“A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on this deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension — seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence. This means recognizing that we both have an important part to play in helping each other become more fully who we are… A soul connection not only inspires us to expand, but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that expansion.”  

~ John Welwood

Photography by Unknown

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The Heroine’s Journey begins with an Initial Separation from feminine values, seeking recognition and success in a patriarchal culture, experiencing spiritual death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. The final stages involve an acknowledgement of the union and power of one’s dual nature for the benefit of all humankind (Murdock, 1990, pp. 4-11). Drawing upon cultural myths, Murdock illustrates an alternative journey model to that of patriarchal hegemony. It has become a template for novelists and screenwriters, shining a light on twentieth-century feminist literature.

The Heroine’s Journey is based on the experience of fathers’ daughters who have idealised, identified with, and allied themselves closely with their fathers or the dominant masculine culture. This comes at the cost of devaluing their personal mothers and denigrating values of the female culture. This occurs for both men and women if not on a personal level, then certainly on a collective level. If the feminine is seen as negative, powerless or manipulative the child may reject those qualities she associates with the feminine, including positive qualities such as nurturing, intuition, emotional expressiveness, creativity and spirituality. On a cultural level, the Separation from the Feminine results from a reaction to images of the feminine presented by the media that are impossible to identify with or because of a lack of feminine imagery in religion.

Gods and goddesses are often seen as diverse ways of being in the world and the ancient goddess Athena symbolises the second stage of the Heroine’s Journey. This Greek goddess of civilization sprang full grown from the head of her father, Zeus. Her mother Metis had been swallowed whole by Zeus, thus depriving Athena of a relationship with her mother. This stage involves an Identification with the Masculine, but not one’s inner personal masculinity. Rather, it is the outer patriarchal masculine whose driving force is power. An individual in a patriarchal society is driven to seek control over themselves and others in an inhuman desire for perfection.

The young girl may see men and the male world as adult and becomes identified with her inner masculine voice, whether that is the voice of her father, god the father, the professional establishment, or the church. Unfortunately, masculine consciousness often tries to help the feminine to speak; it jumps in, interrupts, and takes over, not waiting for her body to know its truth.

The next stage, like the hero’s journey, is the Road of Trials where the focus is on the tasks necessary for ego development. In the outer world, the heroine goes through the same hoops as the hero to achieve success. Everything is geared to climbing the academic or corporate ladder, achieving prestige, position and financial equity, and feeling powerful in the world.

However, in the inner world, her task involves overcoming the myths of dependency, female inferiority or deficit thinking, and romantic love. Many females have been encouraged to be dependent, to disregard their needs for another’s love, to protect another from their success and autonomy.

We live in a society dominated by a masculine perspective where the feminine is perceived as less than the masculine. The Mother Tongue, the language of experience and body knowing is not seen as valid as the Father tongue, the language of analysis. In some families, cultures and religions, being born in a female body is second rate; the female child has therefore failed from the beginning and is marked psychologically as inferior solely because of her gender. In this century the foremost moral issue, from third world countries to the leading world powers, is the abuse and oppression of women and girls around the globe.

The myth of romantic love is that the other will complete her life whether the other is a husband, lover, son, ideology, political party or spiritual sect. The attitude here is that the “other” will actualise her destiny. This stage is symbolised by the myth of Eros and Psyche.

The first part of the heroine’s journey is propelled by the mind and the second part is in response to the heart. The heroine has been working on the developmental tasks necessary to be an adult, to individuate from her parents, and to establish her identity in the outer world. However, even though she has achieved her hard-earned goals, she may experience a sense of Spiritual Aridity. Her river of creativity has dried up and she begins to ask, “What have I lost in this heroic quest?” She has achieved everything she set out to do, but it has come at great sacrifice to her soul. Her relationship with her inner world is estranged. She feels oppressed but doesn’t understand the source of her victimisation.

