Unmask the Fire Thieves- Blue Beard, Hades, and gods of the underworld- reveal the inner and outer forces that steal your spark.
Myth Bluebeard pg. 40
Bluebeard- a natural predator of the psyche.
Key of Knowing (Key of Blood)- Use curiosity and sense of discovery.
Estes questions to instigate transformation-
What is behind the visible?
What is not as it appears?
What do I know deep in my ovaries that I wish I did not know?
What of me has been killed or lies dying?
The Ability to Stand What One Sees. (Undecorated truth).
The deepest work is usually the darkest.
Track the bodies
Follow instincts
See what you see.
Dismantle destructive forces
Backtracking & Looping
Giving the Cry.- Strength and Action.
What action can I take right now in my life to rescue myself from my predator?
What actions have I taken in the past that have aided me?
Consciousness is the way out.
Check In
Intro.
Estes uses myths that show how women can survive difficult circumstances that inevitably show up. The subject matter is intense. The idea is to look at the past for information, but not get stuck there. These myths show us phases of what all women living juicy lives go through.
La Loba shows us how to bring our dead or numb pieces back to life.
Blue Beard illustrates the predator that exists in our psyche and how that predator takes us over. It also shows us how to use our inner animus (male piece) to defeat the predator.
Myths give us ancestral wisdom- stories our parents are possibly unable to teach us, that helps us become wiser.
Myths are the dream of the culture, whereas dreams are our own personal myths- Joseph Campbell.
Clarissa Pinkola Estes is a depth psychologist, who has provided insights into the collective female psyche. Her work is illuminating and deep.
La Loba
Read Singing Over the Bones:
La Loba is about connecting to our natural wild nature, and learning how to collect and put each bone together so that we might truly live.
Estes says that to make the connection we must sing over the bones. This involves being truthful about what needs restoring and about how we need the quality we wish restored. Then go to a feeling of deep love and connect to this wildish part.
Meditation, dance, writing, painting, journeying, drumming, anything which creates altered consciousness is the way to arrive at this meeting place of the wild. (often called the crack between the worlds) A place of ecstatic, altered consciousness.
When we get to this point, speak one’s soul- sing over the bones.
It is from this place we can call back the dead and disassociated pieces of ourselves. It involves knowing which part of our lives should live and which parts should die. The ancient goddess archetype of life/death/life.
Good questions to ask until one decides on one’s true song.
– What has happened to my soul voice?
– What are the buried bones of my life?
– In what condition is my relationship to the instinctual self?
– When was the last time I ran free?
– How do I make life come alive again?
Estes says that our great work is to learn to understand what around and about us and within us must live and what must die.
What do you think about that? What does she mean?
When something is lost we must go to the old woman who lives in the pelvis. How do you access your intuition?
Each of the questions is worth pondering. I refer back to them every now and again, just to review my situation.
Bluebeard.
This is the most intense myth we do. Its message is strong, at times upsetting- but holds the key to start bringing back life to places in ourselves that are dead. To learn to understand myths is to start to tap into cultural wisdom that is not necessarily passed on in families.
The myths tell us about pitfalls common to all humans- just because this is the way we are wired. It gives us some illumination on what tends to die or be killed in our psyches, and how to look for healing.
Don’t be surprised if you have a strong reaction to this tale. Like strong medicine, it has the ability to taste bitter while providing a strong antidote. Notice the feelings you have and look at them as valid. Try not to be swept away by them. Come back to the tale to look for strength and the keys to healing. Or if it feels like too much, look at it intellectually, more from a distance, with curiosity and a sense of –“what if”.
Understanding Fairy Tales:
Our psyche contains all the elements of a fairytale. For instance, when you hear about the young maiden, sisters, Bluebeard, the Castle, the mother, and brothers, they are not forces on the outside, but rather symbolically aspects of one psyche.
When there is a disruption in a kingdom during a fairytale or a crisis, it is part of the psyche that is out of balance and needs restoring.
Try not to get too grim with this work. Keep perspective. All of us have pieces that are out of balance. If we are wise, lucky and have the help we sometimes can rebalance and get stronger.
Restoration can be hard bleak work. Do not think you need to destroy your primary relationships or existing lifestyle. It is important to know remember when approaching this work, that imperfection is a natural state. No relationship or aspect of ourselves is flawless. But they may still be good enough and healthy.
