Last night I was taking a walk high in the hills of Sausalito. There was a young stag on a wooded lot who looked up as I passed. I stopped and we gazed into each others eyes for a long time. He was standing attentively and I felt this beckoning, welcoming, firm yet gentle structure of his adolescent antlers. I silently thanked him for his presence - for the gift I received from him - a reminder of the Sacred Masculine.
Giving him a little bow as I resumed my walk I noticed a yellow plum rolling down the hill in my direction, as if he was offering it to me. I noted it and smiled.
Then this morning on a walk as I passed a couple gathering the same yellow plums from a tree, the man reached out and placed one in my hand. The symbolism felt potent: Again, the masculine, offering me a golden fruit. Gold, the color of the energy of the masculine, is the color radiating from our solar plexus chakra - our power center. And like the healthy masculine, this fruit was firm on the outside. Sweet and tender on the inside.
What I was seeing in the symbolism of these two instances was a reminder to me to welcome in the Sacred Masculine. I’ve been needing to create more structure in my life and this felt like a nudge from Divine.
For decades I’d embraced society’s model of the masculine. Pushing, rigid and often, frankly, punishing. Self-punishing in particular. All of this served to help me muscle through life. But when you think about muscling through something there’s this feeling of tension and contraction, right? So between this near constant state of tension and feeling a necessity to build a layer of armor over my heart, I was keeping the light out with this cold, hard barrier to love. There was no flowing. In or out.
Yes, we joke about everything being “a sign” of something we want to believe is directing us. And of course we can impose meaning on anything we want to see. But there’s a difference in energy, in tone, that comes from actual guidance versus our superimposition of it. With open minds, and most importantly, an open heart, we are given signs such as these every step of the way in our lives. Nature does speak to us. Spirit is everywhere. Saying yes. Or no. Sometimes we don’t choose to see what we’re being shown because we’re afraid of where we may be led. That ominous-feeling great unknown… But putting on blinders doesn’t make the truth of any circumstance go away.
The Mystery of life is so much larger than what we usually allow ourselves to see. It takes time, trust and willingness to get to a place where we are open to expanding into greater possibilities. And while we may have to walk through a potentially dark and scary passage to get to what our soul is guiding us to, it is so worth it. Once we throw open the shutters over our hearts and say yes, the brilliance of love will come rushing in. We will remember that we are always guided. Always led. Always held.
Carl Jung said that “the creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect.“
It doesn’t come from the mind. It comes from the heart. And it comes when we’re willing to open it and listen.
So on my walks when I received these “signs”, I saw them as a reminder to bow in gratitude for the message of the gentle firmness of the Masculine from the young buck, and from the man with the plum. For me, these were reminders that the masculine in its most open-hearted form is there to support us. It’s here to provide a structure for us to be held within. It’s a structure that allows us to open our hearts even more widely and deeply. Like the walls of a canyon, it guides the flow of the river inside it. Firm. Strong and gentle. Structure and Flow. The Masculine and the Feminine. Balanced. Healthy. Symbiotic. Like the infinity symbol, each feeding and flowing into the other.