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.
Monday, August 8, 2011
Buried Reasons
I'm out in the garden the other day, harvesting the tomatoes. I have planted about 6 of them, 3 Romas plus a grape plus an early girl plus a beefsteak, so there were a LOT of tomatoes needing to come in. When I went outside, I was not prepared to find that many ripe so I had no bucket -- only my tunic shirt, which I pulled up and started to use as a makeshift basket.
As I'm kneeling on the ground, filling the pouch of my shirt, I had this image of a group of primitive women out gathering while the men are away hunting. In my mind's eye, they are mostly naked like Bushwomen, save for skirts, which a few of them are using as baskets when they find a particularly full bush of berries.
In that moment, the idea of a skirt being 'women's clothing' suddenly made sense. I mean practical-as-dirt sense. I think of those cultures who developed the overskirt like 2 layered skirts, one remaining down for modesty while the other can be used to help carry, as well as those which developed a long tunic shirt over pants, like I see in Vietnam and areas along the Indian ocean.
Huh. Seeing what I'm taking as being a perfectly viable and reasonable ancient source for the practice of women wearing skirts or long tunics, I am surprised to feel much of the rejection of that style of clothing draining away. I own a number of skirts, and I never wear them. I guess I was subconsciously too plugged into the rejection-of-all-things-traditionally-feminine to feel comfortable in them, or something.
I know I've talked about inhereted ideas, both cultural and familial, which we are born into and absorb, even if we're not consciously aware of it. My grandmother and greatgrandmother are from the Sufferagette and corset-burning eras. My mother is from the post WWII era, and I'm from the 70s and 80s, when the War Between the Sexes became the source of sitcoms and common terminology.
I never really realized just how much of that I had absorbed and was carrying forward until I encountered someone raised in the 90s and 00s. A very different perspective! It was interesting to me to go back and take a look at ideas that I had, and then try to trace their source. Too many times the ideas I have are never questioned, never asked "where did you come from? why are you here?" As a result those ideas just run around unchecked, guiding my actions and beliefs and leading me decisions which surprise me.
One of the ideas which I had no idea was in the subconscious soup was the rejection of many things traditionally feminine. I've been working to reclaim them, such as cooking and sewing, and it seems I was ready to reclaim another one -- clothing choice. I often wondered at the mild, background sense of shame or even betrayal that I had when I wore a skirt, even if it was one that I loved. Now I understand it, see the source of as the inhereted attitude of my immediate previous generations.
--> Warning: astrological tangeant which assumes a great deal of understanding, can be skipped <--
*lol* Of course, my astrological training kicks in, pointing out that I have both Uranus and Pluto on the decendant, making those active energies within my chart. Both of those planets are also generational planets, the furthest ones out. Uranus being my own generation, and Pluto encompassing the previous one or two. From that symbolic sense, that I am plugged into these old ideas definitely makes sense -- but in the position both those planets are in within my chart also means that all those ideas need to be processed and re-examined for current validity. That is the entire point of my journey into the Lioness. Interesting.
--> End astrological tangeant <--
Now I know what I'm looking for, that background sense of shame or betrayal, I now have another tool available which will help me to identify those buried notions which are helping to guide me. Can you think of some confusing ideas you may have, where you think one thing but feel another?
- Lioness (in training)
As I'm kneeling on the ground, filling the pouch of my shirt, I had this image of a group of primitive women out gathering while the men are away hunting. In my mind's eye, they are mostly naked like Bushwomen, save for skirts, which a few of them are using as baskets when they find a particularly full bush of berries.
In that moment, the idea of a skirt being 'women's clothing' suddenly made sense. I mean practical-as-dirt sense. I think of those cultures who developed the overskirt like 2 layered skirts, one remaining down for modesty while the other can be used to help carry, as well as those which developed a long tunic shirt over pants, like I see in Vietnam and areas along the Indian ocean.
Huh. Seeing what I'm taking as being a perfectly viable and reasonable ancient source for the practice of women wearing skirts or long tunics, I am surprised to feel much of the rejection of that style of clothing draining away. I own a number of skirts, and I never wear them. I guess I was subconsciously too plugged into the rejection-of-all-things-traditionally-feminine to feel comfortable in them, or something.
I know I've talked about inhereted ideas, both cultural and familial, which we are born into and absorb, even if we're not consciously aware of it. My grandmother and greatgrandmother are from the Sufferagette and corset-burning eras. My mother is from the post WWII era, and I'm from the 70s and 80s, when the War Between the Sexes became the source of sitcoms and common terminology.
I never really realized just how much of that I had absorbed and was carrying forward until I encountered someone raised in the 90s and 00s. A very different perspective! It was interesting to me to go back and take a look at ideas that I had, and then try to trace their source. Too many times the ideas I have are never questioned, never asked "where did you come from? why are you here?" As a result those ideas just run around unchecked, guiding my actions and beliefs and leading me decisions which surprise me.
One of the ideas which I had no idea was in the subconscious soup was the rejection of many things traditionally feminine. I've been working to reclaim them, such as cooking and sewing, and it seems I was ready to reclaim another one -- clothing choice. I often wondered at the mild, background sense of shame or even betrayal that I had when I wore a skirt, even if it was one that I loved. Now I understand it, see the source of as the inhereted attitude of my immediate previous generations.
--> Warning: astrological tangeant which assumes a great deal of understanding, can be skipped <--
*lol* Of course, my astrological training kicks in, pointing out that I have both Uranus and Pluto on the decendant, making those active energies within my chart. Both of those planets are also generational planets, the furthest ones out. Uranus being my own generation, and Pluto encompassing the previous one or two. From that symbolic sense, that I am plugged into these old ideas definitely makes sense -- but in the position both those planets are in within my chart also means that all those ideas need to be processed and re-examined for current validity. That is the entire point of my journey into the Lioness. Interesting.
--> End astrological tangeant <--
Now I know what I'm looking for, that background sense of shame or betrayal, I now have another tool available which will help me to identify those buried notions which are helping to guide me. Can you think of some confusing ideas you may have, where you think one thing but feel another?
- Lioness (in training)
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
The Power of a Story
Been thinking about this anger/fear issue and wondering what it is that I'm truly angry at. In replaying the post-writing events, one aspect came up over and over again, so I focused on this.
One person read what I had written a couple days ago (before I edited it) and went in a direction that literally never crossed my mind. At the time, I did not know that. When she was talking to me about it and mentioned some aspect of what she thought I was talking about, she assumed my 'I'm upset, but on that point you completely lost me' expression was an 'I'm not listening to you anymore' expression. I later on figured out what she thought I was talking about, and I must admit I was stunned.
