In this article we will continue our discussion of human sexuality. This article speaks directly to the harmful stereotyping of genders and gender roles that is so prevalent in our modern society. In Cosmic Core we recognize that both men and women have an equal potential for all aspects of life except one – childbearing. Other than that one difference, both men and women have equal potentials for rational thinking, intuition, creativity, compassion, technical skills, scientific thinking, artistic expression, strength, endurance, communication skills…etc., etc., etc.
We are unique and individual humans first and foremost, and members of a gender second.
Do not let anyone pigeonhole you because you are a certain gender. An unlimited potential exists within each person. When that potential is tapped each of us are able to rise to our highest potential, in our own unique ways, with our own unique talents, in order to serve the highest good.
The Nature of Sexuality
“All time is simultaneous, and so you are male and female at once.
Your ideas of sexuality follow both your religions and your sciences, for you have created each.
You are in the process of reuniting yourself, and discovering what the word “humanity” means.
You are finding out the meaning of individuality, which is a far more important word than you realize, and when you understand that meaning, then your own individuality will express itself in its natural form.
Regardless of what words are put upon your experience in terms of sexual roles you will be a full human being.
When the conscious and unconscious minds are understood, you will have no more problems with sexuality.
Your sexuality is a point of focus, and that is all.
For those of you who need it said, I say it: a woman is as intellectual as a man. A man is as intuitive as a woman.
You chose your sexual focus for a reason. The reason has more to do with the flexibility of consciousness than you presently understand. It has to do with the real nature of aggression and passivity, which you have allowed yourselves to forget….
Think of your ideas about your own sexuality in connection with those about your being and consciousness.
Regroup your ideas so that you automatically think of sexuality in relationship to your religions and sciences.
You have associated the world “female” with the unconscious, while you have been working towards what you now think of as an egotistically based consciousness.
You cannot, each of you, consider the real meaning of your own sexuality unless you understand your own religious history.
Follow through, in your own minds, with your memories. Try to be honest with yourselves as to those early experiences in which you forced yourselves to behave differently than you were, because adults told you that you must.
You had better understand the beautiful, unique quality of your own individuality lest you project upon the other sex – whichever sex you are – those abilities and qualities that you are afraid are your own, or project upon them those abilities and qualities that you wish you possessed and fear you do not.
Each of you must discover what sexuality is, in all of its aspects, and connect it with the nature of your consciousness and your being.
The answers must come from within.”1
The Anima and Animus – The Female within the Male and the Male within the Female
“The wondrous diversity and complexities of human physicality, psychology and sexuality can be characterized by subtle variation and combination in the proportional balance between the primal, archetypal, psycho-functional fields of anima and animus.” ~ Robert Lawlor
“Each person lives both male and female lives.
As a rule, conscious memory of these is not retained.
To prevent an over-identification of the individual with his present sex, within the male there resides an inner personification of femaleness. This personification of femaleness in the male is the true meaning of what Jung called the “anima.”
The anima in the male is, therefore, the psychic memory and identification of all the previous female existences in which the inner self has been involved.
It contains within it the knowledge of the present male’s past female histories, and the intuitive understanding of all the female qualities with which the personality is innately endowed.
The anima, therefore, is an important safeguard, preventing the male from over-identifying with whatever cultural male characteristics have been imposed upon him through present background, environment, and education.
The anima serves not only as a personal but as a mass-civilizing influence, mellowing strongly aggressive tendencies and serving also as a bridge both in communicating with women in a family relationship, and in communication also as it is applied through the arts and verbalization.
The male will often dream of himself, therefore, as a female.
The particular way in which he does so, can tell him much about his own reincarnational background in which he operated as a female.
Maleness and femaleness are obviously not opposites, but merging tendencies.
The priestess, the mother, the young witch, the wife, and the old wise woman – these general types are archetypes, simply because they are “root elements” representing, symbolically, the various kinds of so-called female qualities and the various kinds of female lives that have been lived by males.
They have also been lived by females, of course.
However, the women do not need to be reminded of their femaleness, but again, so that they do not over-identify with their present sex, there is what Jung called the “animus,” or the hidden male within the woman.
Again, however, this represents the male lives with which the self has been involved – the young boy, the priest, the aggressive “jungle man,” and the wise old man.
These are types, representing generally and symbolically past male lives lived by present women.
Women, therefore, can learn much about their reincarnational past as men, through studying those dreams in which these types appear, or in which they themselves appear as men.
