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The Space Between – Heaven on Earth is a companion podcast to Awakening – Heaven on Earth.
Through intimate, heart-centered conversations, this series explores the lived experience of awakening — the questions, integrations, paradoxes, and sacred pauses where transformation truly occurs.
This is the space between knowing and becoming…
where Heaven meets Earth through honest dialogue.
Welcome to the space between heaven on earth. This is a companion podcast to awakening heaven on earth created as a space for reflection, conversation, and lived experience. Here, we enter the pause between knowing and becoming, between insight and embodiment, between heaven and earth. These conversations are not about answers or conclusions. They are about presence, about listening, about reasoning together, about meeting one another honestly in the unfolding journey of awakening.
Jeffrey Aylor:I'm your host, Jeffrey Aylor. Again, welcome and thank you for entering The Space Between with us. Welcome to this episode of the space between. In our last episode, we explored unity in relationship, and how relationships can often reveal both our connection with others, but also our wounds. Today we're going to move into an even deeper relationship.
Jeffrey Aylor:This is the relationship we have within ourselves, and this episode is called becoming whole. The inner marriage of masculine and feminine. So across many spiritual traditions, a lot of the mystical traditions, there is a recurring theme, a recurring idea of sacred union, and in a number of those this union is referred to as the Alchemical Marriage, so it's important to recognize this isn't the marriage just between two people, but it's the marriage within each one of us individually, the human being itself, And this union of our masculine and feminine energies is something that exists within each and every one of us. And I want to make sure before we get started that we kind of ground the conversation that this is not about men versus women. This is not about physical gender, masculine, feminine.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's really about the human energies, and how every one of us carries both of these energies within ourselves. So the other thing is that it's not to this discussion isn't about becoming more polarized. It's about how do we become more integrated internally as we get going. So I am so honored to have Purnadhavi back with me this morning, who's worked through her Purnadhavi healing arts. She focuses on healing, embodiment, energetic awareness, and authentic interconnection, so very much in alignment with the conversation we're going to be having today and her work just beautifully.
Jeffrey Aylor:Enhances the conversation I think we're going to have around wholeness and inner integration. Perna, thank you so much for being here. Why don't you share a little bit about this work that you do related to this within your your specific, healing arts?
Purna Devi:Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me back. I loved the conversation on unity and relationships, and I'm really excited to dive deeper into the parts of ourselves and how those parts merge to express our own wholeness and our own divinity, right? And so a lot of the work that I do is really about helping people come back into relationship with the parts of themselves that may be one is dominant over the other, one is a bit disconnected. There are patterns of survival within certain parts of ourselves.
Purna Devi:And I'm interested to get in this conversation today because I, you know, while this, like you said, I love the disclaimer. This is not about men versus women. And also I think we would be remiss to not mention the cultural programming, right, that that we find that really defines or influences rather those parts of oneself and the way our personality consciousness and our egos show up internally and then in relationship. Right? I think there's so many influences that create ideas of masculine and feminine, so I'm really looking forward to unpacking that with you today.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, it's going to be exciting because it's going to be one of the very first questions we kind of dive into, I believe, is that that and it and it happens so early in our in life where I think we we get conditioned, and and a lot of that I believe well, we'll get into it. This is the beautiful part about the conversation. There are just so many different paths I think that this one's gonna take, But as we as we jump into this first set of of reflections, again, we wanna make sure we we clarify that the terms that we're using here of masculine and feminine, we're not referring to physical gender. Right. Right?
Jeffrey Aylor:Which I think is probably the thing that blinds people the most about this this topic is that it's pretty obvious in most cases when you look at somebody, whether they're a male or they're a female, they're either, and are they a masculine male, or are they a feminine female, or are they you know? So there's all kinds of different judgments that get made and passed based on what we see with our eyes. Hopefully, we'll be able to to have this conversation more appropriately around the symbolic meaning of gender, masculine, feminine, the inner the energy behind masculine, feminine. And just to set the tone a bit that, you know, here when we talk about masculine, it expresses itself a lot of times through things like structure and direction and clarity and protection, action oriented, and then the feminine energy often expresses through intuition. Being receptive and open and compassionate or empathetic, I think is another word.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's really powerful. Creative. The creative energy within us is that feminine energy that we feel, and just a presence, and it isn't that one is better than the other. There's not a question of this is good and this is bad. That's a judgment statement about these energies when in reality neither one is superior.
Jeffrey Aylor:You have to have both. They're both necessary to be a whole being, to be a complete person, and I think that then is going to help us quite a bit as we go into these these reflections. So growing up, were there certain qualities within yourself that were encouraged more than others?
Purna Devi:Oh, of course. Right? Here we get into those cultural and familial impressions that we receive. Right? I come from an Appalachian family that's very masculine dominant.
Purna Devi:And so there's a lot of that patriarchal, the men are the leaders, the women tend the house, the women have less say, you know, and I think growing up, you know, God love my mother and her own distorted impressions that she received, Through our lineage, she always told me to, you know, grow up and find a good man and find a rich man and right? These sort of implications that I myself could not be successful and powerful on my own. And so I think a part of my entire existence has really been a renunciation of that and been a reclamation of the feminine as powerful. You hit the nail on the head about the feminine being the creative, right?
Jeffrey Aylor:We're
Purna Devi:creators. That's the Shakti in the yogic tradition. And so there is this power behind the feminine. If you think of any archetype of goddess, she's not weak, but those cultural programmings, those familial programmings really, I think, kept us in our place.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, I know growing up as a as a male, as a boy, you know, you would often hear sometime maybe when you were hurt, you know, and you'd start to cry. People they'd say, well, you know, boys don't cry. Don't cry. Right? We're being told not to be sensitive.
