Gateways to 2012 VII
Intimacy in Relationship
Return of the Goddess
By Gwynne Mayer
To return to intimacy means to return the Goddess to Her full power, to regain Her connection to instinct whether it be in male or female, She exists in each, She being the Anima Mundi, the world soul. To understand our intimate other no matter what gender, we have to understand how we express the receptive feminine side of our nature and oftentimes allow others to play out the She Goddess rather than own Her within, as Self. The initiative and receptive qualities in each of us determines the kind of relationship, the level of intimacy and honesty, the will to go the distance. It is a conundrum in most cases and takes a multitude of relationships for those of us who demand spontaneous, free thinking, instinctual connection to our intimate other.
A wonderful Jungian writer Edward Whitmont in Return of the Goddess, suggests that we cut ourselves off from this dark intrinsic mother earth when we allow the God self to come in as the patriarchy and run rampant, depleting the energy of the instinct and the dark musky earth of the feminine. As we move toward the 2012 gateway, we can see the need to return to the primal in the multi-dimensions of self; ‘change’ is called for in relationships to self and others. He writes in these passages the connection between our inner masculine/feminine components, both of which tell the tale of how and why our intimate relationships will work or not work.
“Change is a threat to our present state of consciousness and to our accustomed sense of identity. Hence we dread death, the ultimate change, as the greatest evil of all. Dionysus, the dark god of change, represents such a threat. He had to be cast out in the name of the God who is ‘I Am’, the God who separated the evil from the good, the above from the below. As a result, paradisiacal oneness was lost. This theme, in one way or another, runs through all patriarchal mythologies.”
One can see why it is so difficult to find a moral balance out of which to enact our desires and passions within a relationship. Look at the myths that surround us. So much of the feminine has been repressed, affecting the males in our lives in such a big way. Whitmont also says:
“The creative abyss of the maternal ground, the Feminine or Yin, was split off and rejected. The violent, ecstatic urge to death and destruction that is such an important part of the Yin principle was denied and repressed. The abysmal ground and the origin of being is felt as sacred, dangerous and overpowering, all-in-one. Its attraction is passionately desired, yet also dreaded by the gradually emerging individual identity which came to fear it as chaos. Hence taboo and repression were needed to prevent regressive merging and assure order and rationality.”
Loving relationships rest upon the balance between loving openly and dependency on the one hand and aggressive closing and individual isolation (sacred space) on the other. It is an eternal dance that some can master We become better dancers and partners when we choose to do this together, rather than try to balance this all within. The opposing polarity of ‘love’ is not ‘hate’ as one might think, but instead ‘indifference and apathy’ because as long as the energy is ignited in any event, the partner exists as a part-in-her or a part-in-him. The energies will play themselves out and mellow with years, however the fuel of passion, once ignited glows beautifully when aged. Whitmont sums up what we see so often when the Goddess returns to ignite the passions of the heart:
“And indeed the motif of the return of the Great Goddess and her consort is encountered over and over in the dreams and unconscious fantasies of people who seek psychological help to overcome the deadness of their lives. Art, films, literature, and political upheavals also reflect increasingly the same dynamics. The changes they demand entail new understandings of masculinity and femininity in both men and women and the relations between the sexes, as well as new views of reality.”
The ante is becoming greater, our energy is called on to reach out and touch ‘the other’ with com passion. Shall we? Let’s see what the world’s favorite poet, Rumi says:
They try to say what you are, spiritual or sexual?
They wonder about Solomon and all his wives.
In the body of the world, they say, there is a Soul and you are that.
But we have ways within each other
That will never be said by anyone.
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