A very dear friend of mine recently asked me, “Ingrid, what does the ‘female path’ actually mean?” Well, of course I can only explain the female path the way I understand and conceive it. But in order to provide a better answer to the question, I want to illustrate the three types of femininity that are mainly lived by us women by means of the YIN-YANG-symbolism. [1]
The “more-YANG-than-YIN” women
Apart from her female energies, every woman also to some extent contains male energies within herself, just like men also have a female part. But over the course of the last decades (probably even centuries), we women have acquired or assumed so many male characteristics and qualities from our patriarchal society that we have become oblivious of the fact that we live much more male YANG energy (in my illustration represented in mint green) than is actually good for us.
Such being the case, we will be engaged in reducing our male YANG part to a natural size for quite some time to come in order to give more space to our YIN part once more (the pink part of the illustration).
The “YIN-YIN” women
The spruced-up dolls and seemingly helpless little women who cannot master their own life without a man surprisingly still exist. They prefer to be dependent on men instead of taking responsibility for themselves. They deck themselves out for their husbands and boyfriends and define themselves and their personality by their partner’s social position and the size of his bank account. This is why the YANG part of these women is barely existent and has shrunken to an unnatural size.
The “more-YIN-than-YANG” women
The feminine reawakening of our times induces many women to finally give more space, attention and awareness to their long-repressed and only poorly developed YIN part. We increasingly allow ourselves to be guided by our female intuition and love to express our womanhood. Of course, we are still allowed to consciously live our natural YANG part, because femininity does not exclude YANG qualities like purposeful action or logic.
Some women are afraid of forfeiting their male qualities if they focus too much on their femininity. I cannot relate to this fear for the life of me. On the contrary! We women have acquired so many male energies and patterns of behaviour during the past decades that we are not even aware of how much we are informed by these male YANG energies anymore.
The female path
… is a conscious decision and development towards more YIN energy than is currently lived by us women. It needs a female process of consciousness raising and re-orientation that has its origin in the heart, in order not to run the risk of being dominated by YANG energies once again. To find out what this female path needs, have a look at my upcoming blog posts.
[1] Yin and Yang are two terms of Chinese philosophy and represent two antithetical yet complementary, interconnected forces or principles. A very widespread symbol for it is the Taijitu, in which the white Yang (light, hard, hot, male, active, movement) and the black Yin (dark, soft, cold, female, passive, calm) represent its dualist aspects (source: Wikipedia).
Ingrid Auer for Women 