Embracing the Shadow

“We live in a world that has been governed by the masculine archetype for some 2,500 years, without the feminine archetype to balance it, with no sacred marriage between them. As a result, world culture and the human psyche are now dangerously out of alignment with the Earth and the Cosmos.” ~Ann Bearing

I’ve noticed a buzz in the air over the past few days.

Whether it’s the excitement of growing my newsletter, the amazing connections I’ve made on Substack, or the giant bees that hover around my bird feeders, I don’t know, but the air has been electric.

Things are shifting in ways that are palpable. The collective energy is changing and individuals are awakening to the possibility of moving through the world in a radically different way.

Can you feel it?

One thing is for sure, there is magic afoot. The Great Mother has been raped and denigrated for millennia.

She is waking up from her drugged slumber and she is PISSED.

The evidence of her rise can be seen in the random dust bowl recently that killed over 150 people. Or the double-digit days in a row California has had without sunshine. Her whisper echoes in the disrupted planting cycles across the globe.

And don’t get me started about Yellowstone.

The feminine energies or aspects of being have been vilified for centuries along with Goddess and nature-based traditions.

Maybe it was the star-gazing Egyptians and their affinity towards the sky that began the disconnection from the Earth.

For sure it was the domination of Christianity and the subsequent obliteration of Earth-based traditions like Paganism.

Through centuries of control and domination, the Divine Feminine, Goddess archetypes have been brutalized, denigrated, and demonized. Her cyclical energies of nature and sacred connection to the Earth were buried deep within the collective unconscious, smothered and abused for millennia out of fear of their wisdom.

For over four thousand years humans have lived under ever-increasingly life-effacing paradigms of hierarchical power and control.

The twin toxins of patriarchy and capitalism

From the food we eat to the air we breathe, our literal survival is dependent upon two nihilistic, predatory systems that have habituated us to the point of believing that “this is just how it is.”

These death puppeteers operate in the background of our lives and influence everything. From sovereignty over our bodies to how much and what kind of food we are allotted, our basic needs are held hostage by greed and genocide.

Capitalism and Patriarchy are the water in our aquarium. Everything we do is influenced or downright controlled by these oppressive structures.

These soulless modes of operation are deeply rooted in our ancestral DNA, poisoning us from within while we wait for our Amazon packages and tweet about breakfast.

We rely on two systems of death to sustain our lives

The sole goal of capitalism is accumulating wealth and resources.

We are so indoctrinated we rarely stop to question whether or not that is the right objective for a system we rely on for survival.

This matrix was constructed over time to prioritize the accumulation of monetary wealth over the well-being of individuals and the planet and is ingrained in our collective unconscious as our agreed-upon reality.

This system of competition and scarcity has taken on a life of its own, and we have become its unwitting servants.

Profit is the driving force behind all of our institutions and businesses, not the welfare of our families and communities.

The consequences of this ideology can be seen in the widening income inequality, environmental degradation, and subjugation of women and our rights as sovereign individuals.

Capitalism operates under the guise of providing opportunities and freedom, but in reality, it only benefits those at the top while leaving the majority of people struggling to survive.

Then of course we have the Patriarchy. The system of denigration, subjugation, and violence has been murdering women’s bodies and souls for thousands of years.

The patriarchal structure is deeply embedded in our conscious and unconscious psyches. It is based on the belief that men are superior to women and that traditional gender roles should be upheld.

This ideology has led to the suppression of women's voices and the perpetuation of gender-based violence on a genocidal scale.

Patriarchy values dominance and control over empathy and compassion. The consequences of this system can be seen in the staggering rates of domestic violence, sexual assault, and the wage gap between men and women.

The matrix of capitalism and patriarchy we accept as our reality has created a society that is rife with intolerance, misogyny, racism, classism, and segregation, and it is starting to crumble.

Enter the Shadow

Shadow work is getting a lot of press these days and for good reason.

We are living in a deeply unconscious time period, the lead era, the Kali Yuga, (fascinating stuff, check it out!) where yin and yang are out of balance individually and as a collective.

Everything is heavy and dark. Shadows and specters lurk at every corner. Yet we do not speak nearly enough about Death, the one thing none of us can escape and all of us fear.

That fear underlies so much of how we spend our time here on Earth, yet we pretend it doesn’t exist.

Until it comes smashing into our world with a force we cannot ignore and we are leveled by grief and loss.

Because none of us are escaping those either.

We are disconnected from the source of meaning.

In man’s quest to conquer and control the natural world, humans have created an environment that we cannot inhabit.

We murdered our mother.

The brutal rape and torture of our planet created holographic waves of wounded consciousness that extended to all living beings.

Under patriarchal regimes of control, women and animals became less than. Things to be objectified and consumed at the will of the overblown divine masculine.

We have battered our mother for centuries in a crazed race to disconnect from that which we are.

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it” — Rumi

(I love that Rumi quote. Well, all Rumi quotes, really!)

Shadow work is the process of making the unconscious conscious. Of uncovering aspects of ourselves that we have repressed or denied.

Our fears, desires, insecurities, and our past traumas. The parts we were told were lacking or too much by our caretakers or peers. These are the part of Self that need inclusion and healing.

Centuries of slavery, competition, and environmental degradation have buried the light of the Divine Feminine and silenced her song. Wide-scale rape of the earth, depletion of our natural resources, hatred, and violence toward women and the feminine have demonized her light and erased her from our conscious minds.

She became our archetypal collective shadow.

I liken shadow work to peeling an onion or the leaves on a lotus flower. It’s about getting to know all parts of ourselves we’ve silenced with shame and trauma. It is often painful and always liberating.

Once we fully see these shadow parts they can be integrated into our consciousness, peeling us closer to our soul.

By embracing the energies of the rising Divine Feminine, we can start illuminating the collective shadow. We can demand that the well-being of individuals and communities come before the pursuit of profit and power.

We can begin to embrace equality and compassion and prioritize the connection between humans and nature. By embracing our shadow, we begin the journey of coming home to ourselves.

This work is soul work. It demands we confront the patterns and beliefs that have been passed down to us as truth. It calls us to imagine new ways of being with ourselves and with each other that prioritize connection over dominion and compassion over control.

Are you ready to return?

© Kelley Murphy, 2023.  

Thank you so much for reading! xo

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