Both/And: Moving from Polarized Chaos to Integrated Wholeness Through Your Sacred Inner Masculine-Feminine Partnership
“Oh ya, … that yin – yang thing. Sure I’ve seen that image.”
“Do you know what it means though?”
“Something about how we have two sides to us. One is masculine and the other is feminine. But I don’t really think about it much. Why?”
Why, indeed?
The world is calling for a sense of unity to pull us out of the polarized either/or chaos we see and feel all around us. We’re being guided to transition from ego-based to heart centered consciousness. Many disciplines from science to spirituality tell us we are One.
Yet we cannot truly be One with others outside of us until we become One within ourselves.
For we are beings of two different yet complimentary channels of energy, the masculine and feminine polarity. These run through not only humans, but everything in the 3D realm.
These energies intertwine within us, creating our whole self. Yes, these are connected to our physical male-female genders. And we use the same words. But the gender question is far more influenced by human social, cultural, religious distortion. So it’s easy to be confused.
My aim with this article is to share a simple way1. to understand the inner dynamics of both our masculine and feminine energies.
The more we recognize the distinctions between them, the more we can value each for the gifts they bring us.
Unity consciousness is a move away from either/or thinking to both/and awareness. You are not only a woman or a man—at a deep energetic level you are both. The more inner unity we feel, the more outer unity we’ll create. The wars we wage in the outside world are mirrors for the war we have, often unconsciously, raging inside us.
Masculine Energy is….
The Radiant Electrical Masculine energy is denser, slower, more focused. It’s straight lines and angles, traveling from Point A to Point B, turning a corner at C. There’s a sense of direction, moving forward.
Feminine Energy is…
The Magnetic Feminine energy is creative, fast, expansive, high energy, able to pay attention to many things all at once. It’s fluid, swirling and curving and noticing everything around it.
To help us see how these energies work inside of us, we can look at four possibilities.
These four are all out of balance because underneath the surface behaviors is a deep feeling of being not good enough, unworthy, or not deserving, so we need to prove ourselves to earn love, success, money, even our good health.
It might be easier to picture these scenarios between women and men, but I’m inviting you to get a sense of how this is going on inside of you, whether you are a man or a woman.
Most of us operate from the first two possibilities, which I’ll explore more here.
Before I do that, let’s look at the last two:
With the equally strong feminine and masculine, you can imagine there’s a lot of fighting, butting heads together to find any common place of agreement. Lots of frustration, tension and exhaustion.
When the masculine and feminine are equally weak, you can’t decide what movie to see or what to eat for dinner. You don’t have the internal permission to even know what you want or what action to take. Feeling powerless, there’s a sense of stagnation and inertia that’s also frustrating.
Now let’s look deeper at this scenario:
STRONG MASCULINE ~ WEAK FEMININE
Here, the masculine energy’s unconscious driver is a need to prove its worth and value. What better way than to find a high-powered job with lots of perks? Nice car, good money, travel.
Because the masculine energy doubts its own validity it keeps working harder and harder to prove itself. The bully side of the masculine is really running the show. The long hours and constant demands are leading to real burnout. Health and relationship challenges kick in.
The weaker feminine energy has its own dreams of starting a side-business, or going back to school, but it never gets off the ground. Underneath, the feminine doesn’t believe it has a right to its own dreams.
So it keeps giving up its own power to follow the masculine and ends up feeling incomplete, resentful, and angry.
On the other hand, here’s a different possibility for:
STRONG FEMININE ~ WEAK MASCULINE
Here the strong feminine unconsciously plays out its story of “I’m not good enough. I don’t really deserve my dreams.”
It finds it very hard to Receive, which is one of its primary energy functions. It’s scattered and ungrounded, swirling off in a new direction every other day.
The weak masculine does its best to keep up with the feminine. It truly wants to create the structure, the container for the feminine’s projects and life to grow in. But it feels unappreciated, unheard, and not valued for what it can do. It kind of gives up after awhile.
WOUNDED SHADOWS
When I say these four possibilities are all out of balance, I’m really speaking about what happens when we deny, ignore, or shove away part of who we are. Our wounded shadows. The tricky thing is the more hidden these aspects are, the more they’re driving us behind the scenes.
Here’s how it showed up for me before I realized what was going on. (And in truth I’m still in the middle of this balancing act too.)
For close to 45 years I was actively engaged with empowering myself and other women through the strong feminine channel via the women’s movement. My path for that was through arts, culture and women’s spirituality more than politics per se.
Even though I knew that individual men were not at fault for the entire patriarchal system, and, I had a supportive father and brothers, I did aim to have as little to do with masculine energy as possible. I bought into the idea that male energy equalled aggression, domination, and “power-over” mentality.
Men, we thought, needed to get more in touch with their feelings and women needed to find their power.
While the bare bones of that statement is not untrue; in fact, it’s only half-true.
Why is that?
Because up to that point, I really didn’t grasp the fact that I even had these two different energies operating inside of me. I might have given lip-service to that yin-yang idea, but it had no conscious application in my life—or so I thought.
I had no clue that the role of the masculine energetically is to protect, serve and support the feminine. Not out of any weakness on her part. They are inner partners with distinct roles to play.
The masculine is the bridge between our creative feminine ideas and the one who carries them across the psychic bridge and out to the world. It’s the riverbed… the channel for the feminine waters of emotion and creativity to flow through.
It was a different world in 1973, when this all started for me.
At that time my sister baby boomers were swelling the ranks of the women’s movement, waking up to the oppressive system that ran the world. It became an Us against Them stance.
Turning away from the world’s masculine aggression and domination felt oh so powerful. Yet, at a deeper, more profound personal level, I did not understand that I was also pushing away my natural, internal masculine energy. It went underground…into my shadows.
