Those familiar with Caroline Myss know that in her work with personal archetypes, she has what she terms the four survival archetypes. These are core to each and every individual and they form the foundation of a person and how that person relates to and interacts with the world. The remaining archetypes in a person's chart are individual to them, but the 4 survival ones are commonly held.
In her work, she calls these the Child, the Prostitute, the Victim & the Saboteur.
I have been to the first session of her CMED Sacred Contracts series, but didn't go to the rest. In this first session, we worked a lot with establishing contact with these 4 foundational aspects of the Self. Since that time, I've done a lot more intensive work with them. The one that I was able to initially really get into was the Saboteur, and she told me that she was the guardian of my personal power, which includes aspects such as integrity, self-regard, and honor.
That statement was rather significant, because it radically shifted my perspective on these 4 and I began looking beyond the titles into what aspects of the deepest Self did each of these guard?
The Victim ultimately showed itself as the Guardian of Boundaries while the Prostitute revealed she was the Guardian of Values. The one that I had the most difficult time working with was the Child. What was the role of the Child?
Finally, it hit me: Guardian of Faith.
When a child is born into this world, the environment they find themselves in becomes The Way The World Works. They have to negotiate with this environment to get their needs met. This then becomes the foundation for the way that individual sees and interacts with the world. Since that way has proven effective to get survival needs met, it becomes the norm, the known, the expected. It forms the Story of The Way The World Works, the set of expectations that the growing adult carries with them into the world, into new relationships, into their own family and community.
The child is the first set of eyes with which the world is viewed. Do they learn that the world is inherently good? Or bad? Are people kind, or selfish? Does some external force control their life, or are they expected to internally drive themselves? All of these perspectives come together to form a personal Story, and the parts of that Story which are most relied on become set in stone, they become The Way The World Works.
This is faith - the belief in our own idea of The Way the World Works. As my own Child self has illustrated to me, faith has nothing to do with a divine being, but simply belief in the Story which I tell myself, a Story which helps me survive with reasonable certainty and confidence, a Story which guides my actions, my perceptions, my ideas of what is and is not possible, what I am and not worthy of. My Story sets my expectations, my prejudices, my tolerance. It is everything. The very core of my sense of Self, be that sense correct or not.
When that Story is believed in and acted from as if it's 100% true, that's faith. The more the Story is believed, even in the face of seemingly opposing evidence, the stronger the faith. When belief in the Story starts to crack, faith falters, and the foundations of our very being and the life we've built start to shake. When the Story is no longer believed, faith has been shattered, and there is no foundation. A new Story, a new faith must be found, and through them new foundations laid. Here are a few short examples of 'crisis of faith' moments in people's lives that I've known personally. Some are religious, others are not.
In one case, a friend had faith that a divine being would mete out punishments and rewards based on merit, yet her own infant son just died. Her Story was challenged in such a fundamental, powerful, undeniable way that it felt like the very foundation of her life had just been kicked away. It had. She lost faith in everything. She lost her Story. Her Child self is now raging and floundering, trying to refigure out How The World Works, trying to find Faith in something, to re-establish the foundation. Without it, her life has stalled and she is unable to navigate her way.
In another story, a friend's view of himself and what he was truly capable of was wiped away in a moment, leaving him shattered. Everything he thought about himself was wrong. His Story was irrevocably damaged, and it took him a long time to reformulate his relationship to the world and himself. A new Story was born, and he is again moving through life with confidence.
Another friend faced a similar situation, where she swore up and down she wasn't capable of a baser human emotion. Her Story was that she was too good, too kind to be so mean. When that Story was proven false, she broke in half and has yet to face the consequences of that loss of Faith. Limping along on this cobbled together Story, carried more by denial than true Faith, she now faces medical crisis after crisis and chronic depression.
In a more positive example, another friend honestly thought that humanity was abusive and selfish, the world a dark and scary place. Over time, her Story is being modified, and she's had to come to terms with that by re-discovering her Story and by extension her Faith in the World and her own ability to navigate.
When I lost everything and moved across the continent, I was terrified but I had faith that I would be okay. I knew that I could face the unknown, and had the skills needed to negotiate a radically new environment with no support. That was my Story, and I stuck to it.
I hear religious people talk about faith, and I think "how limiting". Faith is MUCH larger than just a belief in a divine being, and a crisis of Faith is MUUUUUCH larger than questioning whether or not there's such a one. I hear people proclaim proudly that they have no faith at all, and I smile because I know they think faith refers to only religion. Heck, even asking someone "what faith are you?" is a euphamism for "what religion/denomination do you subscribe to?" When I encounter the 'faithless' ones, I think: 'Of course you have faith; you see the world as XYZ and know that it is true because your experience tells you so. You have faith in that.' When someone says "have faith", that means simply "believe in your story, and act with full confidence that it is true". Believe ... in yourself.
How has this realization of the role of the Child helped me? How does viewing the Child as the Guardian of Faith make it a useful tool for me?
For one, it helped me to immediately see just how very important this archetype is. Afterall, how I view the world is the pivot point around which every decision, emotion and thought revolves. But actually seeing this, feeling the truth of it, gave me a sort of sifting tool so that I could then turn to aspects of my Story that I knew I wanted to change. For example, the entire point of this blog is my working through my own baggage with the concept of the feminine. But that's a known one. Let me take through the process that I underwent with another aspect which needed recognizing.
One of the working pieces that Robert Ohotto introduced into my vocubulary, and by extension toolbelt, is the idea of "psychic DNA". These are inhereted, familial patterns which I have taken on and am acting out subconsciously. Hearing him talk about this, I was then able to go to my Child and say "what Story have we inhereted that I'm not recognizing the full impact of?"
My Child began to pour out this story which spans 3 generations that I know of, on both sides of my family. As you read this, be sure that it is simply a statement of fact, like reading a list of ingredients. There is no emotion here any more. Recognizing through the lens of the Child defused it, so it is now just ingredients in the 'inhereted soup'.
Here's the pieces of the Story: My maternal great-grandmother was a devout (my grandmother used the word 'rabid') Church of God preacher. When my grandmother, not Church of God, married my grandfather, they did so in a different church. My great-grandmother, to her dying day when I was 5, insisted that her son was not married in the eyes of God and therefore his children (my mother and uncle) were therefore bastards. Needless to say, this caused a heck of a lot of tension in the family, to put it mildly. Switching to the paternal side, I see the same sort of behavior. My dad's grandmother was a devout Catholic, though my dad describes her as a snake who went to confession regularly to get her "incremental forgiveness" because "it gave her permission to be a complete bitch without worry". My dad's words there. When my dad and mom married, they again did so in a different church. His grandmother, the ruling matriarch of the entire clan, forbade even a single family member from attending. Only immediate family came, and since then his entire extended family disowned him. Even now, almost an entire generation later, I can't get any of his family members to respond to my queries for genealogy.
Considering the vast amount of pain and hurt caused by the abuse of religion (understand that NOW I am able to see the difference between the religion itself and the actions of some of its adherents) which I have inhereted, I had to take a step back. I look at my extreme distrust of strongly religious people and now it makes sense. The Child's Story has been revealed, because I was taught as a youngster that strongly religious people use their beliefs to hurt others. I have faith in that, it's my Story, it's the Way the World Works.
Wow. That's a heck of a thing to learn about myself. It's also very deeply ingrained, and knowing it doesn't automatically make the story change. I have to work to change it, just as I'm using this blog to change my Story about the feminine for myself. Now that I know the foundation behind this emotional reaction I have, I can begin to deal with it more rationally, more effectively. I think that's a pretty darn good use of the Child archetype.
What are some of the other ways that my view of the Child as the Guardian of Faith has been useful for me? Well, I have a heck of a lot more patience with people in the midst of a crisis of faith than I had before. I now see just how big it really is. It can make or break an entire life. That's something to be respected and honored.
Another aspect which has been helpful is in relating to other people. I recognize now that everyone's Story is unique, even if they are in the same family/religion/country/school. Everyone's perspective is different, and the oddities that they have picked up in a lifetime and incorporated into their workable view of the world, which is then used to navigate through the troubles and triumphs of a lifetime, is entirely individual. Seeing things from this perspective has really enabled to me to look at other people's actions and see a growing glimpse at their motivations, rather than just see my own projections of what I think are their motivations.
I've had my faith, my Story shattered before. I've had my Dark Night of the Soul, my "everything is meaningless" foundation leveling moment. Since the original one, there have been others. It's an on-going process necessitated by living and experiencing new things. Know this -- it's easier to rebuild after that. As Doctor Manhattan in "The Watchman" said: "Reassembling myself was the first trick I learned." If you can put yourself back together after that first time, it gets easier and easier to do. The Child archetype, the Guardian of Faith, is the engine which powers everything else. It's the first foot into this world, the first step into living this life. It is the foundation from which everything else springs. Make it your ally.
I've only shared this idea with one other person before this post, and she has found it extremely helpful. She uses it now her own blog, in her own Worldview. I figure that if it helped her, maybe it will help you.
Lioness (in training)
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
A Disowned Feminine Looks Like...
I've been listening a great deal of Robert Ohotto's 2 radio shows: Dialogue with Destiny, and Soul Connexions. In almost every single show, he says something which inspires me to write a sticky-note. My desk is currently covered in sticky-notes. Most of them are reminders, but a good many of them inspire deeper thinking.
