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.
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.
I believe these never stand alone in the process of knowing and being in the world. They are inter-tangled in processes. A process may jump from one to another, yet to return to the first mode.
<This has happened to me plenty of times. When I was deciding if I should separate from the Air Force or stay in, my mind laid out the pros and cons, going over and over them. I finally broke down crying on a phone call with my mom. I was so painfully torn between what seemed like the rational decision (completing my term and saving up money in the process), and what I felt I must do (get out early, move to the Bay Area, and go back to school).
Experiences like this, remind us we can listen to our hearts and our instincts. Sometimes they are exactly what we should listen to. I’m not saying abandon logic and rational thinking. What I am saying is it doesn’t know everything, like it wants you to believe.
The interconnectedness of our different modes of learning can teach us the interconnectedness of other things. As with West, East, North, and South, Thinking, Feeling, Intuition, and Instincts are all on the same map. They all are attempting to chart out the map, to say this way is the way, but one doesn’t exist without the others. For on a map, east doesn’t mean anything without the awareness of west. Understanding this, we can better understand our feelings, thoughts, etc.
When do we talk about the other ways of knowing? Other ways of being in this world? Different ways of making sense of ourselves?
Do we learn them in school? From our parents, friends, co-workers?
Education in our society is for the mind.
“We need to be in touch with all aspects of ourselves. Each informs, but none controls, the others.” Starhawk
Why Care About Balance
I sit writing this, wondering what the point is? Hmmm, the POINT???
We have cut off so much of who we are. We live in a culture that sends us subliminal messages by the shit ton. You know what some of these are: -You are a nobody if you don’t go to school to be somebody -In order to feel good about yourself you need to look a specific way -Money rules the world -Wanting more is greedy -God is selfless as so you should be -Sex is dirty -Being confident means you speak up, let people know you exist -The more you accomplish, the happier you will be.
I could go on and on, coming up with messages we get from society. Rules to live by. Morals to believe as truth. We stretch ourselves thin. We deny modes of existing and being that are not ‘normal.’ We oversimplify our lives with ration.
It’s no wonder we are angry, depressed, and confused.
Our personal power, if we are not conscious, can easily diminish, be forgotten about -like a muscle not worked, it can become weak. Our focus for gauging our value and worth as a person is directed outside in society. Therefore, I am here to remind you to remember your inner strength, worth, power of discernment, and inner wisdom.
We must take responsibility for our growth and our balance. Liberating all of who we are, allowing it to be as it is, learning how to creatively exist with the unknown aspects in ourselves, and designing our beautiful lives with all of it, is what I believe the goal is here.
Times sure have changed; we are releasing delusions that define what a woman and man should be. We are starting to create different beliefs that heal our psyches and change the ways we show up for others. But don’t be fooled, the forces in society will keep trying to control you. When you let up, fall asleep, become too tired to drive anymore someone else will attempt to guide you on their trajectory. Be vigilant with your awareness, and know you have the power within you to create your inner world and your outer.
Expand Your Awareness
Open the doors to other ways of knowing, they may take you to places you have never been. Release your control and bring your awareness to your body, your feelings, and the grounding-ness of the earth you live in.
Relish in the moving forces within yourself. You have so much within you. Neither good nor bad, it is a beautiful chaotic miracle.
There is so much we don’t know that we don’t know. Allow this to humble you, but not take away your curiosity – curiosity to explore the depths of yourself and the world. I urge you to not believe everything your mind says, to use logic when your heart is feeling deeply, to listen to where your instincts are guiding you, and to trust there is something bigger going on than your problems.
It is a call to return to your true nature. I hope you stay tuned for the next few posts in this series where we will discuss what wild looks like in nature and in your life, what desire is, and how to use desire to transform your life.
Let me know what you think. Have you noticed ways in which you have known something through means of instincts, feelings, or intuition? Is rational thinking running the show in your life? Let’s chat in the comment section below.
Part Three of the Women Who Dare To Be Wild series.
Women Who Dare to Be Wild: a person who is courageous enough to be wild and confident enough to take action in accordance with their wild self despite what the culture says they should be. Wild lies within the chaos of the unknown. It has to do with other ways of knowing besides rationalization like feeling, intuition, and instincts. It is the capricious movement of life at many layers of reality: in our psyches (our souls), in our interpersonal relationships, and in our societies.
