DARK GODDESS RISING
Over the next 8 weeks I’m doing the Dark Goddess Spiral workshop series with Chris C Stewart.
I’m doing this workshop at scholarship prices having agreed to honestly share my experiences (yay! I feel grateful for this opportunity).
TLDR VERSION
It’s good stuff. Right for me at this time. Those dark goddesses are kickass. They help me kick the ass of the reoccurring thoughts/emotions that come up when I’m triggered, and let go into loving-myself and spacious awareness of the present moment. This week we ‘cleared out’ failure and hopelessness. Yeah!
Read on if you’re curious to witness my journey more fully.
WHAT DREW ME
The workshop’s slogan is “radically improve your intimate relationships and your inner #relationship”. Well, I can get behind that. 
There’s nothing that my personality is more passionately into.
Part of what drew me to apply was the gender inclusive welcome:
“Don’t be fooled by the language of She and He, or different cultural forms of the same divine archetype… The Dark Goddesses represent the common energy, emotions and physical and psychic forms that are so often unconscious and wounded in us all, regardless of sex or gender or culture… and if we dare to work with them, they can bring forth the tantric aliveness and potency in us all too!”
As a genderfluid person I experience myself as both female and male, living this lifetime in a biological female body. I am usually perceived as a woman, and I was certainly socialised as one.
It’s a mystery that I don’t fully understand, but I live my actual experience as authentically as possible, finding the way by ‘living into it’. So I often feel relieved and grateful by gender inclusive language, and trainings/events that encourage the possibility of going beyond the ‘everything in the world is binary including gender’ box.
Not just for my own sake, but for cis men and women too … we are all so much more than binary boxes.
My main motivation for applying was a recent epiphany. Using tantra constructs to explain it, I’ve realised I’m a lot more mature in aspects of my ‘Shiva’ than I am in my ‘Shakti’. Now to say that again in more accessible language:
*I’m a lot more mature as a person when it comes to holding space for others, listening, resting in presence, initiating contact, giving to others, ‘giving’ and ‘taking’ sexually (see Betty Martin’s ‘Wheel of Consent’), and being a source of strong support and encouragement.
I align more easily with my divine self and can be idealistic and naive. I more easily get caught in my head than my heart although I’ve opened my heart radically (and sometimes I spiritually bypass my inner work). I’m more ‘still’ in my body than I’m active and dynamic. Sometimes I feel stuck in it.
*I’m less mature as a person when it comes to letting others hold space for me, asking vulnerably for support, relaxing into being listened to and held, receiving others guidance, attracting others initiatory contact (and when I do I often feel scared), receiving from others, ‘receiving’ and ‘allowing’ sexually (see ‘Wheel of Consent’), and being a source of dynamic flowing just-living wildly and freely.
I align less easily with my human self and can find them scarily uncontrolled and overwhelming. I more easily avoid my heart in its tenderest moments, and certainly struggle to open it fully to others’ holding. I sense my body wanting to flow and move, to undulate and open up … and I’m not sure how.
To be fair to me, I’ve developed a heck of a lot in these shadowy areas. And there’s also a long way to go – both in Shakti and Shiva (and how delicious that adventure will be). But Shakti development is my next step. And at the same time I’m perfect just as I am (we all are), at my perfect stage of development, and I can relax into it (thank goodness).
So I’ve decided to grow up my ‘Shakti’ so that she can enter into a more equal partnership with my inner ‘Shiva’. Into the unknown I go!
SESSION 1:
Last Saturday we did session 1. I didn’t attend in person since I was already booked into Curious Creatures sexual roleplay workshop with a partner (also yay! And somehow they seem related). I had a kinky good time, and was delighted to realise how much more accessible my most taboo fantasies are these days.
SIDENOTE INTO KINK:
Time was, when I couldn’t even verbalise them to a partner because of the burning shame that would consume me. My body would freeze up, my vocal chords would seize up, and sometimes I would cry silently. Thank you to the generous beloveds who sat with me through this, encouraged me to speak, and held me in my pain.
