A Pathway to Union: The Marriage of the Feminine (Heart) and Masculine (Mind) in the Twenty-First Century.

Copyright © 2010 by Ariana Khent, MA and Carol Wayne, MA

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Many of the stories that appear in this book are composites; nevertheless, they reflect authentic situations in the lives of the many clients I’ve worked with over the years. If you think you recognize yourself in these pages, the similarities are strictly coincidental. The ideas, suggestions, and exercises in this book are not intended as a substitute for consulting with your physician or therapist. All matters regarding your health require medical supervision.

The ankh symbol artwork on front cover by Francisco Marquardt

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid.

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9335-4 (sc)

SBN: 978-1-4401-9333-0 (dj)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-9334-7 (ebk)

Universe rev. date: 02/22/2010

Contents

Acknowledgments

Alchemical Transformation

Introduction

Part 1 Laying the Pathway for Change and Building the Bridge to Transformation

Chapter 1 Feminine and Masculine Qualities

Chapter 2 Her Story and His Story

Chapter 3 The Five Major Initiations

Chapter 4 Modern History and Science

Chapter 5 The Force Centers, Seven Rays, and Rainbow Bridge

Part 2 The Tools for Becoming the Pathway to Union—Marrying the Heart and Mind, the Feminine and Masculine

Chapter 6 Honoring the Physical Body

Chapter 7 Working Through Feelings

Chapter 8 Setting Healthy Boundaries

Chapter 9 Moving Through Judgment to Discernment

Chapter 10 Utilizing Right-and Left-Brain Functions

Chapter 11 Integrating the Conscious and Unconscious Mind

Chapter 12 Living in the Now

Part 3 Treading the Pathway to Union—Walking the Talk

Chapter 13 Transforming Your Stories

Conclusion

Endnotes

Suggested Reading and Exploration

Dedicated to those who are committed to changing their stories.

Acknowledgments

My deepest gratitude:

To my dear friend, Carol Wayne, who offered her support from the very beginning. Her interest and enthusiasm, patient and discerning listening ability, editing and technical expertise, and loyal friendship were invaluable to me as I wrote this book. The fictional story at the end of each chapter is the result of her masterful storytelling talent. Her contribution makes the information in each chapter come alive and beautifully illustrates how to go about the process of integrating feminine and masculine qualities.

To Francisco Marquardt for his exquisite artwork on the front cover.

To my family and friends for their love and support, especially to my son, who intuitively knew it was time to write the next book and gave me the courage to begin.

To the inner guidance that provided the information and resources needed to write the book. A Pathway to Union came through me, not from me, and had a life and mind of its own. My sole contribution was the discipline required to complete the endeavor.

Alchemical Transformation[1]

According to alchemical lore, a marriage of opposites had to occur before lead would turn to gold. Water had to be wedded to fire, the sun to the moon, and the masculine to the feminine … The alchemists also believed that before the opposites could unite, they had to be reduced to their purest essences by a lengthy process of distillation, purification and refinement.

—Jalaha Bonheim, PhD

Aphrodite’s Daughters *

The book you hold in your hands is a key, a blueprint for the alchemical process described above.

Women and men can transform themselves and their world by incorporating both feminine and masculine qualities. They become stronger and more powerful by welcoming and integrating all facets of the human spectrum.

Women and men can be empowered by looking deep into their psyches and embracing their Inner Spirits. The freedom, knowledge, and compassion a human can generate is limitless when the heart and mind are open to infinite possibilities.

Whether you have just begun your exploration toward the path of transformation or have already begun to transform, this book will guide you through important benchmarks and signposts.

Introduction

Heart and Mind in them each insisted upon its rights, and the claims could not be reconciled … Then came, out of that extreme and absolute division, a sudden unity. A new kind of consciousness was created. Mind and Heart, which had been irreconcilable enemies, became united in the soul.

—John Middleton Murry

British literary critic

You are about to embark on a journey into the far reaches of pure spirit where mind and heart exist in a state of unity in the soul, and into the depths of the human psyche where the qualities of mind and heart are divided against each other. You may encounter experiences along the way that shake your cultural conditioning and belief systems to the core.

Required for your adventure are a questioning and open mind, a trusting and open heart, and the willingness and courage to explore. A sense of wonder will enliven your expedition.

This transformative journey grants you an opportunity to expand your belief systems and view cultural conditioning from another perspective: the gift of a new kind of consciousness. When you give yourself permission to neither accept nor reject the contents of this book, you can do your own research and questioning. The ideas that resonate with you may be adopted or set aside, at your discretion; an open heart and mind assist with this process.

Who Will Find This Book Useful?

Are you becoming aware that you are dissatisfied with the old belief systems that have informed your personal life and have informed governmental, judicial, medical, cultural, and religious institutions for the past five thousand years? Do you care deeply about saving the planet, about relationships and social justice, and about personal and global growth and transformation? Have you wondered how to navigate through relationships during these rapidly changing times? Are you open to embracing all aspects of yourself—including feminine and masculine qualities? Are you looking for practical, grounded, easily implemented tools for living as a human infused with a divine essence? Read on—you will find much to expand your conscious awareness and feed your Spirit. You will discover your invaluable worth and the contribution your personal transformation makes to the collective shift humanity is now undergoing.