The latest batch of shows that I'm listening to deals with the Marriage Model which is currently dying in modern Western culture. It's not DYING in that marriage is going away, but it IS dying in that it is undergoing a serious transformation which is still underway. As Ohotto talks about it, the old model is built around co-dependence. What he means when he says co-dependence is that it's a relationship in which responsibility for one or more aspects of oneself is transferred to another person in an unhealthy manner (that's my re-phrase of his definition). Do bear in mind that co-dependence by and large requires a stagnant relationship in which personal growth is actively discouraged. Afterall, growth means change, and change threatens the workable, managable, survivable situation which has been dealt with to present. Change threatens the foundation. The marriage model trying to be reborn in Western culture is built on interdependence. The rise of gay marriage as an issue is the most obvious manifestation of this growth and transformation of the marriage model within this society.
I think that the relationship which I have with my husband is one of interdependence -- I rely on him to help me become the best person I can be, and vice verse. I actively encourage his growth as an individual, and actively pursue my own as well. We work together for the betterment of both the individuals, and the unit. If this means that someday we'll be moving along separate paths, so be it. I accept that as part of the deal, and trust in myself to be able to handle whatever situation might arise. My survival no longer depends on being married.
This statement is not true in much of the world! In much of the world, a woman's survival still does depend on her being married. In fact, I would say that marriage in general is a survival tool, but how it manifests will depend on the culture it's in. I've spoken before about my view of First, Second and Third Chakra Cultures and how the values of each are interpretted by the others.
Western Culture is a Third Chakra culture, in which the Individual is the focus. In a third chakra society, marriage as a static relationship designed to promote tribal or familial stability doesn't work. It doesn't make sense to us. That's often viewed as oppressive, depersonalizing, abhorrant, and just plain wrong. It's in the 3rd chakra society that the idea of marrying solely for love and individual compatability makes sense and seems right. But to a 1st or 2nd chakra society, those ideals are just as horrifying, and indeed are destructive to the social fabric required by that society. Marriage in those situations has a completely different function and purpose. This reality must be recognized and respected!
But I think that there's something deeper in the division, in the survival aspects of marriage that is largely unrecognized yet is now coming into active awareness - i.e. gay marriage. Our world, all levels of it, is a Masculine dominated world. The 3 most dominant religions which blanket this planet all share the same foundation and creation story, and that story is completely missing the Feminine. The world was created by a male god, ruled and mandated by a male god, opposed by a male evil force, spoken for only by male priests/shahs/rabbis. The feminine is marginalized and told that her contributions are flawed, since god is male and she is perpetually punished with pain for her role in the fall of man.
UGH! This is a TERRIBLE story from the point of view I'm using in this post. Why? Because it means that psychologically all things associated with the feminine must be denied, repressed, and marginalized if rhe culture identifies someone as a man. This is especially true in those cultures in which the eldest daughter becomes socially male due to the absense of sons. This ultimately means that the psychological masculine aspect is unbalanced, and unwilling to own all that he is.
I was thinking about the idea of homosexuality the other day. It struck me that this was the PERFECT illustration of exactly what I've talked about over and over again -- that which we deny in ourselves is projected onto others. Modern Western society has seen a major shift since the 1970s, and a huge aspect of that shift is the emergence of the Feminine. In response, on a cultural psychological level, sexuality has also opened up. More homosexuals feel freer to be honest about who they are, and that is now a legally protected stance. Companies are no longer allowed to discriminate based on sexual orientation, as an example. Most folks my generation and younger don't really bat an eye when someone says they are gay. "Yeah, and?" is my response. I am unthreatened by the reality of a man owning his own femininity, and more and more men in this culture are equally unthreatened. I can now instantly tell when someone is still divided on this front because of their reaction to the idea of a homosexual man.
Even the use of the word 'gay' shows a heck of lot about the perspective. What does GAY actually, really mean? It means simply "having or showing a merry, lively mood". This means that a homosexual man is someone who expresses himself in a lively way. ... Following the linguistic logic, men who express their emotionality are homosexual. Men who are in touch with and expressive of their emotions are sexually attracted to men. Emotional men are women. Wow. So our language choice betrays the bias, illustrating the very core of the denial. Men should be MEN, and emotionality is the domain of women.
And what does this have to do with marriage and the shift from codependence to interdependence? Everything. In the West, we're struggling to respectfully balance the Masculine and the Feminine. I think that's the big picture, long term struggle which is going on. Part of process demands that the masculine own his own emotions, and that means to become aware of and act on them.
How many couples have you ever personally witnessed in which the man was a complete dick and yet it was the woman who did the apologizing and social feather smoothing? That was my grandparents. My grandfather had the greenlight to be a total jerk, because he was a guy. In his world, men aren't expected to be socially conscious, let alone mindful of how their words might injure others. That's a woman's job, and he silently demanded that she do it. My grandmother was always apologizing for him and cleaning up his emotional messes. That is a co-dependent relationship. If my grandmother had ever told him "you have to clean up your own crap", that marriage would have been over. He went to his grave steadfast in his ideas, and never once did I hear him apologize for even the worst and most abusive behavior that I experienced from him. My own first husband disowned his emotionality and expected me to handle all of that for him. Nope, no dice. I have my issues; you have your issues; I'll help you in every way that I can but I will not do your work for you -- and I expect the same in return.
Not surprisingly, both my grandparents and my first husband were horrified by the idea of a gay man. The only emotion men can safely exhibit publically is anger. Even privately, a great many women expect that a man will be emotionally stalwart no matter what is going on while she has permission to cry about whatever she wants to, however minute. Heaven help the man who has a moment of emotional weakness and needs a shoulder to lean on, even if only for a little while.
My point with this last bit is to illustrate that this idea of men being unable to own the full range of their emotionality is believed just as much by women as by men. Fortunately, it's changing. Slowly, but surely, it's changing. My grandmother was just as horrified of homosexuality as my grandfather, and while my own parents are seriously uncomfortable with it they aren't violently responsive. Me? *shrug* Whatever. My brother? Violently opposed. By this, I know instantly what the real trigger for him is, and it has nothing to do with the sexual choice of someone else, and everything to do with own shadows and denied Self.
So what does a disowned feminine look like? It looks like angry men and bitter women.
I see plenty of that, the world over, in 1st, 2nd AND 3rd chakra societies. What does a fully owned feminine and a fully owned masculine look like? I don't know. I've never seen it. For now, I have to turn to stories. Ultimately, I think it's The Story which shapes our world, our worldview, and guides the interactions which we each have. I am writting a story in which the main character is the female captain of one of the most powerful and coveted war marchines known, and she's also a quilter. It's been fun to deal with that, a woman comfortable with own aggressive and domestic sides at the same time, in a universe which finds the duality odd and uncomfortable. Her example ultimately encourages the male protagonist to own his own feminine nature, which for him manifests as a nurturing spirit, so he too learns to be comfortable with his own aggressive and caring aspects. He becomes fully human, rather than just half of one. I like this story because it's also illustrating very clearly an interdependent relationship.
What Story do want your life to reflect?
- Lioness (in training)
The latest batch of shows that I'm listening to deals with the Marriage Model which is currently dying in modern Western culture. It's not DYING in that marriage is going away, but it IS dying in that it is undergoing a serious transformation which is still underway. As Ohotto talks about it, the old model is built around co-dependence. What he means when he says co-dependence is that it's a relationship in which responsibility for one or more aspects of oneself is transferred to another person in an unhealthy manner (that's my re-phrase of his definition). Do bear in mind that co-dependence by and large requires a stagnant relationship in which personal growth is actively discouraged. Afterall, growth means change, and change threatens the workable, managable, survivable situation which has been dealt with to present. Change threatens the foundation. The marriage model trying to be reborn in Western culture is built on interdependence. The rise of gay marriage as an issue is the most obvious manifestation of this growth and transformation of the marriage model within this society.
I think that the relationship which I have with my husband is one of interdependence -- I rely on him to help me become the best person I can be, and vice verse. I actively encourage his growth as an individual, and actively pursue my own as well. We work together for the betterment of both the individuals, and the unit. If this means that someday we'll be moving along separate paths, so be it. I accept that as part of the deal, and trust in myself to be able to handle whatever situation might arise. My survival no longer depends on being married.
This statement is not true in much of the world! In much of the world, a woman's survival still does depend on her being married. In fact, I would say that marriage in general is a survival tool, but how it manifests will depend on the culture it's in. I've spoken before about my view of First, Second and Third Chakra Cultures and how the values of each are interpretted by the others.
Western Culture is a Third Chakra culture, in which the Individual is the focus. In a third chakra society, marriage as a static relationship designed to promote tribal or familial stability doesn't work. It doesn't make sense to us. That's often viewed as oppressive, depersonalizing, abhorrant, and just plain wrong. It's in the 3rd chakra society that the idea of marrying solely for love and individual compatability makes sense and seems right. But to a 1st or 2nd chakra society, those ideals are just as horrifying, and indeed are destructive to the social fabric required by that society. Marriage in those situations has a completely different function and purpose. This reality must be recognized and respected!
But I think that there's something deeper in the division, in the survival aspects of marriage that is largely unrecognized yet is now coming into active awareness - i.e. gay marriage. Our world, all levels of it, is a Masculine dominated world. The 3 most dominant religions which blanket this planet all share the same foundation and creation story, and that story is completely missing the Feminine. The world was created by a male god, ruled and mandated by a male god, opposed by a male evil force, spoken for only by male priests/shahs/rabbis. The feminine is marginalized and told that her contributions are flawed, since god is male and she is perpetually punished with pain for her role in the fall of man.
