O ne of the hardships many of us experience in these times of Coronavirus is the limitations imposed by being confined to our homes, which forces us to come face to face with ourselves without distractions. Still, there is a way to make our quarantine experience rich and meaningful when we embrace it as an opportunity to bring us into greater balance and intimacy with ourselves. More specifically, this lockdown is a chance to bring our inner feminine and inner masculine into harmony with each other.
Rediscovering Your Inner Feminine
Your inner world is the realm of your inner feminine, that part of you that connects you with your feelings, emotions, and your inner truth. It is the source of your creativity and inspiration, the place where you can feel your inner core– who you really are, the essence of yourself. Your inner feminine puts you in touch with what you truly want, regardless of how you are pressured by others, independently from your conditioning.
If you are comfortable and connected with your inner feminine, being less busy, being still, and being more internal and creative will come to you as a great relief and a pleasure.
However, if you are not familiar with your inner feminine, and if “her” inner territory feels unknown and scary to you, you might feel agitated, frustrated and anxious. And having to stay still might feel to you like you’re in prison.
Rediscovering Your Inner Masculine
On the other hand, if during this lockdown you have trouble connecting with and expressing your inner masculine, you will experience a whole other set of problems.
Your inner masculine is the one who springs into action and gives you the ability to define boundaries and put structures in place. When your mobility is limited because you have to stay at home, all the structures and discipline that a job would provide are gone.
Without your customary schedule, you no longer benefit from the external structures of the work routines that you’d normally rely on to give your life rhythm.
If you struggle to activate your inner masculine to create boundaries, structure and discipline in your daily life, you’ll end up swimming in confusion.
You might lose your sense of what day of the week it is. Your sleep cycle might become completely skewed, and what you want to accomplish for the day will never seem to get done. In general, you’ll feel like you’re floating around aimlessly.
The solution to having a meaningful experience of growth and expansion during these times is to be intimate with yourself in a loving, compassionate way. Love yourself. Bring the different parts of yourself in harmony within you. But what does that mean?
Reconnecting With Your Inner Feminine
In practical terms, if you feel you are not connected enough with your inner feminine, then try to be a loving mother to yourself.
A loving mother loves you just because you are her child, just because you exist. You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to perform, compete or adapt to be loved by a good mother. So, asks yourself, if you were your own child how would you care for yourself? How can you look at yourself through the eyes of a loving mother? How would you nourish your body and your soul?
Love yourself in your stillness and in your inner silence, and if something emotionally scary comes up, a part that you have repressed for example, love that too. Don’t try to run away from it. Instead send it compassion, understanding, and tenderness. Soothe yourself in the cradle of your own motherly love.
Reconnecting With Your Inner Masculine
Conversely, if you feel you are not connected enough with your inner masculine, then try to be a loving father to yourself.
A good father encourages you to act courageously and succeed in the external world, not according to societal standards but according to your own natural gifts. How do you want to affect the world? Give generously to others. Spring into action and change what you want to see improved.
Organize your own schedule, decide what you want to accomplish each day and follow through, step by step, a little at the time. Love your imperfections and failures and persist with actions that make you feel your own agency. Stop the inner criticisms and encourage yourself like a good father would. Become an activist for your own well-being and the well-being of the world, because those two aspects, the personal and the collective, are not separate but tightly interconnected. When you champion others, you champion yourself, and when you take care of yourself, you care for your community you live in as well.
When much is taken away, you have a chance to get to know yourself more deeply, to love yourself more devotedly and act more generously because your inner masculine and inner feminine are in harmony with each other. Such path is adventurous, exciting and infinitely rewarding because it’s meaningful to you and valuable to the world.
All the rewards and confirmations we seek outside of ourselves are already within us. That’s one of the teachings we can learn from the virus that has compelled us to go inward.
“The path appears to be long, but the destination is near.
The kingdom is within your heart.”
Photo credit: Willgard Krause
