the Exile

As I have been looking back at my own life, trying to make sense of it all this chapter from Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book “Women Who Run With The Wolves” has come my way.

Although this book was written for women and there are special reason why this holds true for the Feminine and men, as a rule, have been allowed to follow their own path there is a universal message here.

Although the conditioning is quite different men who choose to be different and not conform to the values that they are expected to live by are exiles nonetheless.

I would like to dedicate this to Michael Ruppert who, by the end of his life, had really internalised their message of the need for the reunification of the Eagle at the Condor, the masculine and the feminine .

Also to Guy McPherson and all of us who endeavour to be faithful to our own natures and to truth as we perceive it.

---SMR

Finding one’s pack: belonging as blessing

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

- from “Women who Run with the Wolves”

The problem of the exiled one is primaeval. Many fairy tales and methods centre around this theme of the outcast. In such tales, the central figure is tortured by events outside her venue, often due to a poignant oversight. In “the sleeping beauty” the 13th fairy is overlooked and not invited to the christening, which results in a curse being based upon the child, effectively excising everyone in one way or another. Sometimes exile is forced through sheer meanness, as when the stepmother casts her stepdaughter out into the dark wood in “Vasalissa the wise”.

Other times exile comes about as the result of a naive error. The Greek god Haefestus took his mother’s, Hera’s slide in an argument with Zeus, her husband. Haefestus became infuriated and hurled a off Mt Olympus, vanishing and crippling him.

Sometimes exile comes from striking a bargain one does not understand, such as in the tale of a man who agrees to wander as a beast for a certain number of years in order to win some gold, and later discovers his given her soul to the devil in disguise.

The “ugly duckling” has many versions, all of which contain the same nucleus of meaning, but each is surrounded by different frills and furbelows reflecting the cultural background of the story as well as the poetry of the individual teller.

The core meanings we arc concerned with of these: the duckling of the story is symbolic of the wild nature, which, when pressed into circumstances of little nurture instinctively strives to continue no matter what. The wild nature instinctively holds on and holds out, sometimes with style, other times with little grace, but holds on nevertheless. In fact goodness for that. For the wild each woman, duration is one of her greatest strengths

The other important aspect of the story is that when an individual’s particular kind of soulfullness, which is both an instinctual and spiritual identity, is surrounded by psychic acknowledgement and acceptance, that person feels life and power as never before. Ascertaining one’s own psychic family brings a person vitality and belongingness,

Exile of the unmatched child

In the story, the various creatures of the village here at the “ugly” duckling and one way or another pronounce him unacceptable. He is not likely in reality, but he does not match the others. He is so different that he looks like a black bean and a bushel of green peas. The mother duck at first tries to defend this duckling whom she believes to be her offspring. But finally she is profoundly divided emotionally and withdraws from caring for the alien child.

His siblings and others of his community fly at him, peck at him, torment him. They mean to chase him away. And The ugly duckling is heartbroken really, to be rejected by his own. It is a terrible thing, especially since he really did nothing to warrant had other of them look different and act a little different. If truth be told, we have here, before the creature is even half grown, duckling with a massive psychological complex.

…

Girl children who display a strong instinctive nature often experience significant suffering in early life. From the time they are babies, there taken captive, domesticated, told they wrongheaded and improper. The wildest natures show up early. There are curious, artful, and have gentle eccentricities of various sorts, ones that, if developed, will constitute the basis for the their creativity for the rest of their lives. Considering that the creative life is the soul's food and water, this basic development is excruciatingly critical.

Generally, early exile begins through no fault of their own and is exacerbated by the misunderstandings, the cruelty of ignorance or intentional meanness of others. Then, the basic self of the psyche is wounded early on stop when this happens, the girl begins to believe that the negative images her family and culture reflect back to her about herself I not only totally true but also totally free of bias, opinion and personal preference. The girl begins to believe she is weak, ugly, unacceptable, and that this will continue to be true the matter how hard she tries to reverse.

