Soul Lessons -Stalking the Intruder

"While the cause of much human suffering can be traced to negligent fostering, there is also within the psyche naturally an innate 'contra nastrum', an "against nature ' force. This 'contra naturam' aspect opposes the positive: it is against development, against harmony, and against the wild. It is a derivsive and murderous antagonist that is born into us, and even with the best parental nurture the intruder's sole assignment is to attempt to turn all crossroads into closed roads..." - from WWRWTW

I was the girl your parents liked and encouraged you to be friends with. I was always everything everyone wanted me to be. When I graduated from high school, my parents couldnât afford to send me to college, but I got a job and saved my money like crazy so I could go to college and study journalism. An older woman where I worked had done just that and was ready to quit and go to school full time, so I saw that it was possible. But then passion, or some reasonable facsimile (at 18, who knows), entered the picture and I got married. What else would I do, given who I was? The college money I had saved went to buy things for our first home. I devoted myself to being as good a wife and mother as I had been daughter and student.

I was 33 years old before I let myself admit that I was unhappy, that all my best efforts had not paid off and that I had no idea who I was except in relation to others. And the hardest part was to realize that my only salvation was inside myself. All I had done to please and satisfy others had resulted in being surrounded by people who expected me to please and satisfy them and who never even considered that I might have needs. And it was my responsibility to define those needs and express them and find a way to fill them. Nobody was going to do it for me.

When I read in WWRWTW about young people being "asleep", it was a real jolt. When I look back, it is truly as if I was asleep from about 12 to 33. "What was I thinking!" I say to myself. I was sleep-walking.

It is very hard to locate bones so long buried. I had to remember myself as a young child, how I felt, what I liked to do, what I dreamed, for myself, not for anyone else. My children helped me because I knew what I wanted for them, and I realized I needed to give myself the same things. I learned along with them and their joy and enthusiasm for life was a vehicle I could share. I will always be a caretaker, and I donât resent that role, but because of my age and the times I grew up in, I have to be constantly wary of allowing the Bluebeard in my own mind to take control and turn caring and loving into that prison where my own needs are neglected.



It is not easy to recognize, accept and then face the intruder in all of us. It is, however, essential to do so, and it is also essential to know that it is part of us. It is part of what makes us wild women. Without it, we would not be who we are. We have no choice but to recognize it, face it, put it in its place, and celebrate that it is part of what makes us so special, and makes us able to be wild.

Estes speaks of "the natural predator". This thing whose "soul assignment is to attempt to turn all crossroads into closed roads." How many of us have been there? How many of us know women who are still there?

They donât move forward, they stay stuck, and trapped. With every reasonable suggestion given, they put up a wall. We may see a way around the wall, but they cannot, for the internal intruder wonât allow it.

In the Bluebeard story we can see an external force at work on the "natural self"...but it is important, as Estes says "(to) acknowledge that both within and without there is a force which will act in opposition to the instincts of the natural Self." She goes on...." All creatures must learn that there exist predators....To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivte, inexperience, or foolishness."

What is it that keeps the younger sister in the Bluebeard story from recognizing the danger sooner? Estes says we learn to see the predator "via (her) motherâs and fatherâs teachings. Without parentsâ loving guidance she will certainly be prey early on. In hindsight, almost all of us have, at least once, experienced a coompelling idea or semi-dazzling person crawling in through our windows at night and catching us off guard." But not all of us have loving guidance. Does that make us more likely to be preyed upon?? Is this a right of passage for all women? I know Iâve been there with someone "dazzling", and I refused to see the danger...even though I knew deep down it was there.



As children, we tend to think in patterns of black or white, and not in shades of grey. We have not developed to the point where we can make fine discriminations÷particularly, not about ourselves. If I have thought the unthinkable (come face to face with the predator within me), then I must be that predator. I have lost my naiveté, and I become frantic with the knowledge that I am evil. But, thereâs also the rush of adrenalin, the titillation of the secret, my "specialness" in being, among all these innocents around me, a predator, whether seen or unseen.

We are taught to deny rather than control the predator within ourselves by parents and societies that say, Oh, no! You mustnât feel that way.

Iâm still not very far from being/acting out that predator within. Not lashing out, not using others, not objectifying people÷these are deliberate choices that Iâve made concerning who I want to be. They are not expressions of my "good" nature. How many of our children are aware that these matters are choices÷factors over which we exercise control and make conscious decisions÷rather than inescapable genetic programming or the inevitable outcome of "tainted blood" or whatever the current rationale might be.



Estes says: " To render the parts of Bluebeard (the intruder/predator) is like taking the medicinal parts of the deadly nightshade, or the healing elements of the poisonous belladonna plant, and using these materials carefully and for healing and helping. What ash of the predator is left then will indeed rise up again, but in much smaller form, much more recognizably, and with much less power to deceive and destroy÷for you have rendered many of its powers which it plied destructively, and you have turned these powers toward the useful and the relevant."

I think this is the essence of what I mean when I say we should celebrate the intruder. The predator teaches us to trust ourselves...but only if we face it. This, of course, is the hard part. Acknowledging the predator when it is near and disrupting our lives, or worse....keeping us frozen, paralyzed. I think we depend on others to help us see the intruder..at least the first time. Those who have gone before us offer us countless treasure...but only if we are willing to listen.

I once took a class on creativity...one day seminar...the title was "Clearing the Waters"....taken from WWRWTW. The instructor spoke often of the intruder and predator. We asked how she had tamed it. She said she got a hold of some clay and paint, and feathers etc. and made the predator as she saw it. Then she put it in a glass jar with a tight fitting lid and placed it on her desk. I always thought that was wonderful, and plan sometime to do the same thing.



This is one of my favorite passages from "Stalking the Intruder"....we should all try to do this.

"Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice, ask question; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true."