It is not the intent of this work to create feelings of dissatisfaction with all areas of life. Rather, to find what is most harmful to you and be more aware of that pattern or person, and then chose how to deal with it. These are awareness tools to provide you with more choice and options at times when change is necessary.
It is important not to judge yourselves or others with this work. The power comes in making what was invisible visible and having greater clarity about patterns that exist inside yourself, family and society.
Review:
Bluebeard represents a natural predator of the psyche. To restrain this predator, women must keep possession of their instinctual powers: insight, intuition, endurance, tenacious loving, keen sensing, far vision, acute hearing, singing over the dead, intuitive healing, and tending to their own creative fires.
Bluebeard is a complex that we can track by catching ourselves when we desire power over others.
Both within ourselves, within others, and within society, there is a force which acts in opposition to the instincts of the natural self.
A similar force can be witnessed in science, literature, art- often the natural forces are represented as romantic, rural, natural, naive and the predatory forces are represented as mechanical controlling, robotic, industrial and conniving.
We must be able to recognize these forces for what they are and protect ourselves from them.
We are taught to not see the monsters when we are young children. We are often taught to be polite and submissive. This may make us popular but does not fend off the predator. It may be the woman’s mate who harms her, even so, her inner predator concurs. If a woman believes she is powerless or doesn’t acknowledge what she knows to be true the killing continues. The hook is that she will in some way be queen, or have an easier life without exerting effort.
Predator Energy-
Every psyche has a predator. Estes says it starts out like a small magnetic post that has a certain propensity toward attracting more negative energy. So when we are young, when someone says something negative about us, it is attracted to this internal post. It builds in strength and size. It takes over more room in the psyche. Like anything that gets bigger, it takes space from other pieces of us, like our ability to experience joy or spontaneity.
It can also become more educated and mobile and invades other areas of our lives like our dream lives. Here we start having dreams of men who chase us, kill us, hold us hostage and murder us.
It can also start to undermine our confidence and we start to have doubts about our talents, our ability to love and our worthiness.
The predator feeds on beauty. It opposes the positive, wild harmonious aspects of self. It is the failed magician archetype, wishing superiority over others and over nature. It acts in opposition to the natural self. It suffers from loneliness. We must be able to recognize it, protect ourselves from it and strip it of its murderous energy.
This mother cannot pick up the signals. She does not stand for integrity. Therefore her youngest daughter also lacks this ability as she is untrained and unguided.
The beginning of learning always starts with a mess.
We must recognize it to protect ourselves from it dominating our lives. To catch it we need a strong opposing force, an internal mother who can see through Blue Beard, rather than helping to marry her daughter off to the negative and superficially rich.
To keep it from dominating we must: pry things open and see what’s inside. Us our insights and stand what we see. Speak our truth in a clear voice. Use our wits to do what needs to be done about what we see.
This is a force that needs to be memorized and restrained.
The castle is another piece of the psyche, even in dream lives we often dream about the state of our home, being the state we are in emotionally. Our castle is not supposed to be ruled by Bluebeard. It is a place to store our riches, talents, joy, relationships, dreams, but it requires much maintenance.
In this case, Bluebeard, who is not capable of calling Creative Life into being is running the castle. He tries to marry the freshest sources of the psyche, (whatever you bring in that excites you). He sucks the life out of them. Anyone who has begun a project, dream, course and has cast it off or given up on it, because they don’t have time, money, or are not good enough, may have fallen prey to the predator.
We throw what is most valued into our castle’s cellar.
Many aspects of self can lie dead in our own internal castle cellar. We know we don’t feel really good but aren’t sure what is going on. The predator preys on us again and again. It can be outside of ourselves, our job, relationship, a family member, but it is also on the inside. Some piece of us agrees with the predator. You are too- “harsh, fat, weak, inept, unschooled, emotional”
But this story shows us that no matter what has gone wrong, much can be healed. In order to do that curiosity must enter the picture. The sisters must enter, as they carry the insight. They offer questions to the psyche- “What is this castle made of?” “What is this center of the self made of?”
You begin to put the keys in all the doors. You open the doors and look in every room of yourself. You see what riches you have. This is the beginning of healing. This is a story to help open the eyes of our psyche and perceive our inner riches.
Key of Knowing- (Key of Blood)- this is the way out of the situation.
