The Masculine And Feminine Principles In The Creative Process

By The Pathwork Guide

Greetings, my friends. Blessings and love are extended to you and reach you in your deepest being to the extent you open up toward them. You receive it; you let it come into you.

I would like to talk tonight, in direct sequence to our previous lectures, about some more specific elements in the creative universal power. I have often said that each human being not only possesses this power, but expresses this power. Coming into your own means the deliberate and conscious, purposeful use of the creative power, which you are and which emanates from you. For, unconsciously and unknowingly, without realizing it, you constantly create your life circumstances with this power. What you think and feel, what you believe and conceive of, what you secretly wish and fear -- all this shapes and determines creative substance. And all of this is the motor force of this power.

What a tremendous difference it is when you deliberately express and create your life, your fate, as it were, rather than unknowingly creating it. In the latter case you do not know why you go through certain experiences and ascribe them to some obscure fate, which seems to have nothing or little to do with what you are, what you feel, what you wish, what you believe in right now, and with what you choose to "do" with all of these thoughts and feelings. The self-realized individual knows exactly how he creates his life. One interim state toward this final realization of the human consciousness is when man connects with his unconscious blocks and, subsequently, comprehends his obstructions and unhappiness in life. This is a great moment, when an individual understands that he has done it, how he has done it, and what is the secret attitude that has produced the unwelcome fate, so that it is no longer blind fate and he can connect cause and effect. From that moment on, man ceases to be helpless. He has never been helpless in regard to any force or power outside himself. But he is helpless against his own inner processes, until he recognizes and changes them.

This is the way of the path. As you discover the root of your negative experience, you become capable of changing it. In order to proceed from here and deliberately create positive fate, it is also necessary that you understand more of the creative force of the universe, and how you can personally use it. The comprehension of this is essential. Now I would like to discuss certain very specific aspects of this creative power.

There are two fundamental aspects with which the creative process works. The one aspect is activation. The other aspect is letting it happen. First, you activate, then you get "out of the way" and let it happen. This creative principle exists throughout the entire universe and manifests in everything in your life -- whether good or bad, desirable or undesirable, important or unimportant. From the mundane, little occurrence to the creation of a universe, these principles exist. If what is created is constructive, fruitful, joyful, and pleasurable, then these principles must interact in a harmonious way. They must complement one another and be in harmony with one another. If what is created is destructive, painful, wasteful, and unhappy, then these two principles must also be at work, only they are distorted and misunderstood. Instead of complementing one another, they interfere with one another. Instead of two aspects making one, unitive whole, a dualism makes two mutually exclusive opposites out of them. When duality is conciliated, two apparently opposing forces work together toward one goal and complement one another. I have discussed this facet of unity versus duality in many other respects. It pertains to all of creation: where an entity is removed from the center, and is therefore in ignorance and error, dualism comes into existence. The entire earth sphere, that is, human consciousness, is in that state, so that all perceivable creative functions are split in the middle. It is no different with the principles discussed here.

Those two fundamental principles in creation -- the activating and letting it be attitudes -- are universal laws. As I said, everything that has ever been created must contain both aspects of creation. Only these are not mechanical laws, like, let us say, the law of gravity. Although all laws, even impersonal, physical ones, have come into existence from, through, and by consciousness, and must have been created in the same manner of combining these two aspects, direct creation, with its own specific laws, is always an expression of consciousness. Whether this consciousness stems from an individual brain or personality, or whether the consciousness is the great Universal Spirit permeating all life, does not matter. The principle is the same.

The conscious attitude expresses whether or not you activate, or whether or not you let it be. These two aspects deserve much closer scrutiny. To activate means that the conscious entity deliberately issues, claims, sets in motion, moves toward, causes, determines, makes happen, and uses purposefully the forces at his disposal. He does so by knowing of these forces and calling them into action. He does so by removing all possible obstructions and by doing himself whatever is necessary. Effort and endeavor are an integral part of setting the creative forces in motion. This is active doing. We may say that this represents the masculine principle in creation.