At this stage, she is afraid to look into the depths of herself and clings instead to past patterns of behavior, old relationships, and a familiar life style. There’s a fear of saying “no” and holding the tension of not knowing what’s next. In Leaving My Father’s House, Jungian analyst Marion Woodman (1992) writes, “It takes a strong ego to hold the darkness, wait, hold the tension, waiting for we know not what. But if we can hold long enough, a tiny light is conceived in the dark unconscious, and if we can wait and hold, in its own time it will be born in its full radiance. The ego then has to be loving enough to receive the gift and nourish it with the best food that new life may eventually transform the whole personality” (p. 115).

At this point, the heroine is faced with a Descent or dark night of the soul, a time of major de-structuring and dismemberment. A descent brings sadness, grief, a feeling of being unfocused and undirected. What usually throws a person into a descent is leaving home, separating from one’s parents, the death of a child, lover or spouse, the loss of identity with a particular role, a serious physical or mental illness, an addiction, the midlife transition, divorce, ageing, or loss of community. The descent may take weeks, month, years, and cannot be rushed because the heroine is reclaiming not only parts of herself, but also the lost soul of the culture. The task here is to reclaim the discarded parts of the self that were split off in the original separation from the feminine – parts that have been ignored, devalued, and repressed, words and feelings swallowed in her quest for success.

Dismemberment and renewal is a key feature of the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal. Inanna, the Queen of the Great Above, journeys to the Underworld to be with her sister Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Great Below. Ereshkigal’s consort has died and Inanna traverses seven thresholds and seven gates to be with her sister in her grief. At each gate she divests herself of symbols of her power. When she reaches the Underworld, Ereshkigal fixes her with the eye of death and hangs her on a peg to rot. Inanna sacrifices herself for the earth’s need for life and renewal. Her death and subsequent return to life predates Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection by three thousand years.

At this stage in the heroine’s journey, a woman seeks to reclaim a connection with the sacred feminine to better understand her own psyche. She may become involved in research about ancient goddess figures such as Inanna, Ereshkigal, Demeter, Persephone, Kali, or the Marian mysteries. There is an Urgent Yearning to reconnect with the Feminine and to heal the mother/daughter split that occurred with the initial rejection of the feminine. This may or may not involve a healing with one’s personal mother or daughter, but it usually involves grieving the separation from the feminine and reclaiming a connection to body wisdom, intuition and creativity.

The next stage involves Healing the Unrelated or Wounded Aspects of her Masculine Nature as the heroine takes back her negative projections on the men in her life. This involves identifying the parts of herself that have ignored her health and feelings, refused to accept her limits, told her to tough it out, and never let her rest. It also involves becoming aware of the positive aspects of her masculine nature that supports her desire to bring her images into fruition, helps her to speak her truth and own her authority.

The final stage of The Heroine’s Journey is the Sacred Marriage of the Masculine and Feminine, the hieros gamos. A woman remembers her true nature and accepts herself as she is, integrating both aspects of her nature. It is a moment of recognition, a kind of remembering of that which somewhere at the bottom she has always known. The current problems are not solved, the conflicts remain, but one’s suffering, as long as she does not evade it, will lead to a new life. In developing a new feminine consciousness, she has to have an equally strong masculine consciousness to get her voice out into the world. The union of masculine and feminine involves recognising wounds, blessing them, and letting them go.

The heroine must become a spiritual warrior. This demands that she learn the delicate art of balance and have the patience for the slow, subtle integration of the feminine and masculine aspects of her nature. She first hungers to lose her feminine self and merge with the masculine, and once she has done this, she begins to realise this is neither the answer nor the objective. She must not discard nor give up what she has learned throughout her heroic quest, but view her hard-earned skills and successes not so much as the goal but as one part of the entire journey. This focus on integration and the resulting awareness of interdependence is necessary for each of us at this time as we work together to preserve the health and balance of life on earth.