The key is a question that will unlock the door. The key question allows you to advance. Sometimes it is “who or what or how do you think took, stole, pulled the rug out from under (whatever belongs to you.)The key is the permission and endorsement to know what and who are the deepest and darkest parts that are doing the killing.
The negative predator in the psyche hopes you will never ask the question. It should be quite agitated right now. It does not like to be questioned, seen or upset.
The secret is the killing, taking life’s blood from that which is vibrant.
To recognize danger, pay attention to the warning voices in the back of your head. Listen to your body- body scan, be mindful, what are you really feeling?
Although we may go into some of these situations for money, ease, enjoyment, status, employment, societal safety, we start living less rather than more when these forces are at work.
The Key of Blood may also relate to the female blood lines that have gone before you i.e. in actions, attitudes and behaviors, many that are so normalized they are not visible. If these patterns become visible to us, we have more understanding and choice.
Remember self-judgment can occur but do not get tangled in its web.
Refer back to course on shadow and emotions.
Other Ways of identifying Keys of Knowing:
Nightmares, body feels uneasy, evidence of repression, projection, or other shadow functions. Curiosity allows a way in. Explore insight, hunches, and intuition.
Ask the key question to instigate transformation.
Questions open the secret doors of the psyche and generate more consciousness.
What is behind the visible?
What is not as it appears?
What in my life that had vitality has been cut off?
What do I know deep in my ovaries that I wish I did not know?
“What happened to all my ideas, hopes, and dreams?”
What of me has been killed or lies dying?
What have I taken to its deaths through my own naivete?
In the Fairytale the girls are horrified to find the dead bodies in the small room and they should be. “We have to do something”.
In the fairy tale, the key keeps bleeding. It is a dynamic, organic experience. All one knows in life is that they are losing energy. Even when we try to make it stop we cannot. A half-hearted or partial effort is not enough. For example, if we want to paint, or write, something token like a night course, may help, but not be enough. The key still bleeds.
The Ability to Stand What One Sees.
This is an important step. It is in the acknowledging, the standing in the undecorated truth that will allow us to return to our true nature.
It is here that are hopes and dreams have been allowed to be killed. It is here Estes says, that our talents and gifts lie unused, humiliated, slaughtered.
It is the predator disguised as benevolent, but it is deadly and malevolent.
When we avoid our own deep devastation, (which we do to keep safe and keep our ego unharmed), our body sensations become acute, our anxiety levels go up, our dreams become nightmares.
We undo ourselves in this way when we do not understand that our internal desires and external actions are not matching. We are building and destroying our lives at the same time.
One symptom is saying one thing and doing another.
It is this complex that causes us to abandon projects and procrastinate on things that are important to us.
New beginnings are pushed down and endings are not met.
Estes says “the deepest work is usually the darkest.
When we feel powerless, unable to act on our own behalf, we must look to the killing thing that has hold of us, see the result of its grisly work, register it all consciously, retain it in consciousness and then act.
The incessant bleed causes us to forge ahead. We have a natural sensor inside, the ego which wishes to forget the pain and negativity and go back to the way things were. Yet the bleeding keeps us from pretending. At this point, one’s old way of being is dying. Something new is emerging.
The Tale of Blue Beard lays out instructions:
Track the bodies.
Follow instincts.
See what you see.
Call up psychic muscle.
Dismantle destructive forces.
In the Fairytale, resolve is started by a crisis. Bluebeard comes home and accuses her of opening the door. “This can be when we deny knowing something that causes us deep distress.” “I didn’t really see that this isn’t really happening. There is an effort to hide what one knows. The predator becomes more aggressive, and in the story, Blackbeard grabs her by the hair and tells her he will kill her. Then she is dragged to this part of her psyche, coming up to her own death. But in this case, she is asleep to conscious life, not dead. The transformational moment is when she almost loses her life. This is a serious and dangerous place to be. Often at this point, we must call on all our inner resources, and sometimes on psychologists, dreamworkers, and trustworthy allies. We need to do this and we cannot go backward.
If we do not search into our own deadness and murdering instinct we are more obedient to the predator’s powers.
After admitting how captured we are, and how much our psychic life is at stake, we can do something more powerful.
Backtracking & Looping: – Confronting the issue from a different perspective.
This is a technique used by animals when they dive underground to escape and pop behind the predators back.