Jeffrey Aylor:We're being told not to show emotion. We're being told not to don't be overly thoughtful, right? You're not showing a male, you know, strong masculine tendency here, and then with girls, you know, obviously girls again, you get they get this conditioning that, well, that's not how a girl should act. A girl should not do this.
Purna Devi:Don't be don't do this. It's not ladylike.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's not ladylike, right? Yeah, so to me that starts, and it starts so early in the raising of children. It it and it becomes systemic because even once outside of the family, there's cultural pressure. There's societal pressure. There's educational pressures for children to behave in a specific way based on whether they are a male or whether they are a female.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yeah. Right?
Purna Devi:Well, and if you think even before the child is born, it is really a cultural practice to have these gender reveal parties, and we're dressing up at the nursery in blue or in pink, and we're buying trucks, we're buying things with flowers on them.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right. Right.
Purna Devi:And so I think the programming comes even before that sweet child comes earth side. And, you know, as we're talking about our childhood and these impressions, I have to tell a really funny little story. I remember getting in trouble when I was a kid. I had an older brother, And, you know, I would model what he did, and he would spit. And I remember my father caught me spitting one time, and I got in so much trouble.
Purna Devi:Girls don't spit. Okay. I know. What
Jeffrey Aylor:are you supposed to do with it?
Purna Devi:Right. I'm like, well, he's doing it. Why can't I?
Jeffrey Aylor:Yeah. Well, get it. Just those those sound so those sound so innocent, those types of statements, but they have such a lasting because I mean most of our personality and our beliefs get formed in those early years from zero to seven, right? You know, people get very much of their programming put in place in that time frame, And it's it's it's important, I think, as we evolve as a as a people to rethink that. Let's rethink that and how we we set that program so that we can create whole beings, not beings that are relying on other people to complete them.
Jeffrey Aylor:So which I think we'll touch on as we go into this. So you know another area I want to touch on here before we we move into the next kind of section of this is what what parts of yourself do you think you've learned to suppress? In order to feel accepted or successful.
Purna Devi:Well, I think I have I think one of my karmic to dos coming into this life was is boundaries. Because, again, women are expected to be nice, to be kind, to, you know, take care of everyone before themselves and please others. And so I definitely grew up with that tendency of people pleasing, of overextension. And I think also that strong women are often looked at as a problem. A woman with an opinion, a woman with clarity and boundaries and confidence, we can often be looked at as a bitch, right?
Purna Devi:And so I think for me and my own maturation, I've really had to just own my power and my confidence in who I am and not allow those familial and cultural messages to diminish myself, to become small, to make others comfortable. I've really had to overcome that.
Jeffrey Aylor:You make me think of I have a story to tell myself here about a commander that I worked with in the military. I worked with a number of them as they would come through my organizations, and this was the best commander I ever worked with in my entire career, and it was a female. So here you have a woman commander in a male dominated organization who, to your point, would be called a bitch for doing something that if a man had done it, they would have been patted on the back. They would have been praised. They would have been told what a wonderful job they're doing, but because she was a woman doing that same thing and actually doing it more effectively because it had more.
Jeffrey Aylor:It had more substance to it. You know she was she was stereotyped in this way when to me. I found her to be the most effective leader. That I worked with throughout my entire military career now. And and that that was in the military.
Jeffrey Aylor:I've had other circumstances where I've read into that as well now. You know we one of the areas that in Jungian psychology that is that is gender biased is the concept of thinking and feeling, Which and when I say gender bias at this point, I what I originally believed about that I've had to change because it really although women do because of programming, they tend to show these types of behavior or characteristics, and a male will show these. I what I love is, and I use this term a lot, I tell people I am very much in touch with my feminine side. Yeah. As a man, I am very much in touch, and they look at me like what are you doing?
Jeffrey Aylor:Oh, that's weird. You know, ended, so my response I get when I talk about being in touch with my creativity and my intuition. You know, I don't I don't I don't think they look at me as though I'm a feminine, but that still shocks them to think that I can say I'm in touch with the feminine element within me. You get this crazy little oh that oh early, so it's just an. I, you know, I just know that.
Jeffrey Aylor:Unfortunately, there are many women who I think could make and would be better leaders, whether it's in business, whether it's in government, whether it's in religion, whether it's whatever, whatever institution. I think they are more. They're more whole as a leader in many cases, and I believe in the past that there were societies, whether you believe or not in Atlantis or whether you believe in the Lumerian societies. Many of those were not patriarchal.
Purna Devi:Right.
Jeffrey Aylor:They were matriarchal societies.
Purna Devi:Well, the patriarchy, especially as it's defined today, and I will say it very plainly, the toxic patriarchy that we see is dominant, is power over. There's a dominance factor in the patriarchal systems that we see that are actually breaking down before our eyes. Right? There's a changing of the guard happening. And matriarchal societies historically are really centered on the idea of power with.
Purna Devi:Right? In matriarchal societies, we have historically seen everyone thrives. Right. Everyone is taken care of. That is the matriarchal way.
Purna Devi:There's no dominance. And even as we speak on, right, this conversation and moving into the idea of how do I express my divinity within my own wholeness and have that balance of masculine and feminine energies, one is not dominant over the other. Like you said, there is a symbiosis. There is this beautiful symbiotic experience between our energetic composition that shows up as we're defining it, right, in the binary of masculine and feminine.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, as we've said, it it we need to have balance between both. It's not that one is better than the other. The other thing that I think is really important to have a discussion about in her is that there are, I read a wonderful book called the intermarriage, and it's it talked about there are mature masculine and immature masculine behaviors. There are mature feminine and immature feminine behavior, and it's not just a matter of masculine. You want to develop mature elements of both the masculine and the feminine, because a lot of times if you're super oriented towards this, you'll the other will be your shadow.
