Living in a culture dominated by masculine energy, we are accustomed to action being more important than reflection; doing being more essential than being; money and material success being far more valuable than maintaining strong, healthy relationships. Has valuing the logical and willful over the intuitive and nurturing caused us unnecessary suffering? Is it time to re-evaluate how we solve our problems, especially our nationwide struggle with weight? Would embracing our feminine strengths create more harmonious results?
In another time and place, embracing our feminine strengths would have come naturally. Those living in cultures that respect the divine feminine have far less of a challenge embracing the wisdom our feminine nature has to offer. But we live in a culture that teaches us to rely almost exclusively on our masculine nature. Your masculine nature asks you to be logical, rational and action-oriented. He likes to make things happen and he LOVES to be in control. He will even suppress, reject or dismiss your feminine nature in order to remain captain of your ship. It’s true; your masculine side is sometimes a bully. He likes to see things in black and white. He doesn’t often pay attention to the subtleties and nuances and can easily disregard your feminine side’s needs.
Your feminine power, on the other hand, is silently strong. She won’t ever put up a fight. She doesn’t feel the need to force you to do anything. She is the keeper of your dreams and she believes in signs and symbols. She speaks the language of emotions and uses creativity to express her inner wisdom. She is not afraid to make decisions based on her intuition because she knows she is connected to the source of all life. When you allow your masculine side to overpower your feminine nature, you dismiss your dreams as nonsense. If you are hurt, you judge yourself as being too sensitive and insist you don’t have valid reasons for feeling the way you do. You believe you need to change to be happy. You will yourself to be better. You diet, exercise, budget, shop and force yourself to become a better, sexier, richer, stronger, skinnier, younger looking version of YOU. You try to muster all your strength to stay focused, stay on track and deny anything that is not part of your masculine nature’s idea of success. In the end, you spend your energy trying to control everything because you believe eventually you WILL become a better you.
Allowing your feminine power to lead the way can prove far more rewarding. This is not to suggest that you should devalue your masculine side. Valuing one side over the other isn’t the answer but in order to achieve balance, you will have to give your masculine nature a new role. Instead of being in control, you must use him to support your feminine power’s direction. Allow her to be the captain. He will become the wind filling her sails. Without him, she cannot go anywhere. But without her, your ship moves round and round in circles never arriving at your destination.
Your masculine nature prefers to stay on the surface of things. Only your feminine nature knows how to dig deeper and move inward. Without her, you will forever be caught in one happiness trap after another, trying to accomplish goal after laborious goal in hopes that the changes you’re after will finally lead to happiness. Your feminine power’s gentle wisdom points your ship in another direction – inward toward the source of authentic happiness. From there, your masculine nature can take over and do the doing that needs to be done in this world. But instead of your actions being rooted in emptiness, lack and the desire to be different, everything you do becomes motivated by understanding, love and compassion.
How your masculine and feminine nature approaches your struggle with weight demonstrates just how different each side is. Being action-oriented and concerned only with results, when your masculine side is in control, the answer to your weight struggle is single-minded. He is logical and rational. You are overweight because you eat too much and don’t exercise. Consume less. Move more. Simple. Now just do it. It doesn’t matter why you overeat or don’t feel motivated to exercise. It only matters that you will yourself to be better.
Your feminine side digs a little deeper and wonders, what is the true cause of this problem? When you allow her to lead the way, the journey becomes as important as the destination. The wise woman within always asks you to question your motivation. Is your desire to change rooted in self-hate? Do you want to change because you are flawed and can’t possibly be okay with the way you are right now? Is this helpful? She asks you to let go of your need to fix the ‘problem’. Instead, she encourages you to approach your struggle with kindness and use it as an opportunity to get to know yourself better. Her soft, gentle approach lets you know she loves you just the way you are and nothing you do will ever make you better for in her eyes you are perfect. You are flawless. Then she reminds you that when you see what she sees, the changes you want will come effortlessly. They will happen naturally. You don’t have to force yourself to lose weight. You don’t have to will it to be. When you love yourself deeply and completely, your actions will naturally be rooted from a desire to take care of yourself. This is the perfect time for your masculine energy to step back into the picture. When your feminine power leads, he can work harmoniously with her. He will become the power that fuels your actions and the doing that needs to be done will be founded in love, compassion and wisdom.
Being the unconditionally loving, ever-understanding source of wisdom that she is, your feminine self will never force your masculine self to step aside. She would never usurp his power. It just isn’t her way. She is still and silent and prefers to just simply be. She waits patiently for you to let go of control. She waits until you are ready to trust her. You can dismiss her, suppress her and try to control her and still she will love you and wait until you are ready to work with her. Because of her, the physical changes you make will last. You will no longer cover up your problems with temporary band aids. She will help transform the cause of disharmony. Without her, you might be skinnier but you wouldn’t be inherently different in any other way and the cause of your struggle with weight would still exist. It wouldn’t just conveniently disappear. It would continue to show up in your life in one way or another and you would eventually have to deal with it, even if your size 6 jeans finally fit.
To not only lose weight but also heal the root of the problem, your feminine power must be the captain of your ship and your masculine nature must learn to follow her lead. His power to act needs to come from the right place. If it were up to him, he would act without any regard to why he is doing what he is doing. Physical results would be all he cared about. Only your wise feminine nature knows that physical results motivated out of self-love are much different than physical results achieved out of self-hate.
Who is the captain of your ship? Who’s been at the helm and are you moving in the direction you ultimately want to go?
