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.