Category Archives: Jungian psychology

SEEING IN THE DARK: FINDING OUR WILD MEDICINE ~ PART I

29 Wednesday Mar 2017

Posted by in Dreamtime, Eco-feminism, Ecopsychology, Jungian psychology, spiritual ecology, Uncategorized, Women and Leadership

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SEEING IN THE DARK: FINDING OUR WILD MEDICINE ~ PART I

 

For all the devastation of these dark times -the attacks on women, children, the elderly, immigrants, the land, on the truth, international relationships, – T-rump’s essential role as the cruel Fool has catalyzed a fierce awakening. He has woken us up. If Hillary had won, we would be tempted to apathy – without suffering, without feeling. Now, we are engaged, we are concerned, our hearts are broken on a continual basis with the daily news of more devastation. Still, we rise. From the depths of our wild, wise selves we are seeing in the dark and bringing our wild medicine to the surface. We are turning what was shameful – our caring hearts, our feminine power – into brave and effective actions, together. Millions of women around the world marched for life in January wearing pink pussy hats. In this widespread show of humor, of flamboyance, of strength, of pride, women reclaimed a “dirty” word that has been used to degrade, insult and shame women long before T-rump used it in his crude boast about sexual assault.

Monday, March 27th 2017 was a new moon in the fire sign of Aries. This marks the beginning of the New Year in the zodiac, the strongest new moon of the year. Aries energizes leadership, fires up new ideas, ignites action for charting a new course. Venus, sacred to the Goddess of love and beauty in many traditions, is retrograde, gone to the underworld to reclaim – like Inanna – shadow parts of herself which have been repressed and ignored. For women this is often our exiled feminine power.

This feminine power is buried within all of us. “The one who knows”, as Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes calls her, is breaking through frozen ground like spring grass and blossom as we saw in women’s marches and brave actions around the world.

Our deepest sources of creativity and understanding lie out of sight in darkness, in the unconscious. We must learn how to perceive “through the eyes of soul as well as through the eyes of the ego.” This dual way of seeing, being, and acting, Dr. Estes explains, is the most direct way to reclaim the gifts and the “healing apothecary” set into each soul at birth. We must learn to see in the dark to mine the raw gems of mystery, dreams, sudden knowings, and the shadows of power as individuals and as society.

Many of the dreams I am hearing, and experiencing myself, take place in group settings – conferences, classes, circles. The purpose generally seems to be some kind of learning, some kind of education. The root of the word educare is to bring forth, to transform. We are carriers and midwives of the new myth. It is a collective dream. Of many ways to dream this dream onward, to strengthen the New Story, I find sharing our dreams, writing and telling story, and encouraging each other to step into the light with what we know, what we see, of “What is To Come” is most powerful. In the following dream, we women in a hostile environment wash off the shame of patriarchal projections, and find our way to the beauty and joy of community as we reclaim our wild souls, our wisest selves.

Dream #1: Surfing with Flamingos

There are many of us women staying in a hostel. I step into the rustic tin walled shower and find it clogged with black, inky water from the women who have showered before me. I am quite indignant at the poor maintenance of this place. As I shower the water washes black ink off of me as well. Eventually the water runs clear and drains. I see out the window a view of the ocean and go down to the beach for a swim. In the water to my left, a flock of flamingos is surfing a wave to shore, grouped in the curl of the wave.

The dream of a “hostel” where the women must wash off black dye seems to speak to the dark projections of the hostile Masculine which have shamed us and shut us off from the beauty and power of our wild natures. When we wash off these projections and rinse off our shame, we are free to come into the light. Called by the wild wisdom of nature and the vast ocean’s creativity and mystery, we find our way to the ocean where the flamingos are surfing. They are a joyful community, a flamboyance of feminine energy and magic, surfing the large waves of change.

Here are some gifts from Flamingo medicine which come from several of her unique features

~Balance: ~With her long legs, wades in deep water while remaining grounded.

~ Just as Flamingo wades into the muddy waters and stands at the edges of the shoreline to locate and taste shrimp, we find the real nourishment and aliveness for us stands at the shoreline of our souls. These are the thresholds of our most dramatic and challenging changes.