UGH! This is a TERRIBLE story from the point of view I'm using in this post. Why? Because it means that psychologically all things associated with the feminine must be denied, repressed, and marginalized if rhe culture identifies someone as a man. This is especially true in those cultures in which the eldest daughter becomes socially male due to the absense of sons. This ultimately means that the psychological masculine aspect is unbalanced, and unwilling to own all that he is.
I was thinking about the idea of homosexuality the other day. It struck me that this was the PERFECT illustration of exactly what I've talked about over and over again -- that which we deny in ourselves is projected onto others. Modern Western society has seen a major shift since the 1970s, and a huge aspect of that shift is the emergence of the Feminine. In response, on a cultural psychological level, sexuality has also opened up. More homosexuals feel freer to be honest about who they are, and that is now a legally protected stance. Companies are no longer allowed to discriminate based on sexual orientation, as an example. Most folks my generation and younger don't really bat an eye when someone says they are gay. "Yeah, and?" is my response. I am unthreatened by the reality of a man owning his own femininity, and more and more men in this culture are equally unthreatened. I can now instantly tell when someone is still divided on this front because of their reaction to the idea of a homosexual man.
Even the use of the word 'gay' shows a heck of lot about the perspective. What does GAY actually, really mean? It means simply "having or showing a merry, lively mood". This means that a homosexual man is someone who expresses himself in a lively way. ... Following the linguistic logic, men who express their emotionality are homosexual. Men who are in touch with and expressive of their emotions are sexually attracted to men. Emotional men are women. Wow. So our language choice betrays the bias, illustrating the very core of the denial. Men should be MEN, and emotionality is the domain of women.
And what does this have to do with marriage and the shift from codependence to interdependence? Everything. In the West, we're struggling to respectfully balance the Masculine and the Feminine. I think that's the big picture, long term struggle which is going on. Part of process demands that the masculine own his own emotions, and that means to become aware of and act on them.
How many couples have you ever personally witnessed in which the man was a complete dick and yet it was the woman who did the apologizing and social feather smoothing? That was my grandparents. My grandfather had the greenlight to be a total jerk, because he was a guy. In his world, men aren't expected to be socially conscious, let alone mindful of how their words might injure others. That's a woman's job, and he silently demanded that she do it. My grandmother was always apologizing for him and cleaning up his emotional messes. That is a co-dependent relationship. If my grandmother had ever told him "you have to clean up your own crap", that marriage would have been over. He went to his grave steadfast in his ideas, and never once did I hear him apologize for even the worst and most abusive behavior that I experienced from him. My own first husband disowned his emotionality and expected me to handle all of that for him. Nope, no dice. I have my issues; you have your issues; I'll help you in every way that I can but I will not do your work for you -- and I expect the same in return.
Not surprisingly, both my grandparents and my first husband were horrified by the idea of a gay man. The only emotion men can safely exhibit publically is anger. Even privately, a great many women expect that a man will be emotionally stalwart no matter what is going on while she has permission to cry about whatever she wants to, however minute. Heaven help the man who has a moment of emotional weakness and needs a shoulder to lean on, even if only for a little while.
My point with this last bit is to illustrate that this idea of men being unable to own the full range of their emotionality is believed just as much by women as by men. Fortunately, it's changing. Slowly, but surely, it's changing. My grandmother was just as horrified of homosexuality as my grandfather, and while my own parents are seriously uncomfortable with it they aren't violently responsive. Me? *shrug* Whatever. My brother? Violently opposed. By this, I know instantly what the real trigger for him is, and it has nothing to do with the sexual choice of someone else, and everything to do with own shadows and denied Self.
So what does a disowned feminine look like? It looks like angry men and bitter women.
I see plenty of that, the world over, in 1st, 2nd AND 3rd chakra societies. What does a fully owned feminine and a fully owned masculine look like? I don't know. I've never seen it. For now, I have to turn to stories. Ultimately, I think it's The Story which shapes our world, our worldview, and guides the interactions which we each have. I am writting a story in which the main character is the female captain of one of the most powerful and coveted war marchines known, and she's also a quilter. It's been fun to deal with that, a woman comfortable with own aggressive and domestic sides at the same time, in a universe which finds the duality odd and uncomfortable. Her example ultimately encourages the male protagonist to own his own feminine nature, which for him manifests as a nurturing spirit, so he too learns to be comfortable with his own aggressive and caring aspects. He becomes fully human, rather than just half of one. I like this story because it's also illustrating very clearly an interdependent relationship.
What Story do want your life to reflect?
- Lioness (in training)
Monday, October 10, 2011
Foundations of Vulnerability
I was listening to a CD series on a personal growth topic and the speaker gave a few seconds to a topic which really struck me hard, ultimately resulting in this post. His comment was on the attractiveness of vulnerability versus the non-attractiveness of someone who's "perfect". To paraphrase, this is what I jotted down in my traveling notebook:
I've spoken about vulnerability and its relationship to strength as well as the feminine principle of receptivity and what those really mean. I've also explored a little bit with the interconnectivity of these ideas, but it was this simple statement that really tied it all neatly together for me.
It's like a domino chain. When set up properly, when allowed to fall in the way in which they will, strength of self (self-worth) leads to a willingness to be open (vulnerable) in emotionally important areas. Genuinely revealing emotionally important areas means that the open person is now able to receive. From here, the receptive principle has been powerfully engaged and the active principle will respond -- just as two magnets are compelled to respond to each other when they get within proximity.
This willingness to receive is, I think, exactly what the host of the CD series was talking about. Coincidentally, the speaker was male (Robert Ohotto), and he gave a sentance or two on how extremely attractive someone willing to be vulnerable was to him.
There are two aspects to this domino chain which I think are feeding each other. One aspect is "what is the foudation". Notice that I always put the chain as being rooted in an empowered state. This person is CHOOSING to express a part of themselves which could lead to tremendous pain, but they are doing it anyway ... because they believe in themself, know their worth, and know what's truly important to them. Not only does this example person know their worth, but they have the courage to express their emotional self. These two qualities -- self-worth and self-confidence -- are deeply attractive to other people. I find myself automatically looking to them for guidance. The animal instinct in me responds to this, regardless of what my mind thinks of the person. The other aspect of this domino chain is the energetic magnet idea -- being receptive activates the opposite principle of giving.
I think that the being receptive part is the automatic one. Being receptive means that you WILL get something related to what you are receptive to. Here's the "Law of Attraction" idea which is so prevalent but sadly misused right now. What's not talked about is the foundation of this receptivity. It is sooooo extremely important!!! I've have sadly known a great many people perfectly willing to express their vulnerability, but they do so from a disempowered place, and my response to them is anything but pleasant.
One young man comes to mind. A truly gifted artist I knew in college, lived in my dorm. Desperately lonely but with horrible people skills. Not that he was rude, but he was clingy to the nth degree. Because he was expressing his bone deep need to be accepted, wearing his vulnerability on his sleeve, but he hadn't accepted himself yet, he was most definitely getting a response to his receptivity, but none of it was kind or supportive. Watching him struggle so painfully broke my heart, and I tried to be nice to him. He ended up following me around like a kicked puppy hoping for a kind word, appearing out of the shadows and just hovering in my vacinity. They say that some people stay longer in an hour than others do in a week, and he was the living embodiment of this. After a few days, I just couldn't stand any more. I felt suffocated, covered in slime, as if I had to carry him completely. I asked him to go away as nicely as I could (not easy!) and then avoided him. My dorm was a co-ed one, with 3 floors -- 1 & 3 were male, 2 was female. He was on the first floor and he became the butt of every joke the other freshman guys could think of. For lack of a better description, he was hazed. Totally and completely, but he was thrilled for the attention and would do ANYTHING asked of him. One such request was to climb a tree at midnight, one of those trees with no low branches. He was a gangly kid, with zero athletic ability. It was over the sidewalk, and when he fell out of the tree he badly broke his leg. They drew a chalk outline of his form on the sidewalk the next day. Despite this, a week later he was back at school with a cast up to his thigh -- it really was a terrible break. About a month later, some shit took the screws out of his crutches while he was sleeping. He fell again when he tried to use them, shattering his leg beyond repair. After this, he left school and I do not know what became of him.
I give this very raw example to illustrate the importance of an empowered foundation. That poor guy, whom I think of often and wish only happiness for, is an all too frequent example. We've all known someone like him, or been him. A willingness to be vulnerable, an openness to receiving, WILL get a response. It HAS to. I see humans as energetic beings, and when a negative poll is turned on then the active polls have no choice but to act. What makes the difference in what I might get has more to do with where I stand in myself than what I am asking for. If I'm confident in myself, I'll be able to feel if the crowd I'm in has the capacity to give me what I'm willing to accept. If I'm confident in myself, I can handle what I receive or have the capacity to shut down the open channel if what's coming in is something I refuse to accept.
How's that for a new idea? The boundary of what I'm willing and unwiling to accept, coupled with situational awareness. Not every group has the same potential. If I treated every person as if they there the Dalai Lama, I'm going to end up rather disappointed. But if I treat every person as if they are Jeffrey Dahmer, well, I'll still end up disappointed but for radically different reasons. I have to be able to see someone for who they are, and recognize what they are capable of. In order to do that, I first have to see myself, and what I'm capable of. From here, I can honestly recognize my own worth, and from there gain confidence in my Self. Then, from a place of empowerment, I can choose when to be open and when not to be.