Purna Devi:Absolutely.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? And we start digging into the problems we create because I may be in a mature masculine mindset, but a very immature feminine, and with that comes issues, comes behavioral concepts that we have to deal with, and so again, to me this is fascinating because this really touches on, you know, and in alchemy, this whole principle of the alchemical marriage is the development within us of what's referred to as the philosopher's stone. Yeah. Right? The and which is your heart, and that is where the balance of both the masculine and feminine resides is in in the heart, and it's a beautiful marriage.
Jeffrey Aylor:So this no wonder marriage between men and women is complicated. If we can't get the balance correct and healthy within ourselves individually, how do we think we're going to do when we start combining ourselves with another person? Right? The complexities of that is significant. So
Purna Devi:yeah, you know, in yogic philosophy, they speak a lot on Shiva and Shakti, right? And Shakti is this feminine energy and Kundalini Yogi Yoga. They say that Shakti is this energy coiled at the base of the spine, like a snake, that's all of that feminine creative potentiality. And then as we grow and as we mature, right, then that energy rises, it moves along the spinal column, it moves up the energetic body, the chakras, if you will, and the crown they call the abode of Shiva, that's that divine masculine. And so the harmony, the wholeness, Right?
Purna Devi:And it moves through that middle gate of that philosopher's stone. Right? The heart space. And so the merging of that feminine and masculine creates that alchemical marriage.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right, it's beautiful. In fact, the book I was telling you about, the inner marriage, is written by a gentleman who that is his focus is that exact the yogic philosophies behind it, Shiva Shakti, the Kundalini, the Kundalini Awakening. It's it's really a fascinating read. In fact, it's one I'm be referencing in our recommended readings this week as we put this episode out. You know, the other the other and I will bring some psychology into this because Carl Jung, who's absolutely I'm a I'm a huge follower of Jungian psychology, talked about the anima and the animus, which is the same concepts.
Jeffrey Aylor:He was very much into, you know, alchemy and the alchemical marriage of the two, and what I love about this topic is that there's different ways of expressing this same concept in so many different traditions. It's universal. This is not unique to any single tradition whatsoever. I think if there is a tradition who has done their best to try to mess this up, it would be modern Christianity.
Purna Devi:Oh, preach.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? And and as much as I come from that background, I find that the teachings and I find that the way it's being expressed today is not healthy. It is not whole. It it's it's being used to manipulate.
Purna Devi:Absolutely.
Jeffrey Aylor:In many ways, and I hate that because it's not not that's not how it was presented or taught.
Purna Devi:I've worked with a lot of people over the years that have deconstructed from modern Christianity, mostly women, because of the level of toxic abuse and patriarchal abuse and abuse, again, that dominant abuse of power that we have found that is not based in Jesus's teachings whatsoever, but rather in the greed of man, in the power seeking of man.
Jeffrey Aylor:We can certainly go down a path with that discussion because I have my whole entire view of this has changed significantly in that the relationship between Jesus and specifically Mary Magdalene, who was the image of Sophia, the wisdom. She was the the, she was the feminine element that the two come together demonstrated, and they did everything within their power and have continued to do to take her out of the story, to remove her and to remove her power and to remove her influence and to remove her wisdom and to remove what she truly was in the story, and it's so it's so inappropriate. I mean, I'm glad that I think people are are being exposed again. You know, this is the beauty of the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nachamati text is that, you know, the Gospel of Mary has been able to be reestablished, and many of the other texts that teach about her role have been brought forward so that we can see the real story, the whole story, but I find her to be a beautiful image, an absolutely stunning and beautiful image.
Purna Devi:You know, if the readers want another suggested read for the divine feminine, there's this beautiful text that was channeled by a by a woman, and it's called the Sofia Code. It's just lovely. So you bringing up Sofia, right, and all she represents. For anyone that wants to dive deeper, the Sofia Code would be a brilliant read.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, I find that absolutely, absolutely beautiful. So let's let's kind of shift a little bit here towards how does how does masculine and feminine energy, how is it viewed in something like the Hermetic principles? So I'm a student of the Kybalion, the Hermetic principles, and one of those principles is the principle of gender, and it's an ancient teaching. This is not new. Anyone who doesn't understand that this has been hidden, they've done their best to suppress knowledge around the principle of gender, and again, while we use the word gender today, it's often, you know, it's it's it's misunderstood.
Jeffrey Aylor:They people see it primarily as as gender biologically, but that's not the concept. The concept is a masculine and feminine principle that is within each one of us. It's bigger. It's more universal than that, and these are complementary energies. They are not to be in conflict with one another, and and although we have the tendency because if we also take the principle of polarity, we can we can we can take anything to an extreme and be out of balance.
Jeffrey Aylor:And what the hermetic philosophy is about is balance. The middle way is Buddhism, right? It's the that central how do we bring balance to the masculine and the feminine? They are not to be opposing forces. They're to be active and to be receptive and to be structured and to be flowing, and they cooperate with each other.
Jeffrey Aylor:They don't fight with each other. So based on that, do you ever feel modern culture is tending to overvalue maybe masculine? Elements of that, you know, action and productivity and control, undervaluing intuition, that feminine element of intuition and stillness and receptivity and empathy.
Purna Devi:Well, this is a trick question because you probably already know my answer, and for anyone listening to the first part of this conversation probably knows my answer as well. Absolutely. Right? We're slanted. And I think about historically how, you know, again, I wanna bring gender fluidity more into the conversation, right?