The attitude of letting it be means to be receptive and waiting. It is also a movement, for nothing that is alive can possibly be not moving; but the type of movement is a very different one from the movement of the activating principle. The activating principle moves itself out toward another state; the spirit of letting it be is a movement within itself. It is a pulsating, involuntary movement, while the movement of activation is deliberate and self-determining. Words are insufficient to explain these facts and you have to listen with your inner ears and use your imagination and your innermost faculties to perceive what I am telling you here.

Now, the consciousness of the attitude of letting it be is one of trustful waiting, of letting a ripening process come to fruition, one of surrender to a force set in motion. This may be called the feminine principle in creation. As I said elsewhere at various occasions, the masculine and feminine principles exist in every endeavor, in every creative act. The self-determining, voluntary act expresses self-confidence and knowing of one's divine nature. The going with the creative forces, the trustful surrender to them, expresses deep trust in life, in the state of being that does not require one iota more movement than to activate the very powers one trusts in. Everything that functions well -- in the universe as well as in the smallest manifestations of mundane life -- combines these two aspects of life and consciousness. Nothing can be created without these principles being at work. No union between the sexes can be fulfilling unless these principles function as they are meant to. Pleasure supreme is possible to the degree these attitudes are healthy and to the extent trust in self and life makes both attitudes possible.

Both men and women represent these two principles, only in different arrangement, emphasis, degree, proportion, and relation. But this does not mean that the healthy, integrated man represents exclusively the activating principle, or that the healthy, integrated woman represents exclusively the principle of letting be. Both must express both, but, as I said, the emphasis differs and the areas in which both principles manifest or apply differ also with men and women.

Each act, each happening in the world must express both principles. Once you begin to think about this and look at life with this slightly altered vision, you will see and understand a lot more about creation as such, as well as about world events. Whether you create a business, whether you create a situation between yourself and another person, whether you create your fate, or whether you create a universe, it all depends on the extent to which you understand and use harmoniously the masculine and feminine principles of creation. It depends on the degree to which you are conscious of both and allow them both to unfold out of yourself.

Both these principles are often distorted and thus create confusion and disharmony. Destructive occurrences are a result of these distorted creative principles being used in erroneous ways.

A man cannot dare to be fully a man, and to activate the creative force in a deliberate and purposeful way, when his unconscious is still steeped in hostility, rage, and anger. For, the activating principle then threatens to express these destructive impulses. There are many people in this world who are still so undeveloped that they have no compunction about expressing their destructive impulses. They do not mind activating the masculine principle, even though it brings forth the most violent and negative actions. Only when the development proceeds further, and the individual no longer wishes to express violence and destruction, will he become frightened of his own active principle and therefore hold it back. This is why a man cannot be fully a man unless he first comes to terms with his negative emotions and desires. When he fully faces them, they will lose their power, as you all know full well from your experience on this path. But as long as you are unaware of their existence, they will control you and force you to act upon them without even knowing what you are doing and why. You will then rationalize and find reasons why you do these acts. Or you will turn the destructiveness upon yourself in your desire not to let the activating principle out into the world and sow negative seeds. Thus, in a transitory state of evolution the individual prevents himself from using the activating principle, for all activation would be based on negativity. This explains why so many people find themselves paralyzed in inactivity and stagnation. Temporarily, he will hold himself back and prevent himself from using the creative principle; therefore, healthy activation, self-assertion, autonomy are also temporarily bound and must wait for release until the personality has settled his difficulty with his own destructive nature. He may have to go through a number of appearances on this earth plane in which the activating forces must be dimmed in him, so as to no longer express the distorted creative principle of activation.

