THE INNER MAN
(Originally published in Spanish as “El Hombre del Futuro” — The Man of the Future, ‘Uno Mismo’ magazine nº 383, pps.32-36)
Gender, Essence and Personality
In past eras, spiritual and evolutionary need called for individualisation. Now development calls for service and collective refinement. The path towards awakening is no longer one of simple human transcendence but of global transmutation on many levels. We are inspired by a group consciousness that values multiple and simultaneous realisation. Up to the present moment, the spiritual and evolutionary development of Consciousness followed parallel paths. Now individual realisation answers to both Consciousness and evolution, and occurs on two planes. The individual must express uniqueness and difference, and at the same time embody the collective spirit of equality and brotherhood.
Gender defines much more than sexual function or inclination. It determines an inner path that has little to do with preference, behavior or appearance. The essence of a human being is genderless, unique and sometimes very different from its personality and appearance. Those who have attained spiritual fullness, personality awareness, and as a result integration of spirit and form, emanate a quality that transcends gender while at the same time expressing its most elevated qualities.
Upon incorporating matter, essence or spirit conforms to a gender mold. It offers a very specific window of perception that leads to realisation along a path that adjusts itself to culture, time, genealogy and individual conscience, repeating patterns and innovating formulas that respond to evolutionary need.
Present humanity must embody the best of itself as Consciousness within the best of itself as a human model. This means that every individual attains to realisation within an “inner” male or female pattern.
General Characteristics of the Male Gender
Male physical bodies produce directional forces, not only through its physical structure but also mentally. It appreciates and knows the forms of the physical world and how to shape it, giving it form and measure. This leads a man to move in a determined direction, often competitive, and strong physically and mentally. In the best of cases, he not only accumulates but also protects territory and is a physical champion in the service of noble causes. He is a constructor and a doer. In the most refined examples, he need not to raise a finger to exert his authority over the physical world. In a man, yin forces are transmitted in a calm and contained manner, through his capacity to sustain power, even if sometimes he may appear passive. In this sense he is patient. We could say that the natural gamma of physical expressions for a man manifests between extremes of tyranny and debility, acquiring a balanced expression in the Inner Man.
Emotionally and in a veiled manner, a man is vulnerable, a lover and a dreamer. The introverted nature of his emotions makes him evasive. His strength at this level lies in the desire he emits and forges in matter. Physical contact and material things that express his tenderness are more important to him than emotional insinuation.
The linear aspect of the male mind tends to be his strongest feature, together with the management of physical laws. His word is a command; he knows and emits orders. As a giver of form in our world, he is logical and utilitarian, managing and directing with clear purpose. His yin side is abstract and unattached, inventive, analytical and diplomatic. At this level ordinary emotional male expression vacillates between manifestations of self-absorption and fanaticism.
Spiritually, and up to the moment of integration with soul, the male gender tends to focus on humility and silence. He is a seeker of truth whose sense of honor and idealism conform a living ethics. He also expresses fraternity and generosity, more akin to the intellectual tenor of his logic than to the emotional sensibility that define women. Very obvious in our time, where the yin mode tends to define spiritual expression, men manifest different attitudes from extreme mental rigidity, and that excessive flexibility that often define him as a “good guy”, a softie, even a doormat with no willpower of his own.
What is an “Inner Man”?
By “inner” I refer to the dictates of Consciousness and matter. Consciousness depends on a physical structure to express itself and channel its intelligence and emanations. Invariably, the perceptual gender-filter determines form.
We live in critical times. Genders are redefining themselves. They reflect a growing discomfort and longing for inner freedom and authenticity that shows itself impatient, intense and vulnerable at the same time. Nothing is enough. The change we yearn for is incomprehensible, invisible, and qualitative. It begins with the desire for self-recreation.
The planet responds to the intensifying manifestation of the Feminine Principle. It especially influences the female gender, but significantly also the male. In this article we focus on the birth of the man of the future, the Inner Man.
Typically and traditionally, the male gender transmits a form of brute force, linear thought and authority, absolute power, system and global order. In the current transition that we live in, even if his impulses and tasks are the same, the influence of Consciousness is such that more and more men develop their yin side, breaking expectations, boundaries, and pushing beyond barriers of every sort.
According to our definition of the inner aspect of gender, we should begin by defining the male gender by his inclinations or manner of perceiving, dismantling and recreating, understanding, realising and projecting, more than by his interests, force, physical appearance or social behavior. The subtle quality of his affections acquires more importance than the ways in which he expresses them. The Inner Man distinguishes himself primarily by the process of constructing realities than by his creations, by the means he employs rather than the ends.
The Inner Man, His Search and His Realisation
The masculine gender perfects himself following objectives and steps that are mentally and physically definable. Be he a poet, a philosopher, a scientist, musician or artisan, his path is systematic, constructing by means of physical and mental sensibilities. When he attains to the evolutionary frequencies of the heart, he is no longer a conventional man. His inexplicable yearning takes him into the threshold of an existential abyss, similar to the illogical search for the Holy Grail. Nothing will be enough and what he carries with him is inadequate and frustrating. He enters a wholly unknown world with indefatigable idealism and sense of honor. Unto death, and he knows that he will never again be the same.