Analysis, flower essences, dream work, body scanning, mindfulness, meditation, and self-knowing are ways to backtracking and loop. Journaling is a way to record our experience. Without recording, the insight sometimes slips away.
Estes says that the predator and potential reach boiling points at the same time. Have you ever noticed this tendency in yourself, when a lot is at stake the predator is active? Yet even when we are exhausted, and sick of it, we must escape.
In the tale, Bluebeard wants to drag the maiden to the cellar, knock her consciousness out and leave her, like many of her undone projects and ideas in an inaccessible place.
In the fairytale, she says “let me make my peace with god.”
Something else has to happen, she needs a force to balance the negativity. I need to appeal to everything I can think of to remain awake and acknowledge what I saw can no longer go on the way it has.
She prays. Prayer is a way to make our voice heard by larger powers. The force to bring us out of a bleak situation cannot come from ego and will alone. It may be necessary to have a meditative practice, keep a dream journal and explore your dreams, or a support group. Art, music, dance, dreams can connect you to something bigger and more enduring. You need to summon whatever makes you stronger, braver, more tenacious.
Giving the Cry-
She summons her sisters to see if there is help. Eventually, there is. She calls upon her brothers, which are the force within her that acts when it is time to kill. This is her inner animus, the male part that is healthy.
We must practice calling these forces- strength, and action. With them, the ability of the predator is neutralized and the maiden’s eyes are opened. This is the rage at injustice put to powerful use. It is our focused fierceness that will appropriately attack the real problem. The brothers bring consciousness and focus.
They are parts of her that will never allow her to sink back into that much darkness again. They defend your ideas, art, creative life, love for people, things, and places. The brothers kill off what was making her life small, so it can become larger and richer.
Instead of reviling the predator of the psyche, or running from it, we dismember it.
We accomplish this by Not allowing divisive thoughts about our soul life or worth. We decapitate such thoughts before they become large enough to do us harm and we dismantle them. We dismantle the predator by taking to heart what is truthful in what it says and discarding the rest. (homeopathic dose).
We dismantle it by maintaining our intuitions and instincts and resisting the seductive. The predator appeals to our desirous, underprivileged parts. We dismantle it at its root by seeing what belief and the assumption it is related to and challenging the truth of it. Ask “what part of my psyche is this belief attached to?”
We can render parts of the predator for other purposes.
Rage- for accomplishments
Craftiness- inspecting
Killing Nature- to kill off what should die in our life.
But careful, do not try to redeem it as a whole. There is more than finding out its agenda and reassigning it. It is much too crafty for this. It is just that parts of it have power, and are reusable.
We mentioned earlier that nightmares of thieves, rapists, murderers and home invaders accompany the predator. These dreams may indicate we are asleep in our lives, naive and being prey or that our creative juices are slowed because something in the psyche has a low opinion of us and we are groveling its feet, rather than fighting with it.
In many cases what is required is that we take our art, our talents and ourselves more seriously. The dark man warns that if you don’t pay attention to your treasures, they will be taken from you.
It is when these dreams show up that it is time to houseclean our lives. These dreams may also show up when there is a deep cultural threat to women. Then the antidote may involve paying attention to social action. The dreams may also manifest when others are antagonistic or careless about our deep life, our interior predator is fed and develops extra muscle.
As you now know it is common for people to kill off their creative, soulful nature in response to threats or humiliation from the predator.
Consciousness is the way out of the box.
In Estes words, we must fight “TOOTH AND NAIL to have it and keep our vision, voice, insight and action.
To Banish the predator we must:
A)Unlock or pry things open.
B) Use our insight and ability to stand what we see.
C) Speak our truth clearly, audibly.
D) Use our wits to do what needs to be done about what we see.
The brothers say NO and Mean No. No More & NOT EVER.
They kill the predator, dismantle it and let it be. They then move forward into the future. In the end the key ceases to bleed because the woman is able to say “it stops here and no more!” Wherever the predator is a wild woman is. She tracks him through dreams, stories, body scanning, mindfulness. When the soul life is threatened she draws the line…..and means it!
HandOut
Information is drawn from Women Who Run With Wolves Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Practice:
Listening to your intuition.
Ask questions.
Be Curious
See what you see.
Hear what you hear.
Act upon what you know to be true.
Say no and mean no when something is harming your wild nature.
Tonight keep your instincts sharp- practice these tools.
