The heroine in “Beauty and the Beast” could have easily believed she was a victim. Beauty’s mother died when she was young. When her father lost all of his fortune they left the city, where she was free to read and do as she pleased all day, and moved to the country. Beauty then had to do all of the housework, cooking, and cleaning, while her sisters did nothing, but torment her. Then, her father sacrificed her to the Beast to save his own neck and for financial gain. It would be easy for us to believe she was a victim, but she wasn’t.

The Beast represents an instinctual masculine energy that values the feminine. He is asleep in the unconscious until Beauty’s Father stumbles across him. The Beast awakens because the Father is out of touch and isn’t instinctually aware of what to do when he faces a challenge. He discovers the Beast’s castle on a dark stormy night as he wanders alone deep in the forest, which symbolizes the unconscious. He is lost, in more ways than one.

Beauty selflessly cares for her family. She plans to live with her Father forever, and has no intention of leaving home, which means her instinct is off as well. She should want to grow up and leave home, but is content to stay right where she is, in a limited consciousness, taking care of her siblings and Father.

Since Beauty doesn’t plan to leave home, life circumstances eventually force her to leave her Father’s house, and move into the Beast’s. The Beast represents an instinctual knowing neither she, nor her Father, have. Both the Father and Beauty think the Beast will kill her, but on the first night she discovers an apartment with her name over the door. She finds all of her favorite things inside. Why would the Beast do this if he planned to eat her? Obviously, he doesn’t.

He knows what she loves and who she is, before he even meets her.

The Beast sets the ground rules at the very beginning of their relationship. First, he wants honesty. He doesn’t want her to tell him what she thinks he wants to hear, but the truth. That was an issue he had with her Father. He wants to trust what she says. The Beast wants her to speak up about what she feels and wants fearlessly.

He tells her she can do anything she wants. She thought she would have to obey his every command, but he tells her she doesn’t. Initially, she is afraid of his anger, rage, and that he will hurt her, but she speaks up anyway. He asks her to marry him each night at dinner, and she says no. She finally tells him one night that she enjoys his company, but she will not ever marry him. He accepts what she says, but asks her to promise to never leave him.

Beauty wants to go home to see her Father. The Beast agrees, but wants her word that she will return within ten days. She says she will, but doesn’t. Her sisters distract her and she stays longer than she said she would. She has a dream on the tenth night that the Beast is dying of a broken heart and realizes she’s made a mistake.

She wakes up knowing what to do and what she wants. She doesn’t want to remain a child in her Father’s house, at that level of consciousness, and returns to the Beast. Now she knows she wants to marry him, the instinctual masculine who loves, values her, and insists she is free.

He is a new inner masculine. The Beast speaks loudly and angrily with the Father in the beginning, because he has been ignored, dismissed, and overlooked. He was the rejected masculine voice in the unconscious. He was frustrated with actions that didn’t value the feminine. He wanted to be heard, to get Beauty’s attention as a part of her psyche. He may shout in dreams and through intuition to get her listen and act. Once she begins to respond to him, he won’t have to take such drastic measures.

He is the inner masculine who values the feminine, beauty, love, and the soul. She is free and he wants her to stand up for herself, which she finally does.

Beauty is free. She always was free, she just didn’t realize it, until he showed her that she was. She had to believe it for herself. She eventually realizes she loves him, this part of her that cherishes her and believes in her. This transforms the Beast into a Prince and they live happily ever after.

We all want to be free. When beginning to step out as ourselves, after having not been seen, heard, or valued, the inner masculine can seem like a Beast. Shouting to be heard, angry at gifts being devalued, and feeling overlooked. He eventually calms down as we continue to do what we want and say what needs to be said, regardless of what others think. Through inner listening, we learn to instinctively know when to act and what to do. If we persist, he will be transformed and we will be free to be ourselves.

Follow the yellow brick road… This phrase is so familiar that it’s become a part of our modern day conversation. We all know what it means. All we need to do is follow the obvious path, which will lead to the desired destination.