History can show us the wild has been suppressed in people for many centuries. The barbaric savage is not seen as a civilized member of society. Okay, I’m being extreme – we all know the times when cavemen roamed the Earth are long gone. But are there aspects of the barbaric savage that we suppress, that may very well be what we are longing for in ourselves and our lives? And there is more to “wild” than the perceived “wild savage”. Our beliefs and ideas about what wild is have been manipulated for a long time. Throughout history events, discoveries, and ideas have formed our collective unconscious beliefs about who we are and what we are not.
This quote from James Baldwin, expressing how we carry history within us, shows just how much we are affected by the past:
For history, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely some- thing to be read. And it does not refer merely, or even principally, to the past. On the contrary, the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations.
And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. In great pain and terror, one begins to assess the history which has placed one where one is, and formed one’s point of view. In great pain and terror, because, thereafter, one enters into battle with that historical creation, oneself, and attempts to recreate oneself according to a principle more humane and more liberating; one begins the attempt to achieve a level of personal maturity and freedom which robs history of its tyrannical power, and also changes history. –James Baldwin, Unnameable Objects, Unspeakable Crimes
So many of our beliefs have been morphed and altered from societal messages. Believing we have to be a certain way to be lovable, to love ourselves, to just be okay is a large distortion we carry in our psyche. The thoughts that tell us we need to be skinner, healthier, happier make us feel like we are lacking. I believe this distortion stems from the misunderstanding of power. The people in our lives (family, teachers, celebrities, actors, etc.) do not teach us how powerful we are. Our power (strength, ability, worthiness, immanence) is not power-over: domination over other things and people. No, it stems from the understanding that there is inherent magic in everything and that everything and everyone is perfect as they are. A great author, Starhawk, calls this power-from-within. This power is deep within you, connected to the chaotic world, and can be felt and intuited. When we shift our awareness to the power within, all the outside messages lose their strength. We no longer believe we have to own a specific thing or be something we currently are not, to be okay.
Liberating the wild, creative, power deep within you will transform your life.
So what in history is present in us today that creates a distorted view of ourselves and our reality?
Since birth, we are raised in a culture of estrangement, seeing the world around us as nonliving parts, that can be manipulated, valued only by an outside standard not for what they inherently are. This shapes our consciousness, and it very much has to do with how most religions view God, as being something outside of us to be feared and obeyed. Over the past years, researching this topic, I’ve found this way of viewing the world as the western ideology. The west being European Countries and nations that were created by Europeans like the United States. The ‘west’ use to be conquerors and missionaries now they are the leading nations in the globalized capitalist economy. It is a system of power-over, with philosophies based on production, control, and fear of the unknown.
Disclaimer: Please do not think some of these ideas are all bad. I’m speaking about the foundations of our western reality; they are still current and real, which means they are in you and what is in you is not bad, it just is. Look within to see the truth, but please don’t go judging it. Be gentle with yourself and others. Some of the ideas hold us together and still drive us to do more in our lives. I don’t believe we can or should go back to an uncivilized world, but I do think we can become aware of destructive patterns and choose differently.
Ideas that got us where we are
Dualism
Dualism is separating things to attempt to understand them logically.
The separation of
man and nature,
women and men,
mind and body,
and light and dark.
This focusing on the thinking mind, dividing subjects into opposite ends to compare and contrast so they could be wholly known and controlled, limits the complex magic of the items we are observing.
The issue with dualism is that nothing is clean cut. We know this intuitively; nothing is black or white. Some people don’t like this argument though, because it hurts their ego. Their mind wants to know something because they feel secure in that knowledge. When told it is not that simple, fear creeps in.
Fearing what we do not understand
In our western consciousness, we put power in knowledge. When we do not “know” something, we feel weak, dumb, less than. So our thinking mind wants to know everything. We know intuitively that we can’t possibly know everything, but our ego mind will play dirty tricks on us. Have you ever met something who thinks they know everything? They go about their lives belittling everything and everyone into this formed idea that they can understand.
