Equinox: A Call For Balance

In honor of the autumnal equinox (September 22), we will discuss the concept of balance and equal energy. The autumnal equinox in libra marks a day of equal night and equal light. Equal moon and equal sun. Equal yin and equal yang.

The concept of balance governs not just our entire Universe and all of nature, but also our entire being and lives. Human beings (‘Hu’ - spirit, ‘man’ - manifested) are a part of nature’s orchestra. While we feel special that we get this awesome power called ‘free will’, we are also tied to the larger movements of nature and energy. It is through all duality and contrast here on Earth in which we get to utilize our free will to decide what we value and how we use our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy to create what we desire. Achieving continual balance is how we maintain harmony, well-being, and meaning in our lives. This is both the challenge and the opportunity of living. Learning and practicing self-mastery is how you cultivate your ability to balance.

Civilization and society has engineered conditions and beliefs that make it increasingly more challenging and near impossible to achieve balance in being, that gives way to health, well-being, meaning and purpose in life. The evolution of society seems to constantly be perfecting its ability to program human beings as robots. First, it was the severing of soul and spirit. Then, the severing and repression of emotions. Now, it has been a war for control over mind and body. The last and easiest target. When soul is disconnected, all else follows and falls. It is not hard to conquer people’s minds and bodies for control and manipulation. If you wake up and look around, everything in our society is engineered to tell people what to believe, value, think and do. It knows how to target the dark void within and our source of wounds — we all have them, they come from the severing of soul and feeling. This makes it incredibly easy to manipulate and control people. People unknowingly give their soul, spiritual life force energy, bodies, minds and hearts to sources external of them, not knowing what the real underlying intention is nor understanding its implications.

The conquering of spiritually-connected ancient civilizations, the colonization and massacre of indigenous peoples around the world, the spiritual warfare against non-theistic belief systems (pre- religious institutions), industrialization and capitalism, and something that is oftentimes not acknowledged: the warfare against feminine energy, women, and equality, has all helped bring about the great severing of soul and nature.

The war against the feminine is perhaps the single greatest influence on humanity’s well-being.

No one in this world can have true balance, well-being, peace, or great spiritual meaning and purpose in their lives without balance and harmony. At the most fundamental level, we are talking about balance and harmony between yin feminine energy and yang masculine energy. Both yin feminine and yang masculine energy run our entire existence, our entire world and Universe. It gives way to all death and eventual re-creation. These two dual energies are the primary ingredients for life. We cannot have life without one or the other. Nature knows this, animals know this, all of Earth’s creatures and organisms know this because it runs through their natural intelligence. Despite it running through our natural intelligence, humans have free will and do not understand this because we choose to repress it. We are programmed to fight the laws of nature and the Universe, and we wonder why we suffer.

Our society has celebrated, over-prioritized, and over-exercised yang masculine energy for the last few thousand years. The trajectory of our way of being continues to see an exponential usage of yang masculine energy in our everyday being and way of living. The world we live in is patriarchal. The rules, the laws, institutions, governments, corporations, political and economic systems, western medicine and psychology, etc. have all largely been established by the word of men, with the input from women from the shadows. They have all been established unconsciously to largely benefit men—primarily white men. The games and rules we still play by have largely been set by men. If our societal systems have been overly-engineered by one prevailing gender and one prevailing energy, then how are we to ever achieve balance and well-being in life using more of the same perspective and approach? Our entire world is established upon a crumbling foundation of yang masculine energy, invisibly supported by the enduring strength of yin feminine energy. But this way of being and living is not sustainable for us all. And we are already seeing women no longer willing to support a weighty and crumbling foundation that ultimately benefits no one. Women are taking on the repair or building of the foundation, being required to increasingly step more and more into their yang masculine energy. In a society that has long degraded, shamed, repressed, abused, exploited, and gaslighted women, it is not safe to be a woman in society. It is not safe for any person to exercise their yin feminine energy in this society. Our beliefs have created hostile conditions for the yin feminine. The concept of ‘feminine’ has long been co-opted and redefined by men for their own agendas of control. And sadly many women still conform to them. And at the same time, women are increasingly seeing the need to move more into their yang masculine energy as a means to protect and provide for themselves in a world that does not protect them and instead protects the masculine. It is a survival movement. Women are strong and resilient by nature, but many are drained, exhausted, burdened and hardened. The idea of being a ‘super woman’ in all areas of their life is a very necessary yet very unfair standard set for us all. The other side of this movement is that women have been programmed to either give away/deplete or repress their natural yin feminine energy — the life force energy of the Universe. Women have greater access to an infinite source of this life force energy. It is what enables them to literally create life within them. Women are far more powerful than men as they have greater ability to access this infinite energy. It is why men so desperately need and want women’s energy, sexual energy, attention and investment. Women literally give men this energy through a relationship exchange. It is why it is so important for women to understand how they can re-claim their energy and power, define and set the rules and standards, and drive the dynamic in a more healthy and sustainable manner that benefits all. In the other gender, we are seeing men increasingly tired, repressed, debilitated (insecurity, depression, alcoholism, addiction, violence, suicide, etc.), and ill-equipped to answer to the responsibilities and challenges of society. They face pressure to maintain the facade of capability, the image that ‘all is well’, when in reality, so many are crumbling inside. Because society has also programmed men to repress their inner yin feminine energy, they are challenged with resting, recharging, feeling, connecting, processing emotional energy, and freely expressing and communicating themselves. All of this repression is ultimately leading to greater mental health conditions and noncommunicable diseases across both genders. Ultimately, no one is winning here.