Great philosophers have traced the journey of the male psyche. As a constant shadow, the Socratic maxim resounds within the seeker, “All I know is that I know nothing.” The terrible anguish that ensues contributes to subsequent stages of maturation and toning. More and more deeply a man penetrates into the Platonic cave to lose himself therein. Suddenly there arises the light of knowledge, echoing the Cartesian principle. He discovers “cogito ergo sum”: “I think therefore I am.” In this instant, what had been typical male reasoning is transformed into something greater that extends towards the edges of intuition, to become the cornerstone that will allow the Inner Man to establish new certainties, connections and insights.
The refinement of mental sensibility gradually turns him into a sage who transmits teaching though words, symbols, colors, textures and tonalities, tangibly connecting and relating parts over the backdrop of the indefinable. Meanwhile, the vast silence of No-Mind overwhelms him and he recognizes, as Pascal valiantly did for his own time, that “the heart has its own reasons that reason cannot know”. This is the moment when he becomes an “inner man”. He knows because he feels through the refined acute faculty of Mind.
Attuned and impeccable masculine reason time and again confirms almost mathematically, that which soul intuits. Doubt becomes his path. The search for clarity, his curiosity and the need a man has to explore and discover is tireless. He doesn’t stop until the intangible becomes tangible, and then the call to the service of humanity bestows upon him the title of master. Through him, modern science is breaching the gap with ancient metaphysics, and we understand the experience of Truth more and more clearly.
Inner Man knows how to discriminate and is daring and righteous in his field. He knows how to concentrate upon his ideals and also how to collaborate with others, innovating and conserving in equal measure. He emanates authority and respect, trust and security because he respects and trusts himself; he exerts leadership without competition, not because of special merit but because he cares for humanity more than for himself.
Contrast between Genders
Gender qualities share the same spiritual and evolutionary purpose but express themselves subtly very differently.
Both genders may develop physical force, but the psychological quality of a man’s impulse projects concretely as appropriation and need to increase physical boundaries in order to feel secure and powerful. The same impulse in a woman hardly ever defines itself concretely and in its place manifests psychologically and spiritually in inverse manner. She attracts instead of projecting in order to feel full.
Emotionally, the male expression is inward, vulnerable and fragile, tender and absorbent. He is afraid of emotional commitment, even if at a mental level he projects confidence and pride in his mastery over detail, order and system, in his arguments, strategies and logic. He demonstrates extraordinary abilities to categorize, define and measure. He is the king of reason, what essentially confuses a woman whose tendency is to mistrust. She is naturally intuitive; her own logic appears “irrational” to him.
Spiritually, a man knows what faith and non-attachment, trust and surrender are, with generosity and equanimity, even if unstable. His strength rests upon the Law and the Word, formulas and meanings that reveal the architecture of the universe, abstractions that refer to evolution and the formulation of theories. His spiritual opening leads him to isolate himself from the world in order to later express, shed light and his unequalled sense of unity and integration. On the other hand, woman is the visionary guide whose leadership permeates energies in order to gestate and expand creation, conditioning the terrain within which man functions.
The manifestation of the Inner Man, as of the Inner Woman, is infinitely variable. Each one is a differentiated expression of the original prototypes in sublime creative unfolding.
Real Potential
We believe ourselves independent and unique yet we respond blindly to models, programs and anachronistic beliefs. We do not recognise that the characteristics we incorporate without awareness are opportunities and orientations that help us in the process of self-realisation and contribute to the uplifting of humanity. Inner men and women manifest an infinite number of characteristics that could appear stereotyped. Nevertheless they embody them with tremendous impact, with unique style, consciousness.
As we browse through the lists in charts II and III we notice that the qualities respond to a state of being and not to a particular expression, which leaves plenty of margin for authenticity and difference, once the management of gender attributes, coherence with the personality, and fine contact with Consciousness have been secured.
No man possesses feminine attributes but rather a “yin” side. No woman has masculine attributes but rather a “yang” side. A man cannot do what a woman does, and vice-versa. The faculties, powers and virtues of gender develop independently. The development of one influences the other, but there cannot be any progress while one believes itself dependent on the other. The attachment and pseudo-needs fomented socially during thousands of years as legal slavery are counterproductive to aspiration and the potential of every individual within a universal prototype. Neither is it a question of competition or domination, physical or mental in the grossest male sense, or emotional and spiritual in the manipulative female manner.
The tone now is self-sufficiency and trust in spirit and inner forces. The search is for a healthy cohabitation of differences and expressions, and inspired stimulating challenge. Inner men and women are free from inherited neurosis. The Inner Man reaches the same place as the “Inner Woman”, only by following a different route and emanating a qualitatively different aroma. Where she emits the Fullness of the Infinite, he emits the Silence of bottomless depths.
There remains much work to do dis-identifying ourselves from old vices and programming so that genuine gender talents may shine through. The authentic men and women of the future act in fine accord with Nature and the planets, but very specially though the voice of Consciousness and the greatness of the Spirit that lies within each one.