The Wizard of Oz story is about following the yellow brick road home. It’s a symbolic map of an unfamiliar inner terrain. The destination is the heart. This old story provides fresh opportunities to generate new insights and to help us navigate challenges with greater ease and grace.

I did my practicum for a counseling degree in suburban Philadelphia. The alcohol and drug rehab center was located in an upscale neighborhood. It was a nondescript red brick building, surrounded by lush green lawns, trees, and landscaped with shrubs and flowers. It was the kind of place you might drive by a hundred times and not even notice it was there.

My supervisor handed me two books on my first day. I glanced at the covers. The books on drug and alcohol abuse looked less than interesting. You might keep them on the shelf as a reference, but not actually read them. They were the kind of books with statistics, names of drugs, and how they are abused. I thanked her and quietly put them in my bag. She gave me a tour of the place and then left me into a big room to hear the daily “talk” given by one of the counselors.

The counselor was a big burly man. He looked more like a boy’s high school football coach than a counselor. He talked about probabilities. How slim the chances were that any of them would succeed in finding a way out of their addictions. I remember that talk from the first day of college. “Look to your left and right, only one of you will graduate.” I guess it’s supposed to inspire you to work hard, but I walked out of the talk and felt disheartened for the residents. It seemed like the counselors had lost faith. My advisor informed me that afternoon that I would give the talk on my next day of work.

Most of the people in the center were not from the area. They lived in places where crime and poverty were a way of life. They spoke of rape, murder, and the loss of their children in group sessions. They believed what they heard in the talk because that was their reality.

I did not read the book, because I wanted to remain optimistic about their future, and picked the Wizard of Oz for a topic.

I first discussed symbolism and gave them a general sense of how to understand the story  symbolically. Then, I wrote the four main character names on the board, asked what each was searching for, and had them pick a character they most identified with. Each group went into a different corner of the room to talk about what their character would say about their addictions.

I stood in the middle of the room at the podium with about fifty people scattered around the room. I looked at the groups and realized each character group was similar in appearance. The Lion group was soft and a bit heavier. You could imagine talking to one of them for a few minutes and then wanting to give them a hug. They were more interested in feelings. The Tin Men were the work out guys, all muscle, with rolled up sleeves, and trim haircuts. They were the tough guys and their interest was action. The Scarecrow group was taller and thinner. They were more likely to be wearing glasses and focused on insights. Then there was the Dorothy group of two. One young guy was an African American of medium build. The other was a young slim white woman in her early twenties. I found them to be the most fascinating and hardest to categorize.

Each group picked a spokesperson, returned to their seats, and presented their findings. It’s been too many years since this happened to remember the details of what was said, but I remember the excitement in their applause. The Tin Men hurried out, the Scarecrows continued talking among themselves, a few of the Lions came up for a hug and thanked me. The two Dorothy’s were lost in the crowd.

I hoped that the people were able to connect with their character in the story and leave the talk with more faith in themselves and their future. I didn’t want them to believe they were statistics from a worn out alcohol and drug rehab book, but were living breathing characters in a fascinating story, able to generate fresh new insights into their situations. I hoped they saw that the home they were searching for in a bottle or pill was right there inside them all along.

Which character would you choose? What insights would that character offer to you about your situation? Your life? Are you living the fascinating story that is your life? Have you made the journey to discover your inner home? Or are you still looking for it in the world?

I had the following dream in my twenties:

A group of us are being held hostage by several men. We all lay on the deck at the front of a cottage in the middle of a field. The men sit inside watching us. We have to jump up and catch a transistor flying through the air when no one is looking to gain our freedom. I do this and am released. I walk toward the woods.

Dreams come for the benefit of the soul, not the mind. They speak in the soul’s symbolic language and not the mind’s literal language. This is also true for myth, fairy tales, stories, and the things related to the life of the soul.