Listening to your intuition.
Ask questions.
Be Curious
See what you see.
Hear what you hear.
Act upon what you know to be true.
“Wherever the predator is, wild woman is. She tracks him through dreams, stories, body scanning, mindfulness, meditation, and self-knowing. “When the soul life is threatened she draws the line…..and means it!” Estes
Watch your dreams, body sensations, etc.
Create a journal to track Bluebeard.
Enter ways in which the predator manifests in your life.
Keep track of circumstances where you go numb, or feel dead or seek to destroy others.
Keep track of how you treat your talents, gifts, and goals.
Who in you and outside of you helps you?
Which part of you, or which part of others hinder.
Write your predator dreams in this space.
Keep track, keep curious.
Other Blue Beard Questions:
What deepest, darkest part of me is doing the killing?
How do I enable these parts?
Why- $, ease enjoyment, status, self-worth, employment, societal safety? (Hint we start feeling less rather than more when these forces are at work)>
We choose the key of knowing by asking to see our darkest secrets. We look at the rooms of our castle,(psyche), where corpses lie.
The blood key may also be traceable from our female blood lines- actions, attitudes, behaviors that are normalized and not visible that suck life out of situations. They may be easier to spot in our family, than in our own lives.
Standing what one sees.
Where are my internal desires not matching my actions?
This is self-undoing. We avoid feelings- but body sensations are acute, anxiety levels go up and dreams go bad.
Dismantling the predator at its root involves seeing what belief and assumption is related to it and challenging it. (7th Chakra Belief System Work).
What part of the psyche is this belief attached to?
Follow Instincts
See What you See
Dismantle Destructive Forces
Backtracking & Looping
Giving the Cry- Strength and Action.
What action can I take right now in my life to rescue myself from my predator?
What actions have I taken in the past that have aided me?
Consciousness is the way out.
3-Kinds of Bluebeards- Estes
, I can see that there are people of whichever gender, background, age, who have fallen into ‘bluebeardian’ actions.
I believe, honestly that we can pray for all. To come to their true selves again. To turn away from appetites that literally rot away the foundation of the psyche, for intemperance and destructive choices are often perilously exciting. Often enough in guise of being ‘soulful.’ But not. If they are destructive to others, they are also destructive to one’s own Self.
An evidence? The soul is enduring, protective, loving, committed, engendering, letting the human spirit in oneself and others breathe and grow and blossom. A person caught in a bluebeardian ethos, gives the appearance of, perhaps, but sadly, too often is double dealing. Saying one thing, doing another. And those whom they target begin to devolve instead of flourish.
I’d like to suggest to you this matrix I’ve put together… about degrees of loss of true self, and a dive into false-face behaviors and thought systems. I wont detail the exact circumstances, for they vary from person to person. Some have to do with out of control appetites. Some have to do with sheer survival. Some have to do with what appears dedicated circuitry to being a prevaricating predator. And in the latter case, not caring in the slightest that one is such.
THE ACCIDENTAL BLUEBEARD
1. The first I’d offer, is what I’d call ‘the accidental bluebeard,’ if I could please call the behavior, not the person, that. This ‘accidental fall into infamy’ is not planned, is not thought out. It comes from influences perhaps of others who are dedicated to living as false-faces.
There may be alcohol or drugs involved. The person under the influence [high energy ‘fun’ can be as toxic as any other intemperance] catches fire on joining in the lies in order to conquer whatever or whomever. They are decent people. Who got carried away by the high of dominating another through lies, half truths, inferences, outright fantasy.
Afterward, the person, sans the ‘friends,’ sans the drugs or alcohol, returns to their usual sanity, bewildered and feeling confused and poorly, for the high of dominating another human being is a rush, but the after effect of facing oneself as a person of honor, is a clang all across the board.
The person who fell into this, has to decide then. They are at a huge crossroads. Will this false-face solicitation for gain, be repeated… for the high of engagement, sex, money, whatever. Or will the person return to their code of honor they know they can live with and look themselves in the mirror about.
Many return to their own bar for conduct becoming. But some, cannot easily turn away from the rush. And grow their beards bluer and more blue over time. Until someone or something returns them to true self again.
