Spiritual Cowgirl

“You stupid little whore, bitch, slut, what do you think you’re doing?! You are a bad BAD girl!! And totally misguided. “Red Goddess/Redvolution/Priestess Work” - ha! Like that isn’t the biggest load of crap this side of “WRONG”. You’re using all this “red” work as a cover for your own narcissism and vanity and ego. You are hurting people. And what’s with your recent personal interactions, your writing, your new altar! I will not tolerate this behavior! Shame, shame, shame on you! You don’t know what you’re doing. Your intuition is completely untrustworthy. And the Goddess – don’t you know what a weak, small, stupid, evil, false energy that is? And what’s more, the whole goddess movement is incredibly cliché, played out, dumb, and filled with middle-aged women wearing purple robes who don’t shave their armpits. It’s pathetic and now you are pathetic. I am so freakin’ angry. So pissed. So enraged. I have worked so hard to keep you safe and well liked and smart and “normal” now you are ruining it all. Shut the hell up and Step Back!!!!”

My red pen exploded across the white page as I tried to capture this inner volcanic explosion, this incredibly pissed off inner sour Daddy. And then it just as suddenly as the voice shouted, it stopped.

Holy.

Crap.

Did that voice really just come out of me? WTF? What am I, Sybil? Great. This is friggin’ terrif. Like my parrot doesn’t mimic enough strange voices already.

I felt my higher self’s soft nudge, and I decided that before I self diagnose and book a therapist or self-medicate with rose vodka (which, btw, I’m dying to find, with real rose petals. If you know of where I can buy some in SF, lemme know), I should finish the book that unleashed such a pisser.

Earlier that morning (this fun phenomenon occurred a few months ago) I flipped open The Shadow King by psychologist Sidra Stone and read a sentence… something about the importance of starting a “voice dialogue” with your inner Shadow King, and before I even knew exactly what the hell a “shadow king” was (sounds like some cheesy kung fu movie from the 80’s”) I heard “him” – a crazy mad masculine voice reach up from my insides and blast open my metaphorical voice box. I grabbed a new journal and a pen, and decided to let this inner masculine rip… and, as you all just read, he sure did. Wowsers. Pissed off inner daddies are downright scary and sure have nasty potty mouths.

Here’s the great thing (!) - according to Stone (and Carl Jung and thousands of others), if you’re alive, you’ve got this “Shadow King” (might go by a different name), which is actually an internalized patriarch, the inner spokesman for the outer patriarchy. Although we’ve all got a ton of different shadow voices and characters roaming our insides, some that might sound awfully alike, this Shadow King is common to us all.

Yep, Sidra Stone believes that no matter how far women have come in the world, no matter how educated and free thinking and liberal we are, no matter how many feminist ideas we believe in, support, and act on, no matter how many goddess icons we bow to or how much progress we’ve made at dismantling external patriarchy through our votes and demonstrations and voices and actions and bralessness (it’s in the Redvolution dictionary), if we do not go inside at some point and directly confront, listen to, and eventually make friends with our inner patriarch (who rules all mysterious-like and hidden from our unconscious), we will still be living under his thumb. Like all unconscious shadow characters, if he is not brought into consciousness, he will always be subverting our power in some strong or subtle ways.

The Shadow King defines women, whispers (or yells, depending how ticked off he is) from our unconscious what “real” women are like and defines our capabilities and limitations. Here are just a lovely few screwy contradictions he likes to bind me with: He never wants me to get married because he says I will lose my independence and creativity and power and ruin my career and “just” be a weak housewife/mother. But the idea of me single and free, without a serious monogamous partner, also totally freaks him out because according to him, it makes me “loose”, puts me in danger of being hurt, and makes me stick out from the “norm”. Now, your Shadow King might not sound exactly like mine, for instance, my close friend’s SK feels the opposite to the way mine does about marriage – he desperately wants her to get married and tells her she’s a total loser because she presently has no kids, no house, no husband, no matching dinner ware.

Here’s some more from my father from down under - he wants me to look sexy, but then makes me feel dirty and guilty if I attract attention from men that he feels is “lusty”. He reams me for not knowing how to cook, but then makes fun of those women who stay at home and do “typical” women’s work. He wants me to travel around the world independently as a strong woman, but not be “too” strong or I won’t be able to manipulate men the way he would like me to. He’s like a punched-out paradox on acid. With this unconscious Mac Daddy ruling your life from the shadows, you can’t win, but you can drive yourself crazy trying.

