Tag: sacred rage

Mars Retrograde 2020

EleanorLeave a comment

Journal Date: November 14, 2020

Mars finally stationed direct yesterday, after spending over two months retrograde.

“Mars is abrasive, courageous, alarming, bold, inciting, aggravating, confident, heated, and action-oriented. When retrograde, Mars makes us review our leadership style, our relationship to our agency, and our ability to carve our way into the world.

The weeks of Mars retrograde offered us lessons on how to turn towards our anger. Fuel for our engines when worked with consciously, rage is a righteous reaction to injustice–it’s just not a place where we can build a home. Tempers teach us what upsets us and why, when our boundaries have been crossed and how, what to demand and when.” –Chani Nicholas

All of this is true. I feel like I have learned more about these various Mars-related themes in the past two months than maybe ever before in my life up until now.

I spent almost all of the Mars retrograde period FURIOUS (and I’m actually not mad about that).

It was time for me to feel it. I was late to the game here. I had a lifetime’s worth of rage I was suppressing, and it was destroying me.

There were a million things that I should have been mad about, but couldn’t even see. I couldn’t allow myself to do so. I wasn’t “allowed” to be mad, ever.

I’m still not “allowed,” but fuck it, I’m going to go ahead and be mad, anyway.

My anger was the missing key. My rightful rage granted me access to everything else. It opened the doors to clear knowing in a way that nothing ever has before.

It’s been uncomfortable as hell, but still, I am grateful for it. I have seen more and grown more in the past two months that I would have imagined was possible for me.

Remembrance of Things Past

EleanorLeave a comment

My first insight into my past lives happened several months ago, and I didn’t think much about it after that. 

It wasn’t until I went to my second session with Angelic that it came up again.

I’m not exactly sure how it came up in our conversation before the reiki healing, but I know I mentioned the short vision of the past life that I’d had, without giving very many details.

Just that I’d had it, and it had seemed like a difficult ending to that life, which seemed to confirm what she had told me before about having had “very trying past lives” where I was “persecuted for something I didn’t do.”

That was all I said, and she didn’t have much to add about it, and so we went ahead and started the session.

I’m pretty sure the part I’m about to describe began as Angelic was working on my 4th to my 3rd chakra.

Here is what I saw then: 

A cathedral at night appeared suddenly. I first saw it from above and kind of descended into it.

It was a cool night, and the inside of this cathedral was lit by hundreds of burning candles.

It was entirely empty, and it seemed to have been very late at night.

The scene then shifted, and I found myself outside, in a covered passageway running alongside one of the cathedral walls.

I then saw my past self, the one I had seen in my first past life vision.

I immediately ran toward her and embraced her. I threw my arms around her and held her so tightly. I was so happy and excited to see this woman I recognized as myself.

We separated, but I held my arm out to her, and then, arm in arm, just like old friends, we walked around the cathedral together, talking and quietly laughing and catching up.

This went on for several moments, then I started to wonder: who was it that had rushed up to meet this self?

I tried to imagine her. I wondered if it was the “me” that was laying there on that table in Angelic’s office, me dressed in an old gray sweater and black leggings, the “me” of today, Eleanor.

I tried to move my awareness out of the body I was inhabiting in this dream space. I tried putting myself in the place of “past me,” to observe from there this self that had just now rushed up to meet her with so much joy.

I took a step back then, and observed my Self.

I saw a brilliant white body of light, radiating outward, and having the outline of a human form. I saw this self as pure light, pure energy.

But when I decided to get closer and look directly at this self, this brilliant light became a perfect mirror, reflecting back to me my own image, whatever that happened to be at the time.

The scene shifted again. It was now the beginning of a very cool early morning, and I was in the graveyard outside the cathedral.

I came to my own grave. My past self had recently been buried here, and there were hundreds of white roses that had been piled upon my tomb earlier.

Then I found myself in this tomb, from within the vantage point of my buried past self.

There was a crack, a sliver of light coming through between the two heavy stones that had been laid over my grave.

I began to feel restless, and started shifting and moving around there in my grave.

Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. It was time for me to get up, and to leave my burial place behind.

I was concentrating on this when I heard a noise coming from right outside of Angelic’s office.

It was two older men who had started using one of the exercise machines placed right next to her door.

I started to get really upset. I was so mad. “Why won’t they just shut up?” I wondered.

I returned to my vision, and kept trying to focus on pushing aside the heavy tombstones and escaping my grave.

But the voices outside were too loud. They were too distracting.

“I can’t do it,” I thought. “They’re too loud, it’s their fault and I can’t so I won’t even try anymore.”