This was the opening to digging into the source of my anger. This scene replayed itself over and over in my mind's eye. Because I was stuck on this moment, I knew something was there. After replaying it for about an hour of quiet time, it finally hit me: what pisses me off in an instant is a perceived abuse of the Story.
In order to make sense of this particular statement, I have to be within the archetypal mindset. I have the StoryTeller in the Third House, the house of self-expression. I express and understand myself through the medium of Stories. My StoryTeller is tied to my ShapeShifter sitting in the 9th House of spirituality. Both of these areas of my life are extremely active, and tied together. The Story becomes the medium for not only self but also spiritual expression. It becomes something Sacred, and I intuitively understand the tremendous power that it wields.
What I didn't realize was just how strongly I felt about the Story, until I started to unravel all of this. In the last post, I confessed a rage at organized religion. I can see now that everything I've ever said or thought about that topic is tied to what I viewed as an abuse of the Story. A story can be used to inspire, uplift, motivate, and support a person or people as they move through life. At its best, it can empower and energize and comfort. This is the positive side of the story, the power that the storyteller wields. The negative side is when that story is used to degrade, suppress, beat down and weaken a person or people so that they can't move through life with grace. At its worst, it can disempower and deflate and shame.
I quite honestly do not give a crap about religious *expressions* or self-*expressions*. Wear or don't wear whatever you want. Shave your head or never even trim your hair. Beared or beardless. Neon yellow robes or tattered rags. Pray kneeling or standing, 5 times a day or never. Jeans or skirt or mumu. I do NOT care. What I care about it whether those choices are made because the Story that supports the religion or the person or the culture is empowering the individual, or disempowering the individual. (See? A third-chakra statement right there!!) What I'm finally starting to see is that the relationship to the Story is actually as individual as it is cultural or societal or familial. (Moving out of a first- or second-chakra understanding!) One person will make expression choice A because they are ashamed of something, and another person will make the exact same expression choice because they are proud of something. What I care about is the source of that decision, NOT the decision. It's a subtle distinction, and can be easily lost, especially when I make the assumption that everyone else sees this and so mistakenly think it's not necessary to point it out. Anyway, the source of that decision is usually related to the individual's or family's or society's relationship to the Story which supports their way of life.
I've been looking solely at the societal/cultural (first-chakra) relationship to the story and completely missed the individual (third-chakra) relationship. As a result, I completely missed that they are not necessarily the same relationship. This realization is like a hammer to the head: wake up! So then if I want something to change, the choices simply in my mind to 'either change the story, or change the relationship to the story'. My next-to-last post was all kinds of 'change the story!' (pre-edit) when what I really need to do is just change my relationship to the story.
I've been listening and reading to a lot of stuff on working with our Jungian Shadows, the disowned parts of ourselves, and the statement which has come up over and over again as flagged in my mind's eye is basically: any area of my life which has a strong charge to it is an area of myself that I am projecting onto others. I've been looking for those areas which are highly charged for me, and literally never considered this one. Suddenly now seeing it a bit more clearly, the question that immediately followed the revelation is: "If I'm so charged up over the perception of the abuse of a beautiful and powerful Story to disempower others, where I am doing this in my own life that I'm not recognizing?" In other words, since I'm projecting this outside of myself, where I am doing inside of myself?
Since my StoryTeller is in the house of self-expression, I take this question in the direction of "what story am I telling myself in order to keep me small and weak? Where am I abusing the Story in order to justify being disempowered?" Where am I victimizing myself based on the story that I'm using to guide my world view?
I wonder now if the entire point of this Lioness blog is for me to find for myself another Story, or rather change my relationship to the Story so that I give myself permission to be the empowered me.
In order to test whether or not this observation of myself is true, I'm now revisiting all those private thoughts over the years in which I raged against religion. Since I haven't yet identified my own Story, there's still some charge here, ie more to discover, but I'm delighted to also discover that the level of emotional heat has dropped considerably. I'm excited by this breakthrough! I also know it will require a great deal more work to realize, but I figured I'd share with you the process of self-discovery. Maybe there are other Lionesses who can find the hidden source of what angers them so that they too can own all of themselves and empowered.
- Lioness (in training)
One person read what I had written a couple days ago (before I edited it) and went in a direction that literally never crossed my mind. At the time, I did not know that. When she was talking to me about it and mentioned some aspect of what she thought I was talking about, she assumed my 'I'm upset, but on that point you completely lost me' expression was an 'I'm not listening to you anymore' expression. I later on figured out what she thought I was talking about, and I must admit I was stunned.
This was the opening to digging into the source of my anger. This scene replayed itself over and over in my mind's eye. Because I was stuck on this moment, I knew something was there. After replaying it for about an hour of quiet time, it finally hit me: what pisses me off in an instant is a perceived abuse of the Story.
In order to make sense of this particular statement, I have to be within the archetypal mindset. I have the StoryTeller in the Third House, the house of self-expression. I express and understand myself through the medium of Stories. My StoryTeller is tied to my ShapeShifter sitting in the 9th House of spirituality. Both of these areas of my life are extremely active, and tied together. The Story becomes the medium for not only self but also spiritual expression. It becomes something Sacred, and I intuitively understand the tremendous power that it wields.
What I didn't realize was just how strongly I felt about the Story, until I started to unravel all of this. In the last post, I confessed a rage at organized religion. I can see now that everything I've ever said or thought about that topic is tied to what I viewed as an abuse of the Story. A story can be used to inspire, uplift, motivate, and support a person or people as they move through life. At its best, it can empower and energize and comfort. This is the positive side of the story, the power that the storyteller wields. The negative side is when that story is used to degrade, suppress, beat down and weaken a person or people so that they can't move through life with grace. At its worst, it can disempower and deflate and shame.
I quite honestly do not give a crap about religious *expressions* or self-*expressions*. Wear or don't wear whatever you want. Shave your head or never even trim your hair. Beared or beardless. Neon yellow robes or tattered rags. Pray kneeling or standing, 5 times a day or never. Jeans or skirt or mumu. I do NOT care. What I care about it whether those choices are made because the Story that supports the religion or the person or the culture is empowering the individual, or disempowering the individual. (See? A third-chakra statement right there!!) What I'm finally starting to see is that the relationship to the Story is actually as individual as it is cultural or societal or familial. (Moving out of a first- or second-chakra understanding!) One person will make expression choice A because they are ashamed of something, and another person will make the exact same expression choice because they are proud of something. What I care about is the source of that decision, NOT the decision. It's a subtle distinction, and can be easily lost, especially when I make the assumption that everyone else sees this and so mistakenly think it's not necessary to point it out. Anyway, the source of that decision is usually related to the individual's or family's or society's relationship to the Story which supports their way of life.
