An excerpt from Women Who Run With The Wolves:
“When a woman surrenders her instincts that tell her the right time to say yes and when to say no, when she gives up her insight, intuition, and other wildish traits, then she finds herself in situations that promised gold but ultimately give grief. Some women relinquish their art for a grotesque financial marriage, or give up their life’s dream in order to be a “too-good” wife, daughter, or girl, or surrender their true calling in order to lead what they hope will be a more acceptable, fulfilling, and especially, more sanitary life.
In these ways, and others, we lose our instincts. Instead of our lives being filled with the possibility of enlightenment, we are covered over with a kind of “endarkenment” instead.
Our outer ability to see into the nature of things and our inner seeing are both snoring away so that when the Devil comes a-knocking, we sleepwalk over to the door and let him in.(…)
Yet, it must be emphasized that this is where everyone begins. In this tale the father represents the outer world point of view, the collective ideal that pressures women to be wilted rather than wildish. Even so, there is no shame and no blame if you have given away the flowering boughs. Yes, you have suffered for it, no doubt. And you may have given it away for years, even for decades. But there is hope. The mother in the fairy tale announces to the entire psyche what has occurred. She says,”Wake up! See what you have done!” And everybody wakes up so fast, it hurts.
But still it is good news, for the wishy washy mother of the psyche, the one that once helped to dilute and dull feeling function, has just awakened to the horrible meaning of the bargain. Now a woman’s pain becomes conscious. When it is conscious she can do something with it. She can use it to learn with, to grow strong with, to become a knowing woman.
Over the long term, there will be even better news yet. That which has been given away can be reclaimed. It can be restored to its proper place in the psyche. You will see.” (1)
This is basically what I try to achieve with my blog. I try to remind you and me to always stay close to ourselves, to follow our own guidance, to live by our own standards.
When we forget about this sacred truth, we can fall into a slumber and make some wrong decisions along the way, influenced by spending too much time with others and their expectations, and too little with ourselves and our inner wisdom. The answer is always to return within and be radically honest with ourselves. We can only thrive when we know ourselves and our intentions. The universe will respond to our intentions, so we better get them straight, and not make excuses once we know what we want. We have the right to express ourselves fully and truthfully, even when others don’t agree or try to shame us.
Especially when you are very sensitive to other people’s wishes, needs and energy, it can often feel like their wishes are your own, until you have a moment of alone-time, and you discover that your instincts and heart are telling you a very different story.
A lot of us wake up one day, totally empty, with that pressing feeling that we need to make a change, yet we don’t know if we are able to. We don’t want to hurt others and we are unsure about our own ability to cope.
But I find that when we have the courage to trust and to follow through on the changes our hearts whisper us to make, that we are supported by a power bigger than us, and that things seem to fall into place effortlessly.
Don’t be afraid of hard work, though. If you’ve ever thoroughly cleaned a dirty room with your own hands, you know the satisfaction it gives to see everything shine, and to know that you made it so.
Hard work is not only desirable, it is also very necessary for our Soul’s health.
Normally, when you are doing something you love and gives you joy – which is always the way of the heart – working hard for it will come to you naturally, and will give you much satisfaction.
Don’t let anyone take that magic away from you. We all need to dig in the mud of our psyche, to find out who we are. This is so important. We need to have a strong sense of Self to exist within this world in harmony. Otherwise we are very susceptible to false promises and worse, people who prey on our light and energy.
“The unemployed miller, down on his luck, had begun to chop wood. It is hard work to chop wood, is it not? There is much heaving and hauling. Yet this chopping of wood symbolizes vast psychic resources, the ability to provide energy for one’s tasks, to develop one’s ideas, to bring the dream, whatever it be, within reach. So when the miller begins to chop away, we could say the psyche has begun to do the very hard work of bringing light and warmth to itself.
But, the poor ego is always looking for an easy way out. When the Devil suggest he will relieve the miller of hard work in exchange for the light of the deep feminine, the ignorant miller agrees. We seal our own fates in this way. Deep in the wintry parts of our minds, we are hardy stock and know there is no such thing as a work-free transformation. We know that we will have to burn to the ground in one way or another, and then sit right in the ashes of who we once thought we were and go on from there. (2)”
(1) Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With The Wolves, p. 397-398 and 401
(2) p.400