Through the exploration in this post, I can now see where vulnerability is the key to connecting with others, and also why. What makes the connection a healthy or unhealthy one has everything to do with me. Right now, I'm still struggling to see myself clearly, to recognize my unique worth and value. To have the courage to be open!
Right now the 'vogue' way of connecting with others, the new-age approved means of being vulnerable, is through the use of Wounds. "I was abused as a kid" "oh, me too" Instant bonding. I do love Caroline Myss' impatience with this. "Don't talk wounds to me. I don't want to hear it." heh. I do love her forthright nature! Anyway, it's also something I find a LOT in romance novels. The hero and heroine suddenly discover that their hardships and trials faced as kids allows them to 'connect' and from there the relationship is validated as real. Oh. My. God. Connecting to someone solely through a wound is NOT healthy. Why? Because it means the wound is still emotionally alive. If something is still emotionally alive, it has energy, it's real, it's NOW, ongoing, active. Whether it happened yesterday or 80 years ago, if the wound is still open enough that someone can create a living emotional tie with it, then it needs to be addressed. It'd be like going through life with a sucking chest wound. Slapping a bandage on it will help keep it contained, but dude, that needs some attention!
That said, there's also a massive difference between creating a relationship using wounds and using a healed wound to help someone else heal their own wounds. Can you see the difference? It's subtle, but critical to understand. To sum up, wounds are indeed vulnerabilities which can be used to connect with other people, but I really don't recommend it. An emotionally important area is bigger, more important, and runs far deeper than an emotional wound does. Using the living wounds to find the core of those areas, now that's an interesting exercise!
Huh, interesting. The fact that this subject gets me so riled up is a clue to me that somewhere in me it's either still active, or I'm in denial of something. While I can't recall any specific examples of where I've used this to forge a relationship with someone, I have used what I think are healed wounds to help others get over their own wounds. I think I'm more guilty of projection than woundology, or I just go overboard the other way, "don't talk wounds to me". Hrm. I'll have to think on this one.
Anyway. Why is this a lioness post? Receptivity is one of the qualities at the core of femininity. It's hugely important, and yet as a patriarchal society the masculine values are the ones still ruling ... though that is changing! As a society, and as myself, I'm terrified of exposing a vulnerability. But I've made the tragic mistake of linking 'vulnerable' with 'weakness'. If I refuse to expose my emotionally important areas, I am also refusing to be open, refusing to be receptive to others. I am refusing the enact the power of the feminine principle. The Lioness I seek to be embraces her own emotionally important areas; right now, I'm still running from them.
- Lioness (in training)
Vulnerability is the key to connecting with other people.
I've spoken about vulnerability and its relationship to strength as well as the feminine principle of receptivity and what those really mean. I've also explored a little bit with the interconnectivity of these ideas, but it was this simple statement that really tied it all neatly together for me.
It's like a domino chain. When set up properly, when allowed to fall in the way in which they will, strength of self (self-worth) leads to a willingness to be open (vulnerable) in emotionally important areas. Genuinely revealing emotionally important areas means that the open person is now able to receive. From here, the receptive principle has been powerfully engaged and the active principle will respond -- just as two magnets are compelled to respond to each other when they get within proximity.
This willingness to receive is, I think, exactly what the host of the CD series was talking about. Coincidentally, the speaker was male (Robert Ohotto), and he gave a sentance or two on how extremely attractive someone willing to be vulnerable was to him.
There are two aspects to this domino chain which I think are feeding each other. One aspect is "what is the foudation". Notice that I always put the chain as being rooted in an empowered state. This person is CHOOSING to express a part of themselves which could lead to tremendous pain, but they are doing it anyway ... because they believe in themself, know their worth, and know what's truly important to them. Not only does this example person know their worth, but they have the courage to express their emotional self. These two qualities -- self-worth and self-confidence -- are deeply attractive to other people. I find myself automatically looking to them for guidance. The animal instinct in me responds to this, regardless of what my mind thinks of the person. The other aspect of this domino chain is the energetic magnet idea -- being receptive activates the opposite principle of giving.
I think that the being receptive part is the automatic one. Being receptive means that you WILL get something related to what you are receptive to. Here's the "Law of Attraction" idea which is so prevalent but sadly misused right now. What's not talked about is the foundation of this receptivity. It is sooooo extremely important!!! I've have sadly known a great many people perfectly willing to express their vulnerability, but they do so from a disempowered place, and my response to them is anything but pleasant.
One young man comes to mind. A truly gifted artist I knew in college, lived in my dorm. Desperately lonely but with horrible people skills. Not that he was rude, but he was clingy to the nth degree. Because he was expressing his bone deep need to be accepted, wearing his vulnerability on his sleeve, but he hadn't accepted himself yet, he was most definitely getting a response to his receptivity, but none of it was kind or supportive. Watching him struggle so painfully broke my heart, and I tried to be nice to him. He ended up following me around like a kicked puppy hoping for a kind word, appearing out of the shadows and just hovering in my vacinity. They say that some people stay longer in an hour than others do in a week, and he was the living embodiment of this. After a few days, I just couldn't stand any more. I felt suffocated, covered in slime, as if I had to carry him completely. I asked him to go away as nicely as I could (not easy!) and then avoided him. My dorm was a co-ed one, with 3 floors -- 1 & 3 were male, 2 was female. He was on the first floor and he became the butt of every joke the other freshman guys could think of. For lack of a better description, he was hazed. Totally and completely, but he was thrilled for the attention and would do ANYTHING asked of him. One such request was to climb a tree at midnight, one of those trees with no low branches. He was a gangly kid, with zero athletic ability. It was over the sidewalk, and when he fell out of the tree he badly broke his leg. They drew a chalk outline of his form on the sidewalk the next day. Despite this, a week later he was back at school with a cast up to his thigh -- it really was a terrible break. About a month later, some shit took the screws out of his crutches while he was sleeping. He fell again when he tried to use them, shattering his leg beyond repair. After this, he left school and I do not know what became of him.
I give this very raw example to illustrate the importance of an empowered foundation. That poor guy, whom I think of often and wish only happiness for, is an all too frequent example. We've all known someone like him, or been him. A willingness to be vulnerable, an openness to receiving, WILL get a response. It HAS to. I see humans as energetic beings, and when a negative poll is turned on then the active polls have no choice but to act. What makes the difference in what I might get has more to do with where I stand in myself than what I am asking for. If I'm confident in myself, I'll be able to feel if the crowd I'm in has the capacity to give me what I'm willing to accept. If I'm confident in myself, I can handle what I receive or have the capacity to shut down the open channel if what's coming in is something I refuse to accept.
How's that for a new idea? The boundary of what I'm willing and unwiling to accept, coupled with situational awareness. Not every group has the same potential. If I treated every person as if they there the Dalai Lama, I'm going to end up rather disappointed. But if I treat every person as if they are Jeffrey Dahmer, well, I'll still end up disappointed but for radically different reasons. I have to be able to see someone for who they are, and recognize what they are capable of. In order to do that, I first have to see myself, and what I'm capable of. From here, I can honestly recognize my own worth, and from there gain confidence in my Self. Then, from a place of empowerment, I can choose when to be open and when not to be.
Through the exploration in this post, I can now see where vulnerability is the key to connecting with others, and also why. What makes the connection a healthy or unhealthy one has everything to do with me. Right now, I'm still struggling to see myself clearly, to recognize my unique worth and value. To have the courage to be open!
Right now the 'vogue' way of connecting with others, the new-age approved means of being vulnerable, is through the use of Wounds. "I was abused as a kid" "oh, me too" Instant bonding. I do love Caroline Myss' impatience with this. "Don't talk wounds to me. I don't want to hear it." heh. I do love her forthright nature! Anyway, it's also something I find a LOT in romance novels. The hero and heroine suddenly discover that their hardships and trials faced as kids allows them to 'connect' and from there the relationship is validated as real. Oh. My. God. Connecting to someone solely through a wound is NOT healthy. Why? Because it means the wound is still emotionally alive. If something is still emotionally alive, it has energy, it's real, it's NOW, ongoing, active. Whether it happened yesterday or 80 years ago, if the wound is still open enough that someone can create a living emotional tie with it, then it needs to be addressed. It'd be like going through life with a sucking chest wound. Slapping a bandage on it will help keep it contained, but dude, that needs some attention!
That said, there's also a massive difference between creating a relationship using wounds and using a healed wound to help someone else heal their own wounds. Can you see the difference? It's subtle, but critical to understand. To sum up, wounds are indeed vulnerabilities which can be used to connect with other people, but I really don't recommend it. An emotionally important area is bigger, more important, and runs far deeper than an emotional wound does. Using the living wounds to find the core of those areas, now that's an interesting exercise!
Huh, interesting. The fact that this subject gets me so riled up is a clue to me that somewhere in me it's either still active, or I'm in denial of something. While I can't recall any specific examples of where I've used this to forge a relationship with someone, I have used what I think are healed wounds to help others get over their own wounds. I think I'm more guilty of projection than woundology, or I just go overboard the other way, "don't talk wounds to me". Hrm. I'll have to think on this one.