~ Maureen Murdock

Photography: Reflections by Tom Hussey

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“But man always takes upon himself an endless burden. He refuses to let go of anything from his past, and so he stoops more and more beneath the weight of a useless accumulation. Have a guide for part of the way, but once you have travelled that part, leave it and the guide behind, and move on. This is something men do very reluctantly; once they get hold of something that helps them, they cling to it; they won’t let go of it. Those who have made some progress with Christianity do not want to give it up, and carry it on their backs; those who have made some progress with Buddhism do not want to leave it, and carry it on their backs. This weighs you down and slows you terribly. Once you have passed through a stage, drop it; let it go! And move on!”

~ The Mother

Photography: Madisin Rian by Jamie Nelson

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But what after all, behind appearances, is this seeming mystery? We can see that it is the Consciousness which had lost itself returning again to itself, emerging out of its giant self-forgetfulness, slowly, painfully, as a Life that is, would be sentient, half-sentient, dimly sentient, wholly sentient and finally struggles to be more than sentient, to be again divinely self conscious, free, infinite, immortal. ~ Sri Aurobindo

I often use the word consciousness and in using it I can already sense the ones who will misunderstand it and mistake my sharings to be about their experience of the waking mind. But consciousness lies beyond the physical brain and body-mind, and though accessible with practice, it is not experienced by many. Especially not by those who have internalized and identified with the disregard for everything that is not pure logic or a product of the mental.

In walking our path the expanding of our senses and ascent through higher layers of mind is not easily and correctly tracked or known without context or contrast. It often takes the encounter of contrast and the limitations we feel when sharing what has become normal and accepted to us with someone who listens intently but has not the slightest clue of what we are talking about. I am not talking about people who are intellectually lazy or unimaginative but about intelligent, engaged and open-minded people. And yet they cannot understand or even remotely grasp the realness, form, function and expansive natures of Intuition and aspects of the Overmind. 

Here again intuition will be read as the gut instinct which is not quite what I mean. The gut instinct is a subconscious body-mind response which is informed by previous experiences of this lifetime as well as  ancestral and karmic memories, its fundamental goal is assuring our survival and safety, and this is what most people experience singularly as intuition. Yet I have come to experience another layer or emanation of intuition which is not sourced from the body-mind and whose objectives are based on alignment with higher Self and Source. An intuition that can be accessed in the higher mind/ overmind layers and necessitates a different kind of silence and attunement to receive and know it. This is what I meant by intuition earlier.

As with many things our lower minds will struggle to accept or believe in the existence of the heart mind, higher mind and higher intuition dimensions until we experience and know aspects of mind beyond the mental and physical. To get there takes a disciplined practice of inner vision, self reflection, knowing and silencing the mind and a capacity to receive and be open without judgement or expectation. This takes whatever time our system needs and our souls choose, for some it will be short for others a long journey. 

All progress on our spiritual path is a gift of grace and not a matter of achievement through doing things right or long enough as I was reminded emphatically a while back. There is nothing to feel superior about as we were graced with whatever access and use of our being we have, nor do we need to feel envy over the gifts of others as life unfolds perfectly for our individual soul’s growth and quest.

This year I have been taken further in my learning and being, and was granted the gift of being united with woman whose gifts are more subtle and expansive than mine. Whose being and sharings speak to the path and magic which lie ahead of this journey into divine self consciousness and freedom.

Yet with gifts we also have to accept the “price” they come at as we are changing. I became aware that I take decidedly less pleasure, sustenance and meaning from connecting with someone not on this journey or not advanced enough in it. Such connections though lovely in a lot of other ways I appreciate and value feel like someone drained color, textures and tastes from life. These exchanges lack aliveness and the delicious shared knowing of the magical glitter of consciousness sparkling through all of life. It took me by surprise and saddened me deeply to own and accept this. 

