Live by heart
This story makes me tremble. It makes me wonder what in me needed to express all this.
It came from an
exercise to dive deep into the world of my shadow. What is the message
from the shadow? Where does the shadow wants me to awaken to? And how would it give me the message?
He is the one who is never agitated.
he might be the one who we thinks is disorientated. Lost.
We might want to think that. To at least put ourselves in a better light. To not fear that one night we wake up and do like he does.
Who is lost?
Are you lost when you believe in what you do?
In a place not far from here lives a boy. A man in his
late twenties. Nobody really knows him. You rarely meet him on the street, but
when you do, you stop. Every sense in your body tells you to get the hell away
from him. But it freezes you. So he can wander and watch you all. His thin body
with long legs seems to whisper 'you are mine'.
When you seem him walking he seems to glide, his upper
body does not move. His eye sight is straight and if you are the next...he focuses
his eyes on yours. A predator making contact, still gliding as if all is fine.
But then...he winks.
To the one who gets winked at, I wish her/him an instant heart attack. If
not. Hiding does not help. He will find you. He sees you. And when he finds you,
you know there is no escape.
He gently knocks on your door. He will gently hold
you head between his hands. And tell you everything is going to be alright. He
will lead you to a chair. Tells you to sit, Very still. He makes a little cut
with a knife in your throat, so you can still moan, but you can't scream. He
will take your hands and hang them around his neck. And he whispers to you that
everything is going to be alright. Out of his pockets he takes a thin line as
sharp as the sharpest knife. With that he will slice your hands of. You will
moan. And then he makes a cut at the top and bottom of your forehead. Slowly he
stripps the skin down. Just so 'some more blood can join the life'. He calls it
'the first opening of one.' The second opening is when he opens your belly by
making big circles, again with his little knife. While he whispers that
everything is going to be alright. He gently takes skin, flesh, belly fat in
his hands. Massages it and sais that it finally gets some real treat. You moan.
Everything he takes out, you liver, your intestents, he puts on your table. In
order. Next is your tongue. He kisses it when he's got it. When all the blood
from your forehead is dripping in your eyes you see him kiss your tongue. This
he does not put on the table, he puts it in the pocket of his blouse. Right at
his heart. And for the first time, his eyes glance, they are alive. A twinkle.
He seems happy. So happy. His upper body begins to make round movements. He
makes sounds as if he is making love. Not too loud. Then he takes your tongue
out of the pocket, tips his blouse off and caresses himself with your tongue.
He gets more alive. Excited in his body. Then he takes two big knifes in both
hands and sticks them in your upper legt. As if it was a party. He gives you
all his love by sticking knifes in your cheeks, your arms. Sometimes just the
skin. Sometimes so deep you can hear it touch your bones. He throws away his knifes as if it was a dance. It is his dance. His dance
for you. To open up to life. He opens a bag and takes out an axe. He slices with a big movement your feet
off, your knees off, your upper lefts off. He will hold you in his arms, he
won't let you fall of the chair. He takes care of you, cause everything is
going to be alright. Then he takes your face in his hands again. So you can
look at him. And see him. See the love growing in his eyes. You see deep love.
And your whole heart and the little that is left of your body screams to stay
with this love. And that is just before he pushes with his thumbs your eyes
deep in your skull. So they can swim, feel free, they can rest now. Then he
whispers in your ear 'this might hurt a little, but I will hold you'. Suddenly
with a big force he rips your ribs out, rips the ribcage open en howls as a wold.
Life runs through the limbs that he left you as never before.
You live fully. Just before he eats your heart out.
The man turnes into a wolf. Not at full moon, but when he exposes himself towards seeing 'full life'. He comes alive when the other loses life, he calls it 'opening to life'. But aswell for the one dying, he 'lets them feel how it feels to live fully'.
In both ancient and modern cultures, the wolf could stand for wildness, freedom, personal power, playfullness and instincts.
What is the wolf surpressing? And in lack of that, something else builds. Build into a monster, a werewolf that kills.
My shadow. The sides of me that I supress. And by surpressing, something else build: anger, aggression.
Is the story telling me, I am surpressing my wildness, playfullness, personal power, freedom and instincts?
How can the pattern of the
werewolf be disturbed? What can change it? What is missing so the off
balance is there in the werewolf? What can happen to lead to
transformation?
In a later exercise we are invited to go on a journey with the neutral mask:
The heroine enters a big unknows space.
There, at a certain place, she starts to take away soil.
With more and more energy.
Then she hears a sound from the back.
She looks, frightened or trapped, to the direction it came from.
She is in doubt.
Does she want to continue or put the soil back?
Is she digging up something but is there an external factor who does not want her to do that? Is it something in herself? Is the space frightening?
It reminds me of two passages. One from Maureen Murdock, one from Lucy H. Pearce:
Women do have a quest at this time in our culture. It is the quest to fully embrace their feminine nature, learning how to value themselves as women and to heal the deep wound of the feminine. It is a very important inner journey towards being a fully integrated, balanced, and whole human being. Like most journeys, the path of the heroine is not easy; it has no well-defined guideposts, nor recognizable tour guides. There is no map, no navigational chart, chronological age when the journey begins. It follows no straight lines. It is a journey that seldom receives validation from the outside world; in fact the outer world often sabotages and interferes with it.
Maureen Murdock - The Heroine's Journey
Fear. Shame, humiliation, embarrassment, descrediting difference as "madness". Controlling bodies - throught strict dress codes, veiling, starvation...Banishment or threat of banishment. Rewards...en threats. Repression and dissociation. Imposing hierarchy and clear authority. Keeping people small, powerless, impoverished and infantilised. Exhaustion and lack of adequate rest or recovery time. Unattainable standards. A focus on the external. Closely policed spiritual and sexual experience.
These are the toold of coercion, the rules of play in the patriarchy.
Naturally they are the back bone of most patriarchal religions.
First they are used against us by authority figures when we are younger, when they are physically more powerful than us, and can enforce them. Then we learn to internalise them, creating a super-ego, or internal authority figure which continues the job on their behalf.
Each of these weapons in the arsenal of dark arts is a complex energy trap, taking our natural power und turning it against ourselves in a deadly game of self-policing in order to survive.
Lucy H. Peace - Burning Woman
A heroine is not helped by the outside world. It does not want her to grow and step into her power. And so it is put into the shadow. Is my shadow telling me to waken up into my feminine power?
In another exercise, I feel it becomes more obvious which path to follow:
The heroine is in a space where she feels at ease. Watch her movements, hear her sound.
She makes round and big scooping movements with arms and legs. scooping towards herself. Panting, Moaning. Taking and creating.
She feels free. She feels whole. Powerful. Certain. Sensual. Sexual.
The heroine is in a space where she feels not attracted to.
She starts to cover her yoni with her hands. Then other parts of her body as well. She begins to slap her own body.
'sschhh sschhh', there should be no sound. One of her hands hits her yoni, the other is on her mouth, which muffles her sound. One leg pulls her body forward. The other is dragged along.
The questjon for the heroine is: To which voice, feeling do you listen? Do you dare to live the life you want or give in to the obligations from outside system (or that you internalised)?
The way of Burning Woman is an unveiling of another truth, a deeper truth: our own truth. But to find it we have to have the courage to walk through the other side of fear.
Lucy H. Pearce - Burning Woman