A girl is banished for the exact reasons we seein  “the ugly ducking.” In many cultures, there is an expectation when the female child is born that she is or will become a certain type of person, acting in a certain time-honoured way, that she will have a certain set of values, which if not identical to the families, then at least based on the family’s values, and which at any rate will not rock the boat. These expectations are defined very narrowly when one or both parents suffer from a desire for the “the angel child,” the “perfect” conforming child.

In the parents' fantasy whatever child they have will be perfect and will reflect only the parents ways and means. If the child is wildish, she may, unfortunately, be subjected to her parents attempts at psychic surgery over and over again, for they are trying to remake the child, and more so trying to change what her soul requires of her. Though her soul requires seeing, the culture of around her requires sightlessness. Though her soul wishes to speak its truth, she is pressured to be silent.

Neither the child’s soul or her psyche can accommodate this. Pressured to be “adequate,” in whatever manner authority defines it, can chase the child away, or underground, or set her to wander for a long time looking for a place of nourishment and peace.…

The most destructive cultural conditions for a woman to be born into and to live under those that insist on obedience without consultation with one’s soul, those with no loving forgiveness rituals, those that force a woman to choose between soul and society, those where compassion to others is walled off by economic tears or caste systems, where the body is seen as something needing to be “cleaned” or as a shrine to be regulated by fiat, whether new, the unusual, all the different engenders no delight, and where curiosity and creativity are punished and denigrated instead of rewarded, or rewarded only if one is not a woman, where painful acts perpetrated on the body and called holy, and whenever a woman is punished unjustly common as Alice Miller puts it succinctly, “for her own good,” with a soul is not recognised as being in its own right.

The mistaken zygote

Have you ever wondered how you managed to end up in such an odd family is yours? If you have lived your life as an outsider, as a slightly odd or different person, if you are alone, one who lives at the edge of the mainstream, you have suffered. Yet the also comes a time to roll away from that, to experience a different advantage point, to emigrate back to the land of one’s own kind.

… So the answer to Why me, Why this family, Why am I so different, is, of course, that there are no answers to these questions. Still, the eco-need something to chew on before it’ll let go, so I propose three answers regardless.

Prepare yourself. Here they are.

We are born the way we are, and into the odd families we came through 1) just because (almost no one will believe this), 2) the self has a plan and our pea brains are two tiny to parse it  many find this a hopeful idea), or 3) because of the Mistaken Zygote Syndrome (well… yes, may be… But what is that?)

Your family thinks you’re an alien. You have feathers, they have scales. Your idea of of a good time is the forest, the wilds, the inner life, the outer majesty. Their idea of a good time this folding towels. If this is so for you and your family, and you are the victim of the Mistaken Zygote Syndrome.

Your family moved slowly through time, you moved like the wind; they allowed, you are soft, or they are silent and use saying. You know because you just know stop they want proof and a 300 page dissertation. Sure enough, it’s the Mistaken Zygote Syndrome.

You’ve never heard of that? Well see, the zygote ferry was flying over your hometown one night, and all the little zygoes in her basket were hopping and jumping with excitement.

You were indeed destined for parents who would have understood you, but the Zygote Fairy hit turbulence and, oops, you fell out of the basket over the wrong house. You fell head over heels, head over heels, right into a family that was not meant to you. Your “real” family was 3 miles farther on.

That is why you fell in love with a family that wasn’t yours, and that lived 3 miles over. You always wished Mrs and Mr So And So were your real parents. Chances are they were meant to be.

… This is why your parents are alarmed every time you come home or call. They worry, “what will she do next? She embarrassed us last time, God only knows what she will do now. Ai!” The cover their eyes when they see you coming and it is not because your light dazzles.

All you want is love, all they want is peace.