The change I feel internally can be best compared to suddenly realizing that eating apples no longer pleases and nourishes you but to the contrary it makes you feel hungrier and unwell. And necessitates coming to grips with the loss you feel at knowing it still is a beautiful and sweet apple others can fully enjoy, as you did before you changed and lost your ability to metabolize it.

I am surprised that most parts of me take this loss in a stride and that it didn’t incite a woe-is-me-feeling. I guess the past decade of stripping away all that is not true and real to my soul has trained my lower minds to become better at accepting what is than I give them credit for.

And so the journey continues as I choose once again surrendering and opening to the mystery of consciousness.

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The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom.
~ bell hooks, Outlaw Culture

My journey of self-integration and healing can be narrated as a journey of commitment to love for my inner tribe of selves.

I have come through many stages of committing to loving aspects of myself, building habits and practices of self love and care, and slowly and gently acknowledging, facing and loving shadow aspects back into a more whole and hale self. This is an ongoing journey, as it is all too easy to fall into unloving thinking, feeling and acting towards myself when I am low in resources and energy.

And yet I have come a long way on this challenging road to freedom.

Of course that was only half of the commitment to love journey I have consciously committed to. The other half is equally important and challenging in its own ways. To learn to love another in all their aspects, light and shadow, to extend compassion, kindness and generosity even when they prick and pain me, to protect them from unconscious hurtful expressions and actions from me and to do all this from sovereignty feels quite daunting at times.

To balance self love and love for another, to let it flow in a circular system of reciprocal nourishment, inspiration, joy and compassion is the holy grail for a fractured and traumatized self. A goal that can only be achieved by the alignment of self, higher Self and consciousness for more and more extended periods of time until it becomes our default setting. At least in my perception and experience.

This year I am called to teach my wounded and shadow aspects, which were created as per our soul contract with my mother, to CHOOSE to be loving, act with kindness and compassion even in moments of triggered CPTSD while being true to my own needs and boundaries. I am not saying this is what everyone has to do, nor that you are not entitled to your emotions of anger, resentment, hate and whatever else might arise for you in your primary wounding relationships. This is what I have been called to do after years of expressing openly my anger, sadness, grief and hate, a new stage, a new way of relating opening up for me now that foundations for self nurture and self love are firmly set.

Embracing on a mental level the commitment to love and choosing to be loving to others as an expression of my core being and not because their behavior deserved it was easy. For it is comparatively easy to disentangle from the concept of giving people what they deserve and drop the distorted concept of deserving/undeserving on the mental plane. Doing this on an emotional and physical plane is a decidedly different dimension of challenge to my self leadership.

Higher Self and consciousness lead the way to more equanimity in the mental/emotional which allows me to gently magnetize the emotional/physical into a state of homeostasis or balance. It is an excruciatingly slow progress for the mind, as the wounded parts and shadow feel like running towards old soothing strategies and reactivities at the slightest discomforting trigger and I observe the old scripts play out with all their negative ramifications for my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. It takes many repetitions and regressions as well as the unswerving love and support of all other aspects of self and higher Self before the wounded and shadow parts can acknowledge the futility of their go-to-solutions and concede to trying something else. And much cheerleading, loving reminders and celebration of small wins is necessary in order for them to stay on course. Especially when their first attempts and steps are not reciprocated in kind.
Another layer of learning lay here for me: We (inner tribe of selves) are not loving to others in a game of barter or in expectations of getting our needs met by them. We are loving because this is our true nature to which we choose to return. Being loving is all the reward it needs.

It will still take a while and many repetitions of consciously choosing to be love and act as love in a variety of relationships until I can even remotely say that I have laid a foundation similar to the one I have built for self love. And yet I am already reaping the rewards of this work by virtue of the feeling of alignment within, the joy of oneness within and embodying integrity and love in relating whenever I wholly choose to act from love. It feels good to extend myself in love to others knowing that I can and will do my best to show up, be accountable and responsible, caring and mindful in my relationships. No longer having to fear being helplessly highjacked by my shadow aspects into painful catastrophizing abysses or loops of hurtful behavioral patterns towards others. Knowing that I have what I need to see and stop these patterns, and if they manage to bypass my awareness, knowing I have the tools, knowledge and commitment of my inner tribe to repair and make amends best we can in cooperation with another.

