When Women Remember how to Occupy Archetypal Space
an insight into the New Zealand March 2024 WOE laboratory
So You Know:
Before joining a transformational training, I have a habit, or rather my gremlin has a habit, of making sure I do not sign up to it until the last minute. The exact same happened in March 2024. An extraordinary proposal was made: Hold two possibility laboratories at the same time, one for women and one for men, bringing them together on the third day, to see what happens when archetypal masculine meets archetypal feminine. Really the idea intrigued me. It sent a wave of wonder through me, “what would happen?”.
It tasted like an archetypal play ground, I was aching to explore.
I jumped in three days before the training started.
Upon Meeting With Other Women, in an Extraordinary Space:
At first there was a distance between us women, a sort of ‘coolness’. It is hard to describe this texture. I have come to know it from inside of myself as a sort of learnt aloofness. I adapted this strategy in school, when with other girls. It is tinged with resentments and almost disgust, at being in a ‘girls’ zone. Having been raised in a highly competitive culture, where ones capacity to over power others was valued, I learnt to cover my women’s body with men’s clothes, and my in built faculties of collaboration with a cool guardedness. I learnt to get busy at trying to beat other young women at everything. Be favoured by men more than my sister. Certainly not trying too hard to join the other women, I learnt to keep a safe barrier of separation. Certainly not try and be “like a girl”. Before any woman learns to transform that part of herself, all of that conditioning walks in, when women raised in patriarchy, gather.
The Unfolding
Looking back, I don’t think anyone could have guessed what would unfold over the next four days. For that magic to work, all the emotional knots, underworld games had to be put on the table, we navigated in a very small now, with Ana Norambuena as spaceholder, of a radically responsible context. Every woman was called into the circle, we practised archetypal powers of everythingness, to notice when a woman was not energetically present. Rather than adapt to her, we called her back in, calling forward her medicine. Deep in our bones, in the collective wisdom of the circle, we knew that every woman had a unique gift to bring, if she withholds it, something is missing, something vital , alive and precious, some treasure is not brought forward. So we practised naming each other’s gifts. Calling them in. In doing so the space started breathing. Our fear became palpable within and between women. It was the guide, pointing towards the next question, the next process, heightening the energy, calling forth presence.
Already it was clear that we were birthing something. Collectively we were actively walking into the archetypal domain of sisterhood. A place hidden, unless you start intentionally looking, a space right there ready to unfold the moment one woman commits to her sister’s, even more than she does.
What opens up when this happens, is the capacity to travel as a cohesive team, wherever the space needs to go. Meaning wounds are revealed and the healing can happen.
It means that when an intergenerational healing needs to happen, instinctively the space moves, warps, bends to accommodate the previous generations. Upon such expansions, what needs to be said is said. What was not complete then is completed now.
These sorts of healings are initiations in themselves as it requires a total letting go of box considerations, a leaning into a vast terrain fueled by archetypal love and bright principles. It means lowering your numbness bar and keeping it low enough so that you can feel the subtle undulations happening, pointing towards what is moving in the wings.
A helpful hint for explorers of extraordinary domains: If you become numb, in a place like this, it is like being tossed in a wild ocean with no life raft, giddy, directionless. The best thing you can do in a moment, when you notice you are cut adrift, is to find another human, take them by the hand if you need to, or look clearly into their face, and say “I feel nothing, will you hold space for me to figure out what is happening for me?” Or say simply “I feel…” and drop into your body then name the first feeling you find and let yourself feel it until it feels you”.
From someone who has found herself on the outside and getting further and further away, in transformational spaces, once you are aware you are feeling something, you will find a doorway to step in.
The Arrival of The Men
The rest of the training is a blur to me now. Until the day came when the men were to arrive. That is blazed in my cells like a high resolution photograph. Navigating to the point of their arrival was delicate. What did we want? What did we feel? What will we ask for? In the end it was simple, the men come and leave the moment we ask, full stop.
They arrived in a van, we women, were waiting in the training room for their arrival. I felt them arrive before I heard them, my body started quivering slightly and a deep wail started in me.
I was holding onto an older Woman beside me.
I had no idea what was about to happen, I just knew I was going to stay, right to the end, this was exactly where I was meant to be right now.
When they entered my body went cold, I peed my pants.
They marched in a line, it felt like I was about to die. A high pitched ringing in my ears, followed by a heightened pause, the air electric like that moment before the first clap of thunder.
Then the only thing that could have happened, did happen.
The only thing that could have assured me that I was not crazy did happen.
The Women I had worked with for the past three days moved as one. The shaking was no longer just coming from me, nor the sounds, there were other women touching me. Something had been woken up in us, the closest word I have for that is sisterhood. A sisterhood that had been drowned, suppressed, its throat cut since the witch hunt years had been nurtured back to life and we remembered, we were it.
Wave upon wave of grief poured through us. We had stepped into the terrain together and an archetypal healing was under way. All we had was each other, our own innate sense of connection, and our pain, we moved through it all. Steam filled the room, the men were stunned, speechless, some cried, some stood there, still as stone, emotional, energetically, gone.
Our everythingness combed through every shred of unfelt outrage at what the patriarchy had done to the feminine, we found it, voiced it, with specific details. The grief of oceans of unexpressed woundings came rushing through us.
We went for almost three hours.
After
After the men left that night, I remember standing beneath the stars, having never seen them so clearly in all my life. A veil was lifted. I lay in bed that night next to one of my sisters, energy moved through me, and I drifted somewhere between the stars and dreamland. I had never felt more at peace with my own undefined, nature. The future was clear and unmarked, I could create with it what I chose.
That process was an initiation and only possible because of the 100% yes of every single woman there. When women do not hold back their archetypal love, everything is possible. I know that in every corner of my being. Women who do not hold back their love speak the unspeakable with honesty, in exactly the way it needs to be spoken.
Her whole body speaks it, her everythingness moves. She belongs to no one, has nothing to fulfill, she has no expectations to uphold nor constricting code of cultural compliance. She is a force unto herself, she sources from her own deep well, she becomes magic, the archetype of the feminine , she is willing to come completely, ecstatically , unreasonable to life.
That is what it means to not hold back our love.
It is that which lets the next part of culture emerge, for a new fabric of the universe to express itself. She does it, wrapped in the arms of her sisters, supported by their hands, voices and love. She is an integral part of an alive, breathing, organism. She stands alone in her own integrity, in that, she stands for all. When Women can stand and speak from their own authentic aliveness, the whole earth speaks too.
That is the greatest show on earth.
And, the presence of men who can be, with unguarded hearts, to witness all that unfolding, is so vitally essential.
Thank you Millicent!