Although everyone’s inner patriarch is different, there are some common traits Stone has noticed. The Shadow King supports men and masculine energy and feels women and feminine energy are secondary (again people, this is unconscious, so no matter how much you squirm and say “no way, not me, I know better than that”, it doesn’t mean you don’t have some nasty bugger part of you with the exact opposite views of what you think or “believe,” who is directly or indirectly affecting your actions, desires, ideas, emotions, sex life and underwear choices).

OK, what are some more common traits of the inner Daddy Dearest? He rules by logic. He dismisses the heart and emotions and spontaneous flow. He is deeply critical, judgmental, and holds different standards for men and women. For instance, if you’re a woman who is having sex outside a monogamous relationship – well, that is just sick and wrong. But, if you’re a man sowing your seeds, well, that’s just fine and healthy. This is because sexuality and sensuality are the domains of men. If a woman claims her right to these pleasures or tries to define them for herself, she will tick off her shadow king. Big time. Like I’m doing, apparently.

If we unconsciously accept the shadow king’s assessments of us, we become weak and disempowered, we try to be a “good girl” in our life – people pleasers, smiley, always nice and sweet, following the rules and orders and “norms” and what is deemed proper, smalling ourself, being the perfect daughter, friend, wife, mother, lover, in other words, the “perfect” woman.

Conversely, when we unconsciously reject the shadow king’s assessments of us, we become the “bad girl” by fighting against his views, getting tattoos in naughty places, sleeping around, flunking school or acing school so we can prove ourselves in the work place or dominate men or fight the feminist cause, shaking our fists and raising our voices (like him). Either or (and for many of us, we are “good girls” in some areas of our life and “bad girls” in others) we are allowing our shadow king to define our reality. Meaning we live in reaction to this unconscious aspect of our self instead of in conscious response to it.

And, in case you checked out during that first paragraph, my SK also has got some serious issues with the Divine Feminine. He finds her dangerous for me to speak about, crazy for me to love, and an unenlightened, somewhat childish or primitive approach to divinity. Now, anyone who knows me knows this is not the way I consciously feel about The Red Lady, but this unconscious negation of the DF has been affecting my past work nonetheless. It’s one thing to share ideas about the DF when you are in reaction to outer and inner patriarchy, it’s something else entirely to share Her work out of direct conscious response of my inner truth and heart. My external words, my actions, my life might look exactly the same once I become conscious of my SK, but the energy fueling them is very different and will be received as so.

After an intense month of journaling and freaking out and calling my cosmic twin to dish and then journaling some more, I came to really know this voice (fyi: my SK does not always yell or cuss me out like he did in the first paragraph, he can be real sweet and calm), and learned to distinguish it from the other voices scratching my inner carpet. This distinction is priceless and so very helpful. I also eventually realized, experientially, what I previously understood only intellectually: that if you work on clearing out enough of the inner rubble so you can see the roots – you will understand that our inner patriarchs whine and moan and whisper and yell and order us around because they really just want to protect us and keep us safe. Once I got this, things shifted.

I’m not perfect at usurping the King and reclaiming my Inner Throne, but now, when something pops up for me, like a certain feeling or idea or reaction to my daily life, I realize: “Hey now, this feels/sounds like my SK, not my intuition or my fear or that priest from grammar school”. Then I work on reassuring my SK that I will be OK, say, if I smooched that boy I was not interested in marrying. And if he still makes a stink, I simply say “chill out daddi-o, and take a seat in the back of my red caboose” - and so on and so forth.

Believe it or not, once named and heard and allowed some direct contact, the SK can eventually become your ally. He’s not all bad and can even offer some incredibly helpful insight at times. Like all good shadow puppets, it just takes the willingness to shine a little light on your internal home theater in order to become the best show In town.

This is obviously a massive topic hence the epic length of this post (so sorry about that, you still awake?) and I’m barely skimming the surface. Shadow work is intense and complex and unique to each one of us, but if any of this resonates with you, check out The Shadow King by Sidra Stone (not the best written book, but it gets the introductions done), The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford and any book by Marion Woodman (The Pregnant Virgin is my fave. If I could, I would tattoo it on my inner thighs, out of organic orgasmic response to Woodman’s wisdom, not just in order to piss off my Shadow Dad) and let your selves show you what you’re really made of, and then some. (And I can feel some of you asking already – yes, you’ve got an Inner Matriarch as well, but that’s another post.)

But you can start right now sans books if you’ve got any free time (or happen to be bored at work). Sit yer fine self down, grab a journal and some privacy, take a few deep breaths and invite your Shadow King forward. Imagine (imagination is the doorway to the inner realms) you’ve got an Inner Patriarch – what might he want to say to you right now?

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 7:08 pm and is filed under divine musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.