SHADOW PUPPETS
You stupid little bitch! What do you think you’re doing?! You’re a bad, BAD girl!!! Totally misguided! “Red Lady” and “Red Tent” — ha! Like that isn’t the biggest load of crap this side of “WRONG.” And what’s with your recent breakups, your professional downswing, your lack of social encounters, not to mention proper spiritual discipline and guidance! I will not tolerate this behavior! Shame, shame, shame on you! You don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Your intuition is completely untrustworthy. And Goddess — she’s NOT REAL!!! And what’s more, the whole goddess movement is incredibly cliché, filled with middle-aged women. It’s pathetic, and now you are pathetic. I have worked so hard to keep you well liked and “normal” and successful and “spiritual,” and now you’re ruining it all. Shut the hell up and step back!!!
My pen exploded across the page as I tried to capture this incredibly pissed-off inner voice. And then, just as suddenly as the angry voice had started shouting, it stopped.
“Holy
Crap.”
Although Andrew Harvey’s searing voice had burnt my facial hairs off that one day, Divine Feminine Love and Divine Feminine Truth were undeniably present and felt in my body. This scorching voice was filled with fear and falsity, and made my body contract, my heart shut down, and my skin crawl.
What produced such a lovely lash-out? Well, early one morning, after a nudge from my Lady, I flipped open The Shadow King, by psychologist Sidra Stone, and read about the importance of starting a “voice dialogue” with your inner “shadow king.” Before I knew exactly what the hell a “shadow king” was (it sounds like the title of a kung fu movie from the 1980s), a monstrously mad masculine voice reached up from my insides and blasted open my metaphorical voice box. I grabbed my journal and a pen and let him rip. And, as you just read, he sure did.
Stone defines the shadow king as “the voice, or subpersonality, within us that carries the ancient patriarchal traditions, values, and rules from the past six million years. He is an internalized version of the outer patriarchy and functions both protectively and destructively.”1 The shadow king whispers (or yells, depending on how ticked off he is) from our unconscious. Although he acts differently in each woman, Stone has noticed some common traits: The shadow king supports men and the masculine and feels that women and the feminine are secondary. The shadow king rules by reason, rationality, and righteousness. He dismisses the heart and emotions and spontaneous flow. He aims to control women, sexually and spiritually.
If we unconsciously accept the shadow king’s assessments of us, we might try to be a “good girl,” following his rules and standards and what he deems “proper.” We might strive to be “the perfect” daughter, wife, mother, spiritual devotee — his “ideal” woman. Conversely, when we unconsciously reject the shadow king’s assessments of us, we might try to be a “bad girl,” rebelling against his rules, getting tattoos in naughty places, sleeping around, flunking school or acing school, dominating men, over- or underachieving in the workplace, even fighting aggressively for the feminist cause. In either case (and for many of us, we’re “good girls” in some areas of our life and “bad girls” in others), we’re allowing our shadow king to determine our reality. This means we live in reaction to this unconscious part of our self instead of in conscious response to it.
Here are a few screwy contradictions my shadow king likes to bind me with: He never wants me to get married or have children, because he says I will lose my creativity and my career. But the idea of me without a serious monogamous partner upsets him, because according to him, it makes me “loose,” puts me in danger of being taken advantage of, and makes me stick out from the “norm.” He wants me to look sexy, but then he makes me feel guilty if I attract attention from men he labels as “lusty.” He wants me to be a strong woman, but not be “too” strong, otherwise I won’t be able to rely on men the way he would like me to. Now, your shadow king might not sound like mine — for instance, my close friend’s s.k. desperately wants her to get married and tells her she’s a total loser because she at present has no kids, no husband, no matching dishware. With this mac daddy ruling your life from the shadows, you can’t win, but you can drive yourself crazy trying.
Here’s the dart in the dandelion: No matter how educated and liberal we are, or how many goddess icons fill our living rooms, or how many women’s circles we attend, or how spiritually realized, feminist, emotionally intelligent, sexually confident, or embodied we are, if we don’t go inside at some point and confront, listen to, and eventually make friends with our inner patriarch, we will still be living under his thumb. Like all shadowy characters, if he’s not brought into consciousness, he will subvert our power in subtle or strong ways.