Purna Devi:I just wanna say this as an aside, and then I'll answer your question because I have a lot of trans friends, I have a lot of queer, you know, queer friends that, like you said, right? It's not about masculine and feminine and your biology, but rather how these energies create the makeup of who you are. Right? And what we see across the board to go back to your question now is that we have found ourselves throughout history being under the domination of typically biologically men who seek to do what they cannot do, which is create. This is why the witches were burned.
Purna Devi:This is why physicians were male because all of the nurses and the midwives and the herbalists and the healers and the villages were what? They were women because it's a woman's job to be at the brink of birth and at the brink of death. Right? So if we are speaking biologically, men have sought a power that they do not possess. And so what do we do, right?
Purna Devi:Instead of tapping into the creative potentiality that a biological man could embody in their own way. They sought to dominate the feminine and suppress her and go into spaces that they're truly not fit for. I right. I could I could really I could go on for two hours on this topic. And so what we see then is, and it's sad.
Purna Devi:It makes me so sad for the creative, like you said, for the emotional, receptive, intuitive, creative potentiality of all genders, not just male and female, but trans and anyone who identifies as whatever gender they are, right? Because we find, like you said, there's such an imbalance within ourselves. There is so many distorted messages that we have embodied that have created, I think a lack of magic in all genders. And I would love to believe because I have to, because I'm part of it and you're part of it and these conversations are part of it. And when you're in circles with men, Jeff, and you speak on your feelings and your emotions and your intuition and they scoff at you and you keep doing it anyway, right?
Purna Devi:I have to believe it makes me emotional, right? That there is this marriage, this inherent remembrance of the divine masculine and the feminine that is beyond all of our misadapted maladapted programming that is seeking reemergence. It already is, we've just become so distorted in our own images and, you know, and then the historical oppression that really only oppresses everyone, including the men that have found themselves in dominant positions?
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, it's obvious this we see this a lot in workplaces. I think it's it's heavily experienced in a in a work environment. You think about how much time and energy people spend in their work and how we've structured organizations to to in many cases, you know, again, most of them tend to be male dominated. The leadership is, you know, women bump up against ceilings. If you have a man who is highly creative, I tend to be somebody.
Jeffrey Aylor:I'm just I am who I am. I'm a highly creative individual. The energy is high, And I'm different, and everybody knows it. They know it as soon as they interact with me. I had to learn that.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? That, because that most of us, as we're growing and developing, have a tendency to think everybody else sees the world and thinks and acts the way we do, and it's eye opening. This is a big part of my awakening was the learning of who I really am. As you know from a Jungian psychology perspective, I am an INTJ. I'm an introverted intuitive.
Jeffrey Aylor:I am a thinker. I don't have feeling as my primary way of processing decisions, but I've developed that significantly to understand the impact of my thoughts on people, and I'm very decisive. So I know that when enter a room, I have a tendency to bring balance. The energy that I carry brings balance and people replicate to it. It's really an interesting thing, but to know it, to do it consciously versus doing and behaving unconsciously, because I can tell you that that these cultural influences can can they want to push you into a box that they can control.
Purna Devi:Absolutely.
Jeffrey Aylor:And when they don't think they can control you because you are a whole being and you're exhibiting these characteristics of being a whole person, that intimidates, it scares, it causes people to respond, and some will respond positively and some will respond negatively. And as I've taught myself, I I'm not concerned about how people respond. I just have a responsibility to be a whole person, right? So take me for who I am. I am who I am.
Purna Devi:Your opinion is none of our business.
Jeffrey Aylor:It is totally none of my business. Right? What you think of me is your your business. So yeah, absolutely. So obviously, in the hermetic concepts of of gender, they're they're the same thing on two different at two different poles.
Jeffrey Aylor:So you have to bring in none of these these principles in hermeticism are able to be interpreted independently. They have to be interpreted in relationship to each other. Right? So you you we have to then have the discussion around extreme and balance. So do you think that some some, if not much of the suffering that we experience in life comes from living in an extreme of this versus a balanced position of this?
Purna Devi:Absolutely. Well, going back to the yogic principles, right, because that's the basis of my main understanding of these concepts. We have an energetic body that, you know, most folks who are listening have probably heard the word aura, right? Even if they're not familiar with yogic energetic philosophy. So we theorize that there are 72,000 energetic veins running through our energetic body.
Purna Devi:Two of those that are coiling up that main central channel are called Ida and Pingala, masculine and feminine respectively. And like you said, there is this we cannot have one without the other. And so what we find within one's energetic self, if there is more energy flowing through one of the veins than the other, then we're going to find an imbalance. And so extremes happen, right? Because we are dominant in one of those aspects or one of those energetic veins, there's more energy moving through one than the other, which then imbalances the 72,000, the other 70,000 rather.
Purna Devi:Right? And so the practices of yoga, of meditation, of Buddhism, of of all of these different philosophies are really to support the vital energy flow through these channels so that they can be more in harmony with one another so there's balance. And then the side effect of that is balance in the masculine and feminine expressions of creativity, of action, of intuition and thinking, of feeling and doing, right, of the sun and the moon, the solar. I had a teacher once that she said the masculine is the container and the feminine is the contents.
Jeffrey Aylor:Oh, beautiful.
Purna Devi:Right?
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, it's interesting because I I just got some beautiful new body art this last week, and the top of the of the art is the sun moon. So it's just a symbol of the sun moon, right, which is the symbol of the alchemical marriage. It is the marriage of the masculine, feminine, and when we talk about marriage, you have to you have to look at balance. Without balance, a marriage isn't going to work. If if I always always loved to to when I would do marriage counseling with different people, you know, if you love you and I love you, who loves me?
