Sharon wrote:

I was going to send you an email regarding this but thought others might enjoy reading about it, too.

This is what I have gleaned thus far from my research, ponderings, and wonderings:

Male and female characteristics are not the opposite of one another, as we tend to think of them, but rather the completion of each other. When these twin aspects of nature are united, there is balance, wholeness, and harmony.

In its most basic form, the male or masculine manifestation is source. The female or feminine counterpart is consciousness and love. Masculine presence is steadfast and firm. Feminine influence is active, interactional, and adaptive. Every personality has within it male and female characteristics and these can be either in balance, reflecting wholeness, or out of balance, reflecting need for growth or expansion.

In reference to our discussion regarding the term "passive," this word, if used to describe feminine characteristics, would seem to be in opposition to what I have outlined above. However, upon further reflection and study, I discovered that passive means offering no resistance or opposition. Submission does not always mean that no action is being taken! Many great and wondrous things can occur through the act of surrender (I am thinking most specifically of Jesus' mission upon this Earth). Passive also means patient.

Additionally, it is interesting to note that the word "passive" has the same Latin root as the word "passion." Passivus and passus. I am sure there is something more to be gleaned from that little discovery but perhaps I will leave that to you to uncover and then share with me.

I love you, mi palomita. Thank you for the e-card.

Barbara wrote:

Food for thought, my love. Thank you for dialoguing with me on this. I am thinking Ovid might have something to say on passion, especially if I could read it in the original Latin:-) It has been many years since I studied that language, but I loved it. It was one of the college courses I most enjoyed, and what I learned is still of use to me today. Having a great teacher helped. I was so disappointed to find there was no second year available. Anyway, I digress….

Absolutely, submission is an active state. Taken in isolation, at its surface meaning, to submit is to permit something to happen, to yield to a higher power. By implication, to submit means that one has decided the wisest course of action is not to resist but to yield.

In our society, however, submission is universally regarded as wimping out. In the corporate world, where employees are exhorted to "bring in the big game" or "make Competitor X cry like a baby", to submit is to back down, or to fold like a house of cards, and is regarded with derision and smug satisfaction. To submit is to allow the female energy to dominate. To submit is anathema to a world given over to the exclusive worship and unbridled exercise of the male energy. In such an out-of-balance world, it is no accident that sexual metaphors are used to describe it. In my husband's culture, submission is commonly referred to derogatorily in this fashion.

Real men, brave men, resist submission to the death, down to the last spear. Under no circumstances will they bow their heads like women. Those who do submit are weak, unworthy to be called men. Those who submit are no better than women and should be treated like women. Let us think for a moment about how women are traditionally treated in a war situation. Prompt execution for the old; imprisonment, rape and forced motherhood for the young; and random mayhem and murder typically are the order of the day for the vanquished, and this has been so for millennia. These time-honored techniques designed to produce fear in the target population and bravado and bloodlust in the aggressors are still employed in modern times, most notably in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chechnya. Some of the symbology is certainly used by our profit- and marketshare-hungry corporations. Several years ago a (female) relative of mine came home from an employee indoctrination seminar for a rapidly growing nationwide chain of Mexican restaurants and told us incredulously that the symbol of the campaign was a batter poised to strike a baseball with the competitor’s name emblazoned on it. Off with their heads! Sports symbology is commonly used to typify and encourage so-called corporate team spirit, and the majority regards it with a tolerant, good-old-boys’-club eye and takes it for granted, but the meaning is multilayered and goes much deeper into the human psyche than most people realize.

In a world where the pure masculine qualities of rock-hard inflexibility and shield-rattling challenge predominate, there will never be more than a guarded, enforced peace. Two armies staring each other down across a barbed-wire-filled trench will never a free world make. In a world where the pure feminine qualities of compromise and cooperation are considered vices rather than virtues, there can never be true peace. In a world that does not understand the meaning or value of submission, the fighting, whether between countries or between sexes, will never stop. The pain, deep in our hearts and souls, will never go away.

In a world where technology permits even the least of us to play god and dominate all of nature, what power is so much greater than our own that we must needs submit to it? Under what conditions could submission be considered the greater part of valor, the more intelligent alternative?

To recognize and to acknowledge that there is indeed a greater authority than our own, and to yield to it, requires an intelligence and an intuitive understanding that is feminine in nature. By no means does submission mean simply abdicating responsibility or bending one’s back to the lash. It does not mean lying down on the ground and playing the doormat. Submission is a prudent and intelligent response after careful consideration and weighing of facts and consequences.

To what higher power does the energetically balanced, spiritually evolved person submit? To God. Submission in the service of our Creator is an act of love and of understanding of our place in creation.