This way of being and living has been so natural to us that we think it is completely normal. We think this is the way it is and we just keep going, believing that struggling is inherent to the experience of living. People rarely question it, challenge it, or choose differently for themselves. And our society does an excellent job of constantly bombarding people with toxic messages promoting and perpetuating this status quo way of being. We wonder why we face exponential growth in chronic anxiety, stress, depression, worry, over-analyzing, mental health conditions, chronic health conditions, and ‘unexplainable’ noncommunicable diseases, cancers, and pandemics. Western medical ‘experts’, western psychologists, influencers, and businesses happily provide many theories, ‘answers’ and products to feed the sickness, and continue to approach these problems from the very same perspective with the very same overly-masculine yang energy. What we see on the market is a vicious cycle of answering questions with a mountain of half-truths, content and information that further weighs more heavily on people’s minds, causing more anxiety and stress. People don’t know what to do with all of this information, what to trust, and how to apply it realistically in their lives, From what it looks like, no one really has the answers. We’re just feeding the chaos with more chaos.

To solve our challenges, we need to introduce new energy and new perspectives. Instead of solving our challenges with the same energy, we need to fight it with different energy. It is time to reintroduce yin feminine energy back into our way of being and living, and back into society and humanity. Every single person has repressed, hurt yin feminine energy inside of them, and naturally also has overactive, hurt yang masculine energy. If a person (regardless of gender) has not healed and re-embodied their yin feminine energy (this is not about acting feminine, this is a way of being), then their yang masculine energy will have nothing to lead and direct it, and will run around like the house is always on fire. It has no way of being informed by higher intelligence. It will constantly act and do, with no real truth, intention or purpose. It will be short-sighted and unable to be strategic without a continuous feedback loop. It will always be tired, exhausted, drained and depleted. This is because the person is not operating as a whole system of equal yin feminine and equal yang masculine energy. Therefor, there is no continuous feedback loop to inform adaptive action. There is no balance in energy, and therefore the person will always be undernourished and their system will degrade and break down. A person operating primarily in their yang masculine energy is a robot with no real sense of self, no personal mission, no unique values, and no larger individual purpose. It forgets it is a human being (spirit manifested) with emotional and spiritual needs, and a mind and body that needs both to function harmoniously and powerfully in the world.

Let’s clearly define yin feminine energy. Yin feminine energy is the life force energy of the Universe. Yin feminine energy comes first and is the primary energy necessary for creation. Without yin feminine energy, there is no life. It is the infinite source of energy in the Universe—eternal, boundless, dynamic, undefinable, fluid and the most powerful energy in existence. Feminine yin energy exists all around us and it is what gives our forms life. Add in masculine yang energy, and it is what helps give that energy definition, focus, and form. Together, they create life with physical form. Without feminine yin energy, masculine yang energy will have no purpose and nothing to create. There would be no life. And without masculine yang energy, feminine yin energy will exist eternally (just as it always has and will) however without physical form or definition. Feminine yin energy leads and directs masculine yang energy. Masculine yang energy carries out the directive. This is how nature operates. However in humanity, it is reversed. Masculine yang energy leading feminine yin energy, but it naturally doesn’t work that way. Life cannot flourish and thrive when it is reversed. We need the primal life force energy and higher intelligence to inform the physical form and action. We cannot expect the action to provide the higher intelligence. And if we skip out on the higher intelligence, then it simply is an unintelligent, unaligned action based on what was previously done—stuck in a repetitive loop. This is why change is unnecessarily difficult, because we expect to lead first with the action. Which is what so many self-help books advertise on the market.

So how do we re-embody and reincorporate feminine yin energy in our being and our way of life? First, embodying our feminine yin energy has little to do with being female-like, or “feminine” according to societal definitions. Think of feminine yin energy as the opposite of what we are used to. We can re-embody, heal and re-cultivate our feminine yin energy simply by being, doing absolutely nothing, and resting. It may seem like nothing is happening but actually a lot is happening, you just can’t perceive it. By not constantly being distracted, running around, constantly doing and acting, you create space for all of the other functions that need to happen in nature. This is all about creating space. Space for nothing, for recharging, for healing and repairing, for being simply as you are, for truths and higher intelligence to emerge. Creating space allows for nature to come in and do its part, even if we cannot physically see or understand what is happening. So much is happening below the surface, behind the scenes, and all around us right in front of our eyes even if we cannot perceive it. Creating space allows us to perceive and receive nature’s intelligence. Doing this is not a one-time deal, or something you do on a week-long vacation or retreat. This is a way of being and living. It is something you must reincorporate in your everyday life. Equal feminine yin, equal masculine yang energy. At least half of your days should be spent embodying both. Time for nothing, space, rest, and reflection. Time for structure and action. But I will say, for most people re-learning to heal and re-embody feminine yin energy, it will require a lot more time and space to focus on practicing and cultivating that energy before they can bring both back into balance. Meditation has long been defined as a masculine tradition, but it must be redefined truly as a feminine yin practice, which requires a completely different approach — based purely on feeling, intuition, and the complete surrender of control and expectation. Reflection, journaling, creative expression, and movement is a feminine yin practice as well, when connected with spirit and practiced for the sake of natural expression not output. Modern society, media, careers, and the demands of family will make you believe it is near impossible to have this balance. But when there is a will, there is always a way. You are a creative being, you can figure something out. You just have to be willing to say eff it, I’m doing it my way. Be bold and break away from convention or what is considered “normal.” Know that you will be better off and everyone around you will be better off.

Incorporating more feminine yin energy in our lives benefits everyone. We can all, little by little, carve out more space for us to be in our feminine yin energy so we can rest, recharge, reflect, and receive new perspectives, guidance, and higher natural intelligence to inform our actions. Doing so will enable us to create a harmonious feedback loop for living. We can all benefit from reincorporating this life force energy back into our lives to transform our entire way of being and living.