I started to get even more angry and upset.

“Here I am, trying to escape my grave, and these people are making it impossible for me. I’m doing my best to heal and I can’t because these people won’t let me!”

Then I had an insight: this was just like in my real life. 

People were always going to be in my way, telling me I couldn’t do this or I didn’t deserve that.

I had to be willing to stand up and rise, no matter what was going on outside of me. 

And so I made the decision: I was getting myself out of that grave, no matter what.

I turned my attention back to my inner vision. 

I focused on the heavy stones above my grave, and willed them to move apart enough that I could find my way out.

I was determined. This time, I wasn’t going to let anything stop me. 

The men outside kept talking. They kept on and on, but I just focused on my vision.

The voices outside were so loud then, they even appeared as characters in my vision (as angry townspeople yelling at the edge of the cemetary).

But I was already out. Nothing could stop me now.

Dressed in my burial gown of gold and white, I pulled myself completely out of that grave, and I started to run.

The sun was brilliant, blazing high above me. It shone for me, and it gave me strength. I felt this powerful, glowing warmth within and without. 

I picked up the pace, and I ran.

I ran and I ran, faster than I’d ever run before.

It was exhilarating. This freedom, this speed, this joy, as I ran, self-possessed and self-assured, encouraged by my brilliant, loving and powerful sun.

I ran. I came to a cliff’s edge and I jumped, leaping up, arms outstretched, to kiss the sun.

I became one with this power, before I turned and dove down, down into the sea below.

I started to swim slowly down, then more quickly.

Swiftly, I moved through the dark, quiet sea. 

As I swam, I picked up momentum, and quickly I made my way to the very bottom of the ocean.

I arrived at the very depths, and here, I found a great black boulder, and I swam near and pulled myself to rest on top of it.

Then suddenly, I was no longer at the bottom of the sea.

Instead, I saw myself, naked, covered only by my long black hair, sitting on this rock in outer space. 

I sat on this small black moon, a planet all to myself. 

An interstellar breeze caressed my skin and rustled my hair as I sat on my moon, contemplating the cosmos.

I was here for only a moment, not long at all, before I was overtaken by a new vision.

I was no longer on my moon. I was no longer anywhere, really.

All I knew was fire, all I could see where deep orange flames everywhere around me. 

I felt the anguish of burning, deep rage.

“NOOOOOOOOO!!”

I let out this primal animal scream inside my mind.

“No!” I repeated. “No! You don’t know me! Get away from me, get out! No!”

I wasn’t sure what was going on, or what this was about. 

But I knew that it was right for me to be here. 

I knew it was right for this to burn, so that one day it would turn to ashes, as it should.

So I let it burn.

My rage was all the fuel I ever needed, and I allowed it to be so.

I watched, in the flames, of the flames, on fire with this rage, consumed and willing to be here till eternity if need be.

Slowly, the flames died down, and then, a new vision quietly emerged.

Down at my feet, I felt the same vines of white roses as before appear, and begin to twine themselves over my body. The vine snaked itself around me, crawled around both of my ankles, white roses blooming, lovingly rooting me to the earth.

I felt a deep and pervading sense of calm. Maybe forgiveness, but even more than that, a sense of rightness, of being well with the world, of acceptance by the earth.

It told me, “It is okay. You don’t have to struggle anymore. You deserve to be here. Rest, you are at home.”

The Wisdom of the Crescent Moon Bear

EleanorLeave a comment

Journal Date: 10:15am – Thursday, November 5, 2020

I’ve been reading a chapter in Women Who Run with the Wolves today. This one is on rage, something I do need guidance on at this moment in my life.

Here, she tells the story of the “Crescent Moon Bear” as a way to show us how we can deal with our anger.

The story starts with a woman preparing for her husband to come back from the war. She goes shopping and cooks meals for him and does everything she can to please him and make him happy.

But when she goes to him and offers him what she has made, he gets angry and flips over the trays, sending everything she has worked so hard to prepare onto the floor.

The pattern repeats itself over many nights. The man is still in a state of shock, and will not be consoled. His mind is still preoccupied with the images of violence and fear he has seen and experienced in the war he’s only just returned from.

So the woman, in a state of distress, goes to seek out the healer on the outskirts of the village.

The healer tells her to go climb to mountain and bring her back one hair from the throat of the Crescent Moon Bear.

So the woman ascends the mountain by herself to meet the bear.

As she walks the trail up the mountain among the rocks and under the trees, she says, “Arigato zaisho,” a way of thanking the mountain for allowing her to walk on her body and to pass safely.

