Thursday, June 23, 2005

Ascension to the Balance of Male/Female

Summer Solstice – Full Moon Marriage of the Male and Female within.
An ascension process.

Tuesday night, June 21, 2005 was the summer solstice and full moon. It was the night of the Marriage of the Male and Female within.

It is rare when both the Sun and Moon are at their greatest power at the same time, so we were privileged to participate in a powerful union of the archetypal male and female energies, and benefit from what is ignited and what is received and embraced. This is also a time when there is a great alignment that supports and represents the exact ceremony we were conducting. That is the alignment of three planets which are now visible is a straight line on the Western horizon at dusk – Saturn (the dark and hidden aspects within us), Venus (the heart, the earth, love), and Mercury (the messenger, communication). At this time, we reach into our hearts and recover what we have buried, restore what we have denied and embrace what we have hidden from ourselves. In order to benefit from this energy, we must choose to receive it. This is the time of choosing.

We are also challenged to recognize and own that the Sun is not what changes how much light and energy we receive. It is the earth on which we live and move and have our being that turns its face toward and away from our one source of light, love and power, and it is the earth that moves closer and further away in its orbit around the source who is always present, always available. Many people call the Earth “Mother,” however the Earth is a wise and balanced being who knows the value of both genders, a being of perfect duality, the manifestation born of light and dark, male and female, active and receptive, action and rest, creation and gestation.

The earth is our example for perfect love and perfect balance for us as individual expressions of oneness to emulate. The earth turns its face away from the source of light, action and growth, not because it forgets that the Sun is always available, not because it rejects or judges the Sun, but because rest, reception, gestation must rightly occur for a full expression of its highest and best good. We humans sometimes forget that the light is always available to us. We are the ones who move away from the light and judge ourselves as imperfect for doing so. And we are also the ones who subject ourselves to too much sunlight, and then become overstimulated or burned by it, resulting in anger and judgement.

We are challenged to recognize the rightness of being in our darkness and embracing it as a cycle that contributes to our health, completion and oneness. The Full Moon reminds us of those cycles and calls us into the dark to receive, gestate and integrate. We are called to stop judging ourselves for having our light and dark times, our active and passive times, our growing and resting times. The Earth is not at war with the environment in which it lives, the natural cycles that sustain it. It does not judge the darkness or the light. It embraces each in its proper time, and the Earth does not struggle to hold onto the light when the darkness is upon its face. And in this natural acceptance there is harmony. This is our example, our greatest teacher.

This cycle happens to the earth and to us every day. We exchange energy back and forth between the male and female, the active and the passive, the giver and the receiver within us moment to moment with every choice we make. If we Recognize, Experience, Accept and Love this natural process, we activate our REAL life. Recognize, Experience, Accept and Love – REAL life. That’s what it means to get REAL. We can choose to stop the war inside, to honor the male and female and to declare a marriage of the opposing forces that keep us from our divine passion, joy and the highest expression of our true selves.

Honoring the Male and Female aspects through each chakra:

Bring the energy through yourself from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet as you repeat the honoring of all these elements within you…Speak the words from your heart – Feel the words radiate their power inside you. Own your wholeness.


The Crown
Male to Female: I honor your Stillness and Divine Openness
Female to Male: I honor your Active pursuit of Divine Flow

Male to Female: I honor your Boundless Potential
Female to Male: I honor your Magical Actions

The 3RD Eye
Male to Female: I honor your Expansive Vision
Female to Male: I honor your Focused Intention

Male to Female: I honor your Ability to See All Sides of an Issue
Female to Male: I honor your Ability to Define the Details

The Throat
Male to Female: I honor your Encouraging Words
Female to Male: I honor your Ability to Speak Your Truth

Male to Female: I honor your Beautiful Music and Song
Female to Male: I honor your Powerful Voice of Authority

The Heart
Male to Female: I honor your Unconditional Love
Female to Male: I honor your Loving Expectations

Male to Female: I honor your Nurturing Spirit & Compassion
Female to Male: I honor your Courage and Strength

Solar Plexus
Male to Female: I honor your Creative Ideas and Inspiration
Female to Male: I honor your Problem Solving Mastery

Male to Female: I honor your Acceptance of All People
Female to Male: I honor your Discernment and Boundaries

Sacral Chakra
Male to Female: I honor your vulnerability & deepest emotions
Female to Male: I honor your protective nature

Male to Female: I honor your fertility, sensuality and trust
Female to Male: I honor your passion and sexual freedom

Root Chakra
Male to Female: I honor your innocence and idealism
Female to Male: I honor your manifesting skills

Male to Female: I honor your community spirit and family commitment
Female to Male: I honor your ability to negotiate & get what you want

Life-Earth Grounding & Anchoring
Male to Female: I honor your ability to receive gratefully
Female to Male: I honor your ability to make it happen

Male to Female: I honor your patience and constant presence
Female to Male: I honor your stability and structure

Male to Female: I honor your inclusive acceptance of life
Female to Male: I honor your discrimination and goals

THE WEDDING

This is the wedding, the ascension of Yin and Yang, the male and female within you. We call together all the men and women who have interacted with us and touched our lives through all time, space and dimensions to acknowledge our ONENESS, to declare harmony within and without.

Each I AM statement adds to the invocation of oneness. Notice your reactions as you say each I am for yourself. If you find resistance, examine it and correct the statement to reflect your wholeness.