FATHER KNOWS BEST
After I became more familiar with my inner patriarch, I noticed how in simple interactions — like at a restaurant or a yoga class or a party or a professional event — I gave most of my energy and attention to the men in the room. I gave their words and actions more importance than I did the women’s. I began to recognize that I was unconsciously relating to all men as “shadow kings” — daddies, saviors, teachers, pimps, priests, bosses, judges, gods. The interesting thing was, these unhealthy tendencies of mine toward the masculine weren’t always so obvious in my actions; in fact, they were mostly energetic in nature. Yet they had similar effects on my body and soul as if I were actually “sleeping with the boss” or giving my power away to “The Man.”
I sank deeper into this shadowed part of me and began to remember how I had felt and acted at the dinner table with my family growing up. My dad, who is an exceptional father of three girls, was still “the ruler.” When he said “no,” it was final. When my mom, who is equally exceptional, said “no,” it was up for debate. When my father approved or disapproved of something I did, I believed him. When my mother approved or disapproved, well, I didn’t trust her perceptions quite as much. I didn’t take her as seriously as I did my father, and I often put her down or made fun of her fire, her sensitivity, and what some might define as her very femininity. The harsh reality was that part of me still looked down on certain men or women who exhibited these more commonly defined “feminine” traits. I gasped:
I’ve repeatedly knocked the feminine for being “feminine!”
At this shadowy point in the Red Tent, I began to realize that I didn’t even like “the feminine.” Nope. That doesn’t quite do it justice. Deeper down, where a darker darkness screams,
fucking
hated
the feminine!
I felt the feminine was weak, stupid, silly, frivolous, disgusting, too emotional, too moody, “too much,” an illusion, false, a trap, a mistake, evil, not to mention a lower state of consciousness and primitive spiritual approach — basically all the things I accused patriarchy and others of thinking about the feminine. Awesome.
In Spiritual Bypassing, Robert Masters describes shadow elements as those “qualities and traits that we typically keep in the dark and project onto others, both at the personal and collective level, creating the very convincing illusion that such elements don’t belong to us. Exposing this illusion and reclaiming the rejected elements of our being is the essence of shadow work.”2
Our shadows are hidden from us. But if we know where and how to look, we’ll start to notice that they frequently show up as patterns in our lives. My inner patriarch was easy for me to recognize because there were pieces of him projected onto every man I had drawn into my life and in every spiritual group I was attracted to B.M. For example, in my past, I habitually found boyfriends or creative partners and some spiritual groups who were all “pro women, yay, go, Goddess, go!” on the outside. But behind closed doors, they put down the feminine, emotionally abused the feminine, used the feminine for their own sexual needs and personal or professional gain, and were deeply afraid of the feminine. Doing shadow work, I began to recognize how I was doing all this as well, not only in my personal life, but also in my professional life. When I was unconsciously using the Divine Feminine — making Her into a catchy goddess movement or making Her fit into my career plans — my shadow king was cool. If I stopped using Her and, instead, started allowing Her to use me, my shadow king would flip out, because he believed the Divine Feminine would not only ruin my career, but get me killed.
Sounds a bit crazy, right? This is obviously not how I consciously feel toward the D.F. But nonetheless, these were some of the unconscious energies running my show. Remember, often, what we are most passionately devoted to or argue for or try to push or sell or “save” is actually what we have the darkest shadow around (hello, anti-gay Christian senators who are caught having sex with male prostitutes).
Coming to terms with my underground feminine bashing and countless other shadowy ways was rough and disillusioning and, at times, downright devastating. As Masters writes:
Real shadow work does not leave us intact; it is not some neat and tidy process, but rather an inherently messy one, as vital and unpredictably alive as birth. The ass it kicks is the one upon which we are sitting; the pain it brings up is the pain we’ve been fleeing most of our life; the psychoemotional breakdowns it catalyzes are the precursors to hugely relevant breakthroughs; the doors it opens are doors that have shown up year after year in our dreams, awaiting our entry. Real shadow work not only breaks us down, but breaks us open.3
After breaking down and open and down and open and then journaling and then journaling some more, I came to really know my inner patriarch. I also realized, experientially, what I had previously understood only intellectually: If you clear away enough of the inner rubble, eventually you see the roots. You understand that essentially your inner patriarch just wants to protect you and keep you safe. Once I got this, things shifted. Believe it or not, the s.k. can sometimes offer helpful advice and eventually even become your ally. As with all shadow puppets, it just takes the willingness to shine a little light on your internal home theater.
