by Anna Laskowska | Jan 16, 2026
There is no shortage of conversations today about masculine and feminine energy. The topic has become popular, fashionable, and often oversimplified. Yet after spending a prolonged period in a deeply demanding dark night of the soul, I arrived at a very different understanding—one that does not align with much of what is commonly presented.
What I came to see is that( the true and exalted )feminine energy is widely neglected and, in many forms, systematically obscured, suppressed, and often redirected into distorted expressions. In this sense, it is not absent—it is interfered with and compromised. Its depth is undervalued, its intelligence dismissed, and its natural function frequently replaced by imitation or mechanisms of control rather than genuine understanding or integration.
Feminine energy is intangible, yet it would be a mistake to underestimate it—it is extremely powerful. It belongs to the realm of emotion, sensation, intuition, and inner experience. It is the capacity to feel what is happening within—to recognize emotional movement, inner tension, resonance, resistance, and truth as it arises. Although it cannot always be seen or measured, its presence or absence shapes everything that follows. Feminine energy does not act first; it perceives. It receives. It understands. In this sense, it provides the inner container in which action takes shape.
Masculine energy, by contrast, is the energy of expression and action. It gives form to what has been felt. It moves outward. It translates inner understanding into decision, direction, and structure.
One cannot exist meaningfully without the other. Expression without awareness becomes impulsive, reactive, or destructive. Awareness without expression remains stagnant, unresolved, and contained. When either operates in isolation, imbalance follows.
When distorted forms of feminine energy meet distorted forms of masculine energy, the result is not neutral—it is destructive. What emerges from such an encounter is painful, chaotic, and often harmful. And once this imbalance is expressed outwardly, it can be felt. It carries a particular weight. It wounds. It destabilizes. It leaves traces in relationships, in bodies, and in lives. This is not theoretical; it is something that registers immediately, because it hurts.
All creation emerges from the interaction between feminine and masculine energy. What determines its impact is not the presence of one or the other, but whether this interaction is integrated and healthy, or distorted and destructive.
This is where a fundamental misconception appears. It is often said that men embody masculine energy and women embody feminine energy. This is not true. Both men and women carry both. And more importantly, both men and women currently struggle with their relationship to feminine energy.
When feminine energy is distorted or suppressed, a person loses contact with their inner reality. Feelings are misunderstood, denied, projected, or acted out unconsciously. Some people express emotions without understanding them. Others suppress emotions entirely, believing this to be strength. Both are expressions of imbalance.
Healthy feminine energy does not mean emotional chaos or passivity. It means clarity of inner experience. It means knowing what one feels and why. Only from that clarity can masculine energy act in a way that is coherent, grounded, and aligned.
This imbalance lies at the core of many relational struggles—not because one person is “too feminine” or the other “not masculine enough,” but because both lack a grounded relationship with their own inner world. Feminine energy provides orientation. Without it, action becomes disconnected from truth.
There is a reason night has long been associated with the feminine and day with the masculine. The night is inward, receptive, silent, and unseen. The day is expressive, visible, and active. The dark night of the soul carries this symbolism for a reason. It is a period of withdrawal from outward movement and a turning inward—toward feeling, emotional accumulation, and unresolved inner material.
This process is often misunderstood. It is not weakness. It is not regression. It is the restoration of feminine intelligence within the psyche.
For this reason, I strongly disagree with the idea that women must “embody femininity” to attract men. If women alone were meant to carry feminine energy and men alone masculine energy, balance would already exist. It does not.
If both women and men had a healthy expression of feminine energy—the capacity to feel, recognize, and understand their inner states—many conflicts would dissolve before they ever formed. And if both also had a healthy masculine expression—the ability to act from that understanding—relationships would no longer revolve around confusion, projection, or power struggles.
The work, then, is not about choosing one energy over the other. It is about restoring the feminine capacity to feel and the masculine capacity to express within every individual, regardless of gender.
From this, relationships can become grounded, honest, and whole.
by Anna Laskowska | Jan 12, 2026
I believe this will be one of the most important articles I write—one that contains essential information for anyone immersed in the dark night of the soul, or for those working with me on processing suffering and wounds. Here, I aim to describe the architecture of a wound: how it is constructed, how it protects itself, and what one might expect while dismantling it.
I wish that every awakening human being had this structure engraved within themselves. If only it were that simple—if healing depended solely on memorizing a framework. But it does not. This process does not rely on memorization; it relies on awareness. And awareness is precisely what becomes compromised once a person enters an emotional storm.
When overwhelm sets in, resistance emerges. It attempts to divert us from clarity and from direct contact with what is actually happening internally. This is why healing is never as simple as “knowing better,” even when the structure itself is intellectually understood.