I've been looking solely at the societal/cultural (first-chakra) relationship to the story and completely missed the individual (third-chakra) relationship. As a result, I completely missed that they are not necessarily the same relationship. This realization is like a hammer to the head: wake up! So then if I want something to change, the choices simply in my mind to 'either change the story, or change the relationship to the story'. My next-to-last post was all kinds of 'change the story!' (pre-edit) when what I really need to do is just change my relationship to the story.
I've been listening and reading to a lot of stuff on working with our Jungian Shadows, the disowned parts of ourselves, and the statement which has come up over and over again as flagged in my mind's eye is basically: any area of my life which has a strong charge to it is an area of myself that I am projecting onto others. I've been looking for those areas which are highly charged for me, and literally never considered this one. Suddenly now seeing it a bit more clearly, the question that immediately followed the revelation is: "If I'm so charged up over the perception of the abuse of a beautiful and powerful Story to disempower others, where I am doing this in my own life that I'm not recognizing?" In other words, since I'm projecting this outside of myself, where I am doing inside of myself?
Since my StoryTeller is in the house of self-expression, I take this question in the direction of "what story am I telling myself in order to keep me small and weak? Where am I abusing the Story in order to justify being disempowered?" Where am I victimizing myself based on the story that I'm using to guide my world view?
I wonder now if the entire point of this Lioness blog is for me to find for myself another Story, or rather change my relationship to the Story so that I give myself permission to be the empowered me.
In order to test whether or not this observation of myself is true, I'm now revisiting all those private thoughts over the years in which I raged against religion. Since I haven't yet identified my own Story, there's still some charge here, ie more to discover, but I'm delighted to also discover that the level of emotional heat has dropped considerably. I'm excited by this breakthrough! I also know it will require a great deal more work to realize, but I figured I'd share with you the process of self-discovery. Maybe there are other Lionesses who can find the hidden source of what angers them so that they too can own all of themselves and empowered.
- Lioness (in training)
Monday, August 1, 2011
Recognizing the Fear is Step 1 of Owning It
I have to admit, the further I go on this particular path, the more anger is surfacing. Anger at men, anger at women, anger at 'society', anger at myself. I've had a very long standing rage at organized religion, and in my mind there is only The Church, as if somehow my mind is locked into the idea that Christianity is the same now as it was in 1300. I know that's not true, but then this emotion isn't 'rational'. That rage has diffused considerably over the years, but it's still very much there.
I know that anger is a mask worn by fear, so my anger is actually fear. Fear that everything can be undone in a heartbeat. Fear that all the 'equality' we like to believe we have is just an illusion. Stark terror that the barbarians at the gate will indeed topple Rome, and we'll return to the Dark Ages and spend another thousand years in ignorance. That idea is near paralyzing it's so horrifying to me.
I'd love to argue and say 'this isn't MY fear, it's the inhereted gender shadow' or something -- as if attempting to disown it will do any good whatsoever. No, it's my fear now, inhereted or otherwise. And it's very real.
Until I can get a handle on it, until I can face it, understand it and own it, it will continue to color everything I see. But than, that's the point of this journey for me. In order to become the empowered Lioness, I have to trust in my own strength, and value that strength on its own merits. I'm not there yet. But seeing the anger and fear displayed so obviously has been helpful in making me see it.
Now to handle it constructively...
- Lioness (in training)
I know that anger is a mask worn by fear, so my anger is actually fear. Fear that everything can be undone in a heartbeat. Fear that all the 'equality' we like to believe we have is just an illusion. Stark terror that the barbarians at the gate will indeed topple Rome, and we'll return to the Dark Ages and spend another thousand years in ignorance. That idea is near paralyzing it's so horrifying to me.
I'd love to argue and say 'this isn't MY fear, it's the inhereted gender shadow' or something -- as if attempting to disown it will do any good whatsoever. No, it's my fear now, inhereted or otherwise. And it's very real.
Until I can get a handle on it, until I can face it, understand it and own it, it will continue to color everything I see. But than, that's the point of this journey for me. In order to become the empowered Lioness, I have to trust in my own strength, and value that strength on its own merits. I'm not there yet. But seeing the anger and fear displayed so obviously has been helpful in making me see it.
Now to handle it constructively...
- Lioness (in training)
On Chakras and Societies
It's been a long time since I've done a post tracking my Lioness journey, but that means I've simply been too busy to post. It's interesting how, when I take a break for a while, all the threads I've been collecting start to weave together into something that I was not expecting.
I've been taking a class on the Chakra system at a local metaphysics bookstore. In conjuction, I've been reading a book on the Subtle Energy Body -- of which the Charka system is one method of perception/awareness. While the class isn't particularly good in terms of education, it is good in that it's got me thinking of everything else I've learned about the human energy system over the years. I particularly love Caroline Myss' interpretation of looking at the development of society and the Self through the chakras and what each chakra is ready to handle.
The root chakra is the connection to tribe and clan and religion -- the fundamentals of cultural life. For people and cultures living within this chakra, life is about survival of the tribe or the clan or the religion -- not the family per se, and certainly not the individual. This is the most primal way of being, the most grounded in raw survival. Those societies which carry grudges against another group for generations, centuries even, because one person did something to another one ages ago and they are STILL fighting over it -- they live right here. When my husband was in Bosnea on deployment, he encountered a man who was raging against another man because that other man's great-great-grandfather had stolen a house from his family, and they were still fighting over that house. Needless to say, my Western husband literally could not connect to this idea -- he was not raised in a society that lives in the root chakra. Likewise, that man could not fathom in the least the idea that where he came from is less important than where he might go. I think that a great deal of the world's societies are still right here, grounded in the root chakra, living from these ideals and ideas and archetypes. This is also the level of being and society which moves the slowest, because EVERYBODY in that tribe is connected. Uploading a new idea means dissemminating that idea to a lot of people. Can you think of any societies around today which you would describe as a first chakra one?