~The upper part of the beak is hooked sharply, almost as if broken. This movable part scoops up mud, forcing it through a comb-like structure (lamellae), retaining what is edible. This distinct ability to eat upside down, filtering food from the mud and silt, speaks to the need for us to learn how to filter our soul lessons and soul nourishment from the emotional waters.

~Radiant, vibrant, graceful, beautiful, elegant, flamingos are a fine example of feminine beauty and magic. Be bold, be brave, show your colors.

~Associated with the Phoenix, flamingos are a sign of rebirth, of resurrection. You can rise again from devastation, your fall from grace. As a guidance totem and heart healer: Discern what is poisonous or not useful in your life and what can heal your wounds.

~They are shapeshifters, masters of illusion as they stand on one leg, or tuck their heads, and can bend over backwards.

~The flamingo’s tongue is unusually large and fleshy for a bird, acting as a powerful pump to pull water backwards and expel through filters. The tongue gives us speech. Communication is a gift of Flamingo. Use your voice!

~This is a 30 million year old species within the crane family, pointing to our ancient power as creators, as artists of life. In spite of the overuse of flamingos as decorative, tacky lawn ornaments, they have power and medicine in two areas vital to us as women:

The creative process.

Coyote medicine.

Exposes illusions, or makes them

A shapeshifter

A Trickster

~Because of her pink color, associated with the heart chakra, Flamingo reminds us what you put into your heart influences your colors. Flamingo is a visionary and draws its power from water, from our emotional life and from the collective unconscious.

 

O mother of the sea

Lend me a wave that is strong and true

To carry me from this Age which binds me.

 

I do not need a ship, mother,

But make it a buoyant swell

To bear me up and float me on the sea’s dreaming

Then beach me on some lighter shore…

                                                      Sharon Blackie, “Peregrina”

 

 

DREAM A NEW STORY. WALK IT INTO THE WORLD

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by in Eco-feminism, Ecopsychology, Jungian psychology, Shamanic dreaming, spiritual ecology, Uncategorized, Women and Leadership

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Walking. I am listening to a deeper way. Suddenly all my ancestors are behind me. Be still, they say. Watch and listen. You are the result of the love of thousands.

Linda Hogan

Marching in Oakland, California on January 21 with thousands of other women, men, children of every age and ethnicity I felt the weight of the previous ten weeks finally lift. Recalling the marches of the 60’s against the war in Vietnam, this felt celebratory, hopeful, joyous. My three year old grandson danced to the music of a Dixieland band as my daughter and I stood in our Mt. Nasty T-shirts. There was no tear gas here. No violence, no arrests in any of the international marches. We continued all day to watch TV coverage of the worldwide marches like a tonic, a balm, an antidote to the dark and shocking illness of the Election.

The November 9th morning after the results were in, sleepless and felled by a flu-like force, I faced an afternoon of teaching an online class on “The Way of the Wild Feminine: Dream a New Story, Draw a New Map of the World”. This week’s topic was the Way of the North- Destiny, the Place of the Give Away. It was supposed to be inspiring. It was meant to be uplifting. I planned to talk about the emerging wild and sacred Feminine consciousness, the turning of an Age, the death of the patriarchy and the excesses of greed, domination, conquest, destruction. Instead, the most extreme, shallow, cartoonish version of patriarchal shadow was elevated to power. It was impossible! I would have to cancel the class. Flattened, devastated, hollowed, speechless, I wasn’t quite in my body.

