Yin and Yang United
Originally posted at Gaia.com on May 12th, 2007
Should humanity embrace more Yin power in order to balance and tame the Yang power? Gautama Buddha and Jesus Christ taught a middle way between the extremes. According to legend, a few disciples of Jesus wanted something more militant which is why they hoped he would lead a (masculine) violent revolution and destroy the Roman Empire. Christ responded by saying they didn’t understand his message. Even after the Romans executed him, many followers of Christ preached of Jesus as a coming messiah who left as a feminine lamb but would return as a masculine lion to judge the world and destroy the enemies of Christianity. Many of the disciples sought to turn the feminine into the masculine. Like those in their culture, they had an aversion towards the feminine because it appeared weak and ineffectual in the material realm.
A lot of Christians refer to God in the masculine, because masculine matter appears the most visible and it seems to always dominate the more feminine spirit just as the masculine dominates and oppresses the feminine in most cultures. In Africa it’s genital mutilation of women. In the Middle East it’s keeping them from voting, being educated and imprisoning their body, sometimes from head to toe. In America it’s men who get paid the most while women’s salaries are on average less. In China and India, many mothers will abort their fetus if they have a daughter because a son is more desirable. In some conservative Christian house holds, a woman is to submit to the authority of her husband. It’s the masculine power that runs the majority of all governments. It’s mostly men who discovered how to use masculine matter to split atoms and create the most destructive force we know in the world today; nuclear weapons.
This conflict between masculine and feminine perspectives is also found in the research of psychologist Carol Gilligan. When playing games like baseball, one younger boy gets three strikes and is out so he starts crying. The other boys want to eject him from the game so they can keep playing. If a girl is around she will usually say, “Give him another chance.” The girl wants to help, connect and to heal. This is what bothers the boys because they see the game as an initiation into the world of rules and male logic. The boys will hurt feelings in order to save the rules and the girls will break the rules in order to save the hurt feelings.
As it stands now, (masculine) logic is telling us we are destroying the world. The environment is in crisis while a third world war looms on the horizon. Many Biblical prophecy interpretations in the West say humanity would be a doomed species if it wasn’t for a Jesus who comes back to save the world through war and dictatorship. This kind of Christ carries a flaming sword, (masculine) and returns as a lion because the (feminine) lamb was ineffectual in bringing heaven to Earth.
Many claiming to be part of mainstream Christian theology believe the Anti-Christ; the incarnation of evil will rise from the (masculine) West. Even though this view envisions a warrior Christ, there are some Christians who believe Jesus is a prince of peace. Because this version of Christ is a balanced form of opposites, he returns to help unite the feminine and masculine together in harmony (Yin and Yang united to bring the kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven) with ends that are preexistent in the means. In this paradigm it is the feminine who is finally able to shine because the masculine side has been tamed to create an equal balance. If the masculine dominated the beginning (Alpha) stage of human history, it is the divine feminine who finds transcendence at the end of time. (Omega) Only after the unification of opposites can World Spirit be born for the salvation of humankind.
When one is designated as superior; masculine and feminine, matter and spirit will be at war with each other. Perhaps this is what threatens to create an Anti-Christ in the West; the conviction among the masses that sees the feminine East as inferior. This is what could lead the West to seek her oppression and enslavement (through the control of Middle East oil) just like the extreme version of masculine has sought to oppress and enslave the feminine for thousands of years.
Matter needs spirit and spirit needs matter for any life to experience this existence. With the knowledge that there is a piece of yin within yang and yang within yin, we can see that a piece of ourself is within our opposite and a piece of them is within us. Holding this perspective is a way in which the compulsion to make war on what is perceived as evil outside ourselves, can be dissuaded for the more desirable power to seek its transformation. This is why the East could potentially transform the West, bringing heaven to earth through the harmony of opposites; spirit (beauty) tames the monster (beast) within matter.
This is the power Christ and Buddha knew, who together formed the corpus collosum of the Earth brain. These two masters were able to bend the rules of matter with the power of spirit. Christ walked on water and replicated food. Buddha vanished from thin air and sent his rice bowl to float upstream against the current.
It is this power to bend the harsh laws of the material that modern day mystics seek to harness. In his book, ‘Peace is the Way’, Deepak Chopra speaks of his acquaintance with those who are able to bend spoons with their minds. (pg. 66) Even Deepak claims to be close to accomplishing this himself. It is interesting that one of the leaders who he says bends spoons telekinetically, is heavily involved in working for peace in Israel; the epicenter of colliding forces between East and West.
Because the recurring drumbeat of war seems as if it is something we can expect with as much certainty as the unchangeable law of gravity, it isn’t surprising then that the interest of bending the rules of matter plays into the same attempts to bend the masculine logic perpetuating the wars that seem unstoppable.
The West has made many attempts to turn the Christ of the (feminine) lamb into the (masculine) lion. This is how they’ve learned to justify wars in the name of Jesus and many Christians to refer to Buddha as evil and weaker than the warrior king of Nazareth. Words from a Christian imperialist missionary, whose early influence helped pave the way for the banning of a Buddhist holiday in Vietnam, illustrate this point: “Just as when a cursed, barren tree is cut down, the branches that are still on it will also fall. When the sinister and deceitful Buddha is defeated, the idolatrous fabrications that proceed from him will also be destroyed”. 1
The disease of masculine imperialist aggression is the scourge we must cure by turning to the (feminine) archetypal spirit of peace. Science has been employed to treat this illness with little luck because the technology of modern war is the fruitless method many believe can be effectively used to win the next world war; which is only possible if we are willing to consider the millions and perhaps billions of casualties that are prophesied to destroy us and the world as we know it.
1 - Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ - “Alexandre de Rhodes”, (Page 5)
In one form of Chrisitan mythology, Christ returns to unite East with West, Yin and Yang in order to prevent the following:
The End, Nuclear War
More about the theory of opposing hemispheres of the Earth brain:
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