The second chakra is our connection to family, creativity and fertility. This is where family starts to become more important than tribe, and that idea is obviously very threatening to the tribe. Why? Because something else might be more important, which means tribe might be the thing which is sacrificed! Tribe doesn't like that. But for societies living here, the Family is the all important thing. Disgraced or dishonored family members are killed or kill themselves to preserve the family sanctity. The individual members are not individuals, they are members of the family, and must always act with the Family in mind. The energy of this society moves a little faster than in the first chakra one, since it only has to connect to the family it ties together rather than the entire society. Can you think of any societies around today which you would describe as a second chakra one?
Getting to the third chakra, this is the center of personal power and self-esteem -- where the individual starts to emerge. As with Tribe not liking Family, again Family is not particularly keen on the emergence of the I. It is the I which decides that the life they have to lead is more important that the life the Family wants or expects. To second chakra societies, this is a horrible crime. This is where the charge of 'selfishness' becomes a crime. By and large, Western culture has been a third chakra society for several hundred years. We value individual freedom to choose the path we individually wish to take in our life. The Cowboy and the Pioneer and the Entrepreneur are archetypes that we look up to and laud. We look ahead, not behind. For societies in this energy center, it's not where you came from but where YOU are going that is important. These ideals to first chakra societies are ... horrendous. Terrifying. Threatening in the extreme. Second chakra societies at least somewhat understand it, but they don't like it. It's in this third chakra where energy can start to move very quickly.
What's a fourth chakra society look like? Well, the fourth chakra is the heart chakra, It's the one that enables us to connect to others, to love unconditionally. I think this is where we are trying to go. We've gone through our extreme materialism phase, a child trying something on saying "does this have meaning? Do I like this?". I see the rapid growth of the consciousness movement, a revitalization of a non-dogmatic spirituality, all as expressions of our societal growth. It'll take some time, probably another century or so, to get there, but we're on the path.
The danger comes in not recognizing the vast gulf that now exists in this world between the awareness levels of the societies which are now interacting on a daily basis. This is not a judgement call, simply a recognition of the reality. The bare bones emergence of a 3rd chakra society was beginning with Rome, but it faltered, and was wiped out by 1st chakra societies. It took more than 1000 years to recover from that. Fortunately, we're not exactly Rome in terms of being isolated, but nevertheless the barbarians are at the gate. Will we fall into another Dark Age?
Now we finally start getting into why the Lioness is needed now more than ever before. I belief at this moment that it is this feminine principle which is the only one who help bridge that gap. I've said elsewhere that I view the true power of the Feminine as being the foster energy of creation, civilization, society. She is the networker, the caretaker, the one who builds the strong bonds which make community a reality. The image that I have in my mind is that of a woman who can love earnestly her fellow humans enough to reach out to them from her heart center has the capacity to instantly change the energy of those she connects with.
When I say 'she' or 'feminine' here, don't get literal. Men have an inner woman, just as women have an inner man. The famous analyst Carl Jung even named this the Anima in men and the Animus in women. For me, I'm learning that I have a less than ideal image of own inner Animus, and that is a reflection of my image of myself as a woman. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, absorbing a great deal of the resentments and hostility of the changing cultural norms. This is what I'm trying to work through within myself, to find the Lioness, the sacred Feminine buried deep within. How can I hope to help bridge any gaps if I'm still so terribly at odds within myself?
-- Lioness (in training)
Note: I edited this post rather severely shortly after it was initially published.
I've been taking a class on the Chakra system at a local metaphysics bookstore. In conjuction, I've been reading a book on the Subtle Energy Body -- of which the Charka system is one method of perception/awareness. While the class isn't particularly good in terms of education, it is good in that it's got me thinking of everything else I've learned about the human energy system over the years. I particularly love Caroline Myss' interpretation of looking at the development of society and the Self through the chakras and what each chakra is ready to handle.
The root chakra is the connection to tribe and clan and religion -- the fundamentals of cultural life. For people and cultures living within this chakra, life is about survival of the tribe or the clan or the religion -- not the family per se, and certainly not the individual. This is the most primal way of being, the most grounded in raw survival. Those societies which carry grudges against another group for generations, centuries even, because one person did something to another one ages ago and they are STILL fighting over it -- they live right here. When my husband was in Bosnea on deployment, he encountered a man who was raging against another man because that other man's great-great-grandfather had stolen a house from his family, and they were still fighting over that house. Needless to say, my Western husband literally could not connect to this idea -- he was not raised in a society that lives in the root chakra. Likewise, that man could not fathom in the least the idea that where he came from is less important than where he might go. I think that a great deal of the world's societies are still right here, grounded in the root chakra, living from these ideals and ideas and archetypes. This is also the level of being and society which moves the slowest, because EVERYBODY in that tribe is connected. Uploading a new idea means dissemminating that idea to a lot of people. Can you think of any societies around today which you would describe as a first chakra one?
The second chakra is our connection to family, creativity and fertility. This is where family starts to become more important than tribe, and that idea is obviously very threatening to the tribe. Why? Because something else might be more important, which means tribe might be the thing which is sacrificed! Tribe doesn't like that. But for societies living here, the Family is the all important thing. Disgraced or dishonored family members are killed or kill themselves to preserve the family sanctity. The individual members are not individuals, they are members of the family, and must always act with the Family in mind. The energy of this society moves a little faster than in the first chakra one, since it only has to connect to the family it ties together rather than the entire society. Can you think of any societies around today which you would describe as a second chakra one?
Getting to the third chakra, this is the center of personal power and self-esteem -- where the individual starts to emerge. As with Tribe not liking Family, again Family is not particularly keen on the emergence of the I. It is the I which decides that the life they have to lead is more important that the life the Family wants or expects. To second chakra societies, this is a horrible crime. This is where the charge of 'selfishness' becomes a crime. By and large, Western culture has been a third chakra society for several hundred years. We value individual freedom to choose the path we individually wish to take in our life. The Cowboy and the Pioneer and the Entrepreneur are archetypes that we look up to and laud. We look ahead, not behind. For societies in this energy center, it's not where you came from but where YOU are going that is important. These ideals to first chakra societies are ... horrendous. Terrifying. Threatening in the extreme. Second chakra societies at least somewhat understand it, but they don't like it. It's in this third chakra where energy can start to move very quickly.
What's a fourth chakra society look like? Well, the fourth chakra is the heart chakra, It's the one that enables us to connect to others, to love unconditionally. I think this is where we are trying to go. We've gone through our extreme materialism phase, a child trying something on saying "does this have meaning? Do I like this?". I see the rapid growth of the consciousness movement, a revitalization of a non-dogmatic spirituality, all as expressions of our societal growth. It'll take some time, probably another century or so, to get there, but we're on the path.
