“Everything that comes into life has two sides, a masculine and feminine quality, even love. The masculine side of love is “I love you.”
Longing is the feminine side of love: “I am waiting for you. I am longing for you.” Longing is the cup waiting to be filled. And sadly, because our culture has devalued the feminine, we have repressed so much of her nature, so many of her qualities. Instead we live primarily masculine values; we are goal-oriented, competitive, driven.
Masculine values even dominate our spiritual quest; we seek to be better, to improve ourself, to get somewhere. We have forgotten the feminine qualities of waiting, listening, being empty. We have dismissed the deep need of the soul, our longing, the feminine side of love.”
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee,
Love is a Fire: The Sufi’s Mystical Journey Home
Emerging From The Dark Night 
that is so true! and I agree wholeheartedly. xo
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Thanks so much 😚
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An interesting one, about forgetting the feminine qualities of love and employing the masculine values… I can see this being the case, in a generally stereotypical masculine/feminine sense. x
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Well we all have a masculine and a feminine part of us and it may be more strongly or weakly developed. The feminine is really brutalised in our culture dominated by heroic stereotypes of conquest and power by force.
That is why mental illness is not really an illness if you look it as concerning souls whose feminine was overpowered and could not cope in the dominant culture, breakdown may represent something more than ‘illness’ per se.
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Definitely an interesting and relevant way of looking at it given our 21st century culture and also the increasing rates of stress and ‘mental illness’ in tandem. x
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❤
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