Discover the Man and Woman Inside You
Discover the man and woman inside you
A SMALL STORY
(His Divine Holiness Bhagavan Sri Nithyananda Paramashivam has delivered almost 20,000 hours of recorded talks till date. As part of the talks, He shares simple small stories that give powerful cognitive shifts to the listener. Following is one such story.)
Today, we know biologically that no man is 100% man, and no woman is 100% woman. A man may be 51% man and 49% woman. Likewise, a woman may be 51% woman, and 49% man; just a small
Difference .You have taken birth from the energies of your father and mother. Then, how can you
be only male or only female? Whether we accept it or not, we are an embodiment of both male and female energies. We are whole, not divided.
To be whole, we should be able to accept and express both the masculine and feminine aspects of our nature. But does it really happen? Are we allowed to express both aspects?
Right from the moment of birth, society labels you as either male or female. And it expects you to start behaving accordingly. Society simply does not allow boys to express their feminine side, or girls to express their masculine side. Right from a very young age, one half of our being is suppressed.
Until the age of seven, before the social conditioning has taken a deep root inside, the child is not conscious of being male or female. That is why a very young child has a sense of completeness. He is centered and secure. He is so beautiful and joyful to look at! By around seven, the child comes under society's control. But now, such strong conditioning goes into the child that the child begins to suppress that part of himself which is not approved by society. We don't realize it, but this period is traumatic for the child. He suddenly feels uprooted and cut off from one half of his being. He starts searching for this suppressed half outside.
Man's inherent nature is fulfillment. So he begins, unconsciously, to search for the lost half, the suppressed half. He starts looking to the outside world for a substitute for his own lost half. The male child starts searching for a female presence, and the female child for a male presence.
This is where the whole idea of sex starts. This is how the idea of sex takes root.In the period from seven to fourteen years, the child is closest to his parents. From them, the child collects images about how the ideal woman or ideal man should be. In the case of the male child, the suppressed half of his own personality is replaced with his mother's image and in the girl child, the suppressed part of her personality is replaced with her father's image. That is why every boy's first heroine is his mother, and every girl's first hero is her father. This is the unwritten law! This deep-rooted search is what lies behind the so-called Oedipus and Electra complexes of Freudian psychology. A boy expects care from his wife like the care he received from his mother and a girl expects the security and assurance from her husband that she enjoyed with her father. At fourteen, the child attains physical maturity. His activities become diversified and the child or teenager doesn't spend as much time with his parents. The child now begins to collect images from outsiders and media. The media are perfectly aware of this. That is why you will see that all advertisements always have sexual undertones – an attractive woman or man will be modeling for the product, even if the product has nothing to do with them. Almost all motorbike ads show women,but how many women ride motorbikes! Whatever the product may be, you will find a smiling woman recommending it. When you go to the market, you promptly pick up that product, forgetting that the woman does not come with it! This is the media's way of cashing in on your suppressed desires.
If you are alert and aware, advertisements can never fool you. Of course, by seeing them, you can always be aware of the latest things on the market, no doubt, but they will not deceive you.
You see, while on one side the media feed your imagination, on the other society tries to suppress you. The more society tries to suppress your imagination and desires, the more they grow, because society aims at suppressing the symptoms without getting down to the root cause. You collect ideasfrom all sorts of media and build up an image of the perfect woman or man. From each person, you collect the best nose, the best eyes, the best personality, and create your own 'ideal person'. You follow a 'cut and paste' method like you do in your computers!
This stage lasts for around seven years, until we are about twenty one. By then the identification with media wears off, but the ideas are already deep-rooted in our minds.
Then a fresh search begins, to find that ideal person in our real life. This is the search with the idea of how our 'would- be' should be. This is where expectations start.
A small story:
One ninety year old man used to sit every day at the beach from morning to evening, watching people going by.
Another man who noticed this went up to him and asked him, 'What do youactually do sitting here everyday?'
The old man replied, 'I am searching for a woman to be my wife.'
The man was simply shocked at this reply and asked him, 'Why did you not search in your youth?'
The old man replied, 'I have been searching since I was thirty years old.'
The man was astonished and asked him, 'What sort of a woman are you searching for?' He replied, 'I am searching for a perfect woman.'
'The man asked, 'You haven't found one yet?'
'I found one woman who matched what I had in mind but it didn't work out well with her,' replied the old man.
The man asked why.
The old man replied, 'She was searching for a perfect man!'