There is usually one literal meaning to something, but several possible meanings when symbolism is involved.

One possible meaning of the above dream is that the mind was holding me hostage. That I needed to be still until I received information that wasn’t coming from a material source to win my freedom. I had to catch the information floating on the airwaves, which could mean intuition. The masculine says, “This is what you need to do to win your freedom,” be still, wait until the right time, listen, and make your move. Listen for the still, quiet voice to learn something essential to our freedom.

What appears on the surface as being held hostage by someone or something, can take on a deeper meaning when we see that what seems to be one thing is something else entirely. More specifically, we interpret the situation as being held against my will, but in the end I win my freedom. If I hadn’t been held, I might not have opened myself to intuition and won my freedom from the patriarchy, mind, or however it might be interpreted.

Dreams are like fairy tales. This dream theme appears repeatedly in fairy tales. Dorothy is held hostage by the Wicked Witch, Cinderella by her Stepmother, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty by the Beast, Rapunzel by the Old Woman, the mythic Psyche by Eros (then Venus) and Persephone by Hades, Hansel and Gretel by the Witch. None of these characters are free at some point in their story.

When we look at stories literally, we miss the deeper meaning. If the stories were about young women who were in these situations, then we would say this is about the poor heroine as a victim who waits for the prince (in some stories) to set her free. As you may have noticed by the range of stories I have included, they aren’t all rescued by a prince. If we look at them symbolically, none are.

If we read about Dorothy talking to the Tin Man, we don’t say, “She’s psychotic.” We often say it’s pretend, a story, entertainment. What if this is Dorothy conversing with the part of herself that has lost touch with her heart? The part of her that says, “Work, work, work, more, harder, faster, to get what you want.” In the process, she got stuck, and lost contact with her own heart, love, and her soul.

What if the stories weren’t meant to be taken literally? What if they were not intended for the mind but for the soul? What if the stories, like dreams, were in the language of the soul and were about the soul’s freedom from the conditioning of the patriarchal culture?

The soul thrives on depth. Deeper meaning, being, interaction with nature that comes from open and aware engagement. It is nourished by poetry, beauty, and love. Not superficial beauty, love, and stories, but stories, love, and beauty that does not conform to the culture’s ideas of what has value. They reach through the doorway of symbolic language to a deeper truth and meaning to nourish and assist in the growth of the soul.

https://wisdomoftheswan.wordpress.com/

Defy the Authorities and Follow Your Heart

I dreamt of my stepmother a few nights ago. She was sleeping in the dream, but then awoke, and threw a bunch of shotguns on the floor. It was unusual for her to appear in my dream, but she often shows up when I am pondering the role of the so-called “evil” Witch and Stepmother characters in fairy tales, which I was doing the day before the dream. The Witch and the Stepmother in fairy tales are the shadow feminine.

The shadow feminine is the unconscious aspect of the heroine. The part of herself that she projects onto those around her and they are to blame for her lack of progress. The Witch and Stepmother initially served a purpose. They are the part of us that learned the rules in childhood in order to protect us. When you were ten and languishing in front of the television, they sounded the alarm, “Mom will be home soon. You better get up and finish your chores before she gets back or she is going to be angry.” They were your protectors.

The Wicked Witch was a Warrior in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy saw herself as a helpless Victim when her house landed on the first Wicked Witch and killed her. Then, later in the story, she was devastated when the Wizard told her she had to kill the second Wicked Witch in order to get home. How could she, a helpless little girl, kill anyone? She couldn’t even imagine it.

As Dorothy and her friends approached the Witch’s castle, the Witch in defend and protect mode, repeatedly tried to stop them. Finally, the Witch took Dorothy and the Lion hostage, had the stuffing pulled from the Scarecrow, and damaged the Tinman by having him dropped from high in the sky.

