Choosing to be Male or Female in an Embodied Life

Discussing how souls are not male or female as these are things specific to embodied life.  Choosing to embody as one or the other is a means to explore our own natures more fully by setting aside all we are to focus on one particular perspective and experience.

Transcript

Choosing to be Male or Female in an Embodied Life

The concept of male and female is specific to embodied life. It is a means of reproduction. It seems simple on paper if you're looking at the physics of it. You know, if the test of whether something is easy to explain is explaining it to a five year old, this is pretty easy to explain because people have done this. There are children's books specifically to explain this subject at the appropriate level and, to be honest, rarely is anyone confused by it unless connected with being transgendered which is another subject for another time. Male or female are simple concepts yet omnipresent in physical life. So much so we have to actively work to see beyond or around them while we're here. Since we leave nothing to chance when we enter into an embodied life including something as impactful as what sex we will inhabit, let's take a closer look at what this entails and what it all means from an Akashic perspective.

First, it's good to remember there is no sexual bifurcation in non-embodied beings. Souls don't reproduce sexually, and they are not artificially relegated to two categories, male or female. Souls don't actually have form and communicate through telepathy and empathy. They have the ability to merge with each other in a way embodied beings cannot, fully integrating with each other while still maintaining their individuality. This is somewhat akin to ecstasy if you remove the passion and add in more connection. As souls there is no means to touch physically, to experience the self fully while experiencing the other. We experience the other as ourselves in the forever now of time, which is not linear, and then we separate again.

Embodied life provides a means of experiencing ourselves and each other in a completely different way. To enter into encasement at all allows us to have privacy from the constant oneness of soul communication with others. It allows us the ability to be completely ourselves without interconnection. This separateness then gives us the freedom to choose how we will connect with others, how to express ourselves, and how much or how little to interact with others in a myriad of ways throughout each and every day. This in and of itself is amazing and for some is worth the difficulties of getting and being here, but beyond even this there is the ability to experience life as one half of a binary, being either male or female, to be neither, or a unique blending of both. 

When I speak or write about embodiment, one thing I try to be very clear about is the relationship between the soul and the body. The body in which a soul resides is not a symbol for who the soul is or some distillation of the soul's true nature nor is the body a meat car which the soul is driving around in and which can be traded for a newer model if necessary. Each body is specifically chosen and nurtured to be the best fit for what the soul needs in the particular life they have crafted for themselves. I call it crafting because putting together an embodied life is an amazingly complex thing and the body is only one part of the equation yet a significant part which needs to be able to do and be and manage so very much. Every time I think about it, I realize how very miraculous it is any of us are here at all.

Something else to keep in mind is, except in some very specific cases, we as souls don't just dump ourselves into one embodied life after another without down time or review or forethought. We're not forced to be here; we choose to do this. Whether we will be male or female is a major component of embodied life and is not something we choose lightly because, while sexual reproduction is a relatively simple concept, being a woman or a man and what all this means is very much not. There are entire bookstores dedicated to the subject, professionals have careers based on helping us figure out how to communicate across the sex divide, and then you get into roles and responsibilities and whether they are culturally based or essential (based on biology/instinct). Even our deities are imagined as one or the other sex because we can't seem to reconcile ourselves to one which would be beyond it or encapsulate both. Some languages require their words to have sexual gender; others make their gender-neutral pro-nouns so neutral they are negative, and in English people are now struggling to expand their usage of the terms "they" and "them."

So, for the majority of souls, we choose whether to be male or female and in the choosing we take on biology which colors our experience of the world. Men who rapidly cycle through sexual highs and lows within a few days, staying fertile into late life, and having their sex organs be manifestly apparent. Women who have 28-day cycles, end their fertility in midlife, have sex organs which are not apparent but secondary sex characteristics which are, and who provide the incubation system which nurtures new life into the world. This is human sexuality in brief and colors our perspective of the world to such a degree we sometimes have difficulties seeing there are others. To keep things in balance I like to remember that with sea horses the male is the one which carries the babies in his body until they are ready to be born. He goes through the pain of contractions and the body distortions of pregnancy rather than the female thereby turning my notion of male and female responsibilities on its head. It's good to be turned around and upside every once in a while. :)

Choosing to be male or female in an embodiment is not just a choice of whether to be an innee or an outee. Male and female in cultural context defines more than reproductive roles. It defines what type of employment, of interactions, of connections, and how much freedom we will have available to us. For the past few thousand years the roles of male and female have contained within them preset goals or lessons which help in the life selection process. For example, if you wanted to be a captain of industry, an explorer, in power politically or even to experience being rich then you would choose to be male. If you wanted to experience childbirth, oral traditions, the deep interconnection of social and family bonds among other things then you would choose to be female.

