Saturday, September 29, 2012

Between Strength and Gentleness




What comes to mind when we hear/say the word ‘strength’ or ‘power’ is something masculine, big, physical, maybe even harsh and hard. Iron. Weapon. Muscular.  Loud.  
What comes to mind when we hear/say the word ‘gentleness’ is something feminine, miniature, lean, airy, soft. Silk. Peach-colored. Quite.  
But of course those connotations are completely socially constructed and ridiculous. They totally do not represent the deeper levels of reality, where something feminine can be powerful , masculine can be gentle, strength can be metaphysical and gentleness can be earthy.
Furthermore, the greatest challenge of all is - at least for me – to incorporate the two ideas, two forms of being, to have both attributes naturally interwoven in one person. At least this is my recent ambition (without of course losing one’s authenticity, but in fact to become authentically gentle and strong).     
How can I increase, or to be more honest, begin to re-develop my (lost?) inner-strength, while developing a new quality of gentles.
This of course requires a conceptual investigation into the nature of both concepts/attributes. 

People - justly - suggested to me that inner-strength is related to self-knowledge; and when we have this attained we can act more gently, toward ourselves and toward others.   

oh....good-old self-knowledge. The key for everything and yet so hard to obtain. So seemingly desirable and yet the very thing we are constantly running away from, knowing how scary it will be to really meet ourselves.    

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