Marion J. Woodman (1991) ~ Holding the Tension of the Opposites

The gap between spirit and matter is getting bigger and bigger because we are living in an addicted society… The rejected side is this whole area in the body.

This other voice keeps coming in, and we think we aren’t good enough… These projections go out onto other people because we reject our own humanity.

We have to now begin to own our own darkness. Those of us who have been addicts or are addicts know what it is to have to accept our darkness. We have treated our bodies as garbage dumps, we have allowed them to be polluted with poison.

The body has been disowned, and the feeling that is in the musculature of the body is disowned. The very substance that makes us human is disowned. What I‘m suggesting is we have to go back and look at what we call darkness, and realize that there is a different way to look at darkness.

Darkness, of course, is associated with the feminine. The goddess was thrown out of our culture long ago.

It is our task to voice that consciousness, and to do that we have to take a totally new look at what matter, mother, is. What darkness is. Who of us would want to live in a world with no darkness? Night is as prescious as is day.

As we come closer to our darkness, we see something totally new. The new light always comes out of the dark side. So the task that I see us facing is the task of coming up against that wall. Most of us have to crash against that wall before we wake up.

Eventually we have to say ”it is happening.” This is the very energy that can waken us up. Instead of looking, then, at the world as an either or black and white world, we have to begin to see it differently.

The spirit is not the slightest bit interested in staying in body. it doesn’t like it. it wants to fly. it wants its ideals. It wants beauty and truth and light, and you sure don’t get that here. So there is spirit, here is matter, if you have enjoyed living in dark matter all your life, you know how hard it is to bring it into consciousness. If you’ve never disciplined yourself with food…

Matter is not discipline.

In that pulling of tension, the energy is transformed. Something will happen to change the energy, and a third will emerge. A totally other consciousness will emerge in the dreams to bring the two together.

The holding of the tension, saying “no” to having a drink, and your animal says “I will,” and you say “I will not, is there not something you’d like other than alcohol?” … One spirit is concretized, the other is free. The same thing with food. The animal says, “I want sweetness, I am starving for sweetness.” And if you are trying to bring it to consciousness, you try to talk to it, and you say before you get to the refrigerator, “Maybe you would like to dance, maybe that’s the sweetness you would like.”

You have to hold and say, “no.” …You’re going to stay with the conflict. It’s that conflict that stretches us to the point where we start to build our own container. We start to come into our own body and feel the rage. Why do we keep stuffing things down our throats? What are we trying to keep down there? It’s the shadow energy. We don’t want to feel the anger.

Look at the magnificent energy that is just wasted. And when it’s been wasted long enough, it turns against us. It comes back for its revenge. And the cells that never had a chance to live take off in cancer or some other kind of illness. It’s this energy in matter that I’m really speaking for tonight. I feel her grief, god knows I’ve felt it in my own body,,, I see it in the earth.

The heart breaks for the innocent world, for the rainforest weeping its sound after the fire has gone through. Our own bodies are crying in the same way.

The grief, the anger, the jealousy is all here. And we call it “shadow.” We don’t want to own it, and by not owning it, we are not embodied and we are disempowered. Without our body we cannot speak our truth, because we are coming from head.

There is truth in the tears. We are coming down into the roots of the darkness, and going down into those roots and allowing the shadow energy to be recognized in a different way.

The greed may say, “I want something, but I don’t know what it is. But it’s something I have to have.” And then you think of the wolf, and the wolf is the animal of Apollo. Apollo was the god of the sun. The wolf wants to go towards light. It has that burning passion to go towards light… If you try to talk to the wolf consciously, it will tell you it wants something else.

The divine child has come out of the darkness.,, There never is room for the new consciousness in the inn. The new consciousness is having to slip in the back door. But that’s the way the new integration takes place in the individual and the collective.

Once you’ve done this, you’re not going to be judgmental of other people. You know what a mess you are yourself, and you forgive yourself, and you don’t find yourself making judgments on other people or being self-righteous. And your heart opens in compassion, and here’s where the healing of ourselves heals others.

It’s through our wounding and our suffering that we learn to love. And it’s through that love that the very cells of our body are lit with a new light.

There’s a consciousness, a new sensitivity in the body that is coming, making us realize we are all one.

It comes from loving our crooked neighbor with our own crooked heart. That’s real love, not this idealized illusion which is a lie. It’s all based on rejection of the shadow.

The atomic age is all about energy in matter. Energy that wants to be released, energy that wants to be made conscious. This is the goddess energy. She wants to be released.

Once she is touched by that light, the persona, the performance, the plastic disintegrates. There’s a reality.

Our embodiment is the bridge that can bring together spirit and body in love. And surely, that’s the love that can encompass other people and the planet itself. But it’s the consciousness that makes it possible. Without the consciousness, it can’t happen.

Jung says once you’re on the path, you’re at goal. You keep measuring every step to stay on, and the dream will tell you if you’re off.

Something goes wrong that opens up a whole new part of yourself. If you resist… you will never be whole. You’ll have one arm that’s rigid… The energy will be coming through another way. I trust that the dreams will take a person where they’re supposed to go. And I surrender to that. All I try to do is help them understand the symbol, because the symbol is the healer.

The Black Madonna… brings together the feminine in men and women.

We have all this unconscious baggage that we’re carrying around. We are trying to free ourselves of the unconsciousness of our parents so that we are free to live our own lives.

Having been an addict, I loved magic. Something magic was going to happen, but it never did… The mystery is the depth of the sacred. The symbol, you never know exactly what it means. You never can say, because the symbol will open and open and open. 15 years later you’ll say, “that’s what that dream was about!”

What is the meaning of the rage? Of course it depends on the individual… But for me there’s personal anger, beneath that there’s archetypal rage. For a lot of us, the reason we’re afraid to go into anger is because of fear we’ll be possessed by rage.

My sense of the deepest rage is: Nobody ever saw me. Nobody ever heard me. As long as i can remember, i have had to perform. when i tried to be myself, i was told “that’s not what you think. that’s not what you ought to do.” So that I was never mirrored. Nobody saw me, and so I put on this false face, and my life has been a total lie. And somebody is going to see me!

That rage just burns through, and it needs to. But it doesn’t need to be focused on somebody else, because that’s projection.

How can we have intimacy when we lie to ourselves?

An addict faces the shadow every time they want the addictive substance. And you don’t realize how strong that energy is until you say no. As soon as you say, “I’m never going to have another cigarettte,” that’s when you want a cigarette. When you really get to the root, you find an energy that is determined to take your life so that it becomes a real struggle between good and evil. But until you put it to that kind of test, you never know.

Some women who have found their sexuality, some men who are just beginning to realize what sexuality is are realizing the beauty of their shadow.

That grief will open your heart to incredible love. But it has to be dialogued to get it to consciousness.

Poetry gives you images to dream on.