Through the anima and the animus, so-called present personalities are able to draw upon the knowledge and intuitions and background that were derived from past existences as the opposite sex.
On some occasions, for example, the woman may go overboard and exaggerate female characteristics, in which case the animus or male within comes to her aid, bringing through dream experiences an onrush of knowledge that will result in compensating male-like reactions.
The same applies to a male when he over-identifies with what he believes to be male characteristics, for whatever reason.
The anima or woman within will rouse him to make compensating actions, causing an upsurge of intuitive abilities, bringing a creative element to offset aggressiveness.
Ideally, left alone, these operations would result in a balance individually and en masse, where aggressiveness was always used creatively, as indeed it can and should be.
The animus and the anima are, of course, highly charged psychically, but the origin of this psychic charge and the inner fascination are the result of a quite legitimate inner identification with these personified other-sex characteristics.
They not only have a reality in the psyche, however, but they are imbedded in genetically codified data by the inner self – a genetic memory of past psychic events – transposed into the genetic memory of the very cells that compose the body.”2
The Individual is Primary: Male & Female Characteristics Secondary
“Physically speaking, you would have no males or females unless first you had individuals.
You are each individuals first of all.
After this, you are individuals of a specific sex, biologically speaking.
The psyche is not male or female.
In your system of beliefs, however, it is often identified as feminine, along with the artistic productions that emerge from its creativity.
In that context, the day, hours and waking consciousness are thought of as masculine, along with the sun – while the nighttime, the moon, and the dreaming consciousness are considered feminine or passive.
In the same manner, aggression is usually understood to be violent assertive action, male-oriented, while female elements are identified in terms of the nurturing principle.
The psyche is male and female, female and male; but when I say this I realize that you put your own definitions upon those terms to begin with.
Biologically, the sexual orientation is the method chosen for continuation of the species.
Otherwise, however, no specific psychological characteristics of any kind are attached to that biological functioning.
I am quite aware that in your experience definite physical and psychological differences do exist.
Those that do are the result of programming, and are not inherent – even biologically – in the species itself.”3
The Continuation of the Species due to Not Overspecializing in terms of Sexuality
“The psyche is a bank from which sexual affiliations are drawn.
Basically, however, there are no clear, set, human, psychological characteristics that belong to one sex or the other.
This would lead to a pattern too rigid for the development of the species, and give you too-specialized behavior patterns that would not allow you to cope as a species – particularly with the many varieties of social groupings possible.
The vitality of the species in fact was assured because it did not overspecialize in terms of sexuality.
There was no fixed mating period, for example. Instead, the species could reproduce freely so that in the event of a catastrophe of any kind, it would not be so tied into rigid patterns that it might result in extinction.
The challenges and problems of the species were different from those of others. It needed additional safeguards. The more flexible mating pattern was one.
With this came a greater diversity in individual characteristics and behavior, so that no individual was bound to a strictly biological role.
If that were true, the species never would have been concerned beyond the issues of physical survival, and such is not the case.
Heterosexual love, as it is understood, gives you a family of parents and children – an important unit, about which other groups form.
If only stereotyped ideas of female-male relationships operated, however, there would be no bond or stimulus great enough to forge one family to another.
The antagonism between males would be too great.
Competition between females would be too severe.
Wars would wipe out struggling tribes before any traditions were formed.”4
Identity is Not Dependent on Biological Sex – Cultural vs. Biological Programming
“Your identity is simply not dependent upon your psychological or biological sexuality.
Your sexual characteristics represent a portion of your personhood.
They provide vital areas of expression, and focal points about which to group experience.
Your sexual qualities are a part of your nature, but they do not define it.
Your beliefs about sexuality, and hence your experience with it, makes you consider it in a very limiting light.
The psyche’s own knowledge, of course, is far more expansive.
The male-female, female-male orientation is not nearly as separate as it appears to be in your present experience.
It is not nearly as tied to psychological characteristics as you suppose.
If your individuality was programmed by your biological sex, then it would be literally impossible for you to perform any action that was not sexually programmed.
A woman cannot father a child, nor can a male bear one.
Since you are otherwise free to perform other kinds of activity that you think of as sexually oriented, in those areas the orientation is cultural.
You imagine, however, that the male is aggressive, active, logical-minded, inventive, outwardly oriented, a builder of civilizations.
You identify the ego as male.
Societies and organizations of church and state are seen as male.
Love and devotion are largely seem as female characteristics.
The unconscious therefore seems to be female, and the feminine characteristics are usually given as passive, intuitive, nurturing, creative, uninventive, concerned with preserving the status quo, disliking change.