You all experience on this path the necessity to contact hidden cruelty, brutality, sadism, vindictiveness, malice, etc. As you learn to see, understand, and accept these emotions, you can subsequently come out of these feelings. For only then do you become genuinely convinced that there is no need for destructiveness. As long as it is not squarely faced, this conviction is lacking and the holding back is motivated almost entirely by fear of retribution and consequences. Only when you have the courage and honesty to fully see and accept these damaging emotions and desires, only when you totally comprehend and evaluate them, will you see, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are superfluous as a defense and serve no other purpose either. As these feelings become superfluous and you need no longer to be on guard against your own spontaneous reactions, you will be free enough to activate the greatest power in the universe within yourself. You will no longer fear this power, for it will be free from pollution, perversion, distortion. You can then claim your birthright. You can then call into being your own creative forces. It often happens that a person is sufficiently cleansed of the destructive distortions so as to safely use his own inner powers. But the old habit pattern of holding back is so firmly rooted in the personality that he will needlessly forego the use of the activating principle. He is not yet aware of this possibility, that he can afford to use these powers. Although some destructiveness still exists, it is no longer dangerous because he is sufficiently conscious and alert not to allow it to rule him and drive him into negative actions. He does not know yet, however, that the power to handle the remaining aggressions also enables him to use the greatest forces in the universe within himself. He can now become God-like and use the activating power to create circumstances according to his own choice.

So you must differentiate between him who rightfully dims his creative activity because he is justifiably afraid of its negative facets, and him who dims this power simply because he does not know of its positive potential. It is like a person who has been asleep for a long time, and when he wakes up he has not yet discovered all his faculties and the scope of his unfoldment.

The masculine principle is outgoing, active, and leads to action, with its consequences. The act following the driving force or motor force or impetus actively builds, affects, causes, determines. When the personality is fully aware of no longer needing, and therefore fearing, the destructive forces, he also begins to know, eventually, that he can create. He discovers the powers at his disposal that his mind can bring into activation.

The feminine principle of receptivity, of letting it be -- that is, letting the activating forces work their lawful way toward fruition -- is distorted when the entity refuses self-responsibility. If self-activation is relinquished and instead of surrendering to the self-activated forces one surrenders to another person's authority, perversion of the creative feminine principle is taking place. By the same token, a woman who surrenders her autonomy to a mate because she is too fearful and lazy to assume the consequences for her own actions makes a travesty and caricature of her femininity. Her surrender to the mate will never be motivated by love and trust in him and the aim will not be to experience ecstasy by uniting these two creative principles in this particular manifestation. Instead, she surrenders out of fear of life, refusal to assume her obligations in life. Thus this distorted surrender cannot bring anything favorable to either partner. When a woman wants to be a parasite in life and burden her partner with the brunt of her responsibilities, it amounts to cheating life. And life cannot be cheated. The result is that she must increase her fear of life, as well as her fear of man, who is supposed to be her authority. She must fear her self-determined enslavement. Thus the feminine principle is often wrongly associated with helplessness, passivity, inferiority, while masculinity is often wrongly associated with brute force.

In reality, a woman cannot truly be a woman unless she is self-determining. To put it in terms of this lecture: only when she is secure in her selfhood, as a result of activating the creative principle within herself; only when she is accountable for her mistakes and willing to accept and learn from them, can she be strong and self-responsible. Then, and then only, will she be unafraid of total surrender, of letting go, of allowing the involuntary forces in herself to guide her.

Conversely, a man cannot be truly a man when he is not free from destructiveness, when he is not willing to let the activating principle go to work in its own fashion. In other words, he must observe the feminine principle in order to fully activate the masculine one, just as the full woman must activate the masculine principle in order to give herself to the feminine one.

The interaction between man and woman expresses the two facets of the creative power in a very obvious way. The union between the sexes can be satisfactory only to the degree there is harmony within each partner in regard to the two facets. Only then can harmony be established between them.

As man is justified to fear the activating forces as long as he is unaware, and therefore not in control, of his destructiveness, so is woman justified in fearing her self-surrender as long as she makes herself helpless, for whatever distorted motives. If she is not in possession of her inherent powers, surrender must be debilitating and dangerous. Since both men and women express both the masculine and feminine principles, they must both cleanse their activating powers of violence and hostility; and they must both learn means to ascribe the cause for all happenings to the self, rather than blaming outside factors for one's suffering.