This is what empowerment through love feels like to me.

Grateful for the selves, people, lessons and experiences which help me anchor more deeply into my nature and lighten the heaviness of trapped distortions in my field.

May we all be free from suffering,
may we all be love.

Photography by Brenda Del Rao

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“Someone can be madly in love with you and still not be ready. They can love you in a way you have never been loved and still not join you on the bridge. And whatever their reasons you must leave. Because you never ever have to inspire anyone to meet you on the bridge. You never ever have to convince someone to do the work to be ready. There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have never seen, out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready.”                                                  ~ Nayyirah Waheed

These moments are some of the most bittersweet to be had in romantic love. Moments of almost good relationships which leave parts of us unmet. I am speaking here of parts that are key to our wellbeing and happiness in life not just superficial egoic desires.

There are many different ways we deal with such a painful or sad experience: avoidance, denial, adaptation – aka self-sacrifice – in the name of love which leads to resentments and dysfunctional dynamics of suffering, futile battles to get ones needs met by nagging, seducing or cajoling the other or any mix of these.

And then there is becoming very still, going inwards to sense, feel and know our truth and be brutally honest and crystal clear with ourself. Choosing to sit and ponder what is unmet, why it is of importance for this to be met, how to meet this part of ourselves with love, compassion and gentleness and sitting with the pain, frustration, sadness, disillusionment as we let the messages of our body in the form of sensations and flitting images guide us through this process of intimacy with self. Firmly committed to face the reality of our experience as it is, to observe and know it without the embellishments and distortions of our mind, asking for the deeper truth to be known, the hidden aspects to be seen and to listen intently and with tender compassion as it unravels within us.

Being a lovingly protective mother to all our tender and prickly parts, a fierce warrior in creating safety, space and love for them and their need to be heard, a magician in manifesting diverse sources of joyful and free fulfillment of our needs, a weaver of a network of love, connection and healing within as well as without, a sovereign being who takes full responsibility for herself.

This is the path of self love and becoming I choose every time I find myself alone on a bridge. 

It is good to know that all I need is within me and within my life, regardless if someone can find their way to the bridge or not. I am grateful for the knowing:

“There is more extraordinary love, more love that you have never seen, out here in this wide and wild universe. And there is the love that will be ready.”

Photography by Sasin Tipchai

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“I have come to accept the feeling of not knowing where I am going. And I have trained myself to love it. Because it is only when we are suspended in mid-air with no landing in sight, that we force our wings to unravel and alas begin our flight. And as we fly, we still may not know where we are going to. But the miracle is in the unfolding of the wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as you spread your wings, the winds will carry you.” 

~ C. JoyBell C.

Photography by Unknown

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“Freedom is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw from people, not having to seek them out for the sake of money, company, love, glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and solitude. If you can’t live alone, you were born a slave. You may have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case you’re a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you’re not free. And you can’t hold this up as your own tragedy, for your birth is a tragedy of Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if life itself so oppresses you that you’re forced to become a slave. Hapless you are if, having been born free, with the capacity to be isolated and self-sufficient, poverty should force you to live with others.”

― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet 

Image: Unknown

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I will end this lecture by telling you that the fear is not real. It is truly an illusion, but you must go through it by feeling it. Through the gateway of feeling your weakness lies your strength; through the gateway of feeling your pain lies your pleasure and joy; through the gateway of feeling your fear lies your security and safety; through the gateway of feeling your loneliness lies your capacity to have fulfillment, love and companionship; through the gateway of feeling your hate lies your capacity to love; through the gateway of feeling your hopelessness lies true and justified hope; through the gateway of accepting the lacks of your childhood lies your fulfillment now. When you experience all these feelings and states, it is essential that you do not delude yourself into believing they are caused by anything you experience or fail to experience now. Whatever the now brings forth is only the result of the past which still resides in your system.