MOMMY DEAREST
Our shadow kings aren’t the only ones ruling our inner courts. Yep, we’ve got a shadow queen inside us, the internalized version of the outer “matriarchy.” She thinks men are little boys who need to be entertained or reprimanded, or lust-crazed teenagers who need to be teased, or authority figures who need to be seduced or reduced, or “evil” enemies who need to be punished, or feral animals who need to be tamed and carefully controlled. I call her the false feminine (f.f. for short). Just as our inner patriarch contains the twisted, negative shadow of the Divine Masculine, our inner matriarch contains the twisted, negative shadow of the Divine Feminine.
Everyone has an f.f., but she’s difficult to define because she’s slippery and chameleonlike; she transforms and adapts according to the woman and the situation. Although the f.f. works differently in each of us, her main attribute is misusing the feminine to attain power. She has no life force of her own, so she survives and gets her needs met by using other people (like batteries) and then allowing them to do the same to her. She needs constant attention — physically and energetically — and she has found manipulative ways to get these unhealthy needs met, including acting very “spiritual” or even “goddessy.”
The confusing thing is that most of us think the f.f. is the true Feminine, because we’ve never been taught differently. Living from our f.f. instead of our true Feminine is not only a deeply unconscious habit, but also an energetic addiction. We get high from it. When we come from our f.f., we feel powerful, “feminine,” and even like we’re being of service.
The f.f. also holds the shadow of the sacred prostitute — that is, just “the prostitute.” As you know, prostituting yourself isn’t just about selling sex; it’s about selling your soul. You could be prostituting yourself at your nonprofit environmental job just as much, energetically speaking, as you could be on the Sunset Strip. You could be prostituting yourself to a popular idea, a political movement, a fashion trend, a spiritual community, or even within your most intimate relationships.
Nancy Qualls-Corbett told me during our interview that there’s a big difference between servitude and service. Someone who has a healthy inner sacred prostitute is not in servitude to a man or to “The Man”; rather she serves the greater good. Servitude is putting myself down, allowing myself to be dominated by others or a system of belief. Service is filling my own well with Her and acting from this inner divine authority. Truth is, we can’t be of authentic service on this planet if we are sucked dry or unconsciously leeching off other people energetically or covertly trying to “get something” that we aren’t giving ourselves (Attention? Safety? Admiration? Love?).
DANCING WITH MY SELF
When I was first learning about the f.f., I went to a community dance event here in San Francisco. At one point in the evening, my Lady asked for permission to block my f.f. and “activate” my soul sight. I agreed. Immediately, the dynamic between myself and the room shifted. The men who were previously swarming around me on the dance floor moved away and started swarming around another woman. To my physical eyes, this woman appeared vibrant, confident, sexy, “feminine”; but to my soul’s eyes, I “saw” that she was unconsciously sucking the energy from the room like a human vacuum and feeding off all the adoration … just like I had been doing. I was shocked, by both of us.
As soon as I noticed what was happening, my f.f. immediately stopped what she was doing, like she had been caught stealing cookies out of the cosmic cookie jar. But I still felt ashamed. In his powerful book Speak Truthfully, author Robert Rabbin wrote, “If you can see your [shadow], if you can name it, look at it, and if you can call yourself [it], then this is not the ultimate truth of who you are. The ultimate truth of who you are is the one who can see this and acknowledge this.”4
Remembering Rabbin’s wise words helped me understand that although the f.f. was a part of me, she wasn’t the entire me, and she didn’t need to be scolded or shunned; instead, she needed to be brought into consciousness. So, I invited the f.f. to dance with my Lady and me. All together. A subtle but powerful shift happened in my body. Although my dance moves hadn’t changed one bit since the beginning of this dance event, my source of Self did. While I couldn’t control how others responded to me (positively or negatively or neutrally) — and, yes, a few curious and attracted men did circle back — I was truly enjoying myself in a public space without unconsciously taking or needing anything from anybody.
Sofia Diaz, a yoga teacher trained in the sacred arts of Indian temple dancing, once told me you can always tell when an authentic devadasi (Indian priestess and temple dancer) walks into a room, because she adds more aliveness to the space. She offers her divine femininity as a gift to All. This open-handed offering often, quite naturally, evokes adoration in many who behold her, while also reminding other women to shine their inner light. In other words, “false” falls away in her presence, because she radiates Divine life itself. As Magdalen admits in Elizabeth Cunningham’s fictional novel The Passion of Mary Magdalen:
I don’t know what it is about priestesses. You can always tell. Or at least I can…. I knew a woman in authority when I saw one. Most women, now and then, concern themselves to some degree with pleasing men or people in general. Priestesses don’t. They have bigger game. Their eyes show it.5
Show It.
