ENCOUNTERING THE OTHER HALF

I've had an intense and initiatory 12 days. I'd been on a weekend with Leo Rutherford where we had done 2 sweatlodges (and where I gained more confidence that with these ceremonies, what matters is making it your own, rather than doing it the 'right' way.) And as sweats often do, it moved things on for me. Specifically, the spirit of a woman irrupted into my life in a way that I have found overwhelming.

In a sense she is a spirit, but she is also me, and from now on she needs to be always present in my life. I am more whole with her, and it is like a love affair. There is beauty and joy there, and I am at ease in a way that I have never been before. As Jan Morris, one of the first men to have a sex change into a woman observed 40 years after the event, the point is to become both a man and a woman, rather than one or the other.

It is about the inner union with the other sex that can happen in the second 1/2 of life, that Jung talks about in the language of anima and animus. I encounter it as an issue in astrology readings regularly: men finding their Venus, women their Mars. It is a crucial phase in this Shamanic path, whose purpose is to become a balanced human being, as I was told by a Chippewa Cree teacher.

In terms of the Medicine Wheel (the one I use) encountering one's sexual other half is the task of the Adult in the West, who becomes ready to occupy the Elder in the North as this balance is achieved. It is not something that can be consciously brought about, because it is an initiation from the spirit world.

And it also leaves me wondering about how relationships work after this initiation. I don't feel I am looking for someone to complete me anymore. Back in January in a dream, I was walking a cheetah on a leash along Exeter High St. She was straining to chase prey. And I was told that I would not be in a relationship until I felt happy not being in one. Since then I've thought that was a big ask, but now 6 months later it is happening of its own accord. The power of the cheetah is finding her way into my life.

This is all very new, and I have little perspective, and my future has become an unknown quantity. But I want to honour the spirit of the woman by telling you about her.