Through these gateways you will find true life. All the many temptations that beckon you to follow paths which imply that it is possible to find the spiritual reality of yourself without going through these gateways are wishful thinking. There is no way around what has accumulated in you and has poisoned your whole system- your spiritual, your psychological, and often also your physical system. This poison can be eliminated only by feeling wha you hoped you could avoid feeling. Then a new energy influx comes in ever greater measure. Many of you have experienced to some degree what I am saying here, and therein lies your growth. But you all have to go further in this regard. The self-punishment for hatred and spite, for cruelty and greed, for selfishness and one-sided demands upon others must be released so you can go into the terror of your fear, your shame, your pain. When you stop fighting this, you will become real, open, and truly alive.

~ Eva Pierrakos

Photography: Rakotzkybrücke, Germany via Isle of Skye

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“In short, the path of service consists of doing that which is before your vision at this time with as much love as you can. Most paths of service are anything but dramatic, and all paths of service are equal. The quieting of a crying child, the smile to a stranger upon the street, the sharing of the self, of food, of shelter, of listening, the doing of a job which seems to lack an opportunity for service, with faith that indeed it is of service that you have not yet penetrated, these attitudes will keep you in a positive and loving relationship to yourself. Each needs a path of service. Each needs a high self-esteem. These are gifts you give to yourself in will, in faith, and in constant self-forgiveness.

May you love yourself infinitely, for you are a child of God. Your mother, your father, is the universe, love itself. Rest, and have peace and confidence in who you really are. See the illusion for what it is, as much as you can. And when you fail and fail and fail again, as you will inevitably think that you do, never chide yourself, but with patience and care and love grasp once again your desire, your hope, your dreams and your ideals, and go forward on this path of mystery.”

~ Q’uo -The Law Of One

Photography: Isilda Moreira by Frederico Martins

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This frustration causes the child to feel rejected, which, in turn, causes hatred, resentment, hostility, and aggression. This is the second part of the vicious circle. The need for love that cannot be gratified causes hatred and hostility toward the very people one loves the most. Generally speaking, this is the second conflict of the growing human being. If the child hated someone it did not love at the same time, if it loved in its own way and did not desire love in return, this conflict could not arise. The very fact that hatred exists for the very person one loves dearly creates an important conflict in the human psyche. It is self-evident that the child feels ashamed of these negative emotions, and therefore it puts this conflict into the subconscious where it festers. This hatred causes guilt because the child is taught early that it is bad, wrong, and sinful to hate, particularly one’s parents whom one is supposed to love and honor. It is the guilt, living on and on in the subconscious, which in the adult personality causes all sorts of inner and outer conflicts. Moreover, people are unaware of the roots of these conflicts until they decide to find out what is hidden in their subconscious.

Fear of Punishment, Fear of Happiness

This guilt has a further, and again inevitable, reaction. Feeling guilty, the child’s unconscious says “I deserve to be punished.” Thus a fear of punishment arises in the soul, which again is almost always completely unconscious. However, the manifestations can be found in various symptoms, which, if followed through, will finally lead to the chain reactions I will describe next.

With this fear of punishment a further reaction sets in, that whenever you are happy and enjoy pleasure, in spite of this being a natural longing, you feel you do not deserve it. The guilt of hate loves most convinces the child that is undeserving of anything good, joyful, or pleasurable. The child feels that if it were ever to become happy, the punishment, which seems inevitable, would be that much greater. Therefore the child unconsciously avoids happiness, thinking to atone in this way and thus to avoid even greater punishment. This avoidance creates situations and patterns that always seem to destroy everything most dearly wished for in life.

