Article Content
Part Five of the Women Who Dare To Be Wild series.
I love the word WILD; it packs such a punch. I use to think to be wild meant being a little bit crazy, like a hot mess. You know, describing how you use to party in your late teens and early 20’s – getting white girl wasted, staying up ’til dawn, dancing on whatever you wanted, and not having a care in the world. Even though I still will use wild to describe those years of my life, I think being wild means so much more.
Being wild means coming back to our true mysterious nature. This journey requires courage for we have built up a wall, a protective shell around ourselves to protect the preciousness and wildness of our being.
Wild In Nature, In Our Nature, & Everywhere Else
We can learn a lot about ourselves by looking to nature. Consider that you seem to follow these same ‘laws’ of nature, being a mammal, part of this ecosystem that is on Earth. So the attributes I will describe below are also true inside of you. I hope you come to accept and love these qualities in yourself. Some of them are feminine, which we have valued as less than for far too long. Understanding these will help you connect to the wildness – the fire of your being, the source of your magic.
Mysterious & Powerful
First and foremost, being wild cannot be understood by rationalization and logic. It is a practice, continually changing with life. It is a way of existing and moving in the world with an internal humbling power. This power gets its strength from something deep and wise within and amongst us all.
You are mysterious with unknown potential and hidden treasures buried within you. Your dance with life is unknown. It is a journey that must be taken and embarked on. It will reveal much when following the ways of the wild.
❤ The Unknown
Our minds cannot possibly understand the complexities of ourselves let alone nature. I believe it is a sickness to think we can know everything. Can we know what invisible forces make plants grow? Of course, we can attempt to know. We can study plants, organisms and the biosphere to claim we are an expert in the field. But do we really know all there is to know? Is it really true that our facts about how things work really encompass the depth of what is going on? I’m calling us out on our bullshit. We act oh so intelligent, but we have no wisdom when we think we know everything. It reminds me of the quote by Socrates, “The only true wisdom is knowing you know nothing.”
We are raised in a culture that goes to great lengths to control the unknown for the same reason we attempt to control our emotions, our feelings, our lives – fear. We fear we will get behind in work, in paying our bills and end up on the street. We fear we will never find a great partner. We fear we will be seen as stupid. We fear we will be judged as a loser. We fear ghosts and evil spirits. We fear we may be crazy. We fear terrorists will destroy our freedom. We fear to be alone, and the silence that endures. I could go on, but you may be picking up on the essence of what we fear – not knowing what is out there, what is around the corner, what other’s think or feel.
❤ Cycles & Tangos
“The secret cause of all suffering is mortality itself, which is the prime condition of life. It cannot be denied if life is to be affirmed.” Joseph Campbell
* Life / Death
* Push / Pull
* Ease /Resistance Cycles
* Action / Inquiry
* Growth / Rest
Cycles are what they are, we can not fully understand them. But we can accept the complexity of them.
None of these examples is just ONE process; where something is born, shines brightly for many years, then withers and dies. Oh no, birth and dying occur in repeated cycles. The analogy – when one door closes another one opens – is describing this life/death/life cycle. Whenever we perceive something as dying or near its end, this could be losing a job, a relationship, or a seemingly rare opportunity, something else always is birthed from it. We can not know when the birth or growth will happen after the death or rest, but it will. Also accepting that we will die, that all things die, we embrace life at a deeper level.
❤ Chaotic & Contradicting
In our western society, we tend to want to know the facts of a situation and have a solid, concrete storyline. This makes us feel sure about something. In a world that is so chaotic and mysterious, our minds like concrete explanations and singular truths.
But we cannot go through our lives just in our minds!!! This is deadening our lives. We are shorting ourselves of so much more.
Can you stop for a minute and imagine this as a reality: to every situation, every moment there are multiple truths/ multiple realities. There are many different perspectives, different psyche processes going on, unconscious motives and conscious motives.
Example: Why did you just do a double take at that girl walking by?
There could be many explanations. There could be invisible motives behind that encounter.
It might be true that you thought she was beautiful and that is why you looked at her. But it could also be true that you felt like you knew her, from someplace and sometime, you felt like she was familiar. Although, you know rationally this is not true. Or it could be you felt threatened by her, and that is why she caught your attention. Or it could be true that you had felt like you haven’t really connected with anyone, in a deep sense, in such a long time that when she looked at you something awoke within you.
As you can see by my examples, there could be many truths to just one simple scenario. Some of these truths may seem contradictory to each other. But why does one have to be wrong if another one is true? Our world is very complicated. There are no simple answers and precise truths.
Broaden your scenario to more significant questions and more profound truths. What do I want out of life? Why am I with this person? Why am I here? Now imagine the answers or the truths to these questions. Let the unknown answers be complex. You don’t need to know these answers. Many people’s responses change and morph throughout their lives. I want you to open up what you believe to be true and known, allowing many truths or answers to slip into your awareness, making your life a little bit fuller.