At the same time, you consider the intuitive elements rather frightening, as if they can explode to disrupt known patterns – in unknown ways.
Males who are creatively gifted find themselves in some dilemma, for their rich, sensed creativity comes into direct conflict with their ideas of virility.
Women who possess characteristic that are thought to be masculine have the same problem on the other side.
In your terms, the psyche is a repository of characteristics that operate in union, composed of female and male elements.
The human psyche contains such patterns that can be put together in multitudinous ways.
You have categorized human abilities so that it seems that you are men or women, or women and men primarily and persons secondarily.
Your personhood exists first, however.
Your individuality gives meaning to your sex, and not the other way around.
The human personality is therefore endowed sexually and psychologically with a freedom from strict sexual orientation.
This has contributed to the survival of the species by not separating any of its mental or psychological abilities into two opposite camps.
Except for the physical process of reproduction, the species is free to arrange its psychological characteristics in whatever fashion it chooses.
There is no inner programming that says otherwise.”5
Social Programming of the Sexes
“The psyche contains, again in your terms, female and male characteristics.
These are put together, so to speak, in the human personality with great leeway and in many proportions.
Your male or female orientation limits you in ways that you do not understand.
As long as you equate identity with your sexuality, you will limit the potentials of the individual and of the species.
Your psychological tests show you only the current picture of males and females, brought up from infancy with particular sexual beliefs.
These beliefs program the child from infancy, of course, so that it behaves in certain fashions in adulthood.
The male seems to perform better at mathematical tasks, and so-called logical mental activity, while the female performs better in a social context, in value development and personal relationships.
The male shows up better in the sciences, while the female is considered intuitional.
The male’s aggressive tendencies, often taken as basic characteristics of the species itself, are a case in point.
This is an exaggerated, learned aggressive response, not natural in those terms in your species, or as interpreted in any other species.
It is the direct result of the fact that the male has been taught to deny the existence within himself of certain basic emotions.
This means that he denies a certain portion of his own humanity, and then is forced to overreact in expressing those emotions left open to him.
It should be obvious to many of my readers that this is learned behavior.
You cannot teach a boy to be “the strong silent male type,” and then expect him to excel either verbally or in social relationships.
You cannot expect a girl to show “strong, logical thought development” when she is taught that a woman is intuitional – that the intuitions are opposed to logic, and that she must be feminine, or non-logical, at all costs. This is fairly obvious.”6
The Division between Intellect & Emotions, Male & Female
“You have tried to divide mental and emotional characteristics between the two sexes, forcing a stereotyped behavior.
The male who was intuitive or artistically gifted in certain ways often therefore considered himself homosexual, whether or not he was, because his emotional and mental characteristics seem to fit the female rather than the male sex.
The woman who had interests beyond those acceptable as feminine was often in the same position.
Because the intellect and the emotions were considered so separately, however, attempts to express intuitive abilities often resulted in, and often do result in, “unreasonable” behavior.
Instead, intellectual and intuitive behavior should be beautifully blended.
In the same way you have attempted to force the expression of love into a purely – or exclusively – sexual orientation.
An affectionate caress or kiss between members of the same sex is generally not considered proper.
The taboos include most aspects of the sense of touch in connection with the human body.
Touching is considered so basically sexual that the most innocuous touching of any portion of the body by another person is considered potentially dangerous.
On the one hand you are too specific in your use of the term “sexuality”’ yet in another way, and in that context, you feel that any kind of affection must naturally lead to sexual expression, if given its way.
Your beliefs make this sexual eventuality appear as a fact of experience.
This also forces you to guard your emotional life very closely.
As a result, any show of love is to some extent inhibited unless it can legitimately find expression sexually.
In many instances love itself seems wrong because it must imply sexual expression at times when such expression is not possible, or even desired.
Some people have a great capacity for love, devotion, and loyalty, which would naturally seek expression in many diverse ways – through strong enduring friendships, devotion to causes in which they believe, through vocations in which they help others.
They may not be particularly sexually oriented.
In fact, Western society has attempted to force all expression of love and devotion in to sexual activity, or otherwise ban it entirely.
Sexual performance is considered the one safe way of using the great potential of human emotions.
When it seems to you that society is becoming licentious, in many ways it is most restrained and inhibited. It means that all options except sexual freedom have been denied.
The great force of love and devotion is withdrawn from personal areas of individual creativity through purposeful work.
It is being withdrawn from expression through government of law.