True peace, true understanding, true coexistence can only take place when we bring ourselves, and consequently our world, back into balance. This means recognizing the value of the feminine energy we have been suppressing for millennia and giving it the importance and full expression it was meant to have. It means men and women sharing governance of family, corporation, and country equally and unconditionally. It means using the tools of compromise, cooperation, and submission to achieve understanding and peace at every level of society worldwide. It means finally grasping the lesson that Christ (and other teachers) came here to show us: how to love each other and our world as God loves us.

Love is not just a word we say when we want something from another person. It is not the act of sex for pleasure only. Love is not a Hollywood movie; it is living a life that is balanced and productive. It is being true to our nature as God created us. Love is the state of union with the Divine. Love is who we were born to be. Submission is the recognition of the supremacy of Love in our lives. What greater power is there than Love? I bow my head in joyful submission to the power of Love.

Eternally yours, La Princesa Paloma

P.S. -- Lest I be considered out of balance, for a light-hearted treatment of today's topic I encourage everyone to read the famous comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes. We got a lot of enjoyment out of it in Latin class;-) I'd post it here, but it's too long. Here's the link instead:

http://eserver.org/drama/aristophanes/lysistrata.txt

Sharon wrote:

Oh, yes.

And I ask you this. Do we even know what true power is?

It is not oppression. It is not tyranny. It is not domination. It is not brute strength callously wielded to forcefully interfere with the life flow of another.

True power is love.

Oh, Barbara! The anguish I feel when I think of all the damage that has been done in the name of masculine authority and male domination to so many. To me personally; to me specifically. I am enraged at the degree of terror I have cowered under. How dare anyone, anyone, strip from me all that is vital to my being and my essence? How dare they. It was not theirs to take. It was not theirs to meddle with. It was mine. It belonged to me.

Do you remember the commandment, "Thou shalt not kill?" This refers to far more than the murder of another's physical body. Far more. It also refers to the murder of another's true being! When we force ourselves onto someone and declare that our wishes and desires are superior to theirs and force them to comply with our will, we become murderers! Halting the natural flow of another's life force is murder.

I feel so much anger toward the culture you speak of. How much damage must their young men withstand before someone screams "Enough! It stops here. It ends with me." The pain this devaluing process engenders is excruciating to witness, to be a part of. Oh, I speak from experience. How well I know the damage that this kind of blatant disregard for human life can bring.

The betrayer and the betrayed. Both become victims to the aggressive "macho" mindset.

My children will not suffer as I have done. My sons will not go out from my care as damaged souls harming not only themselves but those they try to love.

I will be a human shield. No matter what the cost. My sons will know what true power really is.

They will know.

I say enough.
It stops here.
It ends with me.

Barbara wrote:

So many of us carry the soul-deep wounds of love twisted into travesty. So many of us have been forced or tricked into betraying our very essence. So many of us have allowed others to take our compassion, our feminine desire to comfort and heal, and use it to satisfy their passing fancy. So many of us have been robbed of our innocence by a world out of balance. So often our cries of pain have spun out into a black void seemingly without ears and without pity. So many of us do not value the feminine energy that we carry within, and have allowed others to abuse it, to suppress it, to drain our very life force while all the while deriding us. It has happened to us, and we have allowed it to happen.

It is indeed time for the madness to stop. It is time for women to recognize and value their innate qualities of gentleness, compassion, and nurturing. The power of woman is the power of water: the power to shape and nurture, to sculpt and mold, to softly and persistently create intricate beauty out of even the hardest of stone.

What makes the flowers grow? Water. What opened the Grand Canyon? Water. What cleanses and purifies our bodies, making them function optimally? Water. What makes up three quarters of the Earth’s surface? Water. What is the absolute most essential ingredient of life (after carbon)? Water. What is the ambience of the womb, the very fluid of existence? Water.

Woman, yours is the power of water. To guide and transform, to balance and sustain. To cocreate life. See this power for the gift it is, and claim it. It was vouchsafed to you by God before time began, and it is your birthright and your responsibility. Do not let it be misused any longer.

xoxoxo

Sharon wrote:

And how wounded the men are as well by the imbalance that exists and persists. It is not only the women who suffer from this malady. Don't imagine I hate or despise male presence or masculine essence. I do not. I respect and admire both male and female characteristics. And I desire for both to become strong within me.

The travesty is not the masculine power itself but the imbalance that becomes inevitable when the feminine counterpart is ignored, repressed, or denied. I know you know this but I want to make that point clear for anyone else who might be reading.

The sun needs the moon to reflect its glory. The moon needs the sun to make it glow. The rain needs the earth to pour forth itself upon. And the earth needs the rain to make its bounty grow.

The yin and the yang; the contrast and the complement.

We need each other. We need to be whole. It is time for us to become whole.

I also wanted to emphasize that submitting to love is what releases its power. It is through surrender that we conquer.

Paradoxical? Oh, yes indeed.