We are All Both
Male and Female

All people, whether male or female, have both receptive and active qualities. Each person is a synthesis of active and receptive behaviors, energies, and attributes. We incarnate in either a male or female body to integrate the lessons available to us by being a man or a woman. Most people, having incarnated into human form many times, have been both male and female in the course of their many lifetimes. By both tapping into our soul knowledge of our dual nature, and by applying our awareness to the active and receptive principles within us, we can more easily achieve a state of balance between these polarities.
    The differences between men and women reflect the active and receptive principles at work in the universe, though those differences do not always have to dictate behavior patterns. Concepts of “male behavior” and “female behavior” are to some extent culturally dictated. On a spiritual level we are all both masculine and feminine in nature.

Culture and Gender Roles

     Our cultural and personal definitions of “maleness” and “femaleness” are changing. In the past one hundred years we have witnessed a dramatic shift in traditional gender roles and identity, particularly within the Western world. It has wrought changes at the deepest levels of society and perhaps within the collective consciousness as well.
     Those who are over the age of fifty or sixty can tell you that the male/female dynamic is a good bit different now than it was when they were growing up. I believe that the balancing of the yin and yang polarities in society and within individuals is a major evolutionary step towards planetary transformation.
In the last century we have broken out of many culturally defined limitations around what men and women can do, feel, say, think, and look like. Women can now hold positions of power. Men can act as care-givers. Women are moving towards equal rights in both the workplace and in the home. It is now more acceptable for men to express their feelings and to value their close male relationships. By taking on roles that were heretofore reserved for members of the opposite sex, the non-biological lines between male and female are now rather blurred.
     These role changes are helping to shift the cultural programming of what men and women are “supposed” to be, and from these changes we learn that all of us can be nurturing and self-actualizing. This is a move towards balance within the self and within society.