It is being denied expression through meaningful personal relationships, and forced into a narrow expression through a sexuality that then will indeed become meaningless.
Each individual suffers whenever identity is defined primarily as a matter of sexual orientation.
Mental and emotional human characteristics are simply not meted out according to sex.
Such identification cuts the individual in half, so that each person used but half of his or her potential.
This causes a schism in all of your cultural activities.”7
The “Battle of the Sexes”
“The so-called battle of the sexes, with its ramifications, is not “natural” – or, in that context, is fighting between members of the same sex.
Even in the animal kingdom, for example, males do not fight to the death over the females when they are in their natural state.
It is not natural, then for men to fight over women.
This is a purely cultural, learned behavior.
In terms of history as you understand it, the species could not withstand such misapplied energy, nor could it have withstood such constant antagonism.
If the “battle of the sexes” were as prevalent as supposed, and as natural and ferocious, then there literally would be no cooperation between males and females for any purpose.
There would be none between men or between women either, for they would be in a constant state of battle against each other.”8
Sexuality & Puberty
“In the world of your present experience, sexual differences are less apparent as you reach old age. Before puberty there is the same kind of seeming ambiguity.
Puberty comes at a certain time, triggered by deep mechanisms that are related to the state of the natural world, the condition of the species, and those cultural beliefs that in a certain sense you transpose upon the natural world.
The time that puberty comes varies and afterward it is possible to parent a child. A time then comes when the period is over.
During what is called the sexually active time the larger dimensions of personhood become strictly narrowed into sexually stereotyped roles – and all aspects of identity that do not fit are ignored or denied.
The fact is that few people fit those roles.
They are largely the result of the interpretations of religion as conventionally understood.
And the scientists, for all their seeming independence, often simply found new intellectually acceptable reasons for unconsciously held emotional beliefs.
A relatively strong “sexual” identification is important under the circumstances of puberty – but an over-identification with them, before or afterward, can lead to stereotyped behavior, in which the greater needs and abilities of the individual are not allowed fulfillment.
If men and women think that identity is a matter of sexual performance and they teach this to children, consciously or unconsciously, the children will begin to perform as quickly as possible.
They will squeeze their identity into sexual clothes, and the society will suffer because the great creative thrusts of growing intellect and intuitions will be divided at puberty, precisely when they are needed.
It is pathetic and ludicrous for them to believe that they must have intercourse frequently in their youth, or to set up standards of normality against which they must measure their sexual experience.”9
Sexual Identification in Cultural Terms
“You do not understand what true womanhood or true manhood is.
You are forced instead to concentrate upon a shallow kind of diversity.
As a result, the reflection of sexual schism taints all of your activities, but most of all it limits your psychological reality.
You stress the importance of sexual identification, for it seems to you that a young child must know that it will grow up to be a man or woman, in the most precise of terms – towing the line in the least particular.
The slightest deviation is looked upon with dismay, so that personal identity and worth are completely tied into identification with femaleness or maleness.
Completely different characteristics, abilities, and performances are expected from those in each category.
A male who does not feel himself fully male, therefore, does not trust his identity as a person.
A woman doubtful of her complete femininity in the same manner doesn’t trust the integrity of her personhood.
A lesbian or homosexual is on very shifting psychological ground, because the same interests and abilities that they feel most personally theirs are precisely those that mark them as sexual eccentrics.
These are simple enough examples, but the man who possesses interests considered feminine by your culture, who naturally wants to enter fields of interest considered womanly, experiences drastic conflicts between his sense of personhood and identity – and his sexuality as it is culturally defined.
The same, of course, applies to women.
It is quite natural for some people to behave as males sexually and as females psychologically.
It is quite “natural” for others to operate in a reverse fashion.
The larger pattern of human personhood demands a bisexual affiliation that allows leeway in sexual encounters, a leeway that provides a framework in which individuals can express feelings, abilities, and characteristics that follow the natural inclinations of the personal psyche rather than sexual stereotypes.
The overly specific sexual orientation reflects a basic division in consciousness.
It not only separates a man from his own intuitions and emotions to some extent, or a woman from her own intellect, but it effectively provides a civilization in which mind and heart, fact and revelation, appear completely divorced.
To some degree each person is at war with the psyche, for all of an individual’s human characteristics must be denied unless they fit in with those considered normal to the sexual identity.
