11.7 Sexually-related feelings
People often say that they can never fully know what their
boyfriend or girlfriend feels or thinks, just because they are
different sexes, as if a woman could never know in herself what a
man experiences, and vice versa.
Actually there is nothing more false. Through the art of tuning in
you gain the possibility of going through the whole range of
sensations and feelings pertaining to the other sex. For instance, a
man comes to know in his own body how it feels to have breasts,
to have a uterus, to menstruate, to be pregnant... By this I do not
mean some sort of theoretical or intellectual understanding, but
the real and direct experience of the feeling, exactly as if he was
inside a female body. This also applies to a vast range of emotional
attitudes.
This process can virtually be regarded as an initiation. Once
achieved, the way of relating to the other sex will change
dramatically: much less complicated and based on a true
understanding. Various psychological problems connected with
relating to the other sex (and that usually covers quite a few
problems) will automatically disappear.
At this stage, it may be of interest to mention a fact about the
etheric body (layer of life force, or prāṇa in Sanskrit, qi in
Chinese). Esotericists such as Steiner have often pointed out that
the etheric body of a woman is male, that of a man is female. This
creates an inner substratum which greatly facilitates access to the
feelings of the other sex.
With the expansion of perception a human being tends to be seen
not so much as a woman as opposed to a man, or a man as opposed
to a woman, but more as a totality made of two polarities. In this
context, concepts such as the war of the sexes lose a lot of their
significance. We all have a man and a woman inside, and both must
be brought to enlightenment.
Yet it would be quite untrue to believe that the result is a being of
a blended or asexual gender. On the contrary, the process
contributes to discerning between the two polarities, and achieving
one's femininity, for a woman, or one's masculinity, for a man.
Realizing her male pole helps a woman's femininity to flourish.
When a man is out of touch with his female pole, his masculinity
is a gross facade, much more fragile than his chauvinistic attitude
may imply.