The Witch made Dorothy work in the kitchen and caged the Lion. She repeatedly tried to steal Dorothy’s silver shoes, which eventually made Dorothy so angry she threw water on the Witch, which melted her. This is symbolic of the emotions that can melt the defensiveness and protection we have utilized throughout life. Acceptance of the difficult feelings as they arise will melt the inner Witch. This also moved Dorothy out of the Victim role as she integrated the anger the Witch carried and accepted it as a part of herself. This empowered her to act on her own behalf.

Cinderella played the Victim role with her Stepmother and Stepsisters who endlessly taunted her. They constantly created extra work for her, so she could never rest. They ridiculed her and made her feel as though she was never enough. She would never meet her Stepmother’s expectations in order to be free to do as she pleased.

These women are the inner voices that tell us there is always more work to be done. They are the beliefs we carry regarding inadequacy. They are what keeps us from living the life we desire as our true selves. Those ideas prevent us from following our hearts.

The Witch, Stepmother, and Stepsisters in the fairy tales are the inner voices that keep us from stepping into the fullness of our being. They keep us playing Victim roles and interpreting what happens through that lens. They mire us in giving and receiving blame and guilt, which keeps us under their ever watchful eyes to do more and try harder to be enough.

The roles the Stepmother and Witch played in childhood are not necessary as an adult. Cinderella defied her Stepmother when she went to the balls. The Prince challenged her parents when he insisted she try on the slipper. The Stepmother was the voice that said she had to play smaller the first two times she tried to leave home. The parents continued to ridicule her the third time as the Prince took her away from the home in which she wasn’t seen or valued for who she was.

Dorothy discovered at the end of her journey that she had the power to go home inside her all along. We also have the strength to face our inner critics in whatever form they take. We have the ability to step out of Victim and Warrior roles and into a new story. The power to live the life we long for, following our hearts, and sharing our gifts, is and has been inside of us all along. All we have to do is click our heels together and we are at home in our true self.

http://wisdomoftheswan.wordpress.com/

Trees live in a world of change, while remaining rooted in the deep darkness. They stand bare in the cold blustery winter storms. Their leaves and buds sprout with the onset of spring rains. The sun and heat of summer entices the flowers to bloom and the fruit to ripen.  As the days get cooler and the winds blow, the leaves and fruit drop from the branches and then winter returns. Once again, the tree stands bare and exposed to the elements.

The life of the tree is similar to ours.

We can go through the smaller cycles of the seasons and weather changes many times during one life. Then, in a larger sense, as one lifetime, the spring can be youth, summer is adulthood, fall represents midlife, and the winter as the elder years.

We have been conditioned to look at the seasons and weather we experience in life with judgment. Positive things happen during the sunny days, and rainy days are identified as when negative things happen. Strong winds that break off a limb might be perceived as tragic. The seasons, as related to the deterioration that is a part of the ageing process, is generally presented in our culture as the older one gets the worse it is.

Change is sometimes perceived as difficult. Letting go as a challenge. And life, it has been said, is for the young.

The part of the tree that remains unaffected by the weather and seasons is the part of the tree that is not visible. The roots are in the dark silent stillness, while above ground the trunk may sway in the wind, as the leaves are blown from the branches, and the tree is  pelted with rain.

When we root our awareness in the stillness and silence of ourselves, that which is unseen to the world, we remain undaunted. Seasons come and go. The weather changes. We age. Still we remain rooted in that which is changeless. If we base our sense of selves on that which is seen, that which is impermanent, we can be battered by the natural cyclical ebb and flow of life. When we stand in that which is permanent, we remain immune to what happens in the outer world. We are fully engaged as we witness life with our sense of self based in what is eternal. That is the ever-present Source, which is the deeper root of our being.

https://wisdomoftheswan.wordpress.com/

I took a trip to Istanbul soon after I finished my coursework for grad school. The first thing on my list of things to do was to visit Hagia Sophia. All I knew about it was that it was that it was a church. I was thrilled that I was going to see a historical building associated with Sophia, who was a main character in my dissertation. I couldn’t wait to get inside the church to see all the symbolism around Her. Much to my surprise when the country was invaded they installed Islamic images, the Christian ones were minimal. Sophia wasn’t there the way I thought she would be.