Hierarchy of power
In every circumstance, there is a power dynamic. There is a ranking system of control or power. In the office, you have the general boss, supervisors, then entry-level personnel. Within your friends’ group, you may have a few outspoken, dominating peers; wingman to those dominating ones; and followers of the two types. In the classroom, there is the teacher, the teacher assistant, the popular kids, the rebels with a cause, the nerds, band geeks, and all the stragglers who don’t belong to a group. It might seem like I’m extreme here, but I want to lay this hierarchy out in plain sight. Our society does this all the time. We divide power into groups, and this directly correlates with our worth.
The problem here is that in every situation we have some outside standard for the power structuring, it is not taking into account the inherent and unique worth of every person or thing. Also for it to continue, we must all agree with the rules of the hierarchy and structuring. If we do not accept, we break up the system, and the system loses its power over us.
Capitalism
At first glance, Capitalism may not seem relevant when thinking psychologically about the wild within oneself, but once understood that history resides within us and forms the culture we are emerged in, we can narrow in on aspects of Capitalism that have changed our reality. It begins with the creation of markets and trade in Europe centuries ago. At this time, communities sold excess supplies after their needs were met at the market. They would mostly trade items and work within their communities, sustaining themselves. Also, gatherings would occur where they could gossip, pass on information, support each other, and hold rituals. The markets soon grew larger and more significant due to the wealthy importing and exporting items from other countries. This time in history was the era of colonialism: powerful empires and colonies sent their best to discover resources in faraway lands. Often they had to fight for the resources and take them from the local tribes and communities that lived there. The powerful wanted more. So they used slavery as a way of accumulating as much as they could.
Valuing discovery for accumulation instead of understanding
We want to travel the world to say we’ve been there. We feel better than others. Status elevated. What did we learn from their culture? Who cares, we got to get pictures in front of foreign shacks and beautiful scenery. We describe them as the third world poor. We can’t see how they would want to live as they do. —The dark side of our culture.
Discovering is jaded, to begin with. The very act of discovering is finding or seeing or experiencing something that wasn’t, that now is. Implying that the small rural town in Zimbabwe didn’t exist before you got there, or the Moroccan sweater you found wasn’t valuable before you brought it home to sell vintage. Discovering is cringeworthy, right up there with cultural appropriation.
Back to the main point here, when “discovering” something you once did not know, don’t think you will know it right away. Please understand, that you are seeing and understanding the thing observed from your perspective (your culture, your history, your education, your bias). Know that this thing or place has it’s own perspective (culture, history, education, bias) that can be completely different than your own. Valuing understanding can shift us away from trying to elevate our status by accumulating experiences, things, and resources.
Value of a person associated with production
What have you produced in your lifetime? Have you created anything of value? How much work can you get done in a day that will convert to the dollar? This idea is ingrained in us. Often I beat myself up for not being more “productive.” We look down upon those who are not a “productive member of society,” who are not contributing in some way. This has shifted from participating in the community for subsistence to contributing to the market economy.
Discipline
Working for the man, we have internalized the value of being disciplined. The slave owner no longer needs to tell us to keep working, we value being disciplined and working hard, so we tell ourselves to keep working. I think discipline is important, but with a goal that we want not a goal for someone else. Many of us work just for the paycheck to be able to provide for ourselves and our families. Valuing a good work ethic gets us through tough times. But there is so much more to life than work.
God being outside of ourselves
Believing God is separate than us creates many delusions. Most importantly the belief that we are less powerful than he, giving away the power of creation to an outside source.
Rationalism
Rationalism is the belief that acting in the world should be based on rational thinking (reason and certainty) rather than experiencing (feeling or intuition). The problem with rationalism is when it is taken as an absolute and valued above all other foundations of knowledge. When societies, organizations, or relationships value rationality over other forms of knowing, we can feel estranged and disconnected from our deeper selves.
Viewing the world as nonliving to be controlled
This idea can be seen as humans thinking only humans have value, and that nature is for us to control and manipulate for our purposes. Western civilizations have for centuries, even millenniums, valued progressive cities. They have valued industrializing and creating systems that progress the human existence forward, with no regard to consequences on our planet Earth. This is a selfish, destructive mindset.
Individualism
A cosmological shift occurred where humans stopped believing in the interconnectivity of self and began to think of the self as separate from other people and things and an entity all of its own.