Some may say, this is a moral stance. Could be, but I see it this way: True self is the root of the psyche. Jung called it ‘the Self.’ It is greater than we are, and yet at the center of who we are. It is related to the supra human. True self has ethics, intelligence, insight, and especially care of the body, mind, heart, and spirit and soul… together , preserving and thereby building capacity in oneself for fealty, love, regard, cherishing, devotion… not with ego in lead, but SoulSelf in lead.
THE SURVIVALIST’S TEMPORARY BLUEBEARD
2. The temporary Bluebeard. Working with refugees, torture victims, persons held against the wills, persons returned from killing wars… there have sometimes been tradeoffs persons had to make in order to stay alive, that have to do with prevaricating from the truth, going into subterfuge, with the aim of seducing a predator for instance.
This is not a true false-face issue of character. It is, in rape victims, for instance, in those whose lives are truly threatened, a smart survival choice in order to live. In war, there are many who ‘give comfort’ to the ‘enemy’ in order that their children, their elders, their friends remain alive. I wont go into what persons do to stay alive. I just would like to gently make the point that there might be a time to be false-faced, in order to protect others’ lives and one’s own.
And it is not a characterological issue. It is a matter of sacrificing oneself out of love for others. And self. After the danger has hopefully passed, often, because the person has a high sense of honor, there will also be confusion for a time about what was done, what had to be done without alternative.
And having able souls to walk with while one sorts this out, will be essential. There is a return to peace. The walking with able others is meant to help a person who has suffered so, not remain stuck in the harms done, but rather be reborn in ways that make sense to the person, into new life. Not without memory. But with memory of the ‘black times’ as the times of massacre are called in Guatemala by the Mayan people, in the background, no longer in the foreground.
THE DEDICATED-CIRCUITRY BLUEBEARD
3. The dedicated Bluebeard. I have a theory. It comes from seeing, living, being in, and watching others be caught in long term crushing circumstances that demeaned daily, tormented body, soul, mind, heart and spirit, daily whether in childhood, adulthood, or both.
Because of the relentless cruelty that follows the initial ‘honeymoon mr. or ms. smiley’ phase, the insistence on mocking, harming, hurting, demeaning another human being who is said to never be ‘enough,’ — and because of the abject failure of medicine, ceremony, psychotherapy to turn this dedicated circuitry of harming behaviors to transformation or to consistent good… my theory is, this is a form of mental retardation that is inborn.
In shrinkdom we note deeply that such a person has no conscience. They know what is right and wrong. They may even have a talent. But choose to do harm after first setting up the victim with over-flattery, trinket giving, time given in doe-eyed listening, every accoutrement of romance or soulmate-ness one might imagine.
Or by pretending to be wounded themselves, pretending to have given up on themselves, pretending to have been beaten down by myriad others. But they do not feel it. The words and actions are mimicry.
Because later, when all has deteriorated into constant attack, often in a living situation with the victim, the person lashing the other has no regret, no remorse about the harms they’ve done to most often, vulnerable others. They feel justified, for those they target are ‘not enough,’ do not serve them enough, are not worshiping enough, and so on.
There is another steep fact: A person so situated often has strong appetites of ego, to be worshipped, to be ‘important’, to be ‘the one’, to be served, to be pleased with food, sex, money and other.
The lack of ability to care that others can be deeply wounded is missing except for case-worked words, again in mimicry. This, in contrast to the fact that when confronted with the harms one has done to vulnerable others, the character-disordered person will often weep and say, ‘What about me, what about my feelings! Look what he/she did to me. ‘
The redefinition away from self-accountablity, away from true remorse is remarkable in its self-orientation/ There is also, as in the Bluebeard story, often a controlling personality that appears to want to test the vulnerable person; if i do this to you, if i harm you this way or that, I expect you to still bow to me… and etc.
_____________________
CODA
I will end here for now. There is MUCH more to say, but I believe this lays out the three most common ways we can see false-face. One accidental fall into rush-power over others by being false. One creating false-facade perhaps for years for survival’s sake.. in order to win life and freedom eventually hopefully. [I’d add, not to be gruesome, but just to gently remind… often a person pretending to be lover but secretly planning to do away with the tyrant– is a motif in the oldest tales in scriptures as well as myths and folktales… not because it makes good stories, but because these carry truths about certain desperate circumstances faced by the sons and daughter throughout all of Time. ]
And the last, a pathological state of no conscience, repetitive hounding and harming of vulnerable others by first falsefacing, then once the naive one is roped in, beginning the slow death of a million cuts and crushing of spirit, soul, mind, body, and heart… not to mention attempting to destroy the innocent person’s creative life– which is of the child Spirit.
