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.
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