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We Practice Conscious Forgetting By Refusing To Summon Up The Fiery Material, We Refuse To Recollect. To Forget Is An Active, Not A Passive, Endeavor. It Means To Not Haul Up Certain Materials, Or Turn Them Over And Over, To Not Work Oneself Up By Repetitive Thought, Picture, Or Emotion.

-Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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We Practice Conscious Forgetting

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

...

We Practice Conscious Forgetting By Refusing To Summon Up The Fiery Material, We Refuse To Recollect. To Forget Is An Active, Not A Passive, Endeavor. It Means To Not Haul Up Certain Materials, Or Turn Them Over And Over, To Not Work Oneself Up By Repetitive Thought, Picture, Or Emotion.

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There Will Always Be Times When You Feel Discouraged. I Too, Have Felt Despair Many Times In My Life, But I Do Not Keep A Chair For It; I Will Not Entertain It. It Is Not Allowed To Eat From My Plate.

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In Mythos And Fairy Tales, Deities And Other Great Spirits Test The Hearts Of Humans By Showing Up In Various Forms That Disguise Their Divinity. They Show Up In Robes, Rags, Silver Sashes, Or With Muddy Feet. They Show Up With Skin Dark As Old Wood, Or In Scales Made Of Rose Petal, As A Frail Child, As A Lime-yellow Old Woman, As A Man Who Cannot Speak, Or As An Animal Who Can. The Great Powers Are Testing To See If Humans Have Yet Learned To Recognize The Greatness Of Soul In All Its Varying Forms.

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Positive Thinking

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Go Out In The Woods, Go Out. If You Don't Go Out In The Woods Nothing Will Ever Happen And Your Life Will Never Begin.

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We Practice Conscious Forgetting By Refusing To Summon Up The Fiery Material, We Refuse To Recollect. To Forget Is An Active, Not A Passive, Endeavor. It Means To Not Haul Up Certain Materials, Or Turn Them Over And Over, To Not Work Oneself Up By Repetitive Thought, Picture, Or Emotion.

I Learned About The Sacred Art Of Self Decoration With The Monarch Butterflies Perched Atop My Head, Lightning Bugs As My Night Jewelry, And Emerald-green Frogs As Bracelets.

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Modern Storytellers Are The Descendants Of An Immense And Ancient Community Of Holy People, Troubadours, Bards, Griots, Cantadoras, Cantors, Traveling Poets, Bums, Hags And Crazy People.

To Be Poor And Be Without Trees, Is To Be The Most Starved Human Being In The World. To Be Poor And Have Trees, Is To Be Completely Rich In Ways That Money Can Never Buy.

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Art Is Not Meant To Be Created In Stolen Moments Only.

I Hope You Will Go Out And Let Stories Happen To You.

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Though Fairy Tales End After Ten Pages, Our Lives Do Not. We Are Multi-volume Sets. In Our Lives, Even Though One Episode Amounts To A Crash And Burn, There Is Always Another Episode Awaiting Us And Then Another. There Are Always More Opportunities To Get It Right, To Fashion Our Lives In The Ways We Deserve To Have Them. Don't Waste Your Time Hating A Failure. Failure Is A Greater Teacher Than Success.

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Stories Are Medicine.

I Come From A Long Line Of Tellers: Mesemondok, Old Hungarian Women Who Tell While Sitting On Wooden Chairs With Their Plastic Pocketbooks On Their Laps, Their Knees Apart, Their Skirts Touching The Ground... And Cuentistas, Old Latina Women Who Stand, Robust Of Breast, Hips Wide, And Cry Out The Story Ranchera Style. Both Clans Storytell In The Plain Voice Of Women Who Have Lived Blood And Babies, Bread And Bones. For Them, Story Is A Medicine Which Strengthens And Arights The Individual And The Community.

When A Woman Is Frozen Of Feeling, When She Can No Longer Feel Herself, When Her Blood, Her Passion, No Longer Reach The Extremities Of Her Psyche, When She Is Desperate; Then A Fantasy Life Is Far More Pleasurable Than Anything Else She Can Set Her Sights Upon. Her Little Match Lights, Because They Have No Wood To Burn, Instead Burn Up The Psyche As Though It Were A Big Dry Log. The Psyche Begins To Play Tricks On Itself; It Lives Now In The Fantasy Fire Of All Yearning Fulfilled. This Kind Of Fantasizing Is Like A Lie: If You Tell It Often Enough, You Begin To Believe It.