I would remind too, that when the conscienceless person is left by the prey, or throws the prey to the side of the road as though dead, there is often enough a little line of needy and fawning people waiting to take the fallen’s place.
They too may stay long in the torment, rationalizing, waiting for the moments of sunlight that came first, hoping for the return of that from time to time in the predator even in the midst of the black castle’s gloom in the midst of the limbs of trees hanging black and withered in Bluebeard’s forest.
Can we pray for all persons caught in the syndrome regardless of their attachment or recklessness with it all…Yes. Ever. However, I would say this. In the case of person without a conscience, I pray even more so, not only that they cease their predations, but that somehow, somewhere, someone finds a way to build a true conscience in those who appear to have not shared in that redemptive and transformative function of the psyche.
Think of it, conscience is what allows us to have mercy, to be compassionate beings, to sorrow over hurting, to aright ourselves, in part because we suffer when we veer from the inborn angel of peace and her sister, justice, and their brother, enduring love.
Let us hold all in prayer, those who suffer, those who have suffered so, those who have caused suffering, those who are currently causing such suffering … and let us pray too for miracles yet to come that truly help to intervene before the fact in those without conscience, to come soon.
This comes with love,
dr.e
Dear Brave Souls: Ok. By request: Several via email since we have been talking about the symbols in the Bluebeard story that have psychological value and insights for those with eyes to see, ears to hear, have asked me to speak about false-face teachers…
the bluebeardian ones who appear to like to drape themselves in the equivalent of ‘white robing’ as self-styled personification of “love’ or ‘religion’ or ‘spirituality’
–who often have no real skin in the game, no current nor planned standup, no righteous actions taken to protect innocents today, nothing but words and words about ‘love’ –whilst taking in compliments from others for appearing to be such a ‘loving’ person.
I’d just gently offer this: and please, take some or none or all of what i have to say, as you see fit.
By my sights, there are indeed some persons longing hard to be ‘gurus.’ The difference is that gurus are awake, deeply aware of the difficult dark world far more than the world of easy light. And speak it.
Guru, means a guide to enlightenment. A true guru makes no excuses for evil… does not suggest ‘love’ without activism as the providential answer to the pain of walking this world in beauty but also shredding and shedding. The guru teaches we live in this world as it is, not in some fairyland that some imagine once existed, nor in the future utopia some dream.
Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, the Sikhs, the Earth religions in all their variety, and more, all have teachings that are radiant yet speak deeply and necessarily about Vajra Hell, Gehenna, Hades, Xipe Totec, and more…
the realms of the dark, the realms of evil, the extreme and ongoing battles raging not between good and evil as some glance off the deeper realities, but between a steep and difficult consciousness to maintain in order to actively create a better vs a vapid consciousness that destroys attitude, action and evolution.
Each of the spiritual religions of the world also have distortions. One can read ‘body as filth’ translations of pages and pages of one Buddhist teacher of renown who was obsessed with his ideas of ‘the filthy, disgusting body.’
Same in Islam, same in Christianity, same in most everything ever touched by some human beings. These distortions are not treatises about the destructive aspects of life and living, rather the teachers themselves with either too fluffy ideas or in their minds, righteously destructive ideas, overlay the strong and balanced realities of the old holy teachings.
How can one know who is who, what is what? I can join with others who know foolsgold when they see it. You know if a person appears to have no flaws, is ever running on the ‘frail victim’s’ edge, yet seems to feed off adulation and positions themselves for that… that something may be seriously earnest but counterfeit.
I can tell you tales of Bluebeard and my tale of The Ruby Red Fox and encourage you, with prompts, to draw your own wisdoms and life experiences forward as YOU see fit, for YOUR succor, your consciousness, your health and strength.”
Beyond that I can mention that I see a flash of light when I look at any genuine person, no matter what ‘condition their condition is in.’ By my sights, most project, no matter troubles, no matter triumphs, that sharp blast of light on first sight. But not all.
My grandmother told me long ago and I’ve repeated it to you many times here and in my works: some people are not lit in their centers, in the area of the solar plexus. Some appear to be born without souls. I dont know why or how. I only know that by the depth of their vapidity, their lack of serious engagements, their harms, their prevarications… they are missing something essential that most carry.