Anyway. Why is this a lioness post? Receptivity is one of the qualities at the core of femininity. It's hugely important, and yet as a patriarchal society the masculine values are the ones still ruling ... though that is changing! As a society, and as myself, I'm terrified of exposing a vulnerability. But I've made the tragic mistake of linking 'vulnerable' with 'weakness'. If I refuse to expose my emotionally important areas, I am also refusing to be open, refusing to be receptive to others. I am refusing the enact the power of the feminine principle. The Lioness I seek to be embraces her own emotionally important areas; right now, I'm still running from them.
- Lioness (in training)
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Victim and Child Archetypes in relationship to Self-Worth
I'm a member of an on-line forum based on the idea of individual empowerment. The site supports the journey, but doesn't hesitate to deliver a kick to the head if such is needed. I LOVE that aspect of the site. I'm getting so sick and tired of the kid-glove handling that permeates the Consciousness movement. I fully endorse the supportive environment, but it's gotten to the point where any sort of criticism is deemed as an attack. Well, I'm working toward the Lioness idea -- and she not only has a claws and teeth, but she knows full well that she can take care of herself.
Anyway, I reposted my last entry on this other site and got a very nice boot to the heat which I found extremely helpful.
I have added the bold. This was actually the conclusion that I came to as I was rehashing the last post. Seeing someone else state it so concisely was very gratifying.
Since we can't really see ourselves, the biggest clue we have is the feedback that we get from those around us. Seeing the true motive behind the socially-acceptable platitudes is extremely helpful, and I need to embrace those ... but not to the exclusion of continuing to find an internal source of self-value.
I want both, and internal well-spring and the external confirmation.
Which seques into what I've been working on recently -- the Victim and the Child archetypes. If you are familiar with Caroline Myss, you'll recognize these as 2 of the 4 foundational Survival Archetypes. One of the statements that Robert Ohotto likes to make on his radio show is that 'fair' is the Victim talking. Every time I hear that, it sounds like a discordant note. Finally it hit me. "It's not fair!" is actually the language of the Child, not the Victim.
Think about it.
Children enter the "it's not fair" phase somewhere between 2 and 8. Even as an adult, every time this idea wells up in me, it's spoke with a child's voice. "It's only fair. It's not fair. I need to fair. You're not fair." etc.
In working with each of the survival archetypes, I've come up with a tag line for each. The Victim is the guardian of boundaries; the Prostitute is the guardian of values; the Saboteur is the guardian of integrity; and the Child ... It took me quite a while to figure this one out, and I'm still not sure I have it, but I think I'm closing in. The Child is the guardian of faith and imagination. Think about. A child has perfect faith that the world is a good place, that it's fair, and that his needs will always be met. It's life which disabuses us of that faith, robbing the Child of this idyllic, naive view of the world. But having a mature faith, an empowered faith, isn't about how the world 'out there' is, but rather how the world 'in here' is. An empowered, mature Child has perfect faith that he can handle what comes his way.
When that hasn't yet been reached, the faith is still being projected out into the world. The WORLD has to be fair, and if it's not then the Child gets mad, stomping its foot in a trantrum.
Now here is where the Child's faith in the a fair world steps into the domain of the Victim, the guardian of boundaries. It's when the world isn't seen as fair that the language shifts into one of expectations and deserving what's being asked for. "That's not fair (Child) and I demand (Victim) that it be fixed."
As the guardian of boundaries, it's the job of the victim to highlight and point out where the various boundaries of the Self are being violated. In this example, the boundary being violated was the idea that the world is fair. The Victim stepped in and took over, righteously making demands to restore the boundary.
What are other examples of the Victim language? As I see it, they revolve around 'deserve' and 'entitled'. Actually, these words belong to a disempowered victim attempting to assert control over their boundary. "I DESERVE....". "I am ENTITLED ...." There's the righteous demanding of whatever, and there's the mousy acceptance of the violation of boundaries through justification. "I deserved to be beaten. I had it coming to me. Why should anything I try actually work?"
So back to the idea of self-worth, internal versus external validation. I think right now I'm dealing primarily with my Victim and Child archetypes here. A disempowered child doesn't yet realize that it's not the world out there which is the way they want it to be. Likewise, I'm looking out there for proof that I'm a good person. I will always be dealing with the world out there, and it will always serve as a mirror and projection background, but I'll be working to transfer the bulk of that faith from out-there to in-here. I'll be working to own myself. And that's where the Victim comes in, because it's the boundary of out-there and in-here that it's standing guarding at, serving as the alert mechanism between the two states of being.
I'm out of time now, but I had to put this out there so that I can start working on the next phase.
- Lioness (in training)
Anyway, I reposted my last entry on this other site and got a very nice boot to the heat which I found extremely helpful.
I just want to mention one thing. There are a number of stops along the way. Allowing yourself to pursue validation from sources outside the self has emotional benefits. Embrace the emotional desire for it in addition to seeking your internal truth. There are many flowers along to the way to the garden. They are just as pretty in their way. Try not to overlook them as you walk. The dandilion longs to be seen just as much as the rarest orchid.
I have added the bold. This was actually the conclusion that I came to as I was rehashing the last post. Seeing someone else state it so concisely was very gratifying.
Since we can't really see ourselves, the biggest clue we have is the feedback that we get from those around us. Seeing the true motive behind the socially-acceptable platitudes is extremely helpful, and I need to embrace those ... but not to the exclusion of continuing to find an internal source of self-value.
I want both, and internal well-spring and the external confirmation.
Which seques into what I've been working on recently -- the Victim and the Child archetypes. If you are familiar with Caroline Myss, you'll recognize these as 2 of the 4 foundational Survival Archetypes. One of the statements that Robert Ohotto likes to make on his radio show is that 'fair' is the Victim talking. Every time I hear that, it sounds like a discordant note. Finally it hit me. "It's not fair!" is actually the language of the Child, not the Victim.
Think about it.
Children enter the "it's not fair" phase somewhere between 2 and 8. Even as an adult, every time this idea wells up in me, it's spoke with a child's voice. "It's only fair. It's not fair. I need to fair. You're not fair." etc.
In working with each of the survival archetypes, I've come up with a tag line for each. The Victim is the guardian of boundaries; the Prostitute is the guardian of values; the Saboteur is the guardian of integrity; and the Child ... It took me quite a while to figure this one out, and I'm still not sure I have it, but I think I'm closing in. The Child is the guardian of faith and imagination. Think about. A child has perfect faith that the world is a good place, that it's fair, and that his needs will always be met. It's life which disabuses us of that faith, robbing the Child of this idyllic, naive view of the world. But having a mature faith, an empowered faith, isn't about how the world 'out there' is, but rather how the world 'in here' is. An empowered, mature Child has perfect faith that he can handle what comes his way.
When that hasn't yet been reached, the faith is still being projected out into the world. The WORLD has to be fair, and if it's not then the Child gets mad, stomping its foot in a trantrum.
Now here is where the Child's faith in the a fair world steps into the domain of the Victim, the guardian of boundaries. It's when the world isn't seen as fair that the language shifts into one of expectations and deserving what's being asked for. "That's not fair (Child) and I demand (Victim) that it be fixed."
As the guardian of boundaries, it's the job of the victim to highlight and point out where the various boundaries of the Self are being violated. In this example, the boundary being violated was the idea that the world is fair. The Victim stepped in and took over, righteously making demands to restore the boundary.
What are other examples of the Victim language? As I see it, they revolve around 'deserve' and 'entitled'. Actually, these words belong to a disempowered victim attempting to assert control over their boundary. "I DESERVE....". "I am ENTITLED ...." There's the righteous demanding of whatever, and there's the mousy acceptance of the violation of boundaries through justification. "I deserved to be beaten. I had it coming to me. Why should anything I try actually work?"
So back to the idea of self-worth, internal versus external validation. I think right now I'm dealing primarily with my Victim and Child archetypes here. A disempowered child doesn't yet realize that it's not the world out there which is the way they want it to be. Likewise, I'm looking out there for proof that I'm a good person. I will always be dealing with the world out there, and it will always serve as a mirror and projection background, but I'll be working to transfer the bulk of that faith from out-there to in-here. I'll be working to own myself. And that's where the Victim comes in, because it's the boundary of out-there and in-here that it's standing guarding at, serving as the alert mechanism between the two states of being.
I'm out of time now, but I had to put this out there so that I can start working on the next phase.
- Lioness (in training)
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Digging into the Question of Self-Worth
Recognizing something is just a step in the process. Unfortunately, I've had the tendency to stop there, as if recognizing something means that I've dealt with it.
Sort of like realizing that I'm walking on the train tracks means that now I won't get hit by the train. Definitely a false premise there.
After realizing the depth of my feelings regarding the questions around the source of my worth as a person, it's like a flood gate has been opened on my insecurities. It's really darn annoying, but it does make sense. Realizing that I'm insecure about something that core to my identity means that now I have to deal with it. If I don't deal with the issues, then insecurities are going to reign supreme.
I'm reminded of a question that Caroline Myss asked in her Self-Esteem series: Where am I getting my sense of worth? That seems like a great place to start! It's also a question that every person should address with a very serious mind.
Where do I get my sense of worth? In what instances so I feel confident in myself? What makes me feel valuable?
It's that last question that allowed a couple of answers to come forward.
