The importance of balancing our feminine and masculine energies is a common topic on podcasts and in blog posts about contemporary spirituality. The prevailing assumption is that everyone has access to both feminine and masculine energies because these energies aren’t actually gender-specific.
When we talk about gender in this context, we assume that we’re talking about characteristics associated with our temporary material identity rather than our eternal spiritual identity. The corollary assumption I see most often is that our eternal spiritual identity must be gender neutral.
It’s understandable that we might think of gender identities as being specific to our embodied experience in the material world, especially in our current political climate, where traditional binary exclusivity versus progressive non-binary inclusivity has become such a major point of culture war contention.
We look to spirituality to resolve conflicts that arise from dualities, so we may think of spiritual consciousness as a kind of “Oneness” that negates gender altogether.
But is this really what yoga philosophy says?
Yoga wisdom makes a clear distinction between the perpetually changing mind and body and the changeless self within.
But bhakti-yoga philosophy goes a step further and tells us that, beyond undifferentiated Oneness, there’s an infinite degree of variety to be found in transcendence, including varieties of gender.
The possibility that variety can exist in a spiritual atmosphere matters because varieties of spiritual identities are what makes spiritual relationships possible, and spiritual relationships are the ultimate source of spiritual bliss.
Do you think it’s possible for us to have a spiritual gender identity?