A Pathway to Union provides the foundation, the tools, the understanding, and the vision for traveling the road of transformation. The information in part 1 offers the support you need to lay the pathway for personal transformation through integrating the feminine and masculine. The tools for building a vehicle infused with conscious awareness, so crucial for changing beliefs and behaviors, are described in a practical and easily applied manner in part 2. And finally, in part 3 you get a glimpse of how marrying the feminine and masculine, the heart and mind promotes personal, cultural, national, international, and spiritual transformation. Change begins with you. Collective shifts occur as a result of individual transformation.

I have applied ancient knowledge in an updated, fresh approach to everyday twenty-first century reality. My goals are for you to feel a connection to the material and to be able to use the tools to enhance your life during this chaotic time of massive transition.

When the information is accessible, it can be implemented now or it can plant a seed that may germinate at a later time.

A Love Story

This is first and foremost a love story: a story about marrying the heart and mind and the feminine and masculine qualities embodied in both females and males. This is also a story about how love for yourself, your fellow human beings, and the planet informs your relationship with your own divine nature. The human story is filled with experiences of war, terror, violence, inequality, and planetary destruction, but unity and love provide the most compelling narrative.

The story form helps you learn to think and to make sense of your life. Stories help you organize your world and your experiences and give you what Sharif Abdulla calls an operative blueprint of how we function as a society.¹ Thematic elements of gods and goddesses, heroes and rogues, war and peace, calamity and triumph, love and betrayal motivate you to find meaning, purpose, and connection with others. You evolve through a better understanding of the relationship between humanity and its Creator/Creatress and through the integration of your divine self on this planet.

And so the stories handed down through many cultures for the past 25,000 years—the stories of Isis, Osiris, Hathor, Krishna, Diana, Buddha, Athena, Mohammed, Innana, Quetzalcoatl, Cerridwin, Jesus, and others—give you ways to contemplate and integrate the profound questions of your existence here on earth: Who or what created you? Where do you come from? Who are you? What is your purpose on earth? The stories vary according to the time frame and the culture of their origin; however, they all have many elemental similarities that will be explored briefly. As you traverse a long span of time and space, you will discover the eternal unity of humanity.

A Pathway to Union Defined

Marrying the Heart and the Mind came to me during a meditation several years ago. I knew it was the title of a book, but I did not feel like I had anything new or different to add to this particular topic, so I went about the business of counseling clients and giving personal growth workshops. Then in March 2006, I began to have dreams about the pentacle, the planet Venus, and the number five; all three are ancient symbols of the divine feminine. As a result of these dreams, I was able to connect the heart with feminine qualities and the mind with masculine qualities, and I understood that the marriage of these two qualities was the topic of the book I was to write.

On the morning of March 18, 2007, just before awakening, I saw an ankh (see figure 1), the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol representing eternal life and the Divine Eye—male and female. I realized that the loop at the top of the ankh represents the womb, the feminine, and the heart. The perpendicular line extending below the loop represents the phallus, the masculine, and the mind. The horizontal line between the heart and the mind symbolizes the High Heart. This forms the bridge between the two qualities and the portal into the Divine Matrix, a quantum energy field, from which you can live a conscious life of right human relations using both the heart—the feminine—and the mind—the masculine.

Figure 1: The Ankh

In the dream I learned that the masculine qualities of action, decision making, leadership, and thinking must always contain the feminine characteristics of caring, nurturing, compassion, creativity, and feeling. If you superimpose a life-size ankh symbol onto the physical body, you see that the heart is in the head and the mind is in the heart, resulting in unity consciousness. This creates a fusion and synthesis—the Higher-Self archetype—in the human body at all levels: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. You can think with the heart and feel with the mind—union.

The ankh is simply a symbol to help you remember the characteristics and meaning of your divine nature. The image itself is not to be confused with the attributes of divinity. It is only a reminder of your own personal inner knowing and feeling. In this book you will explore how to implement these lofty concepts into your daily life in a practical, creative, transformative way.

In the twenty-first century humankind is poised at the threshold of a great social transformation: the sacred marriage of feminine and masculine qualities and characteristics—a love story! How can people create this marriage? How does transformation occur? How does humanity step up to the next turn of the evolutionary spiral, individually and collectively?

My Evolutionary Journey

My holistic vision of personal and collective growth and mystical beliefs was formulated through years of spiritual, metaphysical, and scientific research prompted by a near-death experience. This event opened my heart and mind and triggered a life-long investigation involving stories of the origin and meaning of life. My journey stripped me of my old belief systems and conditioning and gave me the courage to question, the will to choose different stories to guide me, and the power to open my heart and mind and soul to love. Throughout this adventure I explored inwardly and outwardly and toward deeper and deeper levels of conscious awareness and wider and more fulfilling pathways.