Last winter we visited the San Antonio missions in Texas. We walked into the church across from the Alamo on the eve of Christmas Eve and the pipe organist was playing a soul-stirring version of Christ is Born that made my hair stand on end. We sat for a while listening to the music and watching the steady stream of people exploring the church with all of its holiday decorations. Eventually we got up to leave and exited through a side door. We walked toward the road that went behind the church and just as we prepared to cross the street I heard a man call from behind us, “Senorita, Senorita! Wait!” I turned around as he steered the woman behind me toward an opening in a high wall behind the church.

Something compelled me to follow them into the garden and without a thought I did. There on the outside of the church, concealed behind high walls, was a towering statue of what the Mexicans call the Virgin of Guadalupe.

I was astonished to see this huge statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe hidden behind the high walls of the garden and tucked away behind the church. Then I had another synchronistic experience with her the very next day.

It was Christmas Eve when we went to the Mission of the Immaculate Conception. The curator and park ranger walked up to us as we sat outside looking at the map to see how far the next mission was. They asked if we needed any help. We chatted amicably for a few moments and then I asked, “Who do you think the woman is on the altar?” It wasn’t the traditional Virgin Mary we see in typical Christian depictions, but the Virgin of Guadalupe image. The Mexican-American ranger responded, the Virgin of Guadalupe is the Virgin Mary.

I explained to them how Sophia was an aspect of my dissertation, but they had not heard of her. I shared how Sophia is Wisdom and that’s who I thought may be portrayed in the Virgin of Guadalupe image. The woman in Revelation is described in the way the Virgin of Guadalupe is shown. They were intrigued by the possibility.

In Revelation 12:2 it says, “And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth. In anguish for the delivery.”

The woman in Revelation was pursued by a red dragon and God prepared a place for her in the wilderness and gave her wings to fly away from the dragon. She is to be nourished in the wilderness for a “time, and times, and half a time.” (Rev. 12:13)

A young girl of about eight walked up to us as I spoke with the curator and park ranger at the Concepcion Mission. She placed her hand on the curator’s back, moved her to the side, and walked right through the center of our group. We were standing outside and there wasn’t anyone else on the grounds except for us, this girl, and her family. As she walked through the center of our small circle, her mother called out to her, “Sophia! What are you doing?” Her mother walked up apologizing, until I explained to her that we had been talking about Sophia at the exact moment her daughter walked up. She was astonished to say the least. We all were.

The latest was the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, which is the Mother church of the archdiocese of Philadelphia. A nun was inspired to have bronze statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe made as a site for prayer. It is located in the front of the church to the left of the altar.

I have typically seen these Virgin of Guadalupe statues in areas saturated with those of Mexican descent. This is the first time I have seen this statue in the northeast, which seems unusual. This is the prayer that is near the statue:

Know for certain that I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary, Mother of the True God. …Here I will show and offer all my life, my compassion, my help and my protection to the people. I am your merciful Mother, the Mother of all those who have confidence in me. Here I will hear their weeping and their sorrows and will remedy and alleviate their suffering, necessities and misfortunes. …Listen and let it penetrate into your heart. …Do not be troubled or weighed down with grief. Do not fear any illness or vexation, anxiety or pain. Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not your fountain of life? Are you not in the folds of my mantle? In the crossing of my arms? What else do you need?

You cannot see the word “Mary” in the photo I took because it is where the camera flash reflected. This divine feminine asks in the prayer, “Am I not your fountain of life?” She is the source and all we need.

These types of experiences with Sophia, a divine feminine, have been in dreams and the world. She is and has been opening my awareness to her presence in many ways. I had a dream during the course of my dissertation that revealed a spiritual experience twenty years ago was an encounter with Jesus and her. Through the course of my studies I began to see her on-going re-appearances as an indication of her presence.