OUR BEAUTY AND OUR BEAST
Now’s the perfect time to admit something: When I first saw a PDF for the cover of this very book, I had a brief but total meltdown. Although I had chosen the photo intuitively, when I saw it actually laid out as a book cover, I wondered if I had been seriously mistaken. “Am I objectifying myself? Using my looks to seduce or draw attention and gain sales? Am I perpetuating some repressive standard for women? What if this is really my f.f. acting out? What if I have fallen prey to patriarchy’s manipulative marketing of the divine feminine? OH MY GODDESS, have I learned anything these past years?” My inner diatribe continued like this, for hours, until I wore myself out and my Lady could finally come in.
While She agreed that these inquiries were important to make, She wanted me to pay attention to where they were coming from — that is, my ego’s fears versus my heart’s knowing. She then made a few things very clear: She chose that particular photo to be the cover because of what was coming through it — Us. Together. Whether or not others see Her in and as me is not my business. My business is transmitting the beauty We create together.
Why am I sharing this with you? Because “spiritual” peeps have always had a complex relationship with beauty. We’re attracted to physical beauty, yet we feel guilty about being attracted to it. We might even strive to make ourselves look more beautiful, but then we feel less than evolved for doing so. Feminine beauty in particular has been vilified, worshipped, covered up, and carefully controlled (especially through the religious traditions and patriarchy) for millennia. Our beauty has even been seen as something that stands in the way of our divinity. There are countless stories of saints, especially Christian female saints (like Catherine of Siena, who I mentioned in Chapter 2), who prayed for God to take away their physical beauty so they could be better at loving Him. Some female mystics even cut off all their hair or permanently marred their faces so they could be closer to God.
In my Red opinion, the Divine Feminine urges us to honor beauty and experience the physical world and our female body (no matter what shape or size or color) as divinity incarnate.
Notice Me, Appreciate Me, Adore Me
The Divine Feminine winks from every redwood tree, fleshy thigh, manatee, and mirror. She shines through cellulite, wrinkles, religious robes, and even polyester suits.
I rush to meet myself,
pausing to straighten my clothing, my hair, my crooked face …
I am never presentable to myself …
I compare, I critique, I examine and find fault.
And then I remember You.
My knees bend to meet the earth …
I remember
I
Am
You.
Beauty blooms everywhere when we take off our culture’s lenses and see the way our soul sees. When we judge ourselves by external standards or try to be old-school “spiritually correct” and downplay our looks or shrug away compliments, we are denying the Divine Feminine’s grandness and Her radiant presence that is embodied in every living thing.
SEDUCE MUCH?
While it’s important to be conscious of our f.f.’s seductive habits, I want to be clear that the D.F. has nothing against sacred seduction. (How do you think this Universe got created? The Divine Feminine is the Biggest Flirt around.) In Seductress: Women Who Ravished the World and Their Lost Art of Love, scholar Betsy Prioleau studied world-famous seductresses throughout time and found that these women weren’t necessarily young or the best dressed, nor did they represent the cultural standards of physical beauty. But they did possess qualities such as eros, nonconformity, “supravitality and selfactualization,”6 because they hung tight with the D.F. According to Prioleau, “Seductresses … pack such an erotic wallop because they plug into this ancient archetype embedded in the inherited unconscious of the race. They evoke the goddess, mankind’s first love object, and replicate her Seductive Way.”7
After a talk I once gave in Charleston, South Carolina, a radiant seventy-seven-year-old woman (with red hair, I should add) grabbed my arm and excitedly whispered to me that by reconnecting with the D.F., she was now having the best sex of her entire life with her husband she’d been married to for more than forty years. Not only that, but she was being hit on, repeatedly, by men in their twenties. She was ecstatic and hilarious and so very completely alive and honestly more attractive than most of the twenty-something women in the audience, with their skinny jeans and flawless skin.