Often they didn’t share my kinks and were a no to exploring them with me. But oh to share without being shamed for my sexuality (which I was already shaming myself for big time, inside). That was healing in and of itself.
And oh the joy and expansion of exploring my kinks, step by faltering step, while holding conscious awareness of all that comes up inside when I enter into those shadowy spaces.
You won’t believe some of the shit I’ve discovered, and the treasure buried in that shit …
BACK TO SESSION 1 – BADASS GODDESSES:
So I listened to the workshop in a recording, did the journaling exercises, and then did a clearing session with Chris by videocall.
The archetypal goddess energies we explored included:
*Dark Moon Lilith (never heard of her. She sounds bad-ass)
*Kali Durga
I resonate with Kali Durga (and Kali, who is coming later in the Spiral, and who emerges in bloody vengeance from Kali Durga’s third-eye at a keypoint in a battle, to save the day by massacring the demons).
In one version of the myth Kali Durga is the great mother goddess who is created out of all the powers of the male gods. Since they are powerless to defeat a demon host, they combine their powers (like Captain Planet!) and she emerges in fierce captivating beautiful POWER.
AND she rides a lion or a tiger (take your pick) into battle. Her many hands hold many weapons. She is called ‘the undefeatable goddess’.
My sense of her is that I need her desperately to help ‘defeat’ the many reoccurring thoughts and emotions that plague my mind when I am in agonising #painbody. Kali Durga helps me cut each one away, so that I can rest in the present moment. She helps me feel all my painful feelings, let old trauma move through my body, and allow stuckness to become dynamic energy.
She is a fierce mother with exactly the kind of mothering I need right now.
CLEARING OLD SHIT
We are moving up the chakras each week, exploring myths of the Dark Goddesses that match each chakra’s energy. We are using a few heavy-lifting tools to discover and clear unconscious knots in our systems, that keep us stuck and hurting, going round in endless cycles.
This week we did a ‘root clear’ on:
*Failure
*Hopelessness/Helplessness
*Transformation
*Grace
Think of a root clear as going down to the deepest roots of an issue and yanking that out … so it can’t keep sprouting back.
My personal experience was that my clearing flowed, felt true, and mysteriously potent.
Not to my mind, mind you. There’s a part of my mind that thinks such practices are made-up garbage. Much less than I did (once that was true for me completely, and I avoided such practices consequently). But it’s still a thought/worry that comes up, and that I watch with tenderness.
Maybe you can resonate? #NewAgeShit
I like how Chris setup the space to address this: We don’t have to believe any of the theory he is presenting. But it’s useful to suspend disbelief, and not go into mental stories about right/wrong. It’s useful to take what resonates, and let go of what doesn’t. Then we get the most out of the process.
That’s certainly been true for me all the way along my life journey.
So I opened to this clearing process, and I felt-sensed its power.
THE FLOW OPENS
In the week since big movements of emotions and energy are flowing in my system. I have been crying (plus making sound, which is progress for me who often cries silently due to trauma that taught me to hide my pain). I’ve been shaking with fear (which I felt in my body for a long time but couldn’t seem to bring to the surface).
Strange energy movements are moving all around.
I’m breathing into them with the intent to ‘Receive’.
Then I breathe out with the intent to ‘Release’.
I have a sense of the divine mother goddess of us all, holding me in her supportive and terrifying embrace. I am glad for her presence. I have often called out to her this week for help, and prayed to her intuitively just what was there in my heart to say.
I went through a long phase in my life of being agnostic. At that time I never prayed (and that felt important. My rationality was growing up and branching out. And I was grieving the death of fundamentalist religion in my life).
I feel humbled and grateful to have discovered prayer again, a much deeper and more flexible form of it, than I once knew.
It feels so good that I can ask for help whenever I need it, and especially when I’m completely in the space of I-DON’T-HAVE-A-FUCKING-CLUE. In that Unknown Space, grace comes, when I reach out and ask for it. 
These shifts are not only because of Dark Goddess Spiral – they are being brought out and supported by life events, and other processes. But the Spiral definitely feels like a timely and key player in this unfolding.
Until Session 2!
[Image from https://