This is what happens when we try to get a perfect match for the image that we carry inside us. After a long search, we suddenly find a person who seems to match our mental image but from a distance. The picture in our mind is green, and the image that we see also seems to be green. A match seems to be found!
What happens at this point is what is called falling in love'. This is the science behind falling in love. Note that it is always 'falling' in love, never 'rising' in love! Because of our own strong needs and expectations, we see things as we want to see them. We project our mental image upon the other. Now, the world becomes filled with greenery and music and life becomes poetry. This is the stage at which we begin to write poetry, make paintings of each other and what not.
As long as this distance is maintained, things go on smoothly. We continue to project our imagination upon each other. But as the person slowly comes closer we then feel that what we saw as green was not so green but only a pale green. We feel it is alright and move on. After a while, we come still closer and feel that it is not even pale green but actually a sort of yellow. But at this stage, we don't want to accept that our imagination has turned out to be a lie, so we start making excuses for the situation. We say to ourselves, 'This is life Everything can't be perfect!' and so on. It requires tremendous courage, tremendous intelligence to live with reality. So we use these excuses instead, as a buffer system,to shield ourselves from reality. Finally, when we get close enough we find that it is not even yellow, it is just white! What is inside us is green and what is outside is white. Fantasy and reality are totally different.
A small story:
A man fell down from the third floor of the building onto the road. A passer-by ran up to him and asked, 'The falling must've hurt you.'
The man replied, 'No. The falling did not hurt me. Only the sudden stopping hurt me!'
As long as we float and flirt in love, as long as we keep our distances and time short we are fine. We are in a fantasy world. It is only when the floating stops and the real relationship starts, when the distances reduce and time increases that the problem starts!
The fewer fantasies you collect, the fewer the number of things there are to compare with and lesser the trouble. If you don't have any fantasy or imagination, you will immediately meet your soul mate. If you don't have fantasies, anyone you marry will become your soul mate.
We need to understand that no living person can live up to the image we carry in our minds simply because the image is not built from reality! No image can be matched with reality because at the end of the day, it is only an image, a fantasy!
The ultimate alchemy
What is alchemy? The process of changing a lower level metal such as copper or iron into gold is alchemy. In the same way, when our being is ripe the base feeling of lust transforms to love, the highest emotion we are capable of.
Alchemy involves removing the impurities, adding some pure elements and then processing to change the base metal to gold.
In the same way, remove the impurity of your fantasies, add the purity of friendliness in your relationship and process this with your patience. In the beginning, people may not be able to understand the change in you. Just continue with belief and confidence in yourself. Your sincerity and strength has no way but to touch others around you positively. When we do not accept ourselves fully and copy someone else artificially, we can be beautiful at best, but never graceful. Grace comes from within. Accept yourself as youare and your partner just the way he or she is. Add friendliness to love. As of now, our lust is deep-rooted violence to possess the other person. Add friendliness to themrelationship. Welcome the partner as he or she is, do not just accept him or her. Welcome and accept the mind, body and being as it is. Then you can see lust turns to love and your being is in eternal bliss.
Patanjali* says, 'To whatever your mind is attracted, just meditate on that object.' You may say, 'But my mind goes to all kinds of dirty things.' Don't bother. Do not give the title 'dirty'. Just beautifully
meditate with a deep sacred feeling. Anything can become sacred, when you are respectful and feeling connected. The lust will become love the moment you add sanctity and respect to it.
Love adds life even to the person. With love the person is a spirit, life! Without love the person is reduced to a thing, utility! Without love, when you look at a beautiful man or woman and plan for what you can get out of that person, you reduce him or her to a thing. Only when you look at that person with love, the person is a spirit, aliving being.
That is why whenever people look at you with lustful eyes, you feel repelled, it looks ugly, and you just want to move out of that place. Whenever somebody looks at you with a deep love, you just feel like being around that person continuously.
Celibacy is nothing but not craving for the suppressed half that is inside you, that's all. If you are a male, you need to experience such fulfillment unto yourself that you no longer miss the suppressed half or female inside you. If you are a female, you are so enough unto yourself that you don't look outside to experience this fulfilment.
Once you have achieved this state, you can live with or without the female in the outside world. If this is not achieved, even if you get married, you will continue to be under the torture of your hormones. Your hormonal torture is nothing but a yearning for the fulfillment that you are actually supposed to get from within, not without.
When you achieve this fulfillment, whether you are married or not, there will be peace in your mind. It is then that you can be celibate even in married life! This is true scelibacy.
Patanjali – A sage of ancient India and author of Yoga Sutras, which is considered the foundation of the system of yoga.
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