I’ve been reading Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves, and it’s dense and scrumptious and the whole damn meal, as they say in non-literary contexts. If you dig symbolism, or feminism, or if you have spent your adult life pining for the folklore and fairy tales class you took at Ball State University in 2003, you should read it.
It’s about exploding myths and fairy tales and what they tell us about our psyches—SCRUMPTIOUS I tell you—and for one Russian folk story, Estes talks about the main character wanting to throw away the torch of inner knowledge she’s been given.
“Momentarily Vasilisa becomes afraid of the power she carries, and she thinks to throw the fiery skull away. With this formidable power at her behest, it is no wonder the ego thinks it would be better, easier, safer, to discard this burning light, for it is so much, and through it Vasalisa has become so much… This skull-light is not forgiving.”
Relatable.
This week, I did some intense work in therapy and in intuitive healing. EMDR was involved. Tears were involved. And that torch has been feeling pretty heavy ever since. Its light is just so bright, and the stuff you find with it can be so dark, and inner work is hard, you guys. Intentionally living for growth and improvement, rather than just swinging at things as they come, is exhausting.
I imagine we all get here, right? Everyone who is trying to better themselves gets sick of it from time to time, especially when you notice that other people are floating past on inner tubes while you’re flailing about trying to swim upstream. This week I was struck by the idea that it would be so much easier to be unrealized. I could be reactive and impatient! I could be a jerk! Why, other people are doing it right this second! Why do I have to have all this awareness?
So I spent a couple of grumpy days with my mind changed about everything. You know what? I thought. This torch is stupid and Elsa shouldn’t have jumped. Neo took the wrong pill, Jonas should have continued taking his pill [*waves to former students*], and Joey Pants was right—WHO CARES IF IT’S NOT A REAL STEAK AND I WISH TO REMEMBER NOTHING.
Then, sometime later, I logged in to Twitter for ten minutes, or Facebook for five minutes, or watched a presidential debate for one minute, and I remembered. Oh yeah. Right.
Sigh. We have to care about the steak and jump into the depths of Ahtohallan because lots of other people aren’t. If we all stop doing the work, we’ll teeter even closer than we already are to the edge of The Great Calamity, at best (because, you know, it’s fake), or The Great Filter, at worst (because it’s probably not fake).
SIGH. You know it, I know it: we can’t change other people, but we can change ourselves. When we do, of course, we do our part to raise the collective consciousness of the world (also helpful: voting, donating, volunteering, and engaging in activist work), and I think that’s going to be the only way forward. The fact that it’s true doesn’t make it any less irritating to me at the moment, but there’s no one else to do it but us.
If the torch of consciousness is feeling a bit too heavy to you lately, or if you’ve been winding back your arm to hurl it into the nearest gorge, I feel you. Sometimes you’re floating on a cloud of your own enlightenment, and sometimes you’re Frodo wishing someone would come bite this stupid ring off your finger. I’ve been more fiery chasm than ethereal sky of late, but I’m working my way back up. And whichever place you’re in, fellow light worker, I’ve got your back.
