At my core I hold a hypersensitive, loving, gentle and guileless little girl believing firmly in the goodness of humanity. These very qualities singled me out and attracted many forms of subtle, overt and pathologically cruel abuse and heaped shame on all of these traits beyond anything I could bear. To the hurt and confused younger versions of my self it felt at as if life was teaching me to drop these aspects of self and so I developed a seemingly powerful outer persona that numbed the sensitive in me to a degree my mind could handle, learning and expressing the ways of unlove like a new language I had to gain fluency in, practicing delighting in harshness and derision of others, cultivating a cold unfeeling capacity for ruthlessness and hyper-vigilant distrust.

In my healing journey of reclaiming said little girl a new layer of shame began to be heaped on all the traits and behaviors I adopted in my survival and moving on from the fear-inducing past. As I reclaimed what lay at my beginning, external voices, once again, shamed the parts of me who helped me survive. Another layer of burden and drama to work through thanks to the ‘good girl’ and ‘love and light’ bias I surrounded myself with in this phase of my life. A growing unease and restlessness kept me looking for the next step of my journey because this felt equally unhealthy and unbalanced as the phase of survival did before.

Enter shadow work and mystical studies to blow dualities and more importantly preferences to smithereens in my mind, then in my emotions and now successively in my body. Nothing about this chapter of healing was and is exactly easy or painless, and yet the pain was ‘just’ the pain of having to let go of lies and misperceptions that had endeared themselves to me and to welcome the unknown in their place. 

And the deeper and more visceral pain of facing the accumulated shame, the pain of titrating in and out of it until I could hold more of it and for longer periods without giving in to the habit of fleeing it, read compensatory avoidant behavior. It took some time to make my peace with a reality in which I can feel shame, around certain things, and can be lovable and beloved to myself and others. To not judge shame or only perceive its corrosive effects and to see equally its natural and helpful manifestations and functions. To end dualities held in the depth of my subconscious, non-verbal conditionings and belief systems.

The Unknown – the ultimate fear fed by the orthodoxy of beliefs, the illusion of knowing what I haven’t experienced, researched, explored or deeply contemplated myself and the fear of ego death. Who would have thought that the unknown has always been my best friend, a space of blissfulness veiled by the nonsensical lies of my conditioning?

I like to think of the Unknown as another word for the Field – the Dark Mother of all that is in form, sound, geometry and light. The first step of the One becoming the many and the last in going from the illusion of separation back into oneness. I like to gender the Unknown as a HER: mystical, nurturing, creative, playful, surprising and loving from a non-dual perception and manifesting vantage point. 

When I allowed my mind to explore many a rabbit hole or alternative narrative about reality (which some like to label as conspiracy theory in their varying levels of cognitive dissonance), she sat by my side and watched me get drawn into dark and light narratives, snagging here getting entangled there, struggling to grasp the reality of multidimensional concurrent realities feeling my human captivated by some and their strange effects on my biology. When it got intense she would tap on my shoulder and let me gaze deep into her luminous darkness as she smiled at my slow disentanglement and transformation. 

I owe her my freedom from energy sucking entanglements and the clarity that arose with blinding light from the depth of her darkness and I delight in the laughter we shared about my slowness and blindness to fact that fear of the unknown was what allowed for entanglement and entrapment in limiting narratives about life. 

She taught me to dance through and across narratives, to dip my feet, to swim and dive deep into them without losing my perspective or anchored vantage point of not knowing. To entertain ideas which align or contradict with no attachment but with all the more joy and creative playfulness. To be free from the egoic need for certainty, absolute truisms and setting myself apart from others by virtue of illusions of absolute knowing. 

She reminded me to enjoy this ‘soul playground’ and helped me develop new skills of engaging and interacting with it from spaciousness and with bliss.

I bow to the plentiful gifts of embracing the unknown, of letting the dark mother hold me and inspire me through changes and evolutions, to her gifts of expansion to my consciousness and to her mysteries that shall remain untouched by me in this timeline. 

In gratitude to all that is unfolding as I dance with my fellow travelers across timelines, dimensions, incarnations, narratives, system and cultures with lightness, ease and grace!

Art: “Ms. Universe” by Jessi Jumanji

The post Hello from the Other Side appeared first on Venuskind.

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

The post The Heroine’s Journey appeared first on Venuskind.