Part 1 - It's time to put myths to rest

By Michael Jorgensen

As we enter into a new millennium, one of the most important challenges facing humanity is to transform our understanding of gender, sex, and sexuality. While much work has been done in the last few decades, there is still much suffering in the world surrounding these issues. The spiritual meaning and purpose of gender, sex, and sexuality are difficult topics to discuss because our culture has many false beliefs about them. Discussion brings these false beliefs, which need to be examined and surrendered, to our awareness which triggers inner struggles. But the challenges they involve are one of their many gifts. Understanding these gifts brings a greater awareness of our wholeness and divinity so we may experience the ecstasy of our true nature.

In this article, I give you my thoughts on the dance of passion between the Shakti and Shiva energies within us, and how our relationship to each gives rise to our experience of sexuality. I avoid giving Shiva and Shakti a gender, because I believe that our culture's myths about male and female qualities are based upon false beliefs. These false beliefs result in karmic core issues, which are played out in human sexuality, and ask for our healing.

The diversity of human sexuality is truly remarkable, and each manifestation of it requires us to deconstruct our false beliefs about power and the meanings of gender, so that we become truly empowered. Learning to love the unique expressions of our divinity, through the expression of our human sexual selves, allows us to get closer to experiencing the erotic and passionate nature of the universe.

The ecstatic love of Shakti and Shiva

Each one of us carries within equal amounts of the complementary energies of the Creator. There are many names for these energies, but in this article I will identify them as the Vedic notions of Shiva and Shakti.

Shiva is the aspect of God within that is pure consciousness and potential power. It is like the dark matter described by Kryon that makes up the universe - it is infinite, aware, potential energy. It is invisible and silent. It is unlimited creative potential. It is omnipresent and the source of all that is. Shiva may be thought of as conceptual and intellectual. Shiva speaks to us through knowing - without words or feelings. Shiva is love.

Shakti is the aspect of God within that is creative power in action. Shakti is the will or desire that brings Shiva's potential into motion, and manifests it. It passionately triggers the potential creativity of Shiva, and actualizes it. Shakti is expressive and speaks to us through our senses. It is inspiration. Shakti is the verb form of love - loving.

Shiva and Shakti are not separate or distinct, and always work together as one. They are two sides of the indivisible Creator. In myth, Shakti's love for Shiva makes Shakti dance passionately and bring Shiva's creative potential into existence. They exist together in eternal ecstasy. It is their dance of intimacy that creates us and allows us to know and experience love. It is the source and force behind everything, including our relationships. It is the drive behind passionate love for each other and ourselves. We are Shiva and Shakti. When we are conscious of these universal forces of God within - when we acknowledge them as cooperative aspects of love, we experience ecstasy, wholeness, and a divine love for all that is.

When we fall in love, we are recognizing through the Shakti and Shiva within, the divinity of the other.

Shakti and Shiva are unrelated to gender

I wish to avoid applying gender specificity to these two energies by calling Shiva 'masculine' energy and Shakti 'feminine' energy. This confuses the nature of God because in our culture, male power has nothing to do with the characteristics of Shiva. Aggression, competition, domination and other abuses of power are the result of denying awareness of Shiva and misapplying the energies of Shakti. Aggression is Shakti energy without the awareness of love. It is fear in action. And where there is fear, love is hidden and denied.

Likewise, our culture has a very distorted understanding of 'feminine' power,' and so confuses our understanding of Shakti. Females in our culture have not been associated with power, but instead with passivity and receptivity. Even creativity is, at times, associated with weakness in North American culture. Yet Shakti empowers all action and creation.

The power associated with men and women in our culture
is not the result of 'masculine' and 'feminine' energies -
they are the result of Shiva and Shakti operating together
to create imbalanced manifestations of power.

'Masculine' and 'feminine' qualities are based on myths. This is a false belief that has arisen over centuries of human evolution to the point that our genetic code has been affected to some degree and seems to provide "proof" that there is an essential difference.

Gender is neutral in meaning.

It is like the color of your eyes or skin. We have applied beliefs to a neutral characteristic of our human bodies over the thousands of years that we have walked the earth. These beliefs are the result of an imbalance in Shiva and Shakti energies. Our false beliefs about gender are one of the most important gifts that sexuality brings to our awareness to be healed.

Falling in love

When we fall in love, Shiva gives us an inner knowing that the object of our affection can help to make us aware of our wholeness. Shakti inspires us to act and the union of the two energies within us causes us to experience passionate, sensual, and erotic love. We are driven to unite with the other, to explore the nature of our loved one, because we see a reflection of our wholeness in him or her. Sex is the act that mirrors the union of Shiva and Shakti within us - we desire to merge into wholeness with ourself.

For example, when I have met my romantic partners, I have known from the beginning that we would get involved in a relationship. A wordless, silent part of me knows and acknowledges that we have an important connection. This is the Shiva aspect of my being. The silent knowing of Shiva starts bubbling around inside me, stirring my emotions and passions and joyfully moves me to act on the knowing, so that I will see this person again. My feelings and desire to act is the Shakti energy working inside of me.

