Awakening My Instinctive Nature

What happens when we tear down the walls that we have built to control our Instinctive Nature?  The Instinctive Nature is the vital, life force energy that expresses itself through impulses of expansion and creation.  It is Nywfre.  From a very early age, we are taught that our Instinctive Nature is a beast that we must subdue and control.  It is the wild animal on the Strength card.  Left unstructured, it can lead us to the negative aspects of excess on The Devil card– addiction, broken relationships, a feeling of being out of control.

In an effort to ‘mature’ and have success in the world as adults, we have captured our Instinctive Nature and placed it under lock and key.  This is our attempt to create some sort of balance and structure in our lives.  And this process of capturing and locking usually comes at the urging of our caregivers during our early years.

“Eat your vegetables.”

“Sit like a lady.”

“Play nice.”

“Don’t talk back.”

The Instinctive Nature is wild, creative, and untame.  It has a voice and it has a focus.  We tend to think of it as being the thing that makes us overeat, over drink and love too hard.  But I think that it is our resistance to this Wild Child that makes us overeat, over drink and over-sex.  I think that on its own, it is creative and expansive beyond the limits of our lower mind; and beyond the tolerance of most ‘civilized’ societies.  And so in an attempt to conform to our environments and find more and more acceptance and ‘normalcy,’ we lock it behind thicker and thicker barriers.  It’s this locking away and denying our inner wild child that we find ourselves unable to escape feelings of ungroundedness leading to a profound sense of isolation, terror, panic and fear.

In my personal life, I have found that my very dominant Super Ego began making it her mission from a very early age to find safety in conformity.  My methods were most unkind and usually came in the form of disempowering inner chatter and a focus on creating enemies where there were none. The original intention of this dominant self was to contain the enemy (the Instinctive Nature.) But when the ego contained the Instinct, the ego was left to its own devices which, without the natural Source of power, was like a straw house in a whirlwind of a vibrant world. By containing the Instinctive Nature, the ego told stories that it thought were expansive, but were actually super-limiting. It saw threats were coming from everywhere and built up defenses to keep itself safe. They were stories that affirmed a life experience as perceived by the mind, but denied the feeling, sensual nature of the heart.  “Follow your head, not your heart.”  Every experience began in the head.  Queen of Swords on crack.

For some reason, my dominant self was a tyrant and every time I was given feedback that felt like I was not conforming to the status quo, I would flood my mind with shame and self-loathing and pummel my self-expression with a borage of daggers meant not to subdue, but maim forever.  I would contain my Instinctive Nature behind thick walls of masks.  These masks were the faces that I began wearing in society to make me acceptable, but then they became the masks that I wore to make myself acceptable to myself. It became my personal badge of honor to contain that part of me that impulsed toward ‘shameful’ behavior such as lusting, desiring, wanting, hungering, copulating, zealing, ecstasying, passioning, having, possessing, experiencing, expressing itself, shouting itself, etc. All those things that were unbecoming of a young black woman living in a white man’s world were sure to lead me down the road to sin and hell and destitution. I created a system in myself that told a story of a calm, cool, collected personality. I am a human being and therefore I subject my natural desires and impulses to a moral code as dictated by a ‘higher’ authority.  I am educated and therefore I do not act ‘ghetto.’ I use the knowledge of my countrymen and don’t seek to overthrow the foundations that support the safety of the lifestyle that live.  My ancestry is lost but it is okay because I have a good life in this land that does not accept me, but if I keep on being a good girl, some day something is going to change.  I was above it all.  I started believing the lies that I was telling myself about how I felt, what I believed and what I wanted.  I became utterly unrecognizable to myself and the distance between me and the place where I had locked away my Soul became larger and larger. And hey, I hope that you can realize that this missive is waaaaay beyond ethnicity and gender.  There are millions of people having the issues of repression and conformity who are Caucasian, Asian, Jewish, Muslim, Transgendered, barefoot runners, carnivores, vegans, wanna-be professional gamblers, artists, and whatever other niche you want to name that is in some way a rebellion against the patriarchal, ‘rational’ status quo.  This post is my experience of it and it is intended to inspire anyone who may be experiencing repressed sexuality and blocked creativity to find a path back home to their Instinctual base, and a re-invigoration of their Root Chakra.

Luckily, my Soul and Instinctive Nature are quite strong and I have been, for the last several years, fighting to release the grips of my dominant self and making way for my Instinctive Nature to come forth and have its rightful place in my life.  As I tear down these walls, (the walls of untruth, lies, deception, and separation–those walls that were put up to keep me from feeling ashamed about what is natural and innocent in me)  I am saying yes to my GodSelf–unabashedly, unshamefully.   Where I had been for decades plunged into a life avoiding my True Nature because I didn’t want to feel ashamed, I am now running headlong into my Truth and expressing her without apology.

As I tear down the walls that block my natural expression,  I notice that my mind is wondering, but how will she be controlled? How will she not destroy everyone around her?  My mind is reeling because this awakening that I am experiencing is my very own Lillith Nature, and, in my patriarchal mind, Lillith is a destroyer!

As I examine my mind’s fears, I use the loving nature around my heart to guide me to a more expansive view.  I take the bigger picture perspective and I see that Life Force is the power of God and it is awesome.   I am showed the vision of a child running wild, and his exhausted parents running around him trying to keep him from harm as he tears up the world.  I have total compassion for those parents.  They want their child to be healthy, safe, and to grow up to be successful.  We tend to think that a child left to run wild, will harm itself and destroy the world around it.  But I wonder what would happen if as parents, we changed our driving dictum from ‘you’ll hurt yourself’ to ‘expand gently?’ What if the child were allowed to expand and explore with a loving container that gently changed shape along with the child; not a rigid container limited by one shape that the child was forced to fit. Depends on the parents and depends on the child, right?  I guess that most importantly, it depends on the Soul and what it came to experience.  Yaaaaas!

I think that’s enough exploration for right now, my love.  Now, I get to go and feel my instincts and use my intuition for guidance in my next step.