One answer was "I feel worthwhile when I'm needed." That's a very common answer, but it felt like a surface answer to me. While poking and prodding it to find out what it was covering, I realized that "to be needed" was also a means of being indispensable. A means of guaranteeing that my presence would also be wanted. It's a co-dependent answer on which my sense of worth relies more on being accepted by others than on a true sense of inner worth.
The second answer was "I feel worthwhile when I'm serving others." That's another exceedingly common answer, but that one felt just as hollow to me as the first one. More poking and prodding yielded the awareness that serving others has more to do with being recognized for my service, for being recognized as a good person, than from a place of empowered service. Again, it's a co-dependent answer which indicates that my sense of worth comes from outside my Self rather than inside.
True self-worth comes from inside. Validation is nice, but it's not a source, and both of my answers are exterior validation answers. I feel worthwhile when my presence is wanted and when I'm recognized as a good person.
Hrm. Throwing out those answers, I have to look deeper. Where DO I feel like a person with interior value??
Going to sleep with that question active in my mind, I had a dream in which I was competing with a bunch of quilters for a cash prize that would allow for the creation of the greatest quilt we were capable of. Another person there was a gifted woman, but she was starving. I knew her history and every time she got even a dime she'd buy food. I actually hoped she wouldn't win the prize because then she's use the money to buy food, and the wonderful design she had would never get made. I ended up winning, but in the after party I approached her with another woman. We were trying to get the starving woman to consider teaching because she was clearly talented but just needed a break.
I think, in the dream, the starving woman was my sense of self-worth -- using every penny that I'm given (external validation) to feed myself (false worth) at the cost of long-term gains (true self-worth), yet ignoring the gifts and talents I was born with (the ingredients of my self-worth). In the dream, my approaching her to encourage her to develop her skills is rather like me asking the question of where do I find my value.
I still don't have a conscious answer to that question, but that in the dream the contest was for a quilt not yet made is rather telling. I'll keep pursuing this question, and share the journey wherever it takes me. Afterall, a Lioness has no question at all as to her own worth!
- Lioness (in training)
Sort of like realizing that I'm walking on the train tracks means that now I won't get hit by the train. Definitely a false premise there.
After realizing the depth of my feelings regarding the questions around the source of my worth as a person, it's like a flood gate has been opened on my insecurities. It's really darn annoying, but it does make sense. Realizing that I'm insecure about something that core to my identity means that now I have to deal with it. If I don't deal with the issues, then insecurities are going to reign supreme.
I'm reminded of a question that Caroline Myss asked in her Self-Esteem series: Where am I getting my sense of worth? That seems like a great place to start! It's also a question that every person should address with a very serious mind.
Where do I get my sense of worth? In what instances so I feel confident in myself? What makes me feel valuable?
It's that last question that allowed a couple of answers to come forward.
One answer was "I feel worthwhile when I'm needed." That's a very common answer, but it felt like a surface answer to me. While poking and prodding it to find out what it was covering, I realized that "to be needed" was also a means of being indispensable. A means of guaranteeing that my presence would also be wanted. It's a co-dependent answer on which my sense of worth relies more on being accepted by others than on a true sense of inner worth.
The second answer was "I feel worthwhile when I'm serving others." That's another exceedingly common answer, but that one felt just as hollow to me as the first one. More poking and prodding yielded the awareness that serving others has more to do with being recognized for my service, for being recognized as a good person, than from a place of empowered service. Again, it's a co-dependent answer which indicates that my sense of worth comes from outside my Self rather than inside.
True self-worth comes from inside. Validation is nice, but it's not a source, and both of my answers are exterior validation answers. I feel worthwhile when my presence is wanted and when I'm recognized as a good person.
Hrm. Throwing out those answers, I have to look deeper. Where DO I feel like a person with interior value??
Going to sleep with that question active in my mind, I had a dream in which I was competing with a bunch of quilters for a cash prize that would allow for the creation of the greatest quilt we were capable of. Another person there was a gifted woman, but she was starving. I knew her history and every time she got even a dime she'd buy food. I actually hoped she wouldn't win the prize because then she's use the money to buy food, and the wonderful design she had would never get made. I ended up winning, but in the after party I approached her with another woman. We were trying to get the starving woman to consider teaching because she was clearly talented but just needed a break.
I think, in the dream, the starving woman was my sense of self-worth -- using every penny that I'm given (external validation) to feed myself (false worth) at the cost of long-term gains (true self-worth), yet ignoring the gifts and talents I was born with (the ingredients of my self-worth). In the dream, my approaching her to encourage her to develop her skills is rather like me asking the question of where do I find my value.
I still don't have a conscious answer to that question, but that in the dream the contest was for a quilt not yet made is rather telling. I'll keep pursuing this question, and share the journey wherever it takes me. Afterall, a Lioness has no question at all as to her own worth!
- Lioness (in training)
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Bringing It To Light: My Own Gender Shadow Dance Exposed!
Last night, after that post, my brain just would not shut up. Fortunately, the insomnia was fruitful. Big time!
=========
When I was a kid watching tons of TV, it was the 70s and 80s. Women were forcing their way into the work force in larger numbers than ever before and men were less than thrilled. I remember ads targeting these working women with statements such as "feeling guilty over not providing a nutritious meal to your family? come to KFC!" Going back with today's mindset and watching even the Brady Bunch, or Three's Company, or heck Partridge Family, and my jaw hits the floor with what was normal, accepted behavior then that today would be considered horribly sexist. Even Wonder Woman was a secretary! Watch the movie "9 to 5", and you'll see the working woman's world of the early 80s.
The point is, when I was growing up it was a radically different time than it is today, and it's very easy to forget just how much changed in the 70s and 80s. Prior to the 90s, women in general were very much an oppressed group, and black women had it the worst. I have no idea how other minorities were treated in those times, I was 15 and under so it's not like 'world news' was high on my agenda.
But the oppression, and the labels of being the weaker gender etc were very much being actively fought against rebelled against, denounced, vilified. The war ignited by Roe v Wade is a very clear shot over the traditional value bow of "female value is tied to childbearing", a reiteration of the shot fired when The Pill was introduced and suddenly western woman had reliable reproductive control for the first time ever. These are HUGE things, and it's easy to forgot the impact they had, and the issues that raised then as well as the echoes still being faced.
When a group fights for empowerment, there's a lot of shadow dancing going on. As an impressionable kid who watched a whoooooole lot of popular media TV, I was inundated with the conflicting messages. I absorbed them, and buried them in the subconscious.
As an early teen, something clicked in me. It's like my hitting puberty triggered all the identification with the female gender that before was just being absorbed and catalogued. Anyway, the first symptom was that I became rapidly angry at organized religion, but now that I look back on it I see that everything I was railing against revolved around the treatment of and messages to women about their worth as individuals as well as an entire gender. The generational shadow dance was alive and well in me, being acted out entirely unconsciously. Compulsively.
This anger later became aimed at my poor dad, who had never done a thing in his life but support and cheer me on. Unfortunately, the generational shadow had taken firm root. The clue to just how strong came as I watching the movie "Mulan", where the daughter returns home and hands her father all of the honors she's won. He drops them and hugs her, saying he'd rather have his daughter. The level of venom that erupted out of me at this scene shocked even me. It was deeply confusing and troubling for me at the time because I had NO clue where the heck this was coming from. There was nothing even remotely sourcable in my own life. I wondered if perhaps this was a past life resentment? That never felt right, but now that I'm looking at the gender shadow of the era in which I grew up, and the gender shadow that my own mom was raised with and passed on to me, it makes perfect sense. I wasn't reacting to my dad, I was reacting as an archetypal Western Woman to her idea of what masculine wanted and valued.
I often heard how, when my mom went to school, she could be a nurse, a school teacher, or a secretary. That was it. She also had to work to pay her own way through MTSU, while her brother got all his bills paid for and went to Vanderbilt. Since she herself was so angry at the unfair treatment she received growing up, she worked extra hard to make sure that my brother and I were both treated equally, given equal encouragement and support. But she had absorbed the shadow of her own generation, just as I had absorbed mine. I wonder now how many of her very serious and real physical problems are an expression of undealt with crap?
Why am I tying the undealt with shadow to physical problems? Because, as the wheels in my brain were churning through all of this, my stomache was reacting rather extremely. The further I got on this train of thought, the more violent my stomach behaved. I've always had a strong physical/emotional connection, but this was over the top! Drinking Pepto-Bismal by the cupfull, I continued following this awareness.
Eventually, I hit on the statement of a woman's worth and where it's truly sourced from. In the 70s and 80s, Western Woman was fighting very very hard to prove that she had value beyond wife and mother, beyond her ability to have children and serve men. The backlash against women who were "only" mothers is a good example of the shadow lashing out. Fortunately, that's subsided and hardly anyone blinks an eye anymore at the whole "I stay home and raise the kids" statement, unlike even just 10 years ago. Hell, most all of the girls I went to school with put their careers on hold to raise their kids. In the 90s, that was a big no-no. I'm very glad to see that changed!
But here I am, working from home, with no kids. Suddenly I'm now engaging this generational shadow surrounding concepts of self-worth and value and contribution to the home, and I'm in new territory! Crisis!!!
The result? In May, my back when out entirely. I was bed ridden for a few days. The lower back is often the area which is affected when there are issues with finance, personal power, and also creativity. Being a dunce, I didn't really piece this together. Two weeks ago, my back goes again. While not bed ridden, it was hurting solid for over a week. Laying down hurt, standing up hurt, sitting hurt. It just freaking HURT, and it wouldn't stop. It was driving me nuts, and driving me into a depression. CRISIS!!!
