Aurora taking leave of her lover Tithos. Having asked Zeus to make him immortal, she failed to also ask that he not age.
In all things, nature seeks a steady state. Young lovers, like the mythic Aurora depicted in the public domain image above, leaving her now aged and enfeebled Tithos, last only for a season. Thereafter, love must take on new and changing features.
The neurotic pursuit of eternal youth fails to appreciate the natural order of change and re-balancing. There is nothing so pitiful as an older man lusting after a girl who could be his daughter, or an older woman pursuing a much younger man. These couplings are contra-natura and, as such, cannot long prevail.
Mind-body-spirit are continuously being recalibrated to new realities, and finding the “sweet spot” at each station on life’s path is our spiritual task. Neurosis simply reflects our failure to find it. Homeostasis is the capacity of animals to regulate physiological limits to secure a balanced system. Whether we speak about the endothermic animals who have inherent self-regulation of such parameters as temperature or exothermic, who carry out control by behavioral adaptations, the aim is the same: support an equilibrium around a mean value developed in evolutionary time. Such regulatory mechanisms include insulin production, kidney regulation of water and ions, conformance to circadian rhythm, and the sleep cycle to name but a few.
As in matter so too in spirit, we see homeostatic feedback loops at work as we thread the needle of insight. Carl G. Jung spoke often of the need for complementarity and balance of feminine and masculine, Shadow and self. The human ecology shows the same socio-spiritual dynamic. As a long-time facilitator of team meetings (large and small), I can anecdotally attest (as so many of my colleagues will as well), that a meeting of all men is a very different meeting than one with mixed gender representation.
The discussions tend to have more sharp edges with an economy of time invested in discovery and willingness to live in the question. On receiving a facilitation assignment, the first thing I look over is the roster to see just how gender diverse it is. In any event, in such gatherings, mixed representation ensures a better return from extremes to balanced views as issues clarify and strategies are developed.
The Harried Mystic 