The danger comes in not recognizing the vast gulf that now exists in this world between the awareness levels of the societies which are now interacting on a daily basis. This is not a judgement call, simply a recognition of the reality. The bare bones emergence of a 3rd chakra society was beginning with Rome, but it faltered, and was wiped out by 1st chakra societies. It took more than 1000 years to recover from that. Fortunately, we're not exactly Rome in terms of being isolated, but nevertheless the barbarians are at the gate. Will we fall into another Dark Age?
Now we finally start getting into why the Lioness is needed now more than ever before. I belief at this moment that it is this feminine principle which is the only one who help bridge that gap. I've said elsewhere that I view the true power of the Feminine as being the foster energy of creation, civilization, society. She is the networker, the caretaker, the one who builds the strong bonds which make community a reality. The image that I have in my mind is that of a woman who can love earnestly her fellow humans enough to reach out to them from her heart center has the capacity to instantly change the energy of those she connects with.
When I say 'she' or 'feminine' here, don't get literal. Men have an inner woman, just as women have an inner man. The famous analyst Carl Jung even named this the Anima in men and the Animus in women. For me, I'm learning that I have a less than ideal image of own inner Animus, and that is a reflection of my image of myself as a woman. I grew up in the 70s and 80s, absorbing a great deal of the resentments and hostility of the changing cultural norms. This is what I'm trying to work through within myself, to find the Lioness, the sacred Feminine buried deep within. How can I hope to help bridge any gaps if I'm still so terribly at odds within myself?
-- Lioness (in training)
Note: I edited this post rather severely shortly after it was initially published.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Dreaming In The Dark - A friend's blog I enjoy and thought I'd share
It's been a while since I've posted. Not because I haven't been working on this topic, but because I haven't been able to find anything close to a precise statement or idea to blog about. It's been rather frustrating.
We have a unique household, I think. It consists of 3 adults, all of whom are actively pursuing personal growth and development. In the majority of cases, this manifests through either spiritual pursuits or through management training. Ironically, the two overlap far more frequently and complimentarily than I would have ever thought. Our evening conversations range from new interpretations of the Book of Job to discussions on medieval and renaissance alchemy, to insightful uses of archetypes and the Joseph Campbell material, and on and on.
When our housemate first moved in with us last summer, she would just stare at my husband and me as we carried on our normal conversations. I knew she was vastly intelligent, but she had never really been in company that would accept her unique insights or encouraged her to participate actively. Not to mention, casual discussions on archetypes and whatnot is a learned language and she was learning a whole new language which takes a bit of time. Now she does speak it fluently, and she is not only a participant but a valuable contributer to the household mission of continual growth and development of the Self through conversation, exploration, support and study.
Our housemate has a blog of her own in which she shares her own path. Her latest blogpost is a Lioness post in that she's seeing the changing face of the Feminine, seeing the new archetype and feeling the oldest ones. I rather enjoyed it and am linking it here to share it. I hope you enjoy it as well.
We have a unique household, I think. It consists of 3 adults, all of whom are actively pursuing personal growth and development. In the majority of cases, this manifests through either spiritual pursuits or through management training. Ironically, the two overlap far more frequently and complimentarily than I would have ever thought. Our evening conversations range from new interpretations of the Book of Job to discussions on medieval and renaissance alchemy, to insightful uses of archetypes and the Joseph Campbell material, and on and on.
When our housemate first moved in with us last summer, she would just stare at my husband and me as we carried on our normal conversations. I knew she was vastly intelligent, but she had never really been in company that would accept her unique insights or encouraged her to participate actively. Not to mention, casual discussions on archetypes and whatnot is a learned language and she was learning a whole new language which takes a bit of time. Now she does speak it fluently, and she is not only a participant but a valuable contributer to the household mission of continual growth and development of the Self through conversation, exploration, support and study.
Our housemate has a blog of her own in which she shares her own path. Her latest blogpost is a Lioness post in that she's seeing the changing face of the Feminine, seeing the new archetype and feeling the oldest ones. I rather enjoyed it and am linking it here to share it. I hope you enjoy it as well.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
What we resent in others...
I've learned something invaluable while working through the resentments that I have toward only 5 of the many people in my life. I've even only done one of them and this was realized. I was blabbering away at lunch today and this statement fell out of my mouth. My conversation partner commented on it and I suddenly realized what I had actually said. I had to run home and write it down! Ready for it??
What we resent in others are actually aspects of ourselves that we don't yet have the courage to own.
You want to know where you are hiding from yourself? Do this exercise, and be open to the truth of the above statement. It will transform those people from folks that we resent into folks that we can emulate as guides while learning to claim and own those aspects they have illustrated to us.
It's actually quite liberating to see this. I'm now extremely eager to work through the other 4!
- Lioness (in training)
What we resent in others are actually aspects of ourselves that we don't yet have the courage to own.
You want to know where you are hiding from yourself? Do this exercise, and be open to the truth of the above statement. It will transform those people from folks that we resent into folks that we can emulate as guides while learning to claim and own those aspects they have illustrated to us.
It's actually quite liberating to see this. I'm now extremely eager to work through the other 4!
- Lioness (in training)
Starting Down the Rabbit Hole
It's often been said that, despite appearances, many women in Western culture tend to disregard or ignore their own wants and needs in favor of the wants and needs of those around them. In all reality, I'd imagine this trait is ingrained within Woman from an evolutionary standpoint. I mean how else is she going to raise kids and see to the needs of an entire tribe if she's not inherently at some level willing to put the needs of others ahead of her own? At some point, however, her own must be tended to. I think therein lies the challenge that many women face, of which I am no exception. The problem though is that this precept is one that has as many foundational underpinnings as any other relationship with the Self, and finding our own personal connection to this is our own challenge. This post is me trying to explore this concept in a way that opens doors for future or deeper exploration. It's a model, one that I've found helpful even though the process demands that I be willing to listen to the emotional surges which are my guideposts. Here goes...
Precept: I shouldn't have any personal wants or desires for myself.
Problem: I have a very hard time even recognizing, let alone articulating, any deeper wants beyond "I want dinner" or "I want to do this today". Without giving any recoginition and thereby conscious validity to deeper wants, they find hidden or even destructive ways of being satisfied.
