“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The word “passive” is a poor one to describe the characteristics of the anima, in that it suggests a lack of motion, and this is hardly the case. It is true that the anima allows itself to be acted upon, but the motive behind this is the desire and the necessity to tune into other forces that are supremely powerful. The desire to be swept along, therefore, is as strong with the anima as the opposite desire for rest. The characteristics of the animus provide the aggressive thrust that returns the personality back outward into physical activities, triumphantly holding the products of creativity that the anima characteristics have secured.

(9:48.) The male yearns toward the anima because it represents to the deep unconscious those other characteristics of the whole self that, on the one hand, lie latent, and that, on the other hand, struggle for release. The tension between the two leads him to temper aggressiveness with creativity, or to use aggressiveness creatively.

(9:58.) Your reality exists in a particular area of activity in which aggressive qualities, thrusting-outward characteristics, are supremely necessary to prevent a falling back into the infinite possibilities from which you have only lately emerged. Yet from this unconscious bed of possibilities you derive your strength, your creativity, and the fragile yet powerful kind of individual consciousness that is your own.

There is also a natural tension, then, between sexes that is based on far deeper causes than physical ones. The tension results from the nature of your consciousness that arises from the anima, but depends for its continuation upon the “aggressiveness” of the animus. I have to some extent explained the fascination that one has for the other, as resulting from the inner knowledge of the whole self, that strives to attain true identity as it struggles to combine and fulfill the seemingly opposite tendencies that are a part of it.

These may not even be recorded consciously, but in many cases they are, and are then forgotten. Her own past male lives will help her relate to you as her son. In some cases new mothers may feel highly aggressive and nervous. These feelings are sometimes due to the fact that the male son causes an activation of the animus in her, with a resulting charge of aggressive feelings.