❤ Connection
We have to shift our belief from we are separate from nature, from other people, from animals to one that grounds us in our connectivity with all. I believe this separation belief stems from the idea that we are separate from God. The belief that God is up there in the sky and we have to do good in the world to join him in his glory. Bullshit! God is here now, in us and with us always. God is not an entity, it is a force, a magical presence in our world. We are all connected by this divinity, by this magic – the sun, the trees, the water, the animals, and all of us humans.
❤ Creative
“Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows.” Henry David Thoreau
Creativity stems from creation. It is the act of creating. The living world around us is always creating; Life grows, reproduces, moves, builds. We are life, creating at multiple levels. At a basic level, we are replicating and producing new cells at an almost constant rate. On a conscious level, we are creating stories, ideas, and plans that manifest in our lives differently. We are powerful as inherent creators. Where does this energy come from though? Is it connected to and intertwined with the forces in life that create all over the world?
I do know it feels—like a fire inside my soul, my body moves me to create and engage with life. Once I can let go of trying to understand what this creative energy is, and stop and feel the life force that is in me, I can tap into and flow with it.
Clarissa Estes, Ph.D. in Women Who Run With the Wolves, uses her poetic prose to assist us in knowing the wild within us. She says we were born from this wild presence (we were created, like everything else that grows and expands in this majestical world) and it is where our essence is derived from.
Photo by Matthias Ripp
❤ Beauty
There is a difference between thinking something is beautiful and feeling and sensing beauty. When we see, hear, feel something so profound we feel we have glimpsed God, this is sensing beauty. The magic of creation has awed us. Something struck us. Clarissa Estes, Ph.D. explains this phenomenon as “tastes of the wild.”
“For some women, this vitalizing “taste of the wild” comes during pregnancy, during nursing their young, during the miracle of change in oneself as one raises a child, during attending to a love relationship as one would attend to a beloved garden.” Clarissa Estes
Now I can see some fault in this, she is describing only roles a woman would have as a mother and as a lover. I believe her attempt here though, is to describe the precious moments in life where we are struck by awe. I would like to add other ones that may be more applicable to younger generations. These “tastes of the wild” can occur while running outside, looking into a lover’s eyes while having sex, watching kids play at a park, having a conversation with a stranger about something meaningful, and even in times of hardship when people come together to assist each other.
Beauty lies in the rawness of life.
❤ Symbolic
Most of what we perceive on the surface level is a symbol. It is something we use to attempt to understand and know something more extensive than the symbol or behind the symbol.
Language is also a great example that life is symbolic. We use words and phrases and sentences to explain deeper meanings, things, experiences, etc. What gives me a greater understanding that the words I speak are not the truth just symbols pointing to the truth is the awareness that other languages are also attempting to speak the truth, to write the truth. What is even more interesting is that there are words and phrases in other languages that describe feelings and experiences that English has no words to describe.
When we use words to describe to someone our feelings these are symbols. Symbols like images, dreams, metaphors are used to create meaning in our lives, but they should not be taken as the absolute truth, because they are the mediators.
When we understand everything is a symbol or a sign of more in-depth interpretations, we then can become more open.
Spoken words often become heavy because we feel we have to take them as they are. Once understood that they were spoken in order to explain and/or describe something deeper, they feel less cumbersome. Our relationships change because we are less hard on people for what they said to us way back when. Life becomes less serious, less literal and we open ourselves up for more joy and fun.
❤ Openness
As nature cannot be controlled, we cannot control every aspect of our lives. We can create habits and rituals which ground us in the practicality of societal life – Yesss to this! It is how we survive in our world. Although, for our wholeness as a human being, we must release our control. We must become aware that we can not rule our emotions, our feelings, our desires, our actions, our behaviors, our knowledge, and so on. Attempting to perfect and have everything under control is the sickness that has corrupted our world at every level. Who is the one controlling all these other aspects of yourself?
Openness is the participation with life instead of the pursuit of possession of things in life. When we let go and open ourselves up to what the mysterious universe has to offer, we begin to live now. Life is always now.
❤ Inherent Wisdom
I would say inherent wisdom is similar to common sense. Although, inherent wisdom is more instinctual knowledge stemming from human nature. Common sense can be that but often is wrapped up in cultural and societal norms. We all have instincts: we get red flags when danger is near, we feel pulled toward places and people, and get the creeps around others. These instincts come from somewhere. There is more depth to us than our rational mind, and it is fucking smart!
At its core being wild means to be connected with all parts of yourself – becoming whole. Attuned to your feelings and desires; aware of inclinations, inspiration, imagination, intuition; weary of thoughts; responsive toward your surroundings in a clear manner; and bridging these different modes of knowing is the work of being wild. All while moving and flowing with life’s currents.
Stay tuned for two more posts in this series. Check out the previous posts here.
-Kristina