Digging around in this problem, I felt an emotional reaction when I revealed something that I wanted which had to be darn near dragged out of me. That reaction was an extreme discomfort to being vulnerable, to being open to rejection. Now I've done a few posts on receptivity and vulnerability and how these relate to what men respond to within the Feminine, and in those posts I admitted that I had a problem with this facet of myself. I didn't quite realize just how large that problem was until I felt as if I were naked at Grand Central Station after finally admitting to something important to me that I didn't even know was in there.
Alison Armstrong uses the example of women being afraid to need something of their own because if those needs are rejected then she's left alone to be eaten by lions. That a woman's placing others before herself is a primal condition. Remembering this, I wondered if perhaps my own relationship with this aspect of the feminine was that same thing.
Anyone remember those logic problem of if A then B, if B then C so therefore A then C? I tried that to see if there was some emotional response. If want then rejection, if rejection then death, therefore want equals death.
As I typed those words, I paid very close attention to how I felt about them, to how I emotionally reacted to them. For 'if want then rejection' I definitely felt a response, so I'm taking that to mean correct. For the rest of it, nothing. The primal and emotional minds were both unmoved by the words, so those aren't correct for me. I went back to the drawing board, changed out a few words and came up with: If want then rejection, if rejection then alone, therefore want equals alone. Now THAT got an emotional response, and a rather strong one. This is the right track for me.
Using my emotional awareness as a guide, the idea of being alone is the one that needed to be explored. What came out was "if I am alone, then I'm alone with myself" and that statement literally had tears coursing down my face. Clearly I have a problem with that idea.
My first thought was to ask "What's wrong with me that this is the case?" I think it's a very basic response that women have, the tendency toward negative re-enforcement, and it's one I've talked about before. This question though also invites a downward spiral of self-blame, recrimination and rejection. I'm trying to accept who I am, good and bad, pretty and ugly. Acceptance and blame are counter-productive, so this question has to be thrown out the window.
Since I'm not really good at that sort of thing, I turned to my husband for a positive way of addressing this problem. True to form, he had an excellent suggestion: "What is it about myself that I'm afraid to be with?" I knew this was on the right track because even just typing the question had my chest burning. You see, this question isn't looking for blame. This question is opening doors, inviting me to look at myself. It should be noted that the previous question had zero emotional impact -- my emotional self can handle the blame game, but the open exploration game caused a surge of almost panic.
Besides this one question, there are a great many more than could be asked, but because this one had such a powerful reaction I started there. Other questions include those of the relationship between my own self-worth and the feeling that I deserve or don't deserve to be happy and therefore don't recognize my wants; taking a look at whether or not I place value judgements such as 'legitimate or not' on desires before they are even consciously recognized. Of course, once all these are considered, I need to go back and find out if my non-recognition of my own heart even related to the idea of "What is it about myself that I'm afraid to be with?" What if want and alone are actually unrelated, and the upwelling of emotion is triggered by 'alone' and unphased by 'want'? But the question highlighted above is where I'm starting for now.
While I won't be posting all the gorey searching, I will share the most useful tool that I used to dig around in myself for this intensely honest and frankly painful but oh-so-liberating inner exploration. That tool was to look at my own resentments towards other people. The initial response to this question was an interior innocent batting of the eyes and a "but I don't resent anyone" denial. Blatantly untrue, but this is the face that social conditioning likes to wear, the face that my ego self likes to pretend is true. Alas, it is not. I wrote down the names of 5 people in my life that sprang to mind, and then spent about 20 minutes just writing about them. Since this is for me, I cut loose. It started out with really nice verbage, couching all the perceiving wrongs with innocous wording. Eventually, something broke and out poured all this genuine emotion.
Now, the absolute hardest part of this process but CRUCIAL is to just let it flow. My social conditioning was trying desperately to put the brakes on this process because it was 'bad' and I was admitting to myself for the first time just how 'bad' I was. Folks, resentment is a poison, and like poison it has to be purged if healing is to take place. Letting it fester in the deepest part of myself while I pretended to be all goodness and light and forgiving was only killing me, leaving them utterly unaffected. Even afterward, when I had filled page after page with a level of rage I had NO idea was even there, those folks are still unaffected and yet I feel so much lighter, freer. I can now see them in my mind's eye and finally there is no inner lip curl at the sight of them. I am free to finally see them.
What came to me during this process is that I chose the symbol of the Lioness far more appropriately than I could have imagined. Why? A Lioness is, above all, true to herself. She knows who she is, and accepts it. There's no "a lioness should be this" in her thinking. She just IS. She is a killer, and is fine with that -- indeed, relies on it to feed her sisters/mother/aunts/cubs. She is also a caretaker, a loving and loyal member of her family. Good and "bad", she just is. I'm starting to realize that in order to fully embrace the Feminine, I have to be just like her, I have to embrace all that I Am without judgement (tricky tricky!). Here goes: I get angry at people. Phew!! You'll just have to trust me when I say that finally admitting to that was like pulling out teeth. Ultimately, since I want to be majestic and powerful and feminine, I first have to know all that I am so that I can accept who I am. Eventually, I'll be able to drop the (in training), but I'm far from there yet. Until then, I remain a striving
- Lioness (in training)
Precept: I shouldn't have any personal wants or desires for myself.
Problem: I have a very hard time even recognizing, let alone articulating, any deeper wants beyond "I want dinner" or "I want to do this today". Without giving any recoginition and thereby conscious validity to deeper wants, they find hidden or even destructive ways of being satisfied.
Digging around in this problem, I felt an emotional reaction when I revealed something that I wanted which had to be darn near dragged out of me. That reaction was an extreme discomfort to being vulnerable, to being open to rejection. Now I've done a few posts on receptivity and vulnerability and how these relate to what men respond to within the Feminine, and in those posts I admitted that I had a problem with this facet of myself. I didn't quite realize just how large that problem was until I felt as if I were naked at Grand Central Station after finally admitting to something important to me that I didn't even know was in there.
Alison Armstrong uses the example of women being afraid to need something of their own because if those needs are rejected then she's left alone to be eaten by lions. That a woman's placing others before herself is a primal condition. Remembering this, I wondered if perhaps my own relationship with this aspect of the feminine was that same thing.
Anyone remember those logic problem of if A then B, if B then C so therefore A then C? I tried that to see if there was some emotional response. If want then rejection, if rejection then death, therefore want equals death.
As I typed those words, I paid very close attention to how I felt about them, to how I emotionally reacted to them. For 'if want then rejection' I definitely felt a response, so I'm taking that to mean correct. For the rest of it, nothing. The primal and emotional minds were both unmoved by the words, so those aren't correct for me. I went back to the drawing board, changed out a few words and came up with: If want then rejection, if rejection then alone, therefore want equals alone. Now THAT got an emotional response, and a rather strong one. This is the right track for me.
