Listen to your wild self

The other night in a dream, a wild earthy woman spoke to me.

Barefoot, wearing colorful clothing, she gave off a magical vibe. She stood near a fire, and on the earth. She belonged to the earth, and looked perfectly comfortable inside her own skin. She did not concern herself with others’ opinions of her.

I knew she was a wizard woman of some kind. The wizard woman turned to me and said, “Stop being so timid. Go back to your wild self again. Don’t be afraid, it’s safe now.”.

She was fiercely unafraid, and she owned her space, she owned being herself. I was a little intimidated at first, but I felt I knew her, and I wanted to have what she had. I felt homesick for that intensity. I knew it from somewhere. I wanted her words to be true.

I didn’t want to be afraid of her, I wanted to be like her. I knew she was here now to help me to be more of my true self. I knew I’d been calling for her help for a while. I knew she said exactly what she meant, without apology or fear. Her neutrality awed me.

I wanted to have those qualities for my wild self: the wildness, the ownership, the honesty, the unapologetic entitlement to simply be.

I woke up feeling a longing for that kind of wildness, a nostalgia for the memories of a thousand times I’d felt it, usually when I was outside under a sky of brilliant deep dark blue, looking up at the stars, or walking in the woods, or sitting by the ocean listening and watching the waves roll in.

Sitting by a fire with the wind howling and the fire cracking, listening to the night, or watching the majesty of an intense storm cover everything in its path, I always feel a deep yes, a deep longing.

The earth will do what it does, and I am here to be with all of that.

The earth is still wild, even though we humans have made the mistake of believing we could tame her. As we have tamed ourselves and created human society, we’ve tried to tame the earth along with us.

The earth, however, isn’t playing our game. The earth is always authentic. We’re the ones who lie to ourselves. When we give in to the demand to show up in a form that others accept, we hold ourselves back from being authentic.

Along with the demand comes the threat of punishment: if you don’t fit into the group, or play along with the rules, you’ll be ostracized, or worse. If you don’t believe and worship what everyone in your group believes and worships, if you ask too many questions and step on the wrong toes, you’ll be put in your place. So we pretend. We lie, and we allow ourselves to be tamed. We forget who we really are to begin with, we forget our true nature. In fact, we’re even afraid of it.

Who you are to begin with may be a gentle healer who loves to help others.

When you don’t know your true worth as a healer, you may give your energy away to others, without ever giving to yourself, or getting to know who you really are. Meanwhile you’re taking on the pain of everyone you come across. That’s not selfless behavior, it’s self abuse. You are a martyr, perhaps feeling virtuous for your sacrifice, but nobody is learning anything new here.

If, on the other hand, you decide to give yourself the permission to be authentic as yourself and a healer, you teach everyone you come into contact with that this is how you do business. You are owning your wild self. If you take the responsibility to own and define yourself, others have no choice but to respect your self definition. They will learn something valuable as a result.

When do we get so tame?

When do we get herded into a neat trim package, ready for polite society? How do we get turned away from listening to our bodies and the earth, forgetting to listen to our own wild spirit? How did we become convinced that we needed to be like everyone else in order to be safe? Or at least accepted by most so we’d have some people who could talk to us?

I am certain that lifetimes of being herded into socially acceptable packages, matching to the ruling group, was a smart thing to do if one wanted to survive and thrive in the culture. From the time we are children, we are socialized to fit in, or worry if we don’t, because we’ll be made fun of, left out, or punished in some other way. So we give up being authentic in order to be welcomed into the group, for the simple but compelling reason that it’s painful to be left out.

Fear and ignorance and a lack of love drive this kind of behavior. Love and acceptance and forgiveness are the ways to heal this. Pretending to be what one is not will never solve a thing.

The fear of being thrown out of the group has prevented many people from even looking for their wild untamed selves.

We are often afraid of such deep honest fierce intensity, because we’re busy playing the social nicety games. Being one’s true wild self means that there is no need to prove anything, and no need to look outside of oneself for assurance that one has the right to exist.

Self love is, in all its exquisiteness, the acceptance of uniqueness and imperfection. Love yourself deeply and truly and you’ll never be lonely. You don’t have to adjust yourself to the parameters set up by anyone who cannot have the full wildness of who you really are.

There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit, all it stands for, the mood, the vastness, the wildness. -Emily Carr