The members of your family, for their own reasons (because of their preferences, innocence, injury, constitution, mental illness, or cultivated ignorance), are not so good at being spontaneous with the unconscious, and of course your visit home countries the trickster archetype, the one who stirs things up. So before you even broken bread together, the trickster madly dances by just dying to drop one of her hairs and the family stew

Even though you don’t mean to upset the family, they will be upset no matter what. When you show up, everyone and everything seems to go quite mad will stop

it is a sure sign of wild zygotes  in the family if the parents are offended all the time and the children feel as though they can never do anything right.

The unwild family wants only one thing, but the Mistaken zygote is never able to figure out what it is, and if she could, it will make her hair stand up on exclamation points full..

Prepare yourself, I will tell you this big secret, this is what they really want from you, that mysterious, momentous thing.

The unwild want consistency.

They want you to be actually the same today as you were yesterday. They wish you not to change with the days to remain as at the beginning of Steaming Time.

Ask the family if they want consistency and they will answer affirmatively. In all things? No, they will say, only in the things that matter. Whatever these things are that count and their value system, they are always anathema to wild nature of women. Unfortunately “the things that matter” to them are not cohesive with the “things that matter” to the wild child.…

… While socialisation of the children is an important thing, to kill the interior a criatura is to kill the child. The West Africans recognise that to be harsh with a child is to cause its soul to retreat from its body, sometimes just a few feet away, other times many days walk away.

… What is the basic nutrition for the soul? Well, it differs from creature to creature, but here are some combinations. Consider them psychic macrobiotics. For some women air, night, sunlight and trees are necessities. For others, words, paper, and books are the only things that satiate. For others, colour, form, shadow, and clay are the absolutes. Some women must leap, bow, and run, for their souls crave dance. Yet others crave only a tree leaning peace.

… Mistaken Zygote’s learn to be survivors. It is tough to spend years among those who cannot help you to flourish. Being able to say that one is a survivor is an accomplishment. For many, the power is in the name itself. And yet comes a time in the individual nation process when the threat or trauma is significantly passed. Then is the time to go to the next stage after survivorship, to healing and thriving

If we stay as survivors only without moving to thriving, we limit ourselves and cut our energy to ourselves and our power in the world to less than half. One can take so much pride in being a survivor that it becomes a hazard to further creative development. Sometimes people are afraid to continue beyond survivor status, for it is just that – a status, a distinguishing mark, a “damn-straight, bet your buttons, better believe it” accomplishment…

But thriving means, now that the bad times are behind, to put ourselves into occasions of the lush, the nutritive, the light, and there to flourish, to thrive with bushy, shaky, heavy blossoms and leaves. It is better to name ourselves names that challenge us to grow as free creatures. That is thriving, that is what was meant for us.

Ritual is one of the ways in which humans put their lives in perspective, whether it be Purim, Advent, or drawing down the moon will stop ritual calls together the shades and spectres in people’s lives, sorts them out, puts them to rest.…

Ofrendas, (which) are altars to those who have passed from this life… Tributes, memorials, and expressions of deepest regard for the loved ones no longer on this plane. I find it helps many women to make an ofrenda to the child they once were, rather like a testament to the heroic child…

… This way of looking at the past accomplishes several things: it gives perspective, a compassionate rendering of times past, by laying out what one experience, what we made of it, what is admirable. It is the admiring of it, rather than the being of it, that releases the person.

To be the child survivor beyond its time is two over identified with an injured archetype. To realise the injury, and yet memorialise it, allows thriving to come forth. Thriving is what was meant for us on this earth. Thriving, not just surviving, is our birthright as women.

Do not cringe and make yourself small if you are called the black sheep, the maverick, the lone wolf. Those with slow seeing say a nonconformist is a blight on society. But it has been proven over the centuries, that being different means standing at the edge means one is practically guaranteed to make an original contribution, a useful and studying contribution to her culture.

When seeking guidance, don’t ever listen to the tiny hearted. Be kind to them, keep them with blessing, cajole them, but do not follow their advice.

If you have ever been called defiant, incorrigible, forward, cunning, insurgent, unruly, rebellious, you’re on the right track. Wild Woman is close by.