There are positives and negatives to both. Luckily we don't live just one life so we have plenty of options to experience them from all angles. In crafting an embodied life we first choose what we wish to achieve whether this be multiple goals concerning our and our soul group's becoming or a life of service to others or a combination of these. If we are embodying with a soul group then the choice of sex is part of the goal because we have already agreed to roles we will play for others such as mother or father, sister or brother. If the goal is service or our own becoming, then selecting the sex becomes much more about what will facilitate these things. We are looking for the best option which will support us and guide us in achieving what we are coming here to do in all its complexity. 

One of the things I have found in reading people's soul books and working with students is our choice of embodied lives are not discrete episodes like beads on a necklace but have a much bigger pattern. As souls we're aware of what we have experienced before, what we have learned from it, what habits we have acquired, how much further we have to go and in what direction, and these things color our selection and crafting of the next life. For example, I have a client who embodies as male specifically to put into practice and test out their in-depth studies in the Akashics. These lives are very focused, so family connections are something they strive to avoid, if possible, although it isn't always. After such a life the next two to three embodiments will be female and will be about living a non-driven, non-research life of service which provides a positive environment for other souls to embody. This gives them balance and allows them the ability to focus on the male lives to a very high degree without causing negative effects. Other souls choose to be male or female for multiple lives in a row in order to learn one specific aspect of being like learning a language through full immersion. Many souls choose to alternate between male and female to keep the balance, like swaying back and forth in a dance.

In this now, being male or female is an even more complex and lusciously rich choice because culturally we are expanding into a new awareness of who we are and what we are capable of. As women become more equal so too do men and the stereo typical roles of what we are able to do are changing in amazing ways. Marriage equality, gender equality, its heady stuff. But it's also good to remember we are not this stuff. We are not better than it, above it, beyond it, nor are we defined by it. We are taking the opportunity to inhabit it. Whether we suffer or savor it is up to us.

I find it interesting to look at past lives to see how the individual soul works with the roles of male and female. Mostly I'm looking at the past few millennia as there are so many lives in any one soul book there's no real reason to go back too far unless there is something specific to the person's current life or to a question they are posing. Which means being male or being female have highly structured definitions and boundaries of various kinds which we put on when we become embodied. And these can seem like a strait jacket keeping us too tightly bound or it can feel like a support helping us to become at a much greater and safer rate.

What interests me is the variety of ways in which we interpret and experience these roles, choosing to subvert them, fully embrace them, rebel against them, immerse ourselves in them, or utilize them for our own ends. Each past life weaves these choices into the fabric of the life which creates the foundation of its narrative. For example: being female in the 40's and learning about empowerment through factory work to support the troops. Or being male in the Middle East during the lifetime of Mohammed and choosing to leave the traditional tribal ways behind for a new type of community...or not. Being female in Ireland during the potato famine. Being male in Germany during the Roman invasion...

Each choice, each role we take on is planned not only to participate in the times, but to explore our own natures, to wear the role and make it our own, to find out about this aspect of ourselves, to fully and completely embody what it is to be male or to be female. And in all my experience I have found no soul that has been only one or the other. We all take on both rolls at times. And at times we blur the lines between them. Because our true nature is neither one nor the other. It is both and neither for the distinctions do not apply to souls. It is a gift to be able to split our nature into these two essential parts. It allows us to combine them in a multiplicity of ways too enormous to fathom.

Looking at our past lives allows us to see all we have learned about what it is to be male, to be female, and points out all we have yet to learn. Remembering this wisdom can help us be better at it this time around.