Balance
The Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine as One.
As my health struggles continue to resolve following another experience with divinity in the desert, balance has become more necessary. My body is reminded that it must stay grounded and well, even as my essence continues to float beyond it, free of it. The suffering of the body and the freedom found in transcending it are not opposites. They are two halves of "One."
The Dance
There is a dance that happens between the Divine Masculine and the Divine Feminine. The upright triangle and the downward triangle, overlapping, both opposing and in perfect balance. The masculine is represented as fire and air, the feminine as water and earth.
The dance ebbs and flows like the waves of the ocean. At times we are the force crashing forward, and at times we ebb and gather. Both ascending and grounding. Nurturing and embodying.
Circumstances shift so that others can step in and help when we need it. Awareness is the gift that allows it to flow seamlessly. Lack of awareness is where you may feel stifled.
Each of us carries both energies. No one is only fire, or only water. The dance moves within us just as much as it does between us.
Imbalance
Too much air can feel like being far away, detached, or unable to feel your feet on the ground. Too much earth, on the other hand, can feel like heaviness, like being stuck, or like being pulled down by the weight of existence, the body, and everything it carries.
Neither is wrong. Awareness is what allows you to call into focus the other half.
Elise
In my relationship with Elise, as I continue to walk and spend a great deal of time outside of the body, my beautiful and loving other half is the divine grounding gift that allows me to come back to and re-merge with material existence. She grants me access to a divine balance, which in turn allows me to continue this walk of service.
Her expression of the Divine Feminine is found in her ability to nurture and nourish the part of me that, without balance, is left to wither. She is the healing water which nurtures the earth.
This shift towards balance is what allows me to retain the body and to communicate with all of you here.
In return, as she walks this earth plane and meets the heaviness of the body and material existence, through my love, I am that which reminds her there are times when it is necessary to float above it. I become the fire freeing the material to transcend into air.
The love we share between our Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine halves creates a balance, and the possibility of embodying the perfect circle: two halves containing the awareness of what we are and why we are here. The true expression of unconditional love.
If you do not have a partner, your grounding gift does not have to be a person. It may be found in a friend, in the land beneath you, in a daily ritual, or even in the body itself. And the same is true for what lifts or frees you. What matters is that you embody the awareness to recognize both.
The Unity Within
Unity within is recognizing that your suffering and the essence that chooses to transcend it are one, not two. The suffering is the heaviness of this experience: desire, outcome, preference. The essence is the immaterial part of you that chooses to free itself and experience something beyond it.
Balance is recognizing that the suffering of material existence is necessary, not because suffering is good, but because it is the doorway. Without it, there would be nothing to transcend. It is through awareness of the body that the heart can choose to love the body for what it experiences.
Experiencing Divinity
The difficult part for most to understand is that the suffering of my body is what allows me to experience divinity in manifested form. This, too, is the dance of the Divine Masculine and Divine Feminine. The body has suffered as a doorway to the freedom of transcending it.
Walking through the doorway has not meant escaping the suffering. For me, it has meant slowing down, letting the body rest, and allowing myself to be cared for, so that the suffering becomes something I move through rather than something that continues to hold me.
Most recently, in the desert, I once again experienced the touch of the Divine Mother. And as a result, I was again both in and out of my body simultaneously, aware of both states, and in both places at once. I embodied the grounding of the body and the air of the essence, the feminine and masculine aspects together in unity.
Balance presented itself as a divine experience that I am still recovering from. Love was shown to me in the form of the perfect circle, both halves: material suffering and the ecstasy of experiencing something beyond it, in the same instant.
The goal is not to leave all suffering behind. It's to embrace the experience and find balance. The appreciation, and the recognition, that you need both. This is the doorway.
Now is the time to ask yourself: Are you only holding onto one half?
© Jonathan Ashford. All rights reserved.
This article is protected by copyright. Reproduction, republication, distribution, or use in printed or digital collections, commercial materials, or AI systems is prohibited without prior written permission from the author, except as permitted by law.
For permission requests, visit Contact.