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? Because if all you're focused on is you and not me, right, then we get this imbalance. And internally it's the same thing. How can I learn to love both the masculine elements of my being and the feminine element of my being so that I can be one marriage married? You know, this is one of the reasons in in Christian traditions, they almost teach that marriage is required in order to be a whole person.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yet Jesus didn't get married. So you have to stop and say, wait, wait a minute. If this was such an important thing. Then why did he not get married and then show us how marriage should work? And how it should be done perfectly so that we would understand and have an image and a picture of exactly how that should work.
Jeffrey Aylor:But I'm going tell you Jesus was married. Within himself. He was the perfect balance of the masculine and the feminine. He demonstrated that, but Mary Magdalene did also. There were two whole beings that complemented, and again that image has become so powerful to me, and the concept of being balanced, you know, nature itself does everything it can to create balance.
Jeffrey Aylor:So if you are imbalanced, let's say you have a strong masculine but an immature feminine, where do you seek to become balanced? How do you do that? Well, we tend to go find someone else to offset that, right? Now all of a sudden you create a dependence on someone else for your beat, your wholeness, and you are not whole within yourself. You've now given away your power.
Jeffrey Aylor:You're given away your responsibility, quite honestly, for individuation and becoming a whole being, and you've off I want to say you have delegated or you have outsourced that right to somebody else, and as soon as they can't fulfill that, you become right that and then we wonder why do relationships dissolve or become they become imbalanced.
Purna Devi:The term my other half came up in the last episode.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right.
Purna Devi:Right? And so again My
Jeffrey Aylor:better half.
Purna Devi:Better half. My other half. How diminishing of self.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right.
Purna Devi:Right.
Jeffrey Aylor:That's by the nature of saying it. You can hear
Purna Devi:it. My gosh. It's so codependent, and it's so unhealthy. Right? And like you said, I love the word outsource because instead of deconstructing the programs that allow me to be weak in one aspect or multiple aspects of my being, I am taught to seek it outside of myself, which only continues to atrophy that part of me.
Purna Devi:Right? And for and now I'm bringing another human with all their baggage and all their stuff into the imbalanced equation. And that doesn't mean right? Like, let's be clear. It doesn't mean that relationships are between two perfect people because if that was the case, no one would be in relationship.
Purna Devi:But what it means is I'm working on myself. I like that word that you used as well. That's the word I'm trying to say out of my face here. Individuation. Right?
Purna Devi:Because there is an autonomy, a sovereignty that I may not have every part, every facet of the diamond perfectly polished. However, there is a containment of self and a recognition of self that is sovereign that I bring into the relationship with you. So I don't lose myself and I'm also not codependent on you and expect you to be the strong to my weak, but we can become stronger together. And that doesn't mean, right, there's not an interdependence and a healthy level of support and acknowledgement and understanding. Right?
Purna Devi:I think there's also symbiosis between masculine and feminine within relationships regardless of gender.
Jeffrey Aylor:There is, and I think of if if if two people can come together and they are both whole, the relationship then becomes built on an overflow of love from within each one of them. But it's not because they are, to your point, codependent necessarily. That it's exhausting. It's mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausting when someone is depending on you to fulfill them.
Purna Devi:Yeah. It creates resentment, know, and I think again, unconsciously, oftentimes people are attracted to others that are carrying the energies that they're disconnected from themselves. And so you said, right, you posed the question, well, what do we do? Well, self self evolution work. You do the
Jeffrey Aylor:But that's hard, Porta. That's hard. But I don't want to. You know, we we have a tendency to do, in most cases, what's easy
Purna Devi:Yeah.
Jeffrey Aylor:Versus necessarily what's correct for us, right? To do that hard work is not easy to go inside yourself, to have that conversation internally and to acknowledge your weaknesses and your shadows and your I mean, this is this is the essence of the work you do with people is to help them, you know, and you and but it's not easy. In fact, I was reading this morning, there was a really great meme that was it it talked about how awakening is it's not butterflies and rainbows all the time. In fact, it's it's hard. It's it's that deconstruction within yourself and acknowledgment of who you are and your weaknesses and your all of that is work.
Jeffrey Aylor:It is work, but it's rewarding because once you gain that that more holistic element within yourself, then then life tends to flow. We're not fighting flow, we're inflow.
Purna Devi:Yeah.
Jeffrey Aylor:Which is a beautiful principle. You can feel it. You feel it when you're in that flow. So let's talk about let's go back to relationships again here a bit because it's really difficult to to not talk about it because in many cases our relationships with other people help us see the imbalances that we have in ourselves, They're mirrors. That person, what I'm seeking in that person is really something that I'm lacking in my self.
Jeffrey Aylor:If I can acknowledge that and then work on it in myself and not put a burden or overreliance on them. To fix it for me again, outsource it to, you know, then you know, we've got to get to where what we're rejecting within ourselves. We need to know that then often when someone's triggering us, lot of times it's because. We see something in them that we know is lacking in ourselves. So based on that, how how do our relationships as we talked a bit last week reveal the parts of ourselves that we really can't see yet?
Jeffrey Aylor:You can't fix something if you can't see it.
Purna Devi:That's right.
Jeffrey Aylor:So
Purna Devi:Well, you know, ideally, we're in a relationship where we can find the support. And I always, you know, when I when I have conversations with my clients about relationships and they're working on strengthening their own personality, they've maybe gotten lost in their relationship or they've become codependent. One question I will ask them is what are the characteristics characteristics and traits that you admire in that person? Because often that will be a a cursor to those traits that maybe are lacking and weak in yourself. And then we start to investigate how can I strengthen those within myself?
Purna Devi:Right? And if I am in a healthy relationship, keyword healthy, then I can begin to develop those qualities internally. If I'm in an unhealthy relationship, it's incredibly difficult because oftentimes what we find is a power dynamic differential. And so maybe there's one person that's benefiting, right, from that power differential that exists because there are codependent layers in it. And so I think some of it is just getting really real and honest with yourself.