I was planning to write a paper in grad school on a common theme in fairy tales which was the sacrifice of the daughter by the father. Before I started writing, I received an intuitive message that it wasn’t a sacrifice by the father, but an initiation by the Mother. I realized in Amor and Psyche that’s exactly what happens. Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, initiates Psyche (Soul) to help her move from being a victim to knowing the divinity in herself. I saw that in subsequent fairy tales, which appeared to be retellings of that myth, that the goddesses had disappeared from the stories.

This is true of the Bible as well. The books not included in the Bible are found in the Nag Hammadi, which has stories of enlightened women, Sophia being one, who are strong and empowered. The women in the Bible are not often powerful in their own right and can be interpreted in a negative light losing the true meaning of their stories.

The manner in which the powerful divine feminine presence is no longer seen in the fairy tales or religion, is also true in my own life. I remember asking years ago where the divine feminine images were? Where the divine female presence was? And I now am left wondering how many times I didn’t see her trying to get my attention because I wasn’t looking, listening, or aware.

After writing my paper, I thought of going back and rewriting my own history to put the goddess back in it. The one who was taken out of the fairy tales, religion, and subsequently my own story. The thing is, once I knew she was taken out of the fairy tales, I could see little signs of her. The helpful animals and the fairy godmothers were a few of the vestiges of her presence. How would rewriting my story change my perception of my life knowing that a divine feminine presence has been with me all along? How would it change your story if you knew she had been there with you all along and you just didn’t see it?

https://wisdomoftheswan.wordpress.com/

We stand on the brink of an epochal shift in consciousness. Just as our forefathers stood on the steps of Independence Hall and proclaimed their independence from their Father, the King of England, we are on the cusp of a historically significant moment. Our forefathers sought freedom by the sword. Our freedom will not come by way of the warrior and fear, but by the cup of truth and love.

When the immigrants streamed by boat toward Ellis Island, they were greeted by a majestic woman who was lighting their way to a new life. She stood with a flaming torch in one hand and the Declaration of Independence in the other. There were broken chains at her feet and a halo around her head. She was in this world but not of this world.

The French gave us the Statue of Liberty because they felt a kinship with our revolutionary spirit, but they no longer felt war was the way to freedom. They had seen the result for themselves, how the oppressed had in turn became the oppressors. Lady Liberty’s artist made sure there were no traces of the warrior present in her image or countenance.

The inner structure of the statue is iron, the metal of Mars, the god of war. The outer surface of the statue is copper, the metal of Venus, the goddess of love. In mythology, the two unite and some stories suggest the product of that union was Eros, the god of love. The Statue is of a woman and although the structure that holds her up is associated with Mars, whom we know as the god of war, he was in fact originally known as the god the pagans worshiped in the spring when planting seeds.

The Romantics saw the results of the bloody French Revolution and turned to their pens to create a revolution. In the sixties, revolution was again the buzzword, with a desire to transform the warrior. Now the way is no longer through power at the point of a gun, but through the heart, which is reached through feminine consciousness, as the Statue of Liberty illustrates.

Fairy tales repeatedly show the feminine as evil or hidden, trapped and fearful. These cultural portraits of the collective symbolically represent what’s happening and how to rectify it. The masculine in these stories can be a Beast, frog, devil, or inept father who sacrifices his own daughter for gain. The Handless Maiden’s father, after cutting off her hands, tells her she can stay with him and he’ll always take care of her. She does not accept his offer and leaves her father’s house, as do many of the other heroines in fairy tales.

We need to leave the fear-based house of our forefathers. This house built on conflict must be replaced by one constructed on a foundation of peace and love. This house is created within. A revolution of the heart is at hand. We must set down our swords and walk a new path to freedom. The time of the warrior has passed. Now is the time for the Child of Love to be born.

https://wisdomoftheswan.wordpress.com/