Is sexuality the only way to bring together the male and female principles?

Lama Ole’s answer:

It’s best if everything male and female basically inspires you. You move through space and perceive it—the openness itself—as the female principle. Likewise, you experience joy as the male principle. You open up towards all qualities and the inherent potential of everybody who crosses your path.

On the personal level, we distinguish between four kinds of relationships, depending on the way people react to each other: a woman can be a mother, a daughter, a sister, or a lover. Not everybody embodies every type. It’s the same thing with the men: there are father types, sons, brothers, and the men that a lady would like to take home immediately. Thus, men and women can complement and touch one another in different ways.

All in all, we should try to let ourselves be inspired by the whole spectrum of experience. At first, you might think mainly of sexual relationships and that kind of closeness. But then you discover that a relationship with fewer desires might be even stronger and, in the long run, more beneficial.

However, the type of encounter is also subject to the degree to which one’s masculinity or femininity has developed. There are people who are very masculine or feminine, and thus need partners to find their balance. For instance, when I am not together with a woman for a longer period, I walk around like a tank: I forget to shave and end up being too rude.

The same is true for some women who are very feminine: if there is no man around, they only talk about hats and kids for days on end and nothing else happens. In these cases, men and women need each other a lot.

There are also the types of people who are less extreme. They have some female and some male qualities, a little bit of both. They can do well without a partner.