What these crises were doing was opening the door for me to receive the message that my acid reflux and scoliosis have been trying to tell me for decades. They had just not reached crisis points, until now.
Back to last night. The idea that I'm grappling with a generational gender shadow revolving around questions of self-worth and value sources and contribution to the family, all brought to the fore by own life at the moment, was like a huge lightbulb going off throughout my entire physical system. It also had me running for the bathroom, where I quite literally was violently ill. As I'm in there, purging the system, these words came to mind:
I've had acid reflux since I was about 18. I've often said "It's like I've swallowed something that I just can't digest. I need to purge it, but I don't know what 'it' is!" Well, now I do! I'm really hoping that the acid reflux will subside also. *crosses fingers*
I write all this to illustrate just how deeply the tribal consciousness embeds itself, and to illustrate some of the ways that it can manifest. In me, it was quite literally physical. I have no doubt that had I not purged it from the system, I would have been looking at stomach cancer or some such in another few decades. I'm looking at the proliferation of breast and testicular cancers these days, wondering how much of that is related to unconscious, unaddressed inhereted gender issues within our society. Makes me go "hrmmmm".
The best news of all is that I can now think about things like the Church's historic attitude toward women, a subject which even just yesterday was a very touchy one for me, but not today. Today, it's almost a scholarly discussion. Granted there's still some lingering emotion, but NOTHING along the order that it was. I feel freed! I feel like I've just taken the single biggest step I've been able to manage thus far toward becoming that Lioness. It took some major digging to get this to surface, but I'm glad it did. I've learned a whole lot. I hope that by sharing it that it's got you thinking about the world you and your parents grew up in, and what disempowering or angery/fearful and even positive shadows you might right now be acting on without your knowing. Or the shadows that your children are being indoctrinated with.
- Lioness (in training)
=========
When I was a kid watching tons of TV, it was the 70s and 80s. Women were forcing their way into the work force in larger numbers than ever before and men were less than thrilled. I remember ads targeting these working women with statements such as "feeling guilty over not providing a nutritious meal to your family? come to KFC!" Going back with today's mindset and watching even the Brady Bunch, or Three's Company, or heck Partridge Family, and my jaw hits the floor with what was normal, accepted behavior then that today would be considered horribly sexist. Even Wonder Woman was a secretary! Watch the movie "9 to 5", and you'll see the working woman's world of the early 80s.
The point is, when I was growing up it was a radically different time than it is today, and it's very easy to forget just how much changed in the 70s and 80s. Prior to the 90s, women in general were very much an oppressed group, and black women had it the worst. I have no idea how other minorities were treated in those times, I was 15 and under so it's not like 'world news' was high on my agenda.
But the oppression, and the labels of being the weaker gender etc were very much being actively fought against rebelled against, denounced, vilified. The war ignited by Roe v Wade is a very clear shot over the traditional value bow of "female value is tied to childbearing", a reiteration of the shot fired when The Pill was introduced and suddenly western woman had reliable reproductive control for the first time ever. These are HUGE things, and it's easy to forgot the impact they had, and the issues that raised then as well as the echoes still being faced.
When a group fights for empowerment, there's a lot of shadow dancing going on. As an impressionable kid who watched a whoooooole lot of popular media TV, I was inundated with the conflicting messages. I absorbed them, and buried them in the subconscious.
As an early teen, something clicked in me. It's like my hitting puberty triggered all the identification with the female gender that before was just being absorbed and catalogued. Anyway, the first symptom was that I became rapidly angry at organized religion, but now that I look back on it I see that everything I was railing against revolved around the treatment of and messages to women about their worth as individuals as well as an entire gender. The generational shadow dance was alive and well in me, being acted out entirely unconsciously. Compulsively.
This anger later became aimed at my poor dad, who had never done a thing in his life but support and cheer me on. Unfortunately, the generational shadow had taken firm root. The clue to just how strong came as I watching the movie "Mulan", where the daughter returns home and hands her father all of the honors she's won. He drops them and hugs her, saying he'd rather have his daughter. The level of venom that erupted out of me at this scene shocked even me. It was deeply confusing and troubling for me at the time because I had NO clue where the heck this was coming from. There was nothing even remotely sourcable in my own life. I wondered if perhaps this was a past life resentment? That never felt right, but now that I'm looking at the gender shadow of the era in which I grew up, and the gender shadow that my own mom was raised with and passed on to me, it makes perfect sense. I wasn't reacting to my dad, I was reacting as an archetypal Western Woman to her idea of what masculine wanted and valued.
I often heard how, when my mom went to school, she could be a nurse, a school teacher, or a secretary. That was it. She also had to work to pay her own way through MTSU, while her brother got all his bills paid for and went to Vanderbilt. Since she herself was so angry at the unfair treatment she received growing up, she worked extra hard to make sure that my brother and I were both treated equally, given equal encouragement and support. But she had absorbed the shadow of her own generation, just as I had absorbed mine. I wonder now how many of her very serious and real physical problems are an expression of undealt with crap?
Why am I tying the undealt with shadow to physical problems? Because, as the wheels in my brain were churning through all of this, my stomache was reacting rather extremely. The further I got on this train of thought, the more violent my stomach behaved. I've always had a strong physical/emotional connection, but this was over the top! Drinking Pepto-Bismal by the cupfull, I continued following this awareness.
Eventually, I hit on the statement of a woman's worth and where it's truly sourced from. In the 70s and 80s, Western Woman was fighting very very hard to prove that she had value beyond wife and mother, beyond her ability to have children and serve men. The backlash against women who were "only" mothers is a good example of the shadow lashing out. Fortunately, that's subsided and hardly anyone blinks an eye anymore at the whole "I stay home and raise the kids" statement, unlike even just 10 years ago. Hell, most all of the girls I went to school with put their careers on hold to raise their kids. In the 90s, that was a big no-no. I'm very glad to see that changed!
But here I am, working from home, with no kids. Suddenly I'm now engaging this generational shadow surrounding concepts of self-worth and value and contribution to the home, and I'm in new territory! Crisis!!!
The result? In May, my back when out entirely. I was bed ridden for a few days. The lower back is often the area which is affected when there are issues with finance, personal power, and also creativity. Being a dunce, I didn't really piece this together. Two weeks ago, my back goes again. While not bed ridden, it was hurting solid for over a week. Laying down hurt, standing up hurt, sitting hurt. It just freaking HURT, and it wouldn't stop. It was driving me nuts, and driving me into a depression. CRISIS!!!
What these crises were doing was opening the door for me to receive the message that my acid reflux and scoliosis have been trying to tell me for decades. They had just not reached crisis points, until now.
Back to last night. The idea that I'm grappling with a generational gender shadow revolving around questions of self-worth and value sources and contribution to the family, all brought to the fore by own life at the moment, was like a huge lightbulb going off throughout my entire physical system. It also had me running for the bathroom, where I quite literally was violently ill. As I'm in there, purging the system, these words came to mind:
Ok, I can carry this consciously now.After I'd finished and brushed my teeth, I straighted up after rinsing and paused ... my back no longer hurt! I was ecstatic. I felt lighter than I have in a long time. I nearly skipped down the hall to return to bed at 4 AM. The interpretation of the issues involved is backed up with the location of the purging -- the solar plexus chakra, the seat of self-worth, self-identity, and inner authority.
I've had acid reflux since I was about 18. I've often said "It's like I've swallowed something that I just can't digest. I need to purge it, but I don't know what 'it' is!" Well, now I do! I'm really hoping that the acid reflux will subside also. *crosses fingers*
I write all this to illustrate just how deeply the tribal consciousness embeds itself, and to illustrate some of the ways that it can manifest. In me, it was quite literally physical. I have no doubt that had I not purged it from the system, I would have been looking at stomach cancer or some such in another few decades. I'm looking at the proliferation of breast and testicular cancers these days, wondering how much of that is related to unconscious, unaddressed inhereted gender issues within our society. Makes me go "hrmmmm".
The best news of all is that I can now think about things like the Church's historic attitude toward women, a subject which even just yesterday was a very touchy one for me, but not today. Today, it's almost a scholarly discussion. Granted there's still some lingering emotion, but NOTHING along the order that it was. I feel freed! I feel like I've just taken the single biggest step I've been able to manage thus far toward becoming that Lioness. It took some major digging to get this to surface, but I'm glad it did. I've learned a whole lot. I hope that by sharing it that it's got you thinking about the world you and your parents grew up in, and what disempowering or angery/fearful and even positive shadows you might right now be acting on without your knowing. Or the shadows that your children are being indoctrinated with.
- Lioness (in training)
Tribal Gender Shadow Dancing
In the last few entries, I've talked a little bit about the shadow aspects of myself. When I say "shadow aspects", I am referring to those aspects that I have rejected, giving them to someone else for them to carry so that I can react against that aspect of myself safely. It's also a process called Projection. When this is an active process, when I am actively dealing with someone that really just riles me up and has me so emotional that I'm irrational, this is my big waving red flag that I am shadow dancing. I'm not actually reacting to the other PERSON, I'm reacting to the idea that I've rejected which I can see in them.