Alienation
We have been separated from our food; from the making of our furniture, appliances and other household items; and even from our health. We buy everything we have. Over many centuries, processes have been created to optimize production and gain money, resulting in the removal of knowing how to sustain oneself. We are denied the satisfaction of creating and witnessing the final product. Even our advancements in technology, have alienated us from other people. Often slowly, sometimes abruptly we have been separated from all these things.
It’s easier to think of our current ideology as a house. The foundation has been there for a long time, allowing the rest of the house to build upwards. The first floor then is built upon the foundation with walls (ideas). If walls were not there, there would be no functioning rooms. The top level is our more modern ideas and beliefs, built upon the bottom floor’s walls.
Most of us live in this house. The work I’m here to do is to awaken you from the dream that the house is all there is. Although it may be scary, there is so much outside of this house. You may be raised in it and it may be all you know, but you can reclaim other ways of living. The safety of this house is a delusion. Deep down you feel there is more to life; there is a depth to your experience you feel is missing.
You may find yourself asking, “Why should I dare to be wild? What’s really in it for me?” This is not a simple answer, and it’s not one I can answer for you. I know I haven’t really told you what I believe wild to mean. First, I want to show you where wild is not. In assisting you in feeling the void, it may motivate you to look within for your own wildness.
If you aren’t wary you may just sink into a dull life.
“What is a dull life,” you ask. It is less of a specific way of living and more of a feeling state. It is when we have made our lives small in one way or another.
Examples Of Dullness…
Our lives become dull when we get into a career where the topics being discussed are rigid, defining, and grounded in reason. If there is no space for unanswered questions the hard ones don’t get discussed, leading to the fallacy that humans can know everything. It may feel like something is missing, but we do not know what it is. Mystery and imagination lie in the unanswerable questions.
Our lives become dull when we have too much structure. We get up a specific time, do the same exercise every day, follow specific procedures at work, cook similar meals every day, etc. If there is no time for spontaneity or creativity, where is the fun in living?
Our lives become dull when we don’t look within us for guidance but instead ask everyone else, and attempt to follow other people’s footsteps toward the “good life”. Do you think you could have the answer to that decision you’ve been trying to make or that career you’ve been holding back on?
Our lives become dull when we don’t have any grounding beliefs or stories in the invisible, in spirit. We worship money, status, and obtaining material things. These don’t sustain us though. Where are the stories and beliefs that keep us going, that light us up, and hint toward the truth about life? What we worship guides us in life.
“We dull our lives by the way we conceive them.” –James Hillman
Our lives become dull because of the stories we tell about our lives and how we perceive them. It’s like when we simplify our lives either to make sense of them or to try to share them with others we leave out so much. We reduce our lives to the moments and events that occurred in the past. Or we reduce life to rites of passage, to accomplishments, to perceived events that you believe say something about yourself.
But get this…. Your life will never only be what you say it is and at the same time, it is whatever you say it is. I imagine this to be like this analogy of the moon: someone is pointing to the moon and saying the moon is round, white and very far away. This is not really the moon, though. You are attempting to describe the moon, but your descriptions are not the actual moon. This is the same with your life.
If this is true, then why not tell better stories? Why not tell stories that try to grapple with a feeling we have or with the beauty we experience? We can see our lives through multiple colored lenses and make them interesting.
When I read James Hillman’s book, The Soul’s Code, I lit up when he said we are missing a romantic flair in how we imagine our lives. Maybe it is just me, possibly from my time in the military or from my time studying psychology, but I attempt to simplify my life in order to dissect and analyze it. When I do this, I totally ignore the wildness that is in me and flowing through me, the wildness that is connecting me to other people and situations and ideas and movements and moments.
I believe I do this in an effort to understand myself at a deeper level. And isn’t this something we all want more of? But, when I am only using one mode of knowing (thinking) to understand myself, I am only understanding myself through one lens. I am only knowing myself through rationalization, by dissecting and categorizing “so-called facts” about my life.
By no means am I saying to drop the career that is grounded in intellectual ideas or remove all structure from your life. I suggest though, that you look at your life and see if any of these examples are ringing true in you. So we can continue our journey into uncovering, unleashing, and reviving the wild in your life.
Do you ever feel like you are holding yourself back?
Do you ever feel like for some reason your true self is not good enough, too complicated, or just “too much” to be let out?