This is why you find on this path that both men and women come across the identical patterns of false activity (aggression, hostility, violence, overactivity, impatience, not waiting for the powers to lawfully come to fruition), and false receptivity and letting go (denial of self-responsibility, laziness, the line of least resistance, seeking another authority to shoulder the brunt of accountability). They must both work out the same problems, but they interact on a complementary level, rather than on an identical one.

No self-realization is possible unless you become full men and women, in the deepest possible sense. This is why the human problems are always primarily concerned with the relationship between the sexes. No matter what other problem a human being has, it is, at least indirectly, connected with a person's masculinity and, respectively, her femininity. The expression and handling of the masculine and feminine creative principles permeates the whole personality. Let us take, for example, a work problem: how can one's work be successful if the activating principle is lacking, is dimmed, and the person is not sufficiently outgoing and healthily aggressive? If he does not activate his own creative powers, if he holds back on them? Or if the activating forces are hostile and antisocial? He must get into difficulties with his environment, no matter how accomplished he may be in his trade. If the spirit of love is lacking, he will not want to contribute to life with and through his work. Therefore there can be nothing creative about it. Therefore the deeper spiritual powers cannot manifest. If, however, he wants to enrich life, he can safely enrich himself by and through his activity, without falsely feeling guilty about the latter. The creative activation will do justice to both -- enriching others and the self in every possible way.

These laws are applicable for all endeavor. Whether you do menial work, are an artist, a scientist, or whatever, the law is the same, although the degree may vary in which these principles must be at work. Simple menial work can be done mechanically and yet relatively efficiently, although it can also be a creative act if or when it is done in the spirit of creation mentioned here. Artistic, scientific, spiritual work can never succeed unless it follows these laws.

Thus, your success in your work must fail, as your human relationships and partnerships must fail, when the masculine and feminine principles do not properly interact and complement one another. Needless to say that in all these areas the relationship between the two aspects of creation varies, the emphasis varies, even at any given time or phase.

If one of these two principles is healthy, the other must also be right. It is impossible that one be healthy and the other distorted. Hence, the man who has a problem in self-activation must, in other ways, be unable to let go and let himself be carried. It would be false to assume that the man who is not sufficiently active and aggressive is so all the way in his total personality. He will inevitably discover an area where the feminine principle should reign. Or, the man who expresses an exaggerated extreme of masculinity must harbor areas in which he is too passive and where he expresses the distorted feminine principle. Both these examples are also applicable to women.

Because of the importance of the manifestation of the masculine and feminine creative principles in the inner life of the individual, as a substantial part of self-realization, this pathwork must be particularly concerned with this entire topic. True spirituality must make fuller men and women out of you -- in the best sense and on all levels of your being. To what degree and in what way the off balance exists varies in each case and must be found by self-search.

When you become capable of truly loving, these principles will be perfectly expressed in you. Or, to put it the other way around, when you can deliberately and knowingly activate the creative power to its highest potential because you have come to terms with and no longer fear your own destructiveness, and when you trustingly allow the universal powers to finish lawfully what you have deliberately set in motion, because you do not fear to surrender to a greater power than your willful ego self, you will be capable of loving. Whatever you do then will be creative and will combine these two aspects of creation. The desire to enrich life will never appear as self-impoverishment -- on the contrary. Then the loving man will activate a sublime power in him and his mate for the purpose of enriching them both. He will warrant trust in him, which makes her self-surrender justified, dignified, and enhances her individuality. Giving up the determining ego will be for her a desired experience that need not be feared. His activation becomes lovingly enriching to both. This is quite different from the kind of activating the pseudo masterful man issues forth. In this attitude he puts her down for his self-aggrandizement, so that he makes her fear of surrender reasonable. Thus he hinders her fulfillment as a woman.

The loving woman will surrender in the spirit of enhancing the mastery of self-activation in her mate. She will encourage his full selfhood by not competing with or rejecting it because it no longer appears a threat. Her receptivity must not be confused with paralyzed passivity, which is but a distortion. The pulsating activity of the soul in the receptivity of letting it be, in the state of being, of self-surrender, is a vibrating force that contributes to her mate's selfhood and to his strength.