It is this fear of happiness that leads a person to all sorts of unhealthy reactions, symptoms, endeavors, manipulations of emotions, and even to actions which indirectly create patterns that appear as if they would happen involuntarily, without the personality being responsible for them at all. Thus a further conflict comes into existence. On the one hand, the personality is yearning for happiness and fulfillment, on the other, a fear of happiness prohibits the fulfillment. Although the desire for happiness can never be eradicated, yet, due to this deeply hidden guilty feeling, the stronger one desires happiness, the guiltier one feels.

Now the fear of being punished and the fear of not deserving happiness creates a further and more complicated reaction. The unconscious mind thinks, “I am afraid to be punished by others, although I know I deserve it. It is much worse to be punished by others, for then I am really at the mercy of others, be it people, be it fates, be it God, be it life itself. But perhaps if I punished myself I could at least avoid the humiliation, the helplessness, and the degradation of being punished by forces outside myself.” These basic conflicts of love and hatred, of guilt and fear of punishment exist in every human personality. The compulsive desire for self-punishment due to wrong and ignorant conclusions exists in every human being to some degree.

Thus the personality inflicts punishment on itself. This may happen in various ways, either by physical disease that the psyche produces, or by various mishaps, difficulties, failures, or conflicts in any area of life. In each case the area affected depends on the personal image the child has formed and carried around during this lifetime until it is found and eventually dissolved. Thus if an image exists regarding profession and career, for instance, it will be fortified by the inherent desire for self-punishment; difficulties in this respect will constantly arise in the person’s life. Or if an image connected to love and marital exists, the same pattern will hold true there.

Hence, if and when you do not succeed in a conscious and legitimate desire, and looking at your life you find the pattern that the fulfillment of this conscious desire was constantly frustrated, as though you had nothing to do with it (as though an unkind fate had befallen you) you can be sure that not only does an image and a wrong conclusion exist within you, but that, in addition, the need for self-punishment is also present.

A further chain reaction in this vicious circle is the personality’s split in its desire currents. The original split between love and hate, which started the vicious circle, causes further splits, as you can see quite clearly by now. One of these conflicting feelings is the need for self-punishment, yet, on the other hand, the desire not to be punished coexists with it. Thus a hidden part of the psyche argues, “Perhaps I can get around it, Perhaps I can atone in another way for my great guilt of hating.” This imaginary atonement amounts to a kind of bargaining. One does so by setting such high standards for oneself that it is impossible to live up to it in reality. This little inner voice argues, “If I am so perfect, if I have no fault and no weakness, if I am the best in everything I undertake, then I can make good for my past hatred and resentment.” And since this little voice was at one point repressed into the unconscious, it did not die; t is still alive in the present. 

~ Eva Pierrakos, Fear no Evil – The Pathwork Method of Transforming the Lower Self

Definition of Image: “Every personality in the course of a lifetime, usually in earliest childhood, often even in infancy, forms certain impressions due to environmental influences or to sudden unexpected experiences. These impressions are usually based on conclusions formed by the personality. Most of the time they are wrong conclusions. One sees and experiences something unfortunate, an unavoidable hardship of life, and then generalizes these happenings into beliefs. The conclusions formed are not thought out; they are more in the nature of emotional reactions, general attitudes concerning life. They are not completely devoid of a certain kind of logic, but it is of a very limited and erroneous kind. As the years go by, these conclusions and attitudes sink more and more into the subconscious, molding to some extent the life of the person in question.”

Photography: Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick by Unknown

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The most effective way to close down the human mind and to manipulate its sense of self is to program into it some form of dogma. A dogma will always vehemently defend itself from other information and repel any alternative opinion which contradicts its narrow, solidified view. Dogmas become a person’s sense of security and means of retaining power, and humanity tends to cling to both until its knuckles turn white. Dogmas take endless forms, and when you can persuade different people to hold opposing dogmas, the manipulation of conflict and control through “divide and rule” becomes easy. ~ David Icke

Photography: Blindness, Neon Portraits by Javier Martin

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“Sensuality does not wear a watch but she always gets to the essential places on time. She is adventurous and not particularly quiet. She was reprimanded in grade school because she couldn’t sit still all day long. She needs to move. She thinks with her body. Even when she goes to the library to read Emily Dickinson or Emily Bronte, she starts reading out loud and swaying with the words, and before she can figure out what is happening, she is asked to leave. As you might expect, she is a disaster at office jobs.