Speaking of skinny jeans, during my Red Tent apartment cleanout, my Lady had me feel into my clothes, jewelry, and even perfume. Whatever didn’t truly light my inner fire, I tossed. My Lady taught me that fabrics, colors, and scents are living energies that interact with and affect my female body and the environment in specific ways. She showed me how to use them not only for seduction and beauty, but also medicinally and alchemically. She told me to treat my jewelry as talismans, sacred ornaments — be they expensive diamond studs or cheap necklaces from Urban Outfitters. She reminded me about the power of feathers, glitter, and makeup (yep, try wearing Red lipstick on an ordinary day).
I tentatively pick the deepest Reds for Your garments
The glories of purple orchids for Your hair
You appear clearer to me with my decorations.
Tasting pollen, Your lips murmur …
“Anything … anything
so you will touch Me, beautify Me, want Me, love Me”
In the Red Tent, my natural tastes started returning, superseding society’s fashion and beauty campaigns. My soul became my stylist.
A Redminder: The Divine Feminine looks as varied as we do. What might appear like someone’s f.f. acting out — like posting a cleavage shot on Facebook with a bawdy quote — might actually be their true Divine Feminine doing Her thang in that particular moment. Or an f.f. might be carefully wrapping herself in conservative business suits or baggy clothes or “goddess” garb and speaking passionately about “female empowerment.” The f.f. isn’t just found in women trying to get attention or power through their looks or sexual energy; she is also found in women who are condemning other women for “using” their looks and sexuality to get attention and power.
According to Prioleau, second wave feminism, which began in the early 1960s, turned seductress into a four-letter word and alienated these types of women for being “non–politically correct sellouts.” Prioleau says that feminists made an unwise move here, because these seductresses were not acting “under the influence” of the media or societal standards or cultural conditions. In fact, these sacred seductresses did not behave as a “woman of their time or age or position”10 should. They were virgin in the Jungian sense of the word and were therefore, according to Prioleau, “the archsaboteurs of patriarchy.”8 They seduced as the Sacred and, in doing so, triumphed over repressive systems of power. Whether consciously or not, they took their cue from Ovid’s first precept, “Do as the goddesses did.’”9
Do as your Goddess Does.
WALKING MY TALK (IN HIGH HEELS OR BARE FEET)
All that said, I’ll be honest: It’s been a bumpy, unpaved road moving from seduction through my false feminine to seduction via my true feminine. My ego still has a hard time letting go of what I “get” from the false feminine, especially when most of the world doesn’t appear to register her alternatives. But operating from my f.f. keeps me anxious and competitive, envious and separate from my Lady and how She wants me to experience and express myself here. And, I would rather be invisible and coming from my truth than desired and dependent upon my false.
The one thing we should not do is judge ourselves or others for having f.f.’s. Our false feminines are incredibly sneaky and brilliant at survival, because they’ve had to be. Remember, it’s only in the past century that most women have been able to live alone and make their own sexual and relational choices, not to mention their own living. For thousands of years, we’ve had to be dependent on men and the patriarchy for our livelihoods, so we’ve developed masterful ways to keep ourselves and our children safe, fed, and with a roof over our heads. Back then, other women were threatening not just to our vanity or self-worth, but also to our very survival. Even though much has changed and we’ve made progress in all areas of life, the harsh history of women still hovers.
Sifting out what is “true” (that which comes from our authentic nature) from what is “false” (that which covers our authentic nature) is a daily practice. But it’s the only way our true ladies can seriously bust a move.
ME AND MY SHADOWS
Alongside my shadow work in the Red Tent, I also practiced forgiving myself — over and over and over again. Marion says, “That’s where it starts. You have to forgive yourself for being human, because to be human is to have lots of faults; so you have to forgive, and then the love flows in.”10 This forgiveness reveals a startling truth: we cannot know and embrace our divinity if we have not known and embraced our humanity.
You want to know what Goddess looks like in human form? Well, She doesn’t necessarily look like some perfectly put-together “powerful” or permanently peppy woman. She is not a static, untouchable, glossy figure portrayed on a spiritual posterboard or a website or the cover of a book. No. She grins and she growls. She shines and she shits. She loves and she fears. She has issues, serious issues. And she has gifts, serious gifts. She is the brightest light and the darkest shadow. She is incredibly vulnerable and gratefully real. She looks exactly like me. She looks exactly like you. She looks exactly like us. Now. As we are. Pretending otherwise is yet another way we negate Her Greatest Teaching.