Purna Devi:And like you said, doing the hard work of introspection, right? Does this make does this support my autonomy? Does this support me feeling sovereign? Does this support me feeling whole? And if it doesn't, then a renegotiation needs to happen.
Purna Devi:And oftentimes, right? Again, it's not all kumbaya and butterflies. Once we begin to renegotiate one part of the equation, sometimes there's a pushback. If I've been if I have been in power in the relationship and all of a sudden my partner is beginning to exert their autonomy, that always doesn't that typically doesn't go so well. And so what I have found in, you know, working with couples and in relationships, it tends to be women who have felt a lacking of presence or power in their relationship in relation to their biological male partner.
Purna Devi:And once they begin to find themselves and find their voice, now all of a sudden, what's wrong with you? What's going on? Sometimes then we bring the partner into the conversation and they can begin to do the inner work, right? To find balance and resolve within themselves and let go of some of that external control and domination. And oftentimes those relationships dissolve so that the two can go on and, you know, at least the one part that I work with, which is typically the female, then she'll be able to find power on her own and then use that relationship as a teaching point.
Purna Devi:But if we're in healthy relationships, then my weak parts, you can mirror those to me in a loving way because I trust you and then I can do the work to resolve that and create a greater balance within myself.
Jeffrey Aylor:I know as we so you we get into some really deep elements of this that, you know, I think of the creative energy element, which is related toward feminine characteristic. How many people misuse, they don't understand, and they don't harness, and they don't learn to manage creative energy. They express it, and they release it, And unfortunately, people struggle to grow and develop and evolve because they have totally dissipated that because they don't know what to do with it, especially men. Right? This is why men become overly reliant and overly dependent.
Jeffrey Aylor:And I hate that because they're wasting the creativity that God has given them. We are creators by nature. That's what we are. We are creators. To take that and harness it and turn it into things that are valuable and not and and but it it's it's the object the objectifying that a man does of a woman.
Jeffrey Aylor:They become an object, and I find that to be it's dehumanizing, totally dehumanizing. Right? So when we talk about healing, though, what changes in relationships when someone starts to become more whole? Because if you're in a relationship and you're you or neither of you are truly whole, what will change if one or both? I can tell you it's not easy if one does it, versus the other doing.
Jeffrey Aylor:I mean, if if it's it's it's, again, it's complicated. So
Purna Devi:You know, I have found through personal experience and also working with couples both have to be on board. Right? They're really one can't be doing it and the other stays where they are. It's like we're both on we're both driving in a car and you're going to stay at this stop, but I'm going to keep driving ahead. We have to go together.
Purna Devi:Right? And I think it was Rumi who said, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And so going together is more difficult, going together requires both people doing the work. And, you know, I have a dear friend, Rachel, and she shared a message with me the other day.
Purna Devi:I can't remember where she heard it, but she said, being in relationship and doing healing work is like waiting while one person is healing and then the other person is healing and the other one is waiting. And so again, there's loving one another while we're stumbling forward, while we're doing our own personal work. So it's like there are three entities in the relationship. There's the individual that is doing that individual wholeness work. And then there is that being of the relationship.
Purna Devi:And so we bring those parts to the whole. Right? But as as individuals that are working to remember our own wholeness first.
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, I've I've come to understand that because we are all energy, if one person is doing work that is raising their energy, it will in many cases raise the energy of the people around them, whether they like it or not. Whether they are ready in some cases or not, they will feel that energy, they will because if we truly believe that we are all one, the best way for us to heal the collective is to heal individually. You know, the scriptures in Christian religion even touch on this about relationship, probably one of the most difficult chapters that everybody in most Christian teachers will ignore. It's the seventh chapter of of first Corinthians that talks about the marriage relationship and how well if if one person is is is transforming and the other one is not, if that person is willing to live with that person as they're going through that, then great because maybe they will be pulled with them. Right?
Jeffrey Aylor:But if they're not, it's better to release so that one is not going to be you know, again, the energies then would separate and one can go faster in some cases, maybe not further, but faster. That that. To me, that that is it gives hope that if you're in a relationship and you're in different places or in different different energy frequencies at that time that that realize that what you're doing does have a it can have a significant positive impact on the people around you. It does. So
Purna Devi:And I think, right, for those listening, I I wanna be clear that we're not saying that both people have to be into meditation and yoga and right? We have to be believing the same thing or both have the exact same level of personal development commitment. Right? I know so many folks in my field that are, you know, there is a symbiosis in the relationship. One is very oriented sort towards self awakening and development, And the other is very oriented toward practical worldly matters.
Purna Devi:And that's a beautiful marriage too, because we need both when we're talking about right masculine and feminine contents and container. And what I think is really the bottom line that that scripture touches on is support. Right? Do I love you and value you in your own sovereignty to support and encourage and not stifle your own progress and your own growth? If we're interdependent, then that is inherent.
Purna Devi:If we're codependent, there's going to be a problem.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So maybe the deepest form of healing is not necessarily becoming someone different, but ending the battle we have inside ourselves.
Jeffrey Aylor:Because a lot of times there is a war going on inside us between these energies and these elements that which brings peace. How do you come to a point of peace within yourself between these energies and these right? So the war of doing and resting or being strong or being tender or using your logic versus your intuition or control versus I'm trusting. Right? You think about, you know, what does that balance between these energy actually feel like in everyday life?
Purna Devi:You know, I think first we have to stop making parts of ourselves the enemy. And I think there's a beautiful maturation and gift when we can hold ourselves in our seeming contradiction. Because like you said earlier, the systems and our programs and all of these external familial and cultural influences seek to box us in this or that. So the conversation really lands on, can I develop into my non dualistic complexity and hold space for my inherent contradiction? And our existence is contradictory.
