“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times . . . For years we have been learning, practicing, been in training for . . . and just waiting to meet on this exact plain of engagement.”
So says Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Jungian psychoanalyst, poet and author of the 1992 best-seller, ‘Women Who Run with the Wolves’. I read her quote right at the beginning of the Covid-19 crisis and it gave me goosebumps.
It shifted reality from this-is-all-wrong to maybe-this-is-where-I-belong. And if I belong here, I might as well fully be here, as in St Theresa’s Prayer: “May you trust that you are exactly where you are meant to be.”
You know the feeling? Mike Dooley describes it as, “That sense of eagerness for the moment. Optimism for the future. And confidence that you’re exactly ‘when’ and where you should be.”
Talking about the future: What would you have done if you could see this thing coming? Personally, I’m glad I couldn’t because it would have overwhelmed me. Madisyn Taylor explains it as follows: Just think back on your life. You’ve probably faced more than you could have ever imagined. What if someone had told you as a child of all the challenges you would one day experience?
“With your head full of information about the future, you would have had a very hard time experiencing your life in the present moment, which is where everything actually happens. In many ways, not knowing what the future has in store brings out in us the qualities we need to grow.”
The quality you need most of all is to be yourself. Clarissa says that one of the most powerful actions you can take to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Struggling souls catch light from other souls who are fully lit and willing to show it.
So, how exactly does one do that? According to Clarissa it starts with accepting yourself. When you accept your own wild beauty, it is put into perspective, and you are no longer aware of it, but neither would you forsake it or disclaim it.
“Does a wolf know how beautiful she is when she leaps? Does a feline know what beautiful shapes she makes when she sits? Is a bird awed by the sound it hears when it snaps open its wings? Learning from them, we just act in our own true way and do not draw back from or hide our natural beauty. Like the creatures, we just are, and it is right.”
Clarissa says that you have to meet your own mysteriousness without fleeing, purposefully living with your wild nature in your own way. “It means to be able to learn, to be able to stand what we know.”
Can you stand what you know, girlfriend? I’m not just talking about the flatlining finances we’re all facing. Can you dare to name the shadow that is trotting behind you? According to Clarissa the deepest work is usually the darkest and we all begin the process before we’re ready, before we’re strong enough, before we know enough . . .
“We respond before we know how to speak the language, before we know all the answers, and before we know exactly to whom we are speaking,” she says. If we don’t, we’ll probably never start.
Instead of focusing on the darkness, remember that all you are seeking is also seeking you. “If you lie still, sit still, it will find you. It has been waiting for you a long time.”
Chances are that these past months have been the ideal circumstances for you to sit still, to lie still, to look. Do not be afraid of facing worsening conditions, girlfriend. Clarissa says it only guarantees fresh insights and opportunities for re-visioning your life and self anew.
She believes that it’s in the middle of misery that so much becomes clear. The one who says, “Nothing good came of this” is not yet listening.
And I know that you’re listening, girlfriend. I know that you’re fully lit up; that you’re shining so brightly, you’re virtually throwing sparks. Don’t dim your light so that the faint-hearted can bring you into the fold.
As Clarissa says, “If you have never been called a defiant, incorrigible, impossible woman . . . have faith. There is yet time.” |