I AM both male and female and capable of honoring my wholeness!

I AM the perfect manifestation of a loving divine mother and father!

I AM ready to express the highest and best of all the male and female attributes within me!

I AM ready to stop judging myself and others!

I AM capable of recognizing and embracing my true power through the blending of my heart and mind!

I AM ready to love myself unconditionally and share that love with others!

I AM honoring the needs of all the diverse elements within me!

I AM ready to embrace and live my own perfect life!

I AM open to receiving and generating divine flow!

I AM aware of a greater vision while focusing my personal intention!

I AM willing to look at all sides of an issue while paying attention to the details!

I AM offering gentle encouragement while speaking my truth!

I AM nurturing myself as I take courageous steps in my life!

I AM embracing creative ideas and inspiration to help solve challenges!

I AM embracing diversity while I choose my greater good!

I AM feeling deeply while setting boundaries!

I AM trusting and sensual in expressing my passion and sexual freedom!

I AM honoring the community as I make it happen!

I AM receiving with gratitude while giving generously to others!

I AM inclusive and accepting while I build and manifest!

I AM one with the sun, the moon and the earth, the universe!

I AM in Love – living in the midst of love!

THIS IS MY PROUNCEMENT…
By the power I have chosen to place in me,
and by the power I have claimed for myself
and in the blazing radiance and passion of the Sun,
and in the fertile, creative potential of the void,
and through the dynamic expression of the Earth,
I now pronounce myself THE ONE.

I AM THE ONE!
I AM THE ONE!
I AM truly THE ONE!
So it is! So it ever shall be. Arisen - Ascended - Complete!

If you have personal vows, commitments or affirmations to offer on your own behalf, write them down and repeat them!

These vows being heard, acknowledged and accepted by this gathering within myself and by the universe at large, I now declare this ceremony complete.

Monday, June 13, 2005

The Invocation of Passion

Marriage of the Male and Female Within

Summer Solstice, Full Moon, Labyrinth Walk

Tuesday, June 21, 2005
- 7:30 pm
Place: Carmel Temple Labyrinth (www.carmeltemple.org)
-------- South Houston, Texas
Cost: Love Donation

Last week I meditated and had a chat with the personified male and female within me. I explained to them that I have some needs that are not being well met, and I would like their help to change that situation. Having already established a working relationship with them, it was easy to come to some terms. I agreed to dress more femininely to satisfy my feminine side's need for honoring. And I agreed to honor the men who come into my life as representatives of my male side. In exchange for this conscious activity of honoring, I would be rewarded with a spiritual writing project that financially supports me, and a relationship with a man that is for my highest and best good and my great joy and pleasure.

The very next day, things began to shift for me. A new man showed up on my life, and I am determined to honor him. and fully explore what we have to offer each other, even if it's only friendship. Also my male side agreed to stop being so critical of every person and situation that shows up that is brought in by my female side.

It sounds simple and maybe a little silly, but the agreement creates intention, the intention creates action, and action creates results. It's amazing what a different feeling I have after doing this process.

As a result of that discussion, I began considering the ceremony for the Summer Soltice, Full Moon Labyrinth Walk, and I asked Jim Miles, a long-time friend of mine to join me in creating a ceremony that would truly express the marriage of the male and female within and that would honor the traditions associated with the natural cycles of the sun and moon at this time of the year. Since he had just written an article for the Indigo Sun on the Summer Soltice, he agreed that it would be a good thing to do. I'm not surehe understood all he signed up for. It's a big process for him that he didn't even know he was taking on.

We met at Onion Creek in the Heights of Houston for coffee Saturday morning and began to formulate the plan for the ceremony. He was a bit perplexed about how we would accomplish such a feat and what would come from it. We planned to include an honoring of the male and female with him honoring the Moon and the feminine as the yielding male (the sun now at its most powerful on the longest day of the year yields to the feminine which begins to grow in power until the shortest day of the year in December. And I would honor the sun as male in all it power and radiant magnificence.

But we realized something else, the true cycles that we experience are centered not in the sun and moon, but in the earth and its rotation on its axis and its orbit around the sun. We often experience the polarity of the male and female within us as chaotic or combative, but if we observe the greater cycle we live in on this planet, we see that light and dark are not at war, but complement each other, and move effortlessles from one to the other every day in the cycles of light and dark, giving and receiving, activity and rest, ebb and flow, birth and gestation. So, the model we have for the exchange of energy between man and woman (male and female energies) is one of ease that complements each other and creates wholeness.

The marriage of the male and female within will be a psychodrama (a ritual) that balances the duality within us and creates our own internal cycle of harmony, honoring and life beyond struggle. Think what the world would be like if we recognized ourselves as being in harmony with this greater cycle, the gender war would cease, and we would all empower ourselves to use the energies and the tools that are naturally ours to create a perfect creative exchange from our wholeness. And, the outer world reflecting the inner world so perfectly would relax into this cosmic rhythm, yin and yang, light and dark, action and rest, creation and gestation.

If you are ready to cease the struggles within you and create a more peaceful, loving place for yourself in this world, it's time to be the change you want to see. This ceremony could be the first step in making a commitment to your future, your peace, yourself, and from that wholeness and place of balance, you might create the perfect relationship outside yourself, a reflection of all you hold dear, a reflection or your cosmic loving perfection.

This is your invitation to join me and Jim Miles on this journey to wholeness.

Peace - Sandy Penny - the writingmuse.