After the sauna my spirit son and I walked over to the coffee shop. As we entered I saw a person with a long white ponytail with their back to us. He was wearing a tan raincoat and talking to his younger woman friend. We ordered our drinks and my son chose the table next to the couple. Open went his laptop and he began to review his correspondence, no doubt looking for the latest message from his lover, the beautiful and intelligent woman in his life. As he dove into his screen, I sat drinking my latte and began to notice the couple at the next table. The white haired elder was facing a younger woman who seemed to be his daughter. She was hunched over, talking in a very quiet voice as he listened. Rarely did he say anything verbally, but his body language was saying a lot.
First of all he was sitting with his coat open. He was wearing a grey and rather dirty muscle shirt, which disclosed his round tummy and breasts. Many men our age have this shape. He looks as though he had given up exercise a few years ago, but was still wearing his old persona. His shoulders were square and strong, but something seemed wrong. He was looking sideways at my son in his hoodie and then at me. He returned his gaze to his female companion. That’s when I noticed his shoes. They were black and wide, some sort of Chinese woman’s attire. Then I noticed his hands. His fingernails were painted a dark red. Yes, definitely nail polish, but not shiny like most women who paint their fingernails. My wife gave up that custom for no make up, no bra, and more comfort about five years into our marriage. I guess I was as startled as when I noticed my nephew’s painted toenails. That was shortly after his wedding. He chose black. His wife had nothing artificial, much like my mine. This new age is definitely interesting.
As we left I acknowledged the gentleman across from me. He nodded, but didn’t smile. He looked jealous. I had what he wanted, a younger man. And then I remembered what Carl Jung had said in the middle of the last century. If we don’t acknowledge our inner feminine and create a dialogue with her, she will eventually possess us. That’s how powerful the unconscious archetypes are. She makes us think and feel that her desires are our own. After all she’s inside of us. She’s interested in the young man sitting beside her more than her daughter. She has the father/mother/daughter relationship in tow and knows how to manipulate it. He/She looked a lot like the big bad wolf licking his chops, as he stared at my son, who looks young for his age. He gets carded when he orders alcohol. Although he’s thirty-five, he doesn’t look it.
The inner feminine, or the anima as Jung called it, is a force to be reckoned with. She has an eye for handsome young men. She projects her desire for relationship with the masculine out onto people she meets. She sees us in many different male forms, but it is the conscious man, within whom she dwells, whom she wants as her lover. If we turn inward and embrace her, we become her lover and, usually, we then become androgynous. We don’t have to show our feminine side with nail polish and women’s shoes. 
We can wear Hawaiian shirts, and things around our wrists like gold and silver time pieces, or Native American silver and turquoise bracelets. For the neck, gold chains or maybe a scarf would do. That way the anima gets to select the wardrobe and dress her man.
It’s a lot more fun to “dress up” as an elder than to feel possessed by an alien spirit which compels us to express it in ways which will call attention to us. That has a function of course. The behavior is designed to show everyone in the environment that the person is out of balance. The unconscious is sort of crying for help in this way. It is showing the other elders what kind of conversation needs to happen. If I had the “balls” to talk to the old man about these things, he might discover why he’s acting the way he is. Maybe I’ll run into him again and then I will. There’s a time and a place for everything and the synchronicity to bring things to the surface for healing. Why else would Great Mystery sit me opposite this man and his daughter? It brings things to the surface and I have the ability to articulate them. And, as that famous quote reminds us, we could be him. “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”
Merlin and the White Eagle 