The Inner World of Choice
The Feminine Principle
The sea in a chasm, struggling to be
free and unable to be
in its surrendering
finds its continuing.
Love has earth to which she clings.
As inner woman the anima lives out the feminine principle active in creative man.
Through his relation to her as soul as well as earth,
he finds a way of reconciliation between the opposites existing within
himself. In woman the feminine principle is her natural center—the
home of her spirit.
Relatedness is her world, eros the god of her being,
a god whom she must learn to serve with clear-eyed devotion.
‘The essential character of eros is the divine creative force that
reaches out from the seclusion of the subject to reach the object.”3
Its source is the dynamis of the emotions; it draws its vitality from
living experience both of the outer world and of those instinctive and
numinous experiences that arise spontaneously from within the
psyche.
The feminine principle is the earth force, “the dark, earth-born
feminine principle with its emotionality as instinctiveness reaching
back into the depth of time and into the roots of psychological con-
tinuity.”
Through these roots it is connected with the primordial
wisdom of the instincts, with the reality of immediate event and its
need, with the patience of nature and its changing aspects of life,
death and renewal.
It is also connected with the waters deep under
the earth, springs that may be tapped by the divining rod of eros.
Acted upon by the hidden waters, this divining rod bends down to
indicate the place where work must be done to release the hidden
springs of creativity.
From these creative springs arise visions of mysterious
beauty or portents of terror and disaster, thoughts and impulses
that spring to life from the “nowhere” which is far below the
region of conscious knowledge.
The unconscious is the wellspring of
the feminine being.
The earth is still. It does not act of itself. … It does not strive . . .
to achieve everything of its own strength but quietly keeps . . . receptive
to the impulses flowing from the creative.
These creative forces rise in emotion, mood, desire, wish, intuition
and perception of the irrational.
They may erupt in sudden impulsefierce
courage that springs up in defense of the child or the beloved,
generosity, love, rage—all directed toward the object that has aroused
feeling.
Or the force of the emotion may be directed toward the
images of the unconscious and the hidden subjective problems of
inner relatedness.
The unconscious then acts with its magnetic
“downdrawing” power which induces meditation, dreaming, wishing,
waiting and awaiting the time when the meaning of that which is
happening is perceived and the wisdom of the unconscious is accepted,
so letting the experience speak for itself as it unfolds within
the psyche. This process in which the whole person unfolds is directed
toward self-revelation. It is an inner knowing manifest only
through a change in personality which shows itself in indefinable
ways.
Feminine emotions instinctively flow into personal channels, busy
with perceptions of what can come alive and grow between people.
A down-to-earth quality6 senses the immediate need, and a practical
earthly wisdom moves to meet it.
Thought, sometimes to the astonishment
or bewilderment of the actor, comes later as afterthought,
which scrutinizes the act and assesses its values.
Yet the sense of the
reality of the immediate situation is not accepted as an exclusive
standpoint, for the feminine psyche is always concerned with bringing
things together.
Woman’s statements are not this or that, they
are, rather, also.
The also admits intuition, whose voice says, “Look
below the surface; question; peer into the depth. See not only what is,
but also what may evolve.”
For feminine intuition is intrigued by the
possibilities that the special human situation offers in the opportunity
to create, to bring forth, to stir—even if what is created is only a
dramatic moment or a “scene.”
The act springs from a desire for
relatedness rather than from any code of ethics or humanistic theory.
Jung says of woman, “She can do everything for love of a man. But
those women who can achieve something important for the love of
a thing are most exceptional, because this does not really agree with
their nature.”
Yet this “everything” is ruled by instinctual perception,
for woman must learn to measure and not to measure, to withhold
and to pour forth without stint.
She cannot say, “A little here
and a little there” to a child, lover, friend or the stranger who comes
to her door. For who can measure need, or know when the pouring
forth will bring the rose to blossom in the desert?
Yet she must be
alert to perceive the moment when giving can impoverish the spirit
of both giver and recipient so that even her withholding may serve
life. ~Frances Wickes, The Inner World of Choice, Page 203-205