Using my emotional awareness as a guide, the idea of being alone is the one that needed to be explored. What came out was "if I am alone, then I'm alone with myself" and that statement literally had tears coursing down my face. Clearly I have a problem with that idea.
My first thought was to ask "What's wrong with me that this is the case?" I think it's a very basic response that women have, the tendency toward negative re-enforcement, and it's one I've talked about before. This question though also invites a downward spiral of self-blame, recrimination and rejection. I'm trying to accept who I am, good and bad, pretty and ugly. Acceptance and blame are counter-productive, so this question has to be thrown out the window.
Since I'm not really good at that sort of thing, I turned to my husband for a positive way of addressing this problem. True to form, he had an excellent suggestion: "What is it about myself that I'm afraid to be with?" I knew this was on the right track because even just typing the question had my chest burning. You see, this question isn't looking for blame. This question is opening doors, inviting me to look at myself. It should be noted that the previous question had zero emotional impact -- my emotional self can handle the blame game, but the open exploration game caused a surge of almost panic.
Besides this one question, there are a great many more than could be asked, but because this one had such a powerful reaction I started there. Other questions include those of the relationship between my own self-worth and the feeling that I deserve or don't deserve to be happy and therefore don't recognize my wants; taking a look at whether or not I place value judgements such as 'legitimate or not' on desires before they are even consciously recognized. Of course, once all these are considered, I need to go back and find out if my non-recognition of my own heart even related to the idea of "What is it about myself that I'm afraid to be with?" What if want and alone are actually unrelated, and the upwelling of emotion is triggered by 'alone' and unphased by 'want'? But the question highlighted above is where I'm starting for now.
While I won't be posting all the gorey searching, I will share the most useful tool that I used to dig around in myself for this intensely honest and frankly painful but oh-so-liberating inner exploration. That tool was to look at my own resentments towards other people. The initial response to this question was an interior innocent batting of the eyes and a "but I don't resent anyone" denial. Blatantly untrue, but this is the face that social conditioning likes to wear, the face that my ego self likes to pretend is true. Alas, it is not. I wrote down the names of 5 people in my life that sprang to mind, and then spent about 20 minutes just writing about them. Since this is for me, I cut loose. It started out with really nice verbage, couching all the perceiving wrongs with innocous wording. Eventually, something broke and out poured all this genuine emotion.
Now, the absolute hardest part of this process but CRUCIAL is to just let it flow. My social conditioning was trying desperately to put the brakes on this process because it was 'bad' and I was admitting to myself for the first time just how 'bad' I was. Folks, resentment is a poison, and like poison it has to be purged if healing is to take place. Letting it fester in the deepest part of myself while I pretended to be all goodness and light and forgiving was only killing me, leaving them utterly unaffected. Even afterward, when I had filled page after page with a level of rage I had NO idea was even there, those folks are still unaffected and yet I feel so much lighter, freer. I can now see them in my mind's eye and finally there is no inner lip curl at the sight of them. I am free to finally see them.
What came to me during this process is that I chose the symbol of the Lioness far more appropriately than I could have imagined. Why? A Lioness is, above all, true to herself. She knows who she is, and accepts it. There's no "a lioness should be this" in her thinking. She just IS. She is a killer, and is fine with that -- indeed, relies on it to feed her sisters/mother/aunts/cubs. She is also a caretaker, a loving and loyal member of her family. Good and "bad", she just is. I'm starting to realize that in order to fully embrace the Feminine, I have to be just like her, I have to embrace all that I Am without judgement (tricky tricky!). Here goes: I get angry at people. Phew!! You'll just have to trust me when I say that finally admitting to that was like pulling out teeth. Ultimately, since I want to be majestic and powerful and feminine, I first have to know all that I am so that I can accept who I am. Eventually, I'll be able to drop the (in training), but I'm far from there yet. Until then, I remain a striving
- Lioness (in training)
Thursday, April 7, 2011
The Threshold Western Woman Really Stands On
I have to admit, yesterday's blog post has me all kinds of excited today. I hear from various quarters a lot of lamentation of what we collectively 'lost' with the feminist movement, but if I change my perspective and instead look at this shift in paradigms as a cultural maturation of the Western Woman, then we haven't "lost" a damn thing. What we have done is throw the baby out with the bathwater in some cases because archetypally the Western Woman was in essence a sheltered and pampered child (have you seen 'the real housewives of the OC'?? holy moley, that's a collection of spoiled and pampered children!). Like a teen who rebels and rejects everything their parents tried to teach them, the Western Woman tried on a few facets of life which before had been denied to her.
The key to success for this collective process is to not go backwards by demanding to be treated like a child again, which is what I'm starting to see in some women. As I see it, this entire energetic leap that Western Woman undertook is invaluable to the maturation of our entire species. Without honest and genuine maturity, wisdom is flat impossible. And if there's one thing we need it's wisdom!
Okay. I think I'm starting to get too abstract for the average person and I think this perspective is too important to lose people. In order to understand this post and the concepts I'm working with, you have to mentally zoom out, like a camera lens has the capacity to zoom in or out so that it can focus on just one thing or include a great many things in the picture. There is no single woman who embodies the Western Woman. I am A Western Woman, just one manifestation out of millions. My life span will likely be between 80 and 95 years, yet the process I'm speaking about has already spanned multiple centuries. Again, zooming in too close to see just myself means that I can no longer see the bigger picture. I think I myself am actually fairly mature so then what am I talking about? What do I mean by the maturation of the Western Woman yet I'm talking about events that have spanned hundreds of years? That is the big picture, and I am just one piece.
Have you ever seen those pictures which are themselves composed of hundreds of smaller pictures? Zooming in allows you see that one picture, but zooming out allows you to see that all those tiny individual pictures combine to create, for example, the Mona Lisa? It's called a photo mosaic.
I personally, individually, am just one photo within the massive photo mosaic that is Western Woman. My own tiny little picture will change as I change, but it's too small to really have that much effect on the composite image of the Western Woman. In order to change this image, it will take millions of women several generations to really change that big picture. So yes, you and I can be very mature and yet we're still a part of this larger image, and that image is of a young woman just learning about who she really is, and isn't.