Purna Devi:I'm a human being having a spiritual experience. This is wild. Right?
Jeffrey Aylor:Right.
Purna Devi:Wild that we're even here in this form with this consciousness developing and remembering its divinity. So can we hold ourselves and and make no parts of us or others the enemy, but rather seeing, you know, certain aspects of us that maybe are imbalanced, are in suffering, are in survival mode like we talked about last week and like I've been talking about in my group, right, the self beyond survival. And how can I continue to build love and grace for the seeming complexity and contradiction that is our basic existence?
Jeffrey Aylor:You know, I can't help but think that I mean, even the concept of God, we have defined as masculine in most cases. When it's very obvious that God, source, the universe is completely androgynous, completely it's both it is both masculine. It is both feminine. It is the perfect balance, and to be one with God, we have to enjoy that same balance, and I believe I love the definition of peace being our confidence of our oneness with the source, with God. That brings peace to know, and that and you can't have peace in a war, you know.
Jeffrey Aylor:From whence come wars and fightings among you, they come because there's something you want and you don't have it. Yeah, and I always like to, you know, happiness is an equation. Happiness is what you have minus what you want. If what you want is more or less or different than what you have, you're going to be unhappy.
Purna Devi:Absolutely.
Jeffrey Aylor:And and you and and because we can't find that balance of the masculine, the feminine, and be whole, it's difficult for us internally to be at peace. Well, how can I how can I have peace outside of myself if I don't have peace within myself? How can I have love outside of myself if I don't have love within myself? It's the general concepts, I think, of all these these traditions to teach. So, you know, the balance creates peace.
Jeffrey Aylor:What's the manifestation of that? How do you know you're you're you're you're getting to a point in everyday life where you're in a more balanced state? Well, you're going to exhibit certain characteristics. Love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness. Right?
Jeffrey Aylor:These are the characteristics that I think are they're the manifestation of that. When you find someone that's exhibiting those characteristics, you find someone who, if you dig into them a little bit, you're going find that they're quite balanced, I think. And so what what shifts within us when we stop rejecting these other parts of ourselves that and we start holding those parts of ourselves with with compassion.
Purna Devi:You know, I have found through my own shadow work and embodiment work that the less I make those uns unsavory parts of myself or those shadow parts in Jungian terms, right? That society has deemed unlovable or unfavorable. The more I love those, the more I accept those, the essence of those changes inherently. And what I have found then is I'm less judgmental and I'm more accepting and more compassionate and extending of love to others. So I think some of those characteristics, right, I'm I'm less quick to judge and react.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? Know, people have heard the the the scriptures that say judge not.
Purna Devi:Right.
Jeffrey Aylor:Lest you be judged.
Purna Devi:That's right. Who am I to throw a stone? Right? And I also try to remind people when we do shadow work that none of us are a collection of the things we've done wrong. Again, there is there there are wholesome parts of me.
Purna Devi:And so the more that I can take that wholesome part and love that shadow part and work and lean in and not reject, right? Fragmentation and disconnection in self and with others comes because I'm rejecting a part of myself that I've been taught to reject, right, based in whatever those influences are that are external.
Jeffrey Aylor:I know for myself as as I've done that work too, what I've had to do is alchemize those pieces of myself. Right? It's taking something like lead and through the process of going through the fire of converting that to gold. I mean, alchemy had to be hidden in science because in the time in which they did those things, if they had been open, they would have been they would have been killed for doing it.
Purna Devi:Were magic.
Jeffrey Aylor:It was magic when, you know, when in reality, it was just, you know, the the original deep spiritual. But that's what we do. I mean, again, it's alchemy.
Purna Devi:It
Jeffrey Aylor:is. All of this is alchemy. And which is why I love the title of this episode, right? Becoming Whole, and this is an alchemical marriage. And if we can do it within ourselves, we become better capable of helping and doing with others through our experience, right, a lot of people, they don't know how or what to do to confront some of these things, and that's where your people like you and your experience and the gifts of what you do in your practice are so critical.
Purna Devi:Well, and I think, you know, I want to touch on something that you said, and I think it's a common cliche, and I kind of want to go a little bit deeper on it as we're I know we're wrapping up here soon. But, you know, folks will say, well, how can I love someone else if I can't love myself? And I want to tweak that a bit. I wanna challenge that because I have come across a lot of folks that have forgotten how to love themselves. And it is because we do the external work and I remind them what it is like to be loved and to feel safe and to be in relation to love that then helps to mirror.
Purna Devi:So some right? So sometimes it isn't always an inner job. That's a very, again, hyper independent way of saying it.
Jeffrey Aylor:So
Purna Devi:I wanna challenge that slightly because sometimes it does take someone outside of us reminding us. So there is this micro and macro, again, there's this symbiosis between the inner and the outer worlds. And so whether it comes from inside or outside, the bottom line is love, right? Is that bad is the alchemical potency, the medicine, the salve on that fragmentation, on that disconnection. And there's been a lot of times where I didn't feel very loving to myself, and it was only by the grace of a loving person outside of me that helped remind me and reflect to me how to remember what loving myself was like.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, again, because community, you know, we have mirrors.
Purna Devi:Yeah.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? There's more opportunities to see things within yourself through others, and then also to see that there one of the things that I've learned through experiences I've had in life, one of them is that, you know, with the loss of a child, if you are able to come through that experience, which is horrific, and at that point your experience becomes so valuable to others who may go through that, that you have a responsibility to help them and give them hope. Because without that, I can tell you, when you first are in that, there is no hope. You don't feel any hope. You don't see any resolution to the grief or the, so we become responsible in community to share that experience, and I think that's really the point I want to make here is that those who have gone through these things, they've gone through fire, they have alchemized areas, they now have a responsibility when able to share that experience with others who don't have that knowledge or experience yet to help them because now that person can see there is hope that I can I can do this?