We do not say such things nor differentiate between faux gurus and actual ones, in order to be slighting of others or condemning. But in the same way we’d want to encourage souls to eat clean for their own ongoing nourishment, for the same reason we’d rather people be in fresh air and sunlight that offer real vitamin D and filling of the lungs with good essence, rather than just sit indoors looking at pictures of same…
I believe any who have traveled to the depths have found a set of truths that exist that are contrary to a ‘life is love, life is beautiful only’ point of view… and having rowed through that dark thundering world at great cost while being accosted from all sides, and also given themselves to painful healings… well just let me put it this way–
if the end of the world were upon us, and we had to row to the sixth world through storm and flood, I would want a lifeboat big enough to hold all those time-tested and scarred up, those who have done the very hard work of continuing to heal, those who are proven– not in plaint and euphemisms and pop spirituality-lite, but who have the cojones, the ovarios… those who are tough and tender — not despite but because of their rowing and rowing through the thousandth gale.
I cannot say who anyone might follow. I know who I follow and why. Many of us can claim we were in beyond deleterious situations that nearly cost one’s life. Literally.
There is no after-fluff to that. There is no soft-ony attitude toward life. Though as we say in our military family, “A warrior loves peace more than anything,” we are prepared to take up what is needed to protect the soul.
Any guru worth their salt will know that we need all able crew on deck right NOW, as uninjured as possible, as healed and healing as possible, and as discarding of the Overculture’s weasel words about how one can improve oneself if one will just love enough.
The most able souls I know on earth are deeply wounded loving souls who have ENDURED through more than physical challenges of life, more than psychic ones, more than spiritual rough waters… they are not in any way deficit of being loving souls.
Neither are they any longer duped by those who want to preen them by telling them ‘how loving they are.’ Their goal is not that. Their goal is to be warriors, to act. Their words are not just words. They are also actions. Actively protecting, actively healing, not retired on duty.
In the Bluebeard story, the instruction comes at the end of the story. Use the key of consciousness to see any teacher/ any guru as they are.
Beware those who have no foibles and tattooed-on battle scars they never truly earned.
Pass by those who seem lonely, isolated and who want attentions to perk up their days and nights. They need to live for themselves, not through your energy. Likewise those with false humility.
Remain awake around those who want to tell you their sad story as a way of gaining not just sympathy and trust, but more importantly, causing you to lower your usual boundaries.
Especially realize that whether conscious or not, some persons are full of it, full of themselves, no matter how daintily or boldly packaged– they are energy vampires. They need you far more than you may need a teacher.
Hold out for the real deal. Your instincts will lead you. A good teacher will make your life larger and more able, not put you on life support attached to them.
And keep this in mind my dearlings: If you are like many of us, after a while of being told ‘how to improve yourself,’ lol, we all have to take a break and go smoke a black cigar or pee in the bushes, or cuss at the pope [sorry pope, I dont mean you, Francis] or some other naughty but innocent thing… why?
To bring ourselves back to being real, to re-ernegize ourselves in true self, true strength, not overly supra-human seeming.
I have a little sign here at my desk that I wrote by hand years ago when I was in psychoanalytic training for six years post-doc in the late 19070s. It is from Jung: Be careful when casting out devils, to not cast out the best of oneself.”
This doesnt mean be a jerk or an evil person. It means: Proportion, decency, actions toward actual evolution, stepping outside the common Overculture’s injunction to ‘just love’ will be enough for all things. Those are words and words, that often weaken and mislead, consciously or otherwise, by saying love will somehow be enough in the worlds we navigate– those deeply dark worlds, those radiant ones also… That would be a half-truth.
Far more is needed to negotiate the worlds. And whomever you choose as guide/ guru/ maestro/ maestra, they ought be teaching specifics of proceeding in strength, wise choices, planning, aiming… and when right, small mischiefs that hurt no one, that reset us back to center again– the place where the creative fire burns eternally.
This comes with love that you seek and find the real deals in life, no matter what role, no matter what connection, no matter what relationship. With our current internet world, much is offered. However, often, most often as at the grocery store, the real food, non derivative, not tired and wilted rehashes, will be found at the edges only– fresh from the farmer’s land and hands… not in the entire middle mass where are the colorfully packaged and over-processed packages of dust that will not nourish.
Be wise.
Courage.