My focus in graduate school was on health psychology. I wanted to know why and how some people remained well in spite of trauma, extreme stress, crisis, loss, and many other challenges. I was fascinated by the research of Salvatore Maddi, PhD, and Suzanne Kobasa, PhD, into what they termed hardiness—an ability to feel deeply involved in or committed to the activities of your life and to yourself, the belief that you can control or influence the events of your experiences, and the anticipation of change as an exciting challenge rather than a threat.² This body of work guided my study of survivors of rape, natural disasters, wartime incarceration, concentration camps, cancer, child abuse, and more. How were they different from those who didn’t thrive? Why didn’t they succumb to victimhood?

This introductory research and many years of working with my clients taught me that those who survive and thrive in the face of extreme challenge definitely cultivate a hardy personality. The tools in part 2 are tailor-made for developing a hardy disposition and coping skills in the high-stress and high-stakes environment of the twenty-first century. These tools will assist you in constructing new stories and images for shaping your mind, body, and soul toward your highest potential. They will awaken you to the fact that you have the power to make choices and changes that serve you and others well.

The health care system is bankrupting individuals, families, businesses, and the government; millions are uninsured. Global poverty and unrest are fomenting frequent terror attacks in nearly every country. Corporate greed and personal fiscal irresponsibility have brought the nation and the world to their knees. Global gender and racial inequality hinder the full development of human potential. Many relationships are fraught with frustration and conflict, and half of all marriages end in divorce. Most scientists across the globe agree that planetary destruction has reached unsustainable levels. Will you have the will to change your stories? Will you employ your power to embrace the life-giving characteristics of the feminine—fusion, synthesis, creativity, compassion—as you move forward and deal (a masculine trait denoting action) with these immense challenges? Will you have the courage to submit to being reduced to your purest essence through the process of distillation, purification, and refinement as you progress toward greater levels of awareness and expanding pathways?

The first step in this evolutionary progression is to unite feminine and masculine qualities in both genders. This calls for a massive shift and implies a certain amount of stress, chaos, distress, and conflict.

Transformation: How and Why It Occurs

The central premise of this book revolves around the theme of transformation—how to move from a male-dominant world culture story to a narrative about integrating masculine and feminine characteristics in both genders. Therefore, a discussion about the fundamentals of change may be helpful. In 1977 Ilya Prigogine won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for the theory of dissipative structures. The principles of this model, relevant to people and everyday life as well as nature, explain how deep change occurs.

All of nature, including insect colonies, cellular interactions, and the DNA code, is filled with order and pattern, and these patterns are always in motion. Some forms and structures, such as seeds, a city, or a culture, constantly consume and exchange energy with their environment. These forms and structures are connected at many points and in many ways, and the most intricately connected systems are the most unstable, always in flux. This is the key to transformation.³

Prigogine was able to express through mathematics how fluctuations in the consumption of energy make it possible to suddenly restructure a system.⁴ If the fluctuations are small, the system resists them and the structure is not altered. However, if the fluctuations create a large number of new interactions within it, the system becomes agitated, confused, and excited. Old patterns are shaken up, brought into contact with each other in new ways, and then compelled to form new connections. The parts reorganize into a new, higher order. As the systems transform and evolve, they become more flexible and less stable. Change effectively becomes the norm.

For example:

Old pattern—Smoking permitted in all public places

Fluctuations: Each arrow represents a disruption in the system that permitted smoking in all public places. New interactions within the system were created, and ultimately a new pattern was generated.

Nonsmoking public concerned about environmental and health hazards Image409.JPG

Smoking banned in federal buildings Image409.JPG

Smoking banned in most business buildings and retail stores Image409.JPG

Smoking banned in front half of airplanes Image409.JPG

Smoking banned in the entire airplane and all public transit Image409.JPG

Restaurants divided into smoking and nonsmoking sections Image409.JPG

No smoking allowed in restaurants Image409.JPG

Smoking banned in bars in some states Image409.JPG

Military health experts propose ban on smoking for soldiers Image409.JPG

Health care reform emphasis on wellness and prevention Image409.JPG

New Pattern—No smoking in public places and less smoking in private places

Each new fluctuation impacted the connections between the institutions of society, creating new connections and expectations until smoking was finally banned from virtually all public places. Change regarding where the public was allowed to smoke became the norm, reflecting these feminine values: compassion and concern for people’s comfort and the preservation of life. The laws enacted to ban smoking in public places reflect the masculine trait of action. Based on the dynamics of this theory, the number of smokers will continually diminish as the health care reform emphasis on wellness and prevention begins to take hold.

If you are paying attention, chaos and stress alert you to opportunities for change. Conflict at all levels—physical, emotional, mental, and societal—often precedes transformation into new forms.

Consider the homogeneous culture of the Puritans arriving on the shores of North America. Their first contact with indigenous cultures presented new patterns and information to assimilate, making their society more complex. Over the next four hundred years, immigrants from all over the world—representing every race, ethnicity, and religious belief—came to America and introduced more new patterns, different ideas, and customs for integration. This created an enormous flow and consumption