Jeffrey Aylor:I can do this. I see it. I see evidence of of someone who has done that, and now that person becomes guide they can become. And I think that's a a beautiful responsibility.
Purna Devi:You know, I had a teacher once that said, oh, Pornadevi, you are not a light worker. You are a shadow worker.
Jeffrey Aylor:True.
Purna Devi:And, yeah, you know, I I I really I've always sat with that. Right? And, again, there is that, you know, that duality of dark and light, but the reality is, right, we go through our own darkness. Darkness. We walk through our own fires, and then some of us, we go back in the fire and and help those that are still in it.
Jeffrey Aylor:Well, Carl Jung often said that, you know, you have in order to deal with that shadow, you have to shine light Yeah. Right on it to to make it again, you can't heal what you can't see. You can't fix what you don't acknowledge. It's a basic principle in the work we do, you know, there are things going on and people just don't see it. It's not in their frame of reference to be able to see that, and once they do, once the light's been shined on it, they see it everywhere, and it's like, oh my gosh, I had all of a sudden there it is.
Jeffrey Aylor:It's there. It's everywhere I look, and to me that is, I think that's the job of the light bearer is to help bring those things that are in shadow today, which are what cause issues. I tell people all the time in the work I do, we don't have problems in our organization because of what we know. We have problems because of what we don't know. And the tools, the tools that we talk about here, the approaches that different traditions use, they're just tools to help bring light to what is otherwise in darkness, and to bring you into the now and help you deal with a lot of these a lot of these things.
Jeffrey Aylor:So it's been a beautiful conversation. I hope you've anything else you want to add before we there's so many important this is one of those topics we could go on and on and on forever, and but I hope that people, as they're listening, resonate with your experience, my experience with the with the content. So
Purna Devi:I feel well, there right? There are so many things you could say. First, I just want to say thank you for this invitation. I just love you so much, my brother. And for the listeners, it's really kind of fun, this relationship between Jeff and I, because some of you well, most of you would not know this, but we actually share the same birthday.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yes, we do.
Purna Devi:Which is 02/02/2022, right, which is a sacred numerological concept as well. And there were supposed to be, what, three, four, five of us on the conversation today and others, right, were unable to make it. And so it just feels fitting that the conversation between masculine and feminine is between my, you know, beloved brother, Jeff, and I, just the two of us. And I I'm just really grateful. And, you know, many of you are gonna be listening to this in a different time, but today is actually Mother's Day.
Jeffrey Aylor:Yes.
Purna Devi:And so I think it's just a real beautiful conversation as we honor the divine mother and the divine feminine and the matriarchy and the way that the goddess cannot be suppressed. And so through these, you know, the wound is where the crack is where the light comes in.
Jeffrey Aylor:Right? Yes.
Purna Devi:I'm I'm a lover of Rumi if you haven't realized. We love the the Sufi mystic. And so that the cracks that we're seeing within ourselves, the cracks that we're seeing in the systems of toxic patriarchy, I think that that is where the light of the divine mother shines and is coming through to create greater harmony and balance. And just thank you. I love you so much.
Jeffrey Aylor:And I love you. And I'm hopeful that, you know, I truly feel that we're here for this purpose. Yeah. You know, this is like we've said, this light getting through these cracks is going to expose things that are not going to be easy for us as a world to deal with. So but it ultimately will be beautiful.
Jeffrey Aylor:So with that, as we bring this wonderful conversation to a close, maybe maybe the idea of becoming whole isn't about being perfect. Right? I always think about when when someone talks about someone being perfect, that they're not perfect in every aspect. They're whole, they're complete, right? So maybe it's about learning to embrace the fullness of who we really are, and not rejecting our strengths, or our tenderness that we feel or our intuition versus our logic, but let them all work together.
Jeffrey Aylor:Let them all work together. They are designed to be, like you say, one symbiotic whole. So Purna, thank you for this beautiful conversation. And to those that are listening, perhaps the healing you're looking for, or you're seeking, it's not it's not really found at becoming more divided in yourself. It really is about becoming more unified within yourself.
Jeffrey Aylor:And if you are in the area where we live here in Ohio, please reach out to Pornadivi and her healing arts practice for she's she's a wonderful healer in so many different ways, and we certainly recommend her highly in every aspect of this. With that, let's let the space between continue. As we come to a close, remember that this journey continues in many expressions. This podcast is part of a family of partner podcasts. Awakening heaven on earth.
Jeffrey Aylor:The Space Between Heaven and Earth and Living Heaven on Earth are three companion podcasts exploring spiritual awakening from complementary perspectives. Awakening heaven on earth offers the core teachings and mystical reflections on unity, love, and conscious living. The space between creates room for dialogue, reflection, and lived conversation around those teachings. Living heaven on earth focuses on basic spiritual practices that help embody these insights in daily life. Together, they form a unified journey of understanding, experience, and integration.
Jeffrey Aylor:Inviting listeners to remember their connection with the divine, with one another, and with the living world. You can find all of them available on the same podcast streaming platforms wherever you listen. And if music helps carry these teachings deeper into the heart, The Unity. Awakening Heaven on Earth album is available on all major music streaming services as a musical companion to this journey. Wherever you engage through listening, reflection, conversation, or music.
Jeffrey Aylor:May it gently remind you, you are not separate. You belong to the one life and heaven is already unfolding within you. Until next time. Walk gently, love deeply, and embody heaven on earth.