It is within this context that wounds reveal their inner mechanics. Usually, when we are deeply entangled in a pattern, it unfolds in the following way: imagine that within you there is an energetic core. This core has its own protective intelligence (and within it, there are often multiple smaller, interconnected energetic patterns rather than a single, uniform structure). Thoughts are intrinsically connected to it, and the core generates thoughts associated with suffering—this is simply how the system operates.
What I will describe here is an exaggerated profile based on more difficult cases. The intensity and expression of this process vary from person to person, depending on their level of awareness. Still, internally, the same mechanism plays out in everyone—the difference lies in degree. I describe it in an amplified way for the sake of clarity.
Any thought that arises from suffering usually has a defense structure in place as it enters conscious awareness. A thought carrying negative energy often passes through a kind of internal security checkpoint, where it becomes encased in a reinforced protective shell whose sole function is to prevent that energy from being exposed. In the process of healing, before reaching the core of negative energy, this protective structure must first be broken down.
At this point, it is important to clarify the role of thought itself. Not all thought forms are ego-based, and I want to make this very clear. Some individuals in spiritual communities claim to live a thought-free life, as if that were the ultimate goal of enlightenment. What I am convinced of, at this stage of my journey—after surviving an excruciating dark night of the soul—is that we are not meant to eliminate thought altogether. We are meant to free ourselves from intrusive and insistent thoughts that are painful in nature and that keep us bound to destructive dynamics.
These intrusive thoughts are defended by ego structures operating through various defense mechanisms. They are not random; they are structured, patterned, and highly strategic. The ego functions as a protective organizer, employing a range of defenses to prevent exposure of what lies beneath. Below is a non-exhaustive list of commonly recognized ego defense mechanisms.
Ego defense mechanisms
- Denial — refusing to accept reality or facts
- Repression — unconsciously pushing painful thoughts or feelings out of awareness
- Suppression — consciously choosing not to think about something distressing
- Projection — attributing one’s own unacceptable feelings or traits to others
- Rationalization — creating logical explanations to justify uncomfortable behavior or feelings
- Intellectualization — avoiding emotional distress by focusing on facts or logic
- Displacement — redirecting emotions from a threatening target to a safer one
- Reaction formation — behaving in a way opposite to one’s true feelings
- Regression — reverting to behaviors from an earlier developmental stage
- Compartmentalization — separating conflicting thoughts, feelings, or emotions to avoid inner conflict
- Dissociation — disconnecting from thoughts, feelings, or reality under stress
- Avoidance — steering clear of situations, thoughts, or emotions that cause discomfort
- Sublimation — channeling difficult impulses into constructive or creative activities
- Humor — using wit to cope with discomfort without denying reality
- Anticipation — preparing emotionally for future challenges
- Altruism — dealing with stress by helping others
As unconscious material draws closer to awareness, these defenses often intensify. Usually, right before confronting any destructive pattern or energetic core, an individual may resort to verbal tactics or elaborate explanations in order to avoid exposure. The ones I have most commonly encountered in my experience are projection, scapegoating, blame, shaming, externalization, splitting, and moralization. In more severe cases, these defenses appear as an explosive and aggressive constellation, emerging just before one reaches the core of negative energy that needs to be dismantled.
This escalation typically occurs when someone is deeply unconscious and their access to emotions is strained. People often arrive at this point after enduring a great deal of hurt, without having any idea how to process negative emotions. In my opinion, many people struggle with genuine healing precisely because this dimension of our existence is largely ignored and therefore neglected. I myself could hardly believe this when I first became aware of it.
Because conscious access to emotions—due to a lack of understanding and adequate tools—is blocked, negativity becomes internalized. Over time, this can lead to existential depression, anxiety, or other chronic conditions.
The reason is simple: there is no release for the negative energies circulating within one’s being. What often accompanies these defense mechanisms is anger. Once confrontation takes place, a very violent outburst of anger may arise and, depending on the individual, may then transform into resentment—along with other intense emotional states such as sadness, hopelessness, blame, and humiliation, as reflected in David Hawkins’ scale of consciousness.
From what I have experienced, every single wound follows the same architecture. This is how they are constructed. For further clarification, I would compare these energetic cores to living entities—something that wants to survive. This is precisely why they develop such a protective shell.
Each energetic pattern is powerful, as it has the capacity to create a reality that is not benign. It always produces suffering in one form or another. As briefly and clearly as possible, I have described here what I consistently observed while going through the process of dismantling these energies.
Finally, I want to emphasize that these are not illusory concepts. Each energetic pattern creates a distinct paradigm in this world and can be clearly identified and named. That, however, is a subject for another post.