Sensuality has exquisite skin and she appreciates it in others as well. There are other people whose skin is soft and clear and healthy but something about Sensuality’s skin announces that she is alive. When the sun bursts forth in May, Sensuality likes to take off her shirt and feel the sweet warmth of the sun’s rays brush across her shoulder. This is not intended as a provocative gesture but other people are, as usual, upset. Sensuality does not understand why everyone else is so disturbed by her. As a young girl, she was often scolded for going barefoot.

Sensuality likes to make love at the border where time and space change places. When she is considering a potential lover, she takes him to the ocean and watches. Does he dance with the waves? Does he tell her about the time he slept on the beach when he was seventeen and woke up in the middle of the night to look at the moon? Does he laugh and cry and notice how big the sky is?

It is spring now, and Sensuality is very much in love these days. Her new friend is very sweet. Climbing into bed the first time, he confessed he was a little intimidated about making love with her. Sensuality just laughed and said, ‘But we’ve been making love for days.” 

~ J. Ruth Gendler

Photo: Birth of an Angel by Pacsaman

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Someone may have told you
Perhaps long ago
That you need a man
To complete you
That on your own
You’re only half of what you will be
When you find “The One”
It was implied
By the tragic fairytales
And the Hollywood romance movies
But it was all a lie
Your power comes from no where else
From no one else
But from inside of you
You are here to stand whole
To emanate magic
First, on your own
With no one to save you
No one to rescue you from your own demons
Woman
It is no man’s job to break down your walls
To give you your sense of worthiness
To make you whole
Power like that only exists
Within you
At the very core
So stop asking yourself
Why am I still single?
Why did that man leave me?
Why aren’t I good enough for him?
When does life begin?
Because his absence says nothing about who you are here to become
Conscious
Empowered
Honest
Kind
A Boundary setting self protector
A Self-loving leader who trusts her path
Stop seeking
Conscious love doesn’t stem from that place
The man you deserve
He knows he is not someone’s better or worse half
He is whole too
And he will come ready
To do the work to heal with you
But he is not here to patch your wounds
A man is not a substitute for feeling your own pain
Woman
You are power
Don’t ever settle just to avoid loneliness
Because the worst form of abandonment
Is abandonment of the self
Sister
Do not wait
For anyone to light your fire
That fire within you is ready to blaze
Without anyone else to ignite you
No man, no lover
Can take that away
No one else is responsible for this
Only you
And that is the core of your womanhood
Your connection to the Goddess
The expression of Kali coming through you
The seductress and destructress
Your love and your heartache
Your passion and your anger
Don’t sweep any of it under the rug
Or spare your truth for fear of being rejected
You can walk alone
And be just as powerful
As when you walk in partnership
You are here to lead
So rise up and claim yourself
What message do you have for this world today?
Who will you choose to be
To leave your mark
And make this place better
Than it was yesterday
That is the core of your feminine essence
To teach, to nurture, to love and to heal
And that power is within you
As it has been
All along

Photography: The coldest day by Zhang Jingna

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“The non-action of the wise person                                                           Is not inaction.                                                                                                   It is not studied.                                                                                               It is not shaken by anything.                                                                           The sage is quiet
Because she is not moved,
Not because she wills to be quiet.
Her quietness is the mirror
Of heaven and earth
The glass of everything.
Emptiness, stillness, tranquility,
Traceless,
Silence, non-action:
This is the level of
Heaven and earth.
This is the perfect Tao.”
~ Chuang Tzu

Photography: Unknown

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