Shiva and Shakti energies must work cooperatively in us in order for us to fall in love, and on a deeper level, realize our divinity. There are individuals who never seem to meet a romantic partner. He or she may hold a false core belief that they are not worthy of love and therefore shut out the knowingness of Shiva. Or he or she may hear the wordless voice of Shiva, but doubt negates it, and therefore does not act on it and initiate Shakti's powers. At the root is fear. Where there is fear, there is a karmic core issue to heal, and until it is surrendered, we will not hear the wordless voice of Shiva's love. Where there is fear, we will not trust our inner guidance and act upon it in a loving, self-affirming manner.

When Shiva and Shakti energies are imbalanced, they create suffering, obsession, control issues and other forms of powerlessness. There are many variations of this. Some people always seem to be pining for someone who never appears or is unavailable. Others get involved with people who they can control, or who control them. Love does not involve pining or loss, and neither does it involve control. Only fear creates these situations, which are based on a false core belief of powerless and unworthiness of love.

Fear shuts down the guidance of Shiva, and uses Shakti in ways that we experience as non-loving and abusive. All relationships and sexual practices that are based on control, power over another, and powerlessness, are the result of Shakti energies being used in ways that are fear-based. The paradox is that even in fear-based uses of Shakti there is only love. Shiva only allows Shakti Shiva's power, and Shakti only acts and brings Shiva's potential into actuality because within everything and every experience is love. As long as any situation is needed for a spiritual purpose, both Shiva and Shakti allow it into creation. But the abuse of Shakti's power is not the easiest way to learn to heal our false core beliefs.

Complementary Relationships

As I wrote in my article, "Relationships as Mirrors," complementary relationships are manifested by our need to recognize in ourselves what we see in others. When we deny that the qualities we see in the other do not exist within ourselves, we become dependent on the other to give us a sense of completion or reject them because they reflect shadow qualities we wish to deny in ourselves.

Our dependence on another is not stable, because our fears become triggered. The ecstasy of falling in love usually lasts for only a few months, because we begin to fear that the wholeness we experience with another will be taken away. Our fear silences the voice of Shiva within. Our security is threatened, and our fears cause us to behave in defensive ways. We attempt to manipulate the other into giving us what we need by being demanding, threatening (we'll withdraw our love and affection until we get what we want or in extreme cases react with emotional and physical abuse), by trying to make the other feel guilty and acquiesce to our expectations, or by trying to please the other and denying our true feelings and needs. We misuse our Shakti energies.

Those in the relationship begin to experience conflict and drama. Each person is attempting to find wholeness in the other, instead of recognizing his or her wholeness within.

What do we see in another that makes us believe we will find wholeness in him or her? Ask yourself, "If my partner were to leave me, what would I feel missing?" Is it his or her independence, self-control, discipline, intellect and reason, competitiveness, or assertiveness? Is it his or her spontaneity, warmth, humor, honesty, passion, intuition, spirituality, cooperativeness, loyalty, protection, trustworthiness, ability to surrender or nurture? These are qualities we must recognize and honor within ourselves.

On the other hand, ask yourself, "What do I dislike most about my partner?" Is it their selfishness, detachment, rudeness, or dependence? Each of these mirror qualities we need to acknowledge, accept and love within ourselves, and thereby bring wholeness to our psyches. For example, if we experience our partner as selfish, then perhaps we need to be more selfish and honor our own needs by setting boundaries about what is acceptable behavior toward us.

Once we work through our false core beliefs, fears and accept ourselves with love, we bring Shiva and Shakti back into balance and again may experience the ecstasy of their cooperative union in others, the world and ourselves.

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If you have any questions or comments about this article or about relationships, please email me at mjorgensen@planetlightworker.com. I will feature your question or comment in an upcoming article and respond to it with my opinions.

Editor's Note: Next month, Michael continues this powerful understanding when he "Deconstructs the myths of gender." In Part II of his message, he explains how gender has been used and distorted to create the separation of masculine and feminine, and how our fears around sexuality separate us. He uses his own sexual history to describe how to knit together each of our Shakti and Shiva energies to become whole as spiritual beings, human beings, and sexual beings. Part II is incredibly poignant, personal, and beautifully written. Don't miss it.

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©2001, Michael Jorgensen. Printed in the January 2001 Issue of Planetlightworker. http://www.planetlightworker.com (Feel free to duplicate this article for personal use - please include this copyright notice.)

Read the Previous Articles In This Series

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Michael Jorgensen is the self-publisher of the e-zine Lucidities - a forum for understanding the spiritual and metaphysical aspects of relationships - http://www3.telus.net/honeycombe_botanical/lucidities.html. He writes, "I have always been fascinated by relationships. Even as a child I wondered about their meaning and tried to understand how they work. Now, in my mid-30s, after three long term relationships and a few less significant ones, I am beginning to penetrate the beauty and mysteries of relationships. And in the process I am discovering who I am and where I belong in the universe." Michael is currently writing a book titled, Soulmate Wanted: Apply Within, based upon his channeled writings and relationship experiences. You can e-mail him at mjorgensen@planetlightworker.com.