When the letting go means a deliberate choice of foregoing the active principle because the person recognizes that at a certain point other faculties must take over, an enormous difference is experienced. The activating principle deliberately causes to happen; the being principle is self-perpetuating and involuntary. Its effects occur indirectly.

The pathwork itself consists of the blending of these two aspects. I have discussed this previously in different terminology. I wish to show you right here how it works. No obstruction can be removed, no unhappiness eliminated, unless the person involved -- man or woman -- uses the activating power. It is necessary to "get up," as it were, and claim his possibilities, his right to become a happy person. Nor must he shy away from the effort involved to find the cause of the unhappiness within himself. In other words, he or she must be moving in the direction to cover, doing in the direction to correct, and, at the same time, deliberately calling upon a higher wisdom and power, deep within the self, to make this endeavor meaningful. The mind issues the will and determines the steps, as well as calling upon a greater aspect within. All these are truly activities, each in its own fashion. But then the other principle must be at work. Once these forces are activated, the entity has to let them come to fruition, must let them go to work. He who cannot wait for this to happen, but wants to connect immediately with the desired result, to attach this result at once to the activation, violates the feminine principle in his creation. Thus he will not be successful, or only to the degree to which the two creative aspects were able to function. When man sows a seed into the soil, he cannot at once pull out the plant. He must give it time to grow within the earth, until he can see the first shoots of the plant. Agricultural law demonstrates beautifully the wholeness of these two aspects of creation. The pathwork itself is such a purposeful creative act.

Now, my friends, this is very important for all of you to understand, to ponder about, to meditate with. There is a great deal of material here, which is bound to help you in the most vital way in your further efforts to find your true nature, and thus your happiness as a co-creator.

Are there any questions?

QUESTION: I have a statement that you can comment on, if you will. Since the vital recognition I had at Thanksgiving, I felt this release, which I take to be as sort of "letting it be," and a simultaneous activation. It feels very creative. Things are happening in my mind that I can't believe. Also, I think my intellect has been released, my mind faculties which, I think, have been numbed to some extent. Therefore my learning processes are enhanced. I feel very much in motion and I feel my faculties have been supercharged and expanded.

ANSWER: All this is very true, and more so. There is a tremendous process going on in you. To put it in terms of this lecture, I would like to explain what has taken place, for it will help you further. For the time you have been on this path, until recently, you have activated forces to an enormous extent. In fact, as I have said to you elsewhere before, at the end there was an over-intensity of the activating principle, although I did not use these terms. In this over-intensity, the letting it be principle was not sufficiently in play, which must be cultivated at this period, so as to round up not only your progress but your personality per se. In this new phase, you will learn how to let it be, without indifference, unconcern, or giving up. This is often misunderstood: the blind, escaping line of least resistance is also a distortion of the feminine creative principle. The key here is awareness. If you are fully aware of yourself, and activate awareness at all times, you can afford, without danger to stagnate, to let the forces come to fruition in their own time and rhythm. You will now learn to consciously let fruition take place in you; to tune in on these forces and begin to experience and perceive their living reality in you, a reality that builds up new life. This will never mean giving up effort; on the contrary. But your efforts will be more relaxed, more meaningful, more harmonious, more rounded. As you deliberately set the activating principle in motion, so will you deliberately let the fruition come about. When to use more of one and when more of the other, no rules can determine. It must be intuitively perceived by activating this intuition, too. For the intellect cannot decide when and how to use both forces harmoniously. The Greater Intelligence within must be deliberately activated.

Be blessed, my friends, everyone of you. May you who are already involved on this path find new strength, new stimulation from these words, and a new opening up of doors that will help you where you may have been stuck. And may the new friends who are here for the first time be touched by some of the things I have said. Perhaps somewhere an echo is created that will set something in motion within you and perhaps make you want to activate more, search more in the direction that leads deep into yourself. After the obstructions are faced, accepted, understood, and eliminated, the highest creative powers can unfold. Be blessed, bring forth more and more the greatness and the beauty that you inherently are -- God.

The Guide
by Eva Pierrakos
January 3, 1969

Back