Chapter 28.1: Un-Conditioning Ourselves: Returning Home to Our Newborn State

If we understands the masculine and safeguards the feminine,

Then we can be a valley stream to all under the heavens,

abiding in our personal power and virtue. and not departing from it.

As a valley stream to all under the heavens,

abiding in our personal power and virtue and not departing from it, 

like a bird from a net,

returning home again and again to the state of a precious newborn babe.

Regardless of gender, each of us has masculine and feminine energies within us, one displaying and manifesting, one reflective and receptive; one active and ambitious, one passive and peaceful, one passionately pursuing its purpose and desires, one open to embracing the unknown opportunities of the universe, one exuberant and one enduring.  Understanding our masculine sides while preserving and safeguarding our feminine sides brings balance.  Far too often, we embrace one side as our identity while rejecting or suppressing the other.  Just as both masculine and feminine are required to perpetuate a species, the harmonious interplay between our own masculine and feminine energies is required to bring about self-sustainability and homeostasis.

When we balance these two energies within us, permitting each its place and allowing each to play its part in our lives, we tap into our own highest good, like water, and become a generative force, a life-giving presence to all around us, like a mountain stream.  Just as a mountain stream washes away dirt and pollution, filters the water, and carries nourishing sediment downstream, so to does balancing our masculine and feminine energies purify, cleanse, and nurture us.  Moreover, we become like a valley, more accepting, encompassing, and embracing of the uniqueness and diversity within ourselves and others alike.  

Far too often, we make decisions that go against our better judgment, our core beings, and our higher selves.  Why?  Out of fear – our own fears and limiting beliefs and fear of what others will say and think.  Fear, like a startled bird fleeing in a blind panic from a net, causes us to rush headlong away from something without regard for where we are going to.  Balancing our masculine and feminine energies allows us to abide in our personal power and virtue.  Abiding in our personal power and virtue and not departing from it, provides an undeviating course for our lives, like the procession of the sun, the moon, and the stars through the skies.  Balance neutralizes fear.  Harmony tempers terror.  Equilibrium grounds instability.  Regularity reduces erraticism.  Personal power and virtue offset temptation and become an anchor to our souls.

Abiding in the personal power of our virtue and not departing from it in terror, tribulation, or temptation, we return home over and over again to an innocent, childlike state before fears and doubts set in – before responses and reactions were trained and conditioned.   We return to a state of pure being and simple joy.  A newborn does not need fancy clothes, expensive cars, or vacation homes to feel good about itself – a newborn does not seek to accessorize, enhance, or validate its worth through external commodities.  All a newborn babe needs is connection – to feel loved, cared for, and safe.  Deep down inside, all any of us really craves is connection with those closest to us and the unconditional acceptance that we give to newborns.  Let us give that gift to ourselves and return to that childlike state of trust and innocence, to that state of pure being and unmediated action.  ~ DCB

Etymology Notes

The imagery of masculine and feminine comes from male 雄 and female 雌 birds.  The imagery of departing 離 from our personal power and virtue 德, is also linked to bird in a net.  When we feel like trapped animals and are in a panic to escape a situation – when we are fight or flight mode, it is difficult to intentionally and systematically make empowered decisions based on our personal values and virtues. 

The Chinese character 恒 (héng), meaning to abide, endure, or enduring, is composed of the heart-mind radical 忄 next to 亘, which originally referred to the orbit of the sun 日 or earlier the moon 月 through the sky. Taken together, it refers to the emotional state of constancy and durability that anchors our lives like the sun or moon traveling across the sky in constant, predictable, and guiding ways.

Continuing with the theme of rare treasures in the imagery of cowry shells, the character of the newborn babe 嬰 (yīng) is depicted as two cowry shells above a woman, revealing that the newborn was doubly valued and precious to a mother, more so than any earthly possession, for the infant was linked, like a necklace 賏, to all of its past progenitors and all of its future offspring.  So too are we.