In the last few entries, I've also talked about inhereting ideas from our family or generation, acting out those ideas without any real conscious awareness of their source. In the various history posts, I've attempted to find the psychic source behind the current state of the gender relationship to herself. In essence, the past is what gives birth to today, but the past not only shapes and influences today, but it also passes down all the undealt with emotions. ((LOL -- Past, passed. The past passes along everything it hasn't finished with yet. hahah. I love word plays like this.)) Eventually, those emotions HAVE to be dealt with. The more consciously this can be done, the better off we are.
The more I'm learning about myself, the more I'm realizing that is the point of this blog -- to consciously face what has been handed down behind the scenes. I'm a child of the 70s and 80s, and one of the shadows which I've inhereted that I have been rejecting extremely violently is this statement which comes from our gender collective ancient past:
It took someone else to point out to me that I was seriously shadow dancing with this idea, and that idea was very much a generational shadow which has yet to be dealt with. In Robert Ohotto's book "Transforming Fate Into Destiny", he has this to say:
Now the process of owning that gender shadow can become conscious.
The more I learn about this, about myself, the more I'm realizing that working with the shadow is extremely vital. I cannot find the Lioness within myself until I come to know all of myself, until I embrace all that I am and think.
The key now is working to identify the other gender shadows which have me frothing at the mouth with hardly any provocation. While working on my undergrad degree in history, the professor that I worked for specialized in women's studies, specifically in the historical role and view of women. Thinking about this, I can look back on my life and now see just how often issues dealing with an empowered versus a disempowered Feminine have been abounded. I keep hearing Robert Ohotto counsel some women in his radio show "Dialog with Destiny" that their job is to help women integrate the shadow aspects, help the entire gender come to terms with themselves so that they can move ahead consciously. Nothing short of a soul-full path of helping the Feminine find and express her sacred self! I immediately see the Lioness when I think of this.
A part of me pings every time I hear that, and I think of this blog. I don't have too many followers, but when it comes to psychic and emotional work, even having one person take on the task causes a ripple in the tribal psyche. Since he's given that statement to about 3 callers that I can recall immediately, I think it's a fairly large tribal movement!
Western Woman wants to wake up. She wants to become a more conscious, and therefore more mature, energy. Maturity is about making decisions and taking actions based on awareness which extends beyond the individual. At the turn of the 20th century, she demanded to be given the opportunity to grow up, to step out of the shadow of being the perpetual child. She was given that opportunity. Like a teenager, she rebelled against everything she was told was important -- corsets were burned, and a few generations later so too were bras. She turned up her nose at the role of wife and mother, identifying with the masculine traits as the ones she really wanted to have. Now, like a young adult, she's having to connect with her own value system, and rediscovering for herself what it means to be a woman. Since I'm a member of that tribe of Western Woman, I'm contributing to the maturation process.
I'm thinking the language of Shadow Dancing, Shadow, and Conscious are going to become commonplace here for a while. Now to identify more of these shadows!
- Lioness (in training)
* All quotes come from Robert Ohotto's book "Tranforming Fate Into Destiny: A New Dialogue with Your Soul", Hay House Publishing, 2008, pages 135 through 165.
In the last few entries, I've also talked about inhereting ideas from our family or generation, acting out those ideas without any real conscious awareness of their source. In the various history posts, I've attempted to find the psychic source behind the current state of the gender relationship to herself. In essence, the past is what gives birth to today, but the past not only shapes and influences today, but it also passes down all the undealt with emotions. ((LOL -- Past, passed. The past passes along everything it hasn't finished with yet. hahah. I love word plays like this.)) Eventually, those emotions HAVE to be dealt with. The more consciously this can be done, the better off we are.
The more I'm learning about myself, the more I'm realizing that is the point of this blog -- to consciously face what has been handed down behind the scenes. I'm a child of the 70s and 80s, and one of the shadows which I've inhereted that I have been rejecting extremely violently is this statement which comes from our gender collective ancient past:
The value of a woman is based solely on her physical fertility.Even brushing up against this idea conjures images of women as broodmares and suddenly I'm absolutely livid. I utterly reject that idea, irrationally so. Not that rejecting the idea is irrational, but my response is always so extreme that I can't even think about it in a rational enough way to form coherent arguments.
It took someone else to point out to me that I was seriously shadow dancing with this idea, and that idea was very much a generational shadow which has yet to be dealt with. In Robert Ohotto's book "Transforming Fate Into Destiny", he has this to say:
"... the more we collectively resist owning the dark parts ... the more [we] are going to shadow dance."*In short, this is a shadow which has yet to be dealt with by women in western society. "This" is the shadow of where does a woman's worth truly come from? .. or maybe they all already have I'm just late to the party. hah. Anyway, I think it's a shadow because She wasn't sure, and assumed that it was Men who saw women as glorified broodmares. This idea became rejected, without dealing with the source of it, and was automatically given to all Men to carry. Once the shadow was externalized, it could be righteously refuted without ever being owned, or addressed. Since it was not owned or addressed, it was passed down to the next generation.
"The impact of the tribal psychic process of projection upon the individual should never be underestimated."*In this case, the "tribal psychic process" refers to western women. I was born into that Tribe; I identify with it. As such, that means I've been handed everything it can hand me -- strengths and weaknesses. All women in western society are part of this tribe, and we are all collectively and individually dealing with the process integrating into our own everyday selves and lives everything we've inhereted. The more I learn about working with my shadow, the more I realize just how much of my shadow is actually inhereted from my tribe -- all of my tribes. I have shadows from my race, my gender, my nation, my religion, my family, my states of birth and childhood, my region of the country. That's a LOT of stuff which I'm plugged into!! And each and every single person is similarly plugged into all of their individual tribal patterns. If those are not recognized, they will be acted out completely unconsciousnessly, leaving me to wonder "why on earth did I do that? why did I say that? why am I so angry/sad/wounded by this situation?"
"This pattern is transformed at the personal level by owning our own shadow, befriending it, and then reworking the psychic patterns of the past into which we were born. ... We can't alter a culture without first being conscious of its history and contents -- and we can't change something inside and outside of us without taking part in it in some way."*Herein is the key -- being conscious of our tribal history and in so doing become aware of the ideas and attitudes we've inhereted which are being acted out without us even being aware of it. Like me absorbing the shadow idea that my worth is measured solely by my ability to pop out babies, and then working very hard to reject that idea as untrue. Since it's been an unconscious shadow, looking at it now has me thinking "huh, no wonder my sense of self-worth has been so screwed up. I'm listening to inhereted ideas of where my worth is or is not, and have never been able to hear what my own ideas really are."
Now the process of owning that gender shadow can become conscious.
"befriending your darker self ... means you have a new awareness of yourself, which gives you the choice to not unwittingly harm others through compulsive action..."*By not owning this shadow, every time I got close to this concept it erupted into a violent argument. It was compulsive. I had no choice because I was ignorant of what was going on behind the curtain.
"venturing into [the territory of befriending the shadow] will require a new level of self-responsibility that most of us resist."*This is absolutely true!!!! In too many instances, people would rather kill than face the notion that what they are trying to kill is actually a part of themselves.
The more I learn about this, about myself, the more I'm realizing that working with the shadow is extremely vital. I cannot find the Lioness within myself until I come to know all of myself, until I embrace all that I am and think.
"... compassion, nonjudgment, acceptance and forgiveness ... are virtues that are born out of being whole, not good."*I would go further and state that pretty much all of the genuine expressions of the virtues are born out of being whole, out of seeing all that I truly am, and embracing it. By doing, I can choose how to react, rather than blindly react.
The key now is working to identify the other gender shadows which have me frothing at the mouth with hardly any provocation. While working on my undergrad degree in history, the professor that I worked for specialized in women's studies, specifically in the historical role and view of women. Thinking about this, I can look back on my life and now see just how often issues dealing with an empowered versus a disempowered Feminine have been abounded. I keep hearing Robert Ohotto counsel some women in his radio show "Dialog with Destiny" that their job is to help women integrate the shadow aspects, help the entire gender come to terms with themselves so that they can move ahead consciously. Nothing short of a soul-full path of helping the Feminine find and express her sacred self! I immediately see the Lioness when I think of this.
A part of me pings every time I hear that, and I think of this blog. I don't have too many followers, but when it comes to psychic and emotional work, even having one person take on the task causes a ripple in the tribal psyche. Since he's given that statement to about 3 callers that I can recall immediately, I think it's a fairly large tribal movement!
Western Woman wants to wake up. She wants to become a more conscious, and therefore more mature, energy. Maturity is about making decisions and taking actions based on awareness which extends beyond the individual. At the turn of the 20th century, she demanded to be given the opportunity to grow up, to step out of the shadow of being the perpetual child. She was given that opportunity. Like a teenager, she rebelled against everything she was told was important -- corsets were burned, and a few generations later so too were bras. She turned up her nose at the role of wife and mother, identifying with the masculine traits as the ones she really wanted to have. Now, like a young adult, she's having to connect with her own value system, and rediscovering for herself what it means to be a woman. Since I'm a member of that tribe of Western Woman, I'm contributing to the maturation process.
I'm thinking the language of Shadow Dancing, Shadow, and Conscious are going to become commonplace here for a while. Now to identify more of these shadows!
- Lioness (in training)
* All quotes come from Robert Ohotto's book "Tranforming Fate Into Destiny: A New Dialogue with Your Soul", Hay House Publishing, 2008, pages 135 through 165.
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