In 2017 I had a huge wake-up-call where I realized that in not understanding and thus welcoming the gifts of my masculine energy, I was forcing my energetic feminine to step outside of its natural role of feeling, receiving, attracting.
I was consciously demanding that it carry the entire load of feeling my full range of emotions, listening to and trusting my intuition, feeling safe and secure in the world, creating healthy boundaries, coming up with ideas, visions and action plans and manifesting those plans into reality. I was all for being an Amazon Wonder Woman. That’s what I thought taking my power back was all about.
It’s not what the feminine energy is designed to do though.
With my internal masculine energy channel denied its rightful place alongside my feminine, here’s what was really going on as I tried to set up a new business.
Lots of mind-spin ~ my computer filled with ideas and no implementation.
Unfocused ~ a vague vision with no clear plans, lots of doing with no strategy.
No Structure ~ fuzzy boundaries, no systems in place
Unsupported ~ I needed to do everything by myself, hard to ask for help, no follow through
Self-Doubt ~ couldn’t own my accomplishments, undervalued my knowledge and life experiences, didn’t really know what I wanted so couldn’t ask for it either.
Ruled by Fears of carrying that much power.
It’s easy enough to feel this between you and someone else. Yet this is also true inside of yourself when you feel unsupported, unfocused, not valued or appreciated…
“Masculine energy without feminine energy is not whole.
It does not feel valued. It is not nurtured or appreciated. It feels incomplete.
Female energy without masculine energy is not whole.
It feels unsupported. It’s not focused. It is scattered and unstable.
It is without purpose, and as a result, it has no sense of success.”
~Jim Self of Mastering Alchemy~
Again, picture how this sacred dance of energies is operating inside of you…
A Healthy Balanced Masculine in relation to a Healthy Feminine…
Feels validated, motivated, appreciated and supported to come up with new ways he can assist her to develop her creative ideas.
He loves creating the structures she can use to nurture her dreams.
He can fully step into his natural role of protecting, providing for and serving the feminine. They’re a team.
A Healthy Balanced Feminine in Relation to a Healthy Masculine…
Feels safe and protected so she can create and expand.
She has the structure, the scaffolding, a container to create within.
He provides stability, focus, strength, and dependability.
Out of that she feels permission to focus on her creativity in whatever way it wants to manifest.
There is a beautiful flow of give and take energy between them.
The Path Forward: Integrating Your Inner Sacred Dance2
So how do we move from these wounded patterns into this beautiful flow of balanced masculine and feminine energies within ourselves?
The journey begins with awareness. Simply recognizing these dynamics at play inside you is the first step toward healing and integration. Notice when you feel scattered and unsupported—that's your feminine calling for your masculine's steady presence. Pay attention to when you feel unappreciated or undervalued—that's your masculine asking to be acknowledged for its gifts of structure and support.
Start with compassion. Both your inner masculine and feminine have been doing their best to keep you safe and successful, even when operating from wounded places. Thank them for their efforts, even the misguided ones.
Create dialogue. Begin conversations between these aspects of yourself. Ask your masculine what it needs to feel valued. Listen to what your feminine requires to feel safe enough to create and expand. They've been talking past each other for too long.
Honor both voices. When your feminine bubbles up with creative inspiration, let your masculine step in to create the plan, the timeline, the supportive structure. When your masculine wants to charge ahead with action, invite your feminine to check in—does this feel aligned? What wisdom does your intuition offer?
Practice receiving. If you're like me and spent years in strong feminine/weak masculine patterns, consciously practice letting your masculine energy support you. Let it create boundaries, take action on your behalf, and provide the stability your feminine craves.
On the other hand, if you’re high on the masculine scale and low on the feminine, allow yourself to take breaks, to rest, to honor the value of enjoying simple pleasures without constantly running in the productivity mode.
Celebrate the dance. This isn't about perfect balance—it's about conscious partnership. Some days your feminine will lead with wild creativity and emotional intelligence. Other days your masculine will step forward with focused action and protective strength. The magic happens in the flow between them.
As we heal this sacred dance within ourselves, we naturally begin to recognize and honor it in others. The wars outside begin to quiet as the war within finds peace. We stop trying to fix or change people and instead see them as fellow travelers on this journey of integration.
The world needs both your wild, creative, intuitive feminine and your steady, focused, protective masculine. Not in competition with each other, but in sacred partnership.
When you embody this inner unity, you become a living example of what's possible. You become part of the shift from separation to wholeness, from either/or to both/and, from conflict to collaboration.
The yin-yang symbol isn't just an ancient image—it's a roadmap to the integrated, powerful, whole being you were always meant to be. The question isn't whether you have both energies within you. The question is: are you ready to let them dance together?
Unity Begins Within
With acknowledgement, permission, and thanks to Jim Self of masteringalchemy.com who helped me understand these dynamics in this simple way when I first began this exploration.
I haven’t used ai much except for generating ideas or help writing titles, but I plugged the whole essay into claude.ai and it gave me this conclusion. It summarizes my ideas and experiences of working with my own yin-yang energies quite nicely.
I welcome your thoughts and comments about our sacred dance of polarities. Join the conversation!
Linda, thank you for this beautifully clear and easy-to-follow guide to understanding the masculine and feminine energies. I especially appreciated how you broke down the imbalances—your examples made it so accessible and deeply relatable. This piece struck that rare balance of being both practical and profound, offering not just insight but a true invitation to integration. I’m walking away with a better sense of how to recognize these energies within myself and support them in moving toward harmony. Grateful for your clarity and wisdom here ◡̈
I love this nuanced, balanced take! We live in an era where extremes drive us apart