Ideally, the adult male or female would rejoice in sexual expression and find an overall orientation, but would also bask in a greater psychological and psychic identity that experienced and expressed all of the great human capabilities of mind and heart, which splash over any artificial divisions.”10
Projecting Our Ideas of Sexuality onto Animals
“When you view the animal kingdom, you also do so through your specialized sexual beliefs, studying the behavior of the male and female, looking for patterns of aggressiveness, territorial jealousy, passivity, mothering instincts, or whatever.
These specialties of interest make you blind to many larger dimensions of animal behavior.
To some degree, the so-called mothering instinct belongs to male and female alike in any species that can be so designated.
Animals have close friendships, with or without sexual expression, with members of the same sex.
Love and devotion are not the prerogatives of one sex or one species.
As a result, you see in nature only what you want to see, and you provide yourselves with a pattern or model of nature that conforms with your beliefs.”11
The Bisexual Nature of Humanity
“There are obvious differences between the sexes.
They are insignificant, and appear large only because you concentrate so upon them.
The great human qualities of love, strength, compassion, intellect and imagination do not belong to one sex or the other.
Only an understanding of this inherent bisexual nature will release those qualities in each individual, regardless of sex.
Your beliefs lead you to suppose that a natural bisexuality would result in the death of the family, the destruction of morals, rampant sexual crimes, and the loss of sexual identity.
I would say, however, that my last sentence adequately describes your present situation.
The acceptance of the species natural bisexuality would ultimately help solve not only those problems but many others, including the large instances of violence, and acts of murder.
In your terms, however, and in your circumstances, there is not apt to be an easy transition.
The parent-child relationship has its own unique emotional structure, which survives even those distortions you have placed upon it, and its ancient integrity would not be weakened, but strengthened, if greater stress were laid upon your bisexual nature.
Children would fare far better if the ancient parental qualities were not so forcibly focused upon the mother.
This in itself leads to more dependence upon the mother than is healthy, and forms an artificial allegiance between mother and child against the father.
Basically, man’s inherent bisexuality provides the basis for the cooperation that makes physical survival, and any kind of cultural interaction, possible.”12
Children & Lesbian or Homosexual Tendencies
“Tendencies toward lesbianism or homosexuality in children are quite natural.
They are so feared, however, that often just-as-natural leanings toward heterosexuality are blocked.
Instead, the young person is stereotyped.
Individual inclinations toward creativity often emerge in a strong fashion in adolescence.
If those drives in either sex do not conform in expression to those expected of the male or female, then such young persons become confused.
The creative expression seems to be in direct contradiction to the sexual standards expected.
I am not saying that lesbianism and homosexuality are merely stages leading to heterosexuality.
I am saying that lesbianism, homosexuality, and heterosexuality are valid expressions of humanity’s bisexual nature.”13
Lesbianism & Homosexuality
“Because of your exaggerated focus, you therefore become relatively blind to other aspects of “sexuality”.
First of all, sexuality per se does not necessarily lead to intercourse.
It can lead to acts that do not produce children.
What you think of as lesbian or homosexual activity is quite natural sexual expression, biologically and psychologically.”14
“Homosexual entities…have experienced many incarnations as biological male and as biological female.
This would not suggest what you call homosexuality in an active phase were it not for the difficult vibratory condition of your planetary sphere.
There is what you may call great aura infringement among your crowded urban areas in your more populous countries.
In an over-crowded situation where each mind/body/spirit complex is under a constant bombardment from other-selves it is understandable that those who are especially sensitive would not feel the desire to reproduce. ”15
Reincarnational Lives and Sexuality
“In their play children often imaginatively interchange their sexes.
The young self-hood is freer in its identification, and as yet has not been taught to identify its own personality with its sex exclusively.
In the dreams of children this same activity continues.
Adults censor many of their own dreams so that the frequent changes in sexual orientation are not remembered.
Play then at another game, and pretend that you are of the opposite sex.
Do this after an encounter in which the conventions of sex have played a part.
Ask yourself how many of your current beliefs would be different if your sex was.
People often program their waking memory in quite the same fashion.
The psyche, again, not only has no one sexual identification, but it is the larger psychic and psychological bank of potentials from which all gradations of sexuality emerge.
It is not asexual, and yet it is the combination of those richest ingredients considered to be male and female.”16
- Roberts, Jane, The “Unknown” Reality Vol I, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1977
- Roberts, Jane, Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1972
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1979
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- ibid.
- Elkins, Rueckert, McCarty, The Law of One, Session 31.8, http://www.lawofone.info/results.php?s=31
- Roberts, Jane, The Nature of the Psyche: Its Human Expression, Amber-Allen Publishing, 1979
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