Do you ever feel like it is wrong to love everything about yourself?
Do you ever wonder that there is more to you than just your body, your mind?
Do you ever feel like people live shallow lives around you and you are different because you know there is something more?
Sometimes I catch myself in a low dull state, and think to myself, “this isn’t me”. I am so much brighter and louder and sexier and WILD. I want to be real and experience life deeply, but often I feel like there is no place for this.
If you resonate with any of these feelings then I think you will like the series of blog posts I have created: Women Who Dare to Be Wild.
The title comes from my research paper I completed for my final project in my BA program. I wrote an astonishing 38 pages… say what?!?… I attempt to take the good shit out of that paper and find themes I want to discuss here.
So to begin, what the hell am I talking about?
Women Who Dare to Be Wild
Women: female-oriented human beings in society. Or more specifically the feminine energy in every single human being that has been oppressed, stomped on, shamed, belittled, etc.
Who Dare to Be Wild: the person who is courageous enough to be wild and confident enough to take action in accordance with their wild self despite what the culture says they should be.
What the hell is wild? That is explained in this future post.
Introduction
Masculinity is the norm in the ‘west’ (our civilized, industrialized society). Some consequences from this are – over-using and taking more than what is replenished, holding particular logic structuring that keeps rationalization a priority and valuing production and profit over human needs.
I believe we have come a long way in women’s rights and breaking down gender roles that hinder our human fullness. But our culture still deems specific ways of acting and being as better than others. What can be worse is when we internalize all the shoulds and shouldn’ts and believe they are coming from us. When in actuality we pick up beliefs from our parents, our friends, and from media. If we don’t become aware of what the filters we use to question how we live our lives, we can become a prisoner to them.
“The stories we’ve been living by for the past few centuries – the stories of male superiority, of progress and growth and domination – don’t serve women and they certainly don’t serve the planet.” Sharon Blackie
I don’t know about you, but I like to feel like I have some say in my life and I am in the driver’s seat. For this to occur, we need beliefs and stories that ground our power within instead of power over.
I want stories that remind me of who I am at my deepest level, stories that emphasize how I’m intertwined and connected with other living things, and stories that inspire me to live a magical life. This desire is fueling my quest into the wild.
Wild lies within the chaos of the unknown. It has to do with other ways of knowing besides rationalization like feeling, intuition, and instincts. It is the capricious movement of life at many layers of reality: in our psyches (our souls), in our interpersonal relationships, and in our societies.
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings.” Audre Lorde
Through understanding the differences between ‘signs’ and ‘symbols’ and understanding archetypes that we hold within us we can start to grasp the depth of ourselves. Our bodies begin to feel like home. We begin to appreciate our chaotic emotions. And we learn how powerful we are as a human being.
So earlier I said the wild lies within the unknown, but then I said it has to do with other ways of knowing like feelings, intuition, and instincts. This may sound contradicting, but once you begin to understand that the act of knowing, or the belief that we know this ‘sign’ or ‘symbol’ (ex. oh this is fear I am feeling or the word ‘wild’ that keeps coming into my awareness means I need to get into nature) is not the actual chaoticness of what is occuring, you begin to really grasp how you can not possibly know the wild.
A poem I wrote before even stumbling upon the material and coming up with the idea for this research:
How Dare You
Walking in straight lines, we eradicated the wildness.
Something deep has been forgotten, our wildness.
Shhh, eyes burning holes through her, hearts beating faster.
Her voice is denied, everyone is scared of wildness.
Crying, kicking, screaming – it is locked behind bars of shame,
too much for worthiness lays wildness.
Concealed skin, edges sanded off, warped self, she hides behind
a mask, denying the call – wildness.
Stretching behind a desk to pass the time; It is freaking out inside,
“Please express me,” said Wildness.
There is a silent agreement; this is what we shall do.
Gentle kisses late at night, all while craving steamy wildness.
Bouncing around, ricocheting off walls, energy gradually building.
Will it explode? Why not let it be? – freeing wildness.
Middle finger in the air, they say, “How can you dare?”
I say, “I am allowing wildness!”
By no means are these posts inclusive of the topics I discuss or the information I give an exact definition. Allow some fluidity and please question what I say. Run it through your mind, body, heart, and spirit and ask if it rings true to you.
