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 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)

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)

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!

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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:

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.

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)

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)

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)

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.