The child’s consciousness must learn to appreciate the feminine soul force that nurtures it. This can only be done by becoming aware of one’s own helpless dependence and the experience that it is the mother who unconditionally nourishes and carries and warms it in this helplessness. This appreciation of the soul-feminine must take place in childhood – in the state of dependence. Once the consciousness has „grown up“ without this realization, then the ego could expand unhindered all the time. This state of expanded ego creates in the consciousness the view that it is powerful and that the feminine mental is weak and may be used for its own purposes. The development of consciousness then goes in the direction of solitary power.
The spiritual cannot enforce this realization of appreciation on the child’s consciousness. If the spiritual stands alone, then the child’s ego will gradually swamp the child’s consciousness. Intolerance, anger, weak nerves, egoism, destructiveness – in short, the pain of not uniting everything and completely to one’s own opinion – are the consequences. The disregard, the contempt of the seemingly helpless feminine by the childlike consciousness are the consequences.
It is incumbent upon the masculine power – whether in the form of the father or the masculine aspect of the mother – to enforce respect for the feminine upon the child’s consciousness. To show the child’s expanding ego the right limits and to keep it away from or free it from the misconception of the fullness of power towards the feminine and to remind it again and again of its status of helpless childlike dependence. Thus the childlike consciousness learns to appreciate and respect the feminine, soul aspect and to let it develop within itself on an equal footing with the ego. It learns that power does not work without power. It learns to love.