Conversations with Yin and Yang – Version 1.1
© 2010 Howard McQueen
Yin and Yang’s journey into intimacy has manifested a dream state lakefront paradise where in the day, they enjoy the bright unifying sunshine of intimacy. During the night, they slake their thirst under the lover’s honeyed
moon of love.
Recently, they have been visited by disruptive messengers, reflections from their past. These reflections evoke disturbing dark drama that spills into their field of intimacy, obscuring their ability to tune into and resynchronize with intimacy. Like a gathering storm, their fears feed off of these reflected inner negative energetic memories. Outwardly, their lakefront paradise is assaulted by high winds and within the lake, rip-tide undercurrents threaten to undermine their sacred shared ground.
They have learned to implement a buddy-system, like the safety pairings of two scuba divers descending several atmospheres to explore dark caves. They also, like test pilots, are learning to report back to each other, sharing the qualities of their inner emotional turmoil. They are beginning to develop an appreciation for how each other’s energetic vessels are burdened with various aspects of stress held in their reflections.
They discover a pattern: most reflections from their pasts are feelings centered in their youth, when they felt trapped in disempowering relationships. These strongly held feelings are of being treated unjustly and unfairly over extended periods of time. Yin’s feelings center around being disregarded, having promises broken, suffering inequities and feeling abandoned. Yang’s feelings center around being repeatedly scruitinized and criticized and being the target of anger, with the anger erupting into rage and physical abuse.
Their present moment paradise becomes saturated with these reflections and the pressure builds to do something. The stage of drama is set for these reflections to invoke reactive projections. Yang’s stored aggression has the shortest fuse and he is generally first to project his pressure. This immediately causes Yin to feel separation and then her projections around sadness are triggered. With both in projection, their clear, unifying lake surrounding intimacy becomes murky. Feeling cutoff and in the grip of their toxic projections, they experience suffering.
Late Saturday evening, a storm front formed over something as trivial as Yang feeling a growing inequity in the cooking and cleaning up chores. They spent two hours in communion, exchanging descriptions of their feelings, walking back into their past, where the echoed reflections of their child-selves experiences discomfort. Both went to bed that night believing that all was well. In the pre-dawn of morning however, both had failed to fall asleep, an unresolved restlessness remained, holding them back from the felt experience of intimacy.
Yang unilaterally tries to fix the situation by moving out of the bedroom to the sofa, thinking this would be a useful and necessary temporary self-imposed exile. Yin expresses heightened concern that this is a tactical withdrawal, centered in avoidance. Yang, honoring this possibility, enters back into dialog and communion. What Yang finds within himself is more than a tinge of anxiety and avoidance specific to Yin’s surfacing sadness and weariness.
Yang, speaking to Yin, says:
“Dearest Yin, I am becoming fully present to be with you, here and now, to experience
the fullness of your sadness, weariness and restlessness. I bring my full attention and intention to bear, first, to feel and honor my own feelings and emotions, then to honor the feelings and emotions emanating from you.”
As Yang inwardly receives both the words and the energetic opening to his invocation, he is filled from within with presence. Yin, feeling his return to presence, witnesses her feelings of separation and sadness dissolve.
In their shadowed, just before the dawn murky space, dark energies recede and the torch of intimacy is again a bright arcing beacon for connecting to the revitalizing field of intimacy.
The day afterwards, Yin and Yang look back at the unfolding of their all night vigil.
What they realize is that each human instrument is capable of being played to create music that evokes the dark emotions as well as the bright light of intimacy and love. Each human in-being has the innate capability to tune, to calibrate, to occupy and play their human instrument. By becoming present in their human laboratory, by experimenting while in their test pilot seat, by diving into their reflections and projected pain, they are learning to create the profound, healing music for their world.
Yin and Yang believe they have stumbled upon several snippets pointing to a spiritual truth: 1) They did not create this field of intimacy, they inherited it. 2) They did, however, rigorously prepare themselves to be filled with this field; 3) The field of intimacy does not disappear when they entertain and engage in inner storm and turmoil; 4) they do not have to re-create the field of intimacy, they need only relax and release the vice-grip of their own negative energy, which immediately allows them to again be in the field and flow of intimacy.
This direct experience being conductors and beginning to orchestrate the ebb and flow of dark and light energy has them realizing that they are consciously able to tune into and shape their myriad symphonies flowing through their human instruments, connecting them into the flow of intimacy.
They sense this journey, this process of becoming intimate with whatever arises, is the pathway to healing the fear held in the human heart, and the poison and puss linked to the human mind. The mind holds this poison as stories of victimization, and the subconscious entertains all the dis-empowering programming to support these stories and beliefs about our personal world view. This commitment to intimacy is the pathway to neutralize the negative charges running within our human operating system.
As they work to neutralize their negative emotional and mental pockets, the music of intimacy and unity flows in increasing constancy, through the words they speak and write, the depth in which they touch others and the compassion and acceptance that is passed to others they lock eyes with. This conveyance of intimacy awakens the inner presence in others, infecting the whole world with its invitation and example for opening to the heart. They join the swelling ranks of those who, through action and intent are inspiring the human imagination to evolve, by stepping off the inner wheel of suffering.
