[Upon request, and because it's coming up again for me as well, I'm re-posting updates of several previous Sophia's Children entries on Lilith & other 'naughty girls' -- 2011 is a year to shine authentically, and that means reclaiming the Wild Child! Enjoy.]
Most women, thinking back to childhood, remember clear 'lessons' and messages about the difference between 'good girls' and 'bad girls'.
Most were taught to be 'good girls' by having 'bad girls' pointed out as examples. The bad girl was a cautionary tale. Just like Lilith. And like Lilith, the story we were told about 'bad girls' was never quite accurate, and often far from it.
Giving the benefit of the doubt, these childhood lessons were well-meaning, in that they were designed to protect us from the horrors of non-conformity that are visited upon the creative, the sensual, the wild, the unique, and the 'different'. And of course, naughty girls -- like any others who went outside of the designated lines or wore colors other than the approved shades of gray and beige -- did not conform to the cultural rules for good girls.
But in that slow and often painful march to conformity, so much gets killed off or suppressed. But it never really dies; it just burrows deeper and deeper within, finding some dark, quiet corner of our beings where it can live without being found out.
And it sits there, waiting for us to awaken from the deep sleep of forgetfulness that takes so much of our essential nature with it. It hibernates in that long, cold winter, waiting for a Spring that comes only to the fortunate, and only to those courageous and determined enough to seek it out, cultivate it, and love it back to life.
And in that winter of conformity, while the Wild Child and Naughty Girl sleep, the good girl follows the rules, but soon learns that though the rules seem few and very specific, they are, or seem, always just beyond our reach. We're never 'there'; we never gain the hoped-for approval, the gold star, for being the Good Girl, because any such moment would be fleeting. There are always new levels to the rule, always higher standards to meet.
In striving to be the good girl, while at the same time silently rebelling, most become perfectionists, reflecting the cultural standard for the Perfect Good Girl.
Marion Woodman, the renowned Jungian analyst and voice of what she calls the 'Conscious Feminine', writes, "Perfection massacres the feminine," and "Perfection does not allow for feeling."
Speaking in terms of the archetypes of Feminine and Masculine, perfectionism would be considered an extreme expression of a Masculine trait -- very exacting, specific, conforming, non-emotional, externally oriented. It allows no space, no deviation, no creativity, no spontaneity, no receptivity. It's well-armored and always at war with itself. It never rests, or hibernates.
This charade of Good Girl Perfectionism has its high cost, of course. As Emile Zola wrote, "When truth is buried underground, it grows and it builds up so much force that the day it explodes it blasts everything with it." And that's often what happens until the True Self, the Essential Self, the Whole Self is recognized, reclaimed, re-embodied. This is, of course, as applicable to men as it is to women, since men also inter core parts of themselves in order to conform.
To become whole, and indeed to experience the depths of joy, grace, heartfulness; and to express the greatest and most beautiful gifts belonging to unique purpose, we need to go searching for and welcome home the Wild Child, the Naughty Girl, or whomever else buried herself alive in the coffin of conformity.
Outside of the coffin, there is life. There is Spring awaiting the rousing of the too-long-dormant but most living parts of us.
Awaken the Wild Child and call to the Naughty Girl and welcome back their creative and vibrant gifts.
The Dark Goddess, Sophia -- whose season this is (though she needs no season and knows no such boundaries, being Everywhere) -- can show you how. Sophia can light the way back to your own Lilith -- she who has never parted from Essential Wholeness, though she flew into exile for a time.
FeMojo Blessings,
Jamie
Join me in the Feminine Mojo Mystery School (or other Feminine Mojo Projects) to explore & reclaim your Lost Gifts of the Feminine -- your Light to shine brightly in the world.
Image Credits: Famed naughty girls, Evelyn Nesbit & Tallulah Bankhead
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