Is Consciousness Masculine or Feminine?
And What About Ego?
Hello beloved reader,
I practice remembering gratitude for many things, but one thing in particular stands out: the privilege of living in a decades-old log cabin in the woods of Temple, New Hampshire, where—just a few years after we moved here in 2011—a Thai Forest Buddhist monastery took root across the road.
This past weekend, the Temple Forest Monastery celebrated its 10th anniversary. I joined the Saturday festivities, where one of the co-abbots, Ajahn Jayanto, joked that it only took them ten years to put up a sign.
I smiled, remembering how, over a decade ago, our former neighbors called to tell us they planned to sell their 100+ acres to a Buddhist community. We were invited to a “meet the neighbors” evening, an experience I wrote about in my serialized memoir: The Rising of the Divine Feminine and the Buddhist Monks Across the Road.
That evening, I asked a question in innocence: “I’m curious about where the women are, in your tradition?” Only later did I learn about the controversy surrounding women’s ordination in the Thai Forest lineage.
Even in traditions rooted in awakening, patriarchal hierarchies persist.
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Living across the road from this monastic community has invited deeper reflection over the years—on gender, identity, and the nature of consciousness. These questions surfaced again during the weekend’s celebration, especially after listening to a beautiful dhamma talk by Ajahn Viradhammo.
The Saturday night when he spoke in a Sala room filled with perhaps fifty people sitting on meditation cushions pulled up close due to the limits of the room, I felt something intangible. It was as though my heart began to glimmer and glow. While writing this now, in my mind’s eye I see an amusing visual—I’m reminded of E.T.’s glowing heartlight in the 1982 movie.
But it was as though a connection formed between all the hearts in the room. Like there was an invisible thread of presence between us, and that connection brightened.
Any spiritual teacher like Ajahn Viradhammo who cultivates the capacity to encourage and inspire people to drop their energy down from their intellect, through their throat and into their heart—in my view—is a gift to humanity.
In the West, we tend to identify more with our intellects than our hearts. The mind is of course an invaluable tool to think, analyze, reason, problem-solve, discern, question, even doubt, etc. But as the old adage reminds us, the mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.
The next day I searched online for more talks from Ajahn Viradhammo and I found this beautiful dhamma talk where he asks,
is awareness feminine?
is awareness 32 years old?
is awareness Latvian? is it Malaysian?
After I listened to this talk, I sat in my own spiritual practice, and I noticed the thought arise:
Consciousness is not feminine or masculine. But ego is.
Consciousness may be genderless, but ego is shaped by gendered experience.
Ego, unlike consciousness/awareness, is deeply entangled with identity—our names, roles, bodies, stories. And for those of us shaped within patriarchal systems, the ego’s dance becomes more visible: sometimes as resistance, sometimes as strategy for survival.
I wonder if women, having so often been objectified or dismissed, or suppressed or silenced — if women develop a heightened awareness of ego—not out of choice, but necessity. Perhaps we’re less identified with ego simply because we’ve had to be.
We all incarnate into masculine or feminine forms, yes—but perhaps the deeper invitation is to remember what lies beneath form. To notice when ego speaks, and when awareness listens.
Ajahn Viradhammo had a beautiful metaphor where he talks about writing on a white page. And how the white page is the background, and that’s like the observing awareness that we can remain connected with, throughout living our daily lives in the physical/material realm. And the printing on the page is the representation of that foreground, the living our lives. And we can simultaneously keep awareness of the white page/the background/the observing awareness.
But all of this makes me wonder if consciousness itself is evolving. If it’s awakening more of us to the truth that while our forms may have a gender, consciousness does not.
And that the return to wholeness is not through the ego, but through the quiet practice of noticing—noticing from that observing awareness which we cultivate by mediation or spiritual practice.
Noticing when we react from ego.
Noticing when we soften into awareness.
Noticing how gender, form, and story shape us—and perhaps how something vast and loving lives beyond everything in the material realm.
I’d love to hear if this sparks any thoughts within you.
Thank you so much, Camilla, for this insightful piece. I admit that I haven't thought about gender in terms of ego and consciousness. I think I live more in my consciousness than my ego, perhaps because I identify so strongly with plants, for whom gender is simply too diverse to be a meaningful classification system. Most plants have both "male" and "female" parts; some plants have one or the other; some plants can shift between those states as environmental conditions change. Nature is far more complex than most humans realize! Lots to ponder here. Thanks again for the nudge to think about this, and many blessings to you.
In Hindu cosmology divine masculine or Purusha represents pure consciousness and divine feminine or Shakti is the dynamic energy that gives form to Purusha. They twine together throughout the world of course, and yet, patriarchy has held sway for too long…..that is a subject we could talk about forever!
And I agree, “And that the return to wholeness is not through the ego, but through the quiet practice of noticing,” I like to say in class, “notice what you notice!”