Getting to even higher ground, she surprised by the birds which fly out at and then past her, these birds representing the spirits of the dead with no family, the muen-botoke.

She tells them, “I will be your relative. I will lay you to rest.”

The muen-botoke symbolize the parts of ourselves which we may have abandoned during times of distress.

These can be thought of as the difficult emotions and experiences which we may have repressed or dissociated from during any incident which was traumatic or otherwise overwhelmed our body’s capacity to cope.

The woman promises them that she will be their family, she will bury them. With this, it is as if she is saying, “I will recognize you as my own, I will honor you and put you to rest.”

Finally, after continued struggling up the mountain, the woman finds the tracks of the crescent moon bear. She hides near the entrance of her cave, and every morning, she leaves food out for the bear to discover upon waking in the morning.

Slowly, with patience, she gets closer and closer to the Crescent Moon Bear, until one day she finds herself directly underneath it.

She tells the bear of her situation, about her angry husband who has come back from the war traumatized and upset, and asks the bear for a single hair from its throat which she needs to heal her husband.

The bear, taking pity on her, consents to let the woman take one hair from the shining silvery crescent on her throat.

Having received the white hair from the crescent moon on the throat of the bear she rushes down the mountain through the Village to the house of the healer.

She rushes up to present the single white hair to her. The healer then smiles and throws the hair into the fire.

The woman cries out in despair, having lost the one ingredient she had struggled so much to obtain in order to heal her husband.

The healer reassured her, telling her the hair itself was not necessary. In learning how to approach the Crescent Moon Bear, win its trust and receive its message, she had learned what she must do to heal her husband as well.

“Now you know what you need to do. Go home, and repeat everything you have just done here with your husband. That is how you can heal this rage and find love again.”

In this story, we can take each character be a part of the woman’s own psyche.

The husband represents animus, the masculine inside of us, in this case the part which has been wounded. Normally, it is responsible for outer directed activity, for creating structure and boundaries and pursuing ambition and achievements in the world.

However, when wounded, it may have a tendency to respond by being either shut down, pushing others away, or with senseless rage and aggression. These responses are typical of the “fight-flight-freeze” trauma responses that are activated after periods of great stress or danger.

The woman here stands for the anima, or the emotional, feminine part of our psyches. This is the part which loves, which strives for union and ultimately seeks healing by going to find the healer outside of the village.

The bear can be thought to represent the wisdom of rage itself. The Crescent Moon Bear, and the primal power of sacred rage which she represents, are something which many of us fear and reject, but which, when approached with the proper care and respect, can ultimately serve as one of our greatest teachers.

The woman’s interactions with the bear and the environment around her along with her journey up the mountain show us a way in which we can start to come to terms with these difficult and troubling feelings.

With caution, with respect, with care, understanding and a little bit of fierceness, we can find the wisdom we need to release our pain while preserving our natural instinct to protect.

The bear teaches “that one can be fierce and generous at the same time. One can be reticent and valuable. One can protect one’s territory, make one’s boundaries clear, shake the sky if need be, yet be available, accessible, engendering all at the same time.”

In fact, I believe that in many ways it is the “NO” which makes the “YES” possible. If we are unable to communicate the points which are our limits, we will never be able to feel truly comfortable expressing the fullness of our power and can never express the fullness of our generosity, as well.

When we have discovered how to approach the tender, hurting parts of ourselves which we have previously sought to disown, we can begin the journey of healing and learning from our rage.

Our anger and our pain are worthy of being treated with respect. To push them away, or to ask that they simply “be nice” and act as if nothing has happened, is to do ourselves a disservice.

It is understandable to be wary of such a powerful and potentially explosive current of raw energy within ourselves. But there is a message waiting for us if we can sit quietly and let it speak to us.R

Repression or denial is hardly effective. In fact, it only makes the denied energy louder and more destructive, as it struggles to get us to pay attention to pain which needs tending to.

There is inestimable hope and healing available to those who turn towards the powerful sacred rage of the Crescent Moon Bear.

As Clarissa Pinkola Estes says, “Women who are tortured often develop a dazzling kind of perception that has uncanny depth and breadth. Although I would never wish anyone tortured in order to learn the secret ins and outs of the unconscious, the fact is, having lived through a gross repression causes gifts to arise that compensate and protect.

In that respect a woman who has lived a torturous life and delved deeply into it definitely has inestimable depth. Though she came to it through pain, if she has done the hard work of clinging to consciousness, she will have a deep and thriving soul-life and a fierce belief in herself regardless of the occasional ego-waverings.”

I know that this is true about me. This has been my path. What was once my shame is becoming my strength, and of that I am proud.