In order to relate to this, I have to correlate her to my own growth and maturation process. This helps me to make that massive composite image something small enough, personal enough, that I can work with it and understand it. In the teen years, what is happening is that the individual is breaking away from the parental figures in order to learn about who they are. This is the time for experimenting with new hairstyles, different friends, etc. Eventually, if all goes well, the individual will find that sense of individuality that they are looking for, that they NEED. The 20th century was all about this phase of maturation for that Western Woman. She threw out everything she had been taught to value because she needed to find the value in those things for herself, in her own way, on her own terms. Only then can she really and honestly see the value in them! She also needed to work through a lot of anger and resentment at Western Man for trying to protect her from the trials of adulthood -- just as a teen sneers at her parents and chafes at the controls and restrictions. Eventually though, with experience and wisdom, the teens comes to understand what was really going on and comes to terms with things. I think that's where Western Woman is at this point, at the early stages of coming to terms with Herself more honestly, with her Man, and everything in between.
Looking back a few posts, I talked about the power of the Feminine being the force of Civilization itself, of woman as the civilizer of man, of an empowered woman as the inspiration source that allows men to become their empowered aspect. If my theory is correct and that Western Woman is herself finally ready to step into her role as a mature woman, though of course there are some growing pains and learning which has to happen first, what does this say about our culture? About our civilization? Indeed, about our entire species, about humanity as a whole? See, the Western Woman concept that I am just one tiny little piece of is herself just one image within the photo masaic of Humanity!
So if Western Woman is working toward stepping into her Empowered, Adult, Mature self, how will this change the world? How will her wisdom and strength of character affect those around her? Inspire those around her? I actually think that the heralding of the Energetic Age and the passing of the Fossil Age, as Caroline Myss talks about in a September 2008 Sacred Contracts radio show, is a direct result of this process!
I so want to be a part of that! I won't live long enough to see it in its full glory, but I am one who is making it happen. The more women who can see how their lives and their hardships and the lessons they've learned and passed on to their daughters will help shape this future, the less likely we will be tempted to retreat back into a known path of comfort. If we do that, if Western Woman collapses in her bid for maturity, the entirety of humanity will take a huge step backwards in terms of potential. It could take another couple of millenia or more to get the momentum back to try this again. I'm not sure the planet will have the patience with us for that.
I personally find this image and this guantlet of challenge to be exceedingly inspiring and empowering. I wanted to try to share this excitement with you, this vision of what the threshold that we collectively stand on really is and means. It's an awesome time to be alive!
- Lioness (in training)
The key to success for this collective process is to not go backwards by demanding to be treated like a child again, which is what I'm starting to see in some women. As I see it, this entire energetic leap that Western Woman undertook is invaluable to the maturation of our entire species. Without honest and genuine maturity, wisdom is flat impossible. And if there's one thing we need it's wisdom!
Okay. I think I'm starting to get too abstract for the average person and I think this perspective is too important to lose people. In order to understand this post and the concepts I'm working with, you have to mentally zoom out, like a camera lens has the capacity to zoom in or out so that it can focus on just one thing or include a great many things in the picture. There is no single woman who embodies the Western Woman. I am A Western Woman, just one manifestation out of millions. My life span will likely be between 80 and 95 years, yet the process I'm speaking about has already spanned multiple centuries. Again, zooming in too close to see just myself means that I can no longer see the bigger picture. I think I myself am actually fairly mature so then what am I talking about? What do I mean by the maturation of the Western Woman yet I'm talking about events that have spanned hundreds of years? That is the big picture, and I am just one piece.
Have you ever seen those pictures which are themselves composed of hundreds of smaller pictures? Zooming in allows you see that one picture, but zooming out allows you to see that all those tiny individual pictures combine to create, for example, the Mona Lisa? It's called a photo mosaic.
I personally, individually, am just one photo within the massive photo mosaic that is Western Woman. My own tiny little picture will change as I change, but it's too small to really have that much effect on the composite image of the Western Woman. In order to change this image, it will take millions of women several generations to really change that big picture. So yes, you and I can be very mature and yet we're still a part of this larger image, and that image is of a young woman just learning about who she really is, and isn't.
In order to relate to this, I have to correlate her to my own growth and maturation process. This helps me to make that massive composite image something small enough, personal enough, that I can work with it and understand it. In the teen years, what is happening is that the individual is breaking away from the parental figures in order to learn about who they are. This is the time for experimenting with new hairstyles, different friends, etc. Eventually, if all goes well, the individual will find that sense of individuality that they are looking for, that they NEED. The 20th century was all about this phase of maturation for that Western Woman. She threw out everything she had been taught to value because she needed to find the value in those things for herself, in her own way, on her own terms. Only then can she really and honestly see the value in them! She also needed to work through a lot of anger and resentment at Western Man for trying to protect her from the trials of adulthood -- just as a teen sneers at her parents and chafes at the controls and restrictions. Eventually though, with experience and wisdom, the teens comes to understand what was really going on and comes to terms with things. I think that's where Western Woman is at this point, at the early stages of coming to terms with Herself more honestly, with her Man, and everything in between.
Looking back a few posts, I talked about the power of the Feminine being the force of Civilization itself, of woman as the civilizer of man, of an empowered woman as the inspiration source that allows men to become their empowered aspect. If my theory is correct and that Western Woman is herself finally ready to step into her role as a mature woman, though of course there are some growing pains and learning which has to happen first, what does this say about our culture? About our civilization? Indeed, about our entire species, about humanity as a whole? See, the Western Woman concept that I am just one tiny little piece of is herself just one image within the photo masaic of Humanity!
So if Western Woman is working toward stepping into her Empowered, Adult, Mature self, how will this change the world? How will her wisdom and strength of character affect those around her? Inspire those around her? I actually think that the heralding of the Energetic Age and the passing of the Fossil Age, as Caroline Myss talks about in a September 2008 Sacred Contracts radio show, is a direct result of this process!
I so want to be a part of that! I won't live long enough to see it in its full glory, but I am one who is making it happen. The more women who can see how their lives and their hardships and the lessons they've learned and passed on to their daughters will help shape this future, the less likely we will be tempted to retreat back into a known path of comfort. If we do that, if Western Woman collapses in her bid for maturity, the entirety of humanity will take a huge step backwards in terms of potential. It could take another couple of millenia or more to get the momentum back to try this again. I'm not sure the planet will have the patience with us for that.
I personally find this image and this guantlet of challenge to be exceedingly inspiring and empowering. I wanted to try to share this excitement with you, this vision of what the threshold that we collectively stand on really is and means. It's an awesome time to be alive!
- Lioness (in training)
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