But other women from around the world would show up online. Maybe we needed to talk about this. I prayed for help, for guidance, for Goddess of Wisdom Sophia to be next to me to lend strength. What I heard was: I will not be next to you, I will speak through you. Much relieved, I began the class. Women found their “standing rocks”, the bedrock of their values, beliefs. We spoke with sorrow, anger, heartbreak, fierceness for what truly matters. We rose like mountains to find a higher, wider perspective. We found the grounding and solidity of rock, the “thinking like a mountain” by embodying that strength and timelessness from the inside out. The stories were not so much the climbing of the mountain path in a struggling or striving way, but the adventures of the spiral journey of our own individual paths, unique gifts and Give Aways for this time. What had begun as a morning of absolutely the worst time and timing, became a place of perfect time, of perfect timing. We called on Grandmother Spider Women to weave our thoughts and stories into the starry skies, to claim the magic and joy of Hummingbird medicine. To stand in the center of our own power without flinching, and to boldly commit to living our wild heart wisdom in the world from now on.

We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.                                                                                           Ursula le Guin

 We are all storytellers. We are all mythmakers, dreaming a common dream, bringing the old and the new story of human culture and consciousness together. Myths can be medicine for our culture.  As Jean Houston puts it: We not only live in a Universe; the Universe lives in us. We participate at every moment in supporting or challenging the existing myths of women’s place in the world and what it means to be human.

The wild genius of feminine wisdom has a new story to tell, and is drawing a new map of the world. The word “draw” means to make a picture, as in sketching, writing or speech. But it also means to pull in a certain direction, to attract, to bring forth like a pump draws water. What are you being called to do by future generations? In this new story, this story of Becoming, we can map out a world “in which it will be easier to love” (Father Paolo Freire).

Are our hearts on fire? In those days of the 1960’s, during the anguish of the Vietnam war, something beautiful did begin to bloom. The summer of love. The hope of a New Age, the dawning of a new day. Perhaps this could be a Renaissance of that hope. Perhaps now is the very best time to use our power to dream a new story, for ourselves, for the world.

After an earlier Webinar I dreamed there was a huge, thick, beautifully illustrated book on the coffee table. Titled “Motherworld”,  it is an atlas. Maps of the world. Because it is we women who are the mythmakers, the carriers of the emerging possible, the wisdom keepers, the keepers of the flame. And it is time for us to come alive to our new stories and home to our wild, wise selves.And to tell these stories to each other.

The wild feminine is not only sustainable in all worlds, it sustains all worlds. Let’s admit it. We women are building a motherland; each with her own plot of soil eked from a night of dreams, a day of work. We are spreading this soil in larger and larger circles, slowly, slowly. One day it will be a continuous land, a resurrected land come back from the dead. Mundo de la madre, psychic motherland, coexisting and coequal with all other worlds. This world is being made from our lives, our cries, our laughter, our bones. It is a world worth making, a world worth living in, a world in which there is a prevailing and decent wild sanity.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

Let us become powerful messengers for the beautiful new story that wants to be born now in us, through us, for the good of all. This election has awakened a new sense of power and guidance, an urgent need to reclaim our legacy: The sovereignty of the wild woman, with the men who support the heart of the world. As President Obama said:

“I’m asking you to believe. Not in my ability to bring about change — but in yours.I am asking you to hold fast to that faith written into our founding documents; that idea whispered by slaves and abolitionists; that spirit sung by immigrants and homesteaders and those who marched for justice; that creed reaffirmed by those who planted flags from foreign battlefields to the surface of the moon; a creed at the core of every American whose story is not yet written: Yes, we can.

Yes, we did. Yes, we can.                            (Farewell address, January 10, 2017)

 

 

MOTHERWORLD: THE WAY OF THE WILD FEMININE

27 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Eco-feminism, Ecopsychology, Jungian psychology, Shamanic dreaming, spiritual ecology, Women and Leadership

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On the morning of the introductory Webinar to an online course on “The Way of the Wild Feminine”, I drew this Tarot card for the group from the Motherpeace (Vicki Noble) deck: XX – Judgment. Healing the Earth. It felt like a blessing for our gathering, in the numinous way that synchronicities do. We wild souls, wise hearted women, are ready to celebrate our old stories and all that we have come through, done, failed to do, suffered, triumphed, gained and lost. Clearing the way to letting go, to dissolving the old roles, identities, maybe careers, perhaps relationships. Mostly letting go of any old story that told us we were not worthy, magnificent, brilliant rays of the sun and creators of the world.

The Judgment Tarot card speaks to the return of the Feminine, a time of healing and regeneration. It directs us to listen to our hearts, and judge for ourselves where the truth lies. In many indigenous and mystical traditions, the Feminine ray of light is coming back into manifestation. Or as pagans and feminists might say, this is the time of the return of the Goddess. In Gnostic teachings, the Female Aion is the great manifested thought. In this Tarot image, the sun’s rays shine the rainbow light of the core Self and the community, expanding the world of the small self. We return to the integrated, holistic world of the goddess with the healing energies of the heart and the Bodhisattva compassion and forgiveness of isis, Tara, Kuan Yin.

This suggests to me that wild mind, Grandmother-Mind, is what we have to bring to bear on the urgent needs of the world. Wild mind is an inclusive, contextual, relational, integrated and visionary intelligence which sees the Both/And realm of possibilities in long range vision, seven generations out. It is a thinking with the heart. From those awakened hearts comes our own wild genius as wisdom keepers. As one of the 13 indigenous Grandmothers said in 2014:

“We are standing in the vibration of a sacred prophecy, the prophecy which tells us that consciousness is preparing the spirit of the feminine, the spirit of the Grandmothers.”

Jung’s idea of awakening the indigenous soul, the wild soul, is kin to awakening the Grandmother Mind. This is the unforgotten wisdom that resides at the heart of our psyches. It is not only in some of us. It is within each of us. As Jean Houston puts it: We not only live in a Universe; the Universe lives in us. This is why so many of us are drawn now to the teachings of the Aboriginals, the Hawaiians, Native Americans, Africans. We resonate with their stories for deep within our own souls, our cellular memories, we remember and recall our very own wisdom roots which have been traumatized out of conscious memory.

When we connect to our Wild Feminine power, we shift the field of collective consciousness, allowing each of us to tap into a New Story.

We can reclaim these memories and their power in many ways. One of the most powerful and direct ways is through your dreaming which is a primary focus of the online course.

The night after the Webinar I dreamed there was a huge, thick, beautifully illustrated book on the coffee table. Titled “Motherworld”,  it is an atlas. Maps of the world. Because it is we women who are the mythmakers, the carriers of the emerging possible, the wisdom keepers, the keepers of the flame. And it is time for us to come alive to our new stories and home to our wild, wise selves.And to tell these stories to each other.

The wild feminine is not only sustainable in all worlds, it sustains all worlds.

Let’s admit it. We women are building a motherland; each with her own plot of soil eked from a night of dreams, a day of work. We are spreading this soil in larger and larger circles, slowly, slowly. One day it will be a continuous land, a resurrected land come back from the dead. Mundo de la madre, psychic motherworld, coexisting and coequal with all other worlds. This world is being made from our lives, our cries, our laughter, our bones. It is a world worth making, a world worth living in, a world in which there is a prevailing and decent wild sanity.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D.

The time is now to restore the wild woman to her rightful sovereignty.

Join our online course and community beginning October 12 through the Depth Psychology Alliance.

The Way of the Wild Feminine: A 6 week online course

  • ~Come alive to your new story in a journey of Nature’s Seven Directions
  • ~Awaken your Inner Shaman and Wild Genius
  • ~Ignite the energies of the solar Feminine and give voice to your true story
  • ~Learn how chaos and complexity new science models describe your Heroine’s Journey
  • Become a powerful messenger for the beautiful new story that wants to be born in you, through you, for the good of all. Awaken a new sense of power and guidance. Be renewed. Come alive again. Help to create a world “in which it will be easier to love”

Each 90-minute class will feature an interactive-style lecture and commentary, with opportunities for participants to write, share experiences, dreams, and insights. Please come prepared to interact and participate. Note: This course will be offered in a video webinar format, so participants will not be heard or seen until they request it

Course dates:                               

OCT 12, 19, 26, NOV 2, 9, 16                              Time: 12 pm to 1:30 pm PT14aa208f38466ca1406e3da35a1f68c9

Click here to REGISTER for the 6-WEEK COURSE