On Metanoia // End the War Within
When was the first time you experienced inner conflict?
I’m taking an educated guess that you don’t remember because it’s one of the earliest ways that most all of us learn to relate to ourselves. As we start to experience the world around us more acutely through our senses, we observe that being at war with ourselves is in fact one of the most “normal” ways to go through life.
Encouraged, even.
The tropes of battling with ourselves to achieve or create things - pushing on through, etc. are considered inspirational and aspirational.
It’s the mythic Hero’s Journey. I don’t know about you but I think it’s time to retire that one and start getting curious about the mythic Heroine’s Journey.
This battling with ourselves may be normal(ized). But it’s certainly not natural. It’s based on pathologizing parts of ourselves, including + especially our bodies, and then fighting against ourselves to “overcome” ourselves.
(The other day, I saw a friend’s dog incessantly barking at herself in the mirror - which pretty much sums up this strikingly similar human tendency.)
The internalization of good vs. evil - which of course gets played out in the world as well.
And don’t even get me started on how we impose this maddening rhetoric on Nature.
Because this way of relating to ourselves is unnatural, it’s also exhausting. Energetically, we’re depleting our auric fields - the invisible field of energy that surrounds our bodies - which ends up causing dis-ease in our physical selves. We’re operating from a state of incongruence, which causes incongruence on all levels of our being.
Yes, we get “stuff done”. But in a sort of joyless, teeth-gritted, brow-furrowed way, self-punishing way.
It’s just not very energy efficient, and it’s not the way Nature flows. And, it really doesn’t have to be this way.
Well that all sounds great, I hear you say, but I’ve got sh*t to do. Responsibilities. I can’t just stop battling with myself and lie on the couch eating macaroons and watching Netflix.
Agreed. (Although sometimes that is the best counter-intuitive productivity hack, I promise.)
But first, let me ask you this: what makes you think you won’t get things done if you don’t battle with yourself?
Where did you learn to be so afraid and mistrustful of your wonder-filled Self?
(You can chew on that and ping me back with your thoughts.)
So then: Metanoia.
If you’re unfamiliar with it, metanoia is a Greek word meaning “reversal of flow”. Due to a mistranslation/misrepresentation in the New Testament, the word metanoia was misunderstood as “repent”. The Tantric wizard Jesus was allegedly telling his followers to “repent” for their sins - as in they are bad and wrong and they should feel terrible about their inherently sinful nature and repent.
Nope. All that dogma came much later.
What he was saying was that in order to reach your full potential, reverse the flow of your being.
Wait, what?
In tantric-alchemical terms, this is bringing up the energy from your lower energy centers (or chakras) and bringing down the energy from your upper chakras to meet and delightedly copulate in the heart center to create a beautifully congruent Unified Will.
Art by Real Fun Wow
A Unified Will is the objective of alchemical-magickal workings - the product of the Alchemical Marriage.
In the rites of passage and initiations of most earth-based Indigenous traditions across the globe, this heart-centric union of above + below, of a person’s animal + spiritual natures is a fundamental journey back to wholeness or a Unified Will.
(It also points to why sex was a crucial aspect of the sacred feminine Mystery traditions, and why it was necessary for patriarchal systems to pathologize this natural + pleasurable expression of divinity playing + creating in + through form.)
But that’s for another day.
Back to the Unified Will: do you see how you cannot create and wield this if you’re warring with yourself?
And can you recognize that this is your very real, very natural birthright? And that yes, you can trust yourself with it. Because the very nature of a Unified Will involves being sovereign, self-responsible and heart-centered.
You can still get all the stuff done and not be at war with your Self. You can stop draining yourself through dominating and exploiting your energy, and instead start working in collaboration with all that you are.
Because when you’re not warring with yourself, you’re a beautiful, energy efficient force of nature (in whatever way that expresses through you).
Another way of undergoing metanoia is through the (re)integration of the parts of us that we have rejected and are at war with.
This is one of the crucial things that we’ll be doing this coming season in Root + Rise: The Journey into Mythic Transformation
Two fundamental and potentially radical axioms we’ll be immersing ourselves into as we work with metanoia, and that I leave you to consider are:
1. There is no inner enemy
2. Behind every behavior lies a worthy intention.
As ever, I would love to hear your thoughts/objections/questions!
And if you’re interested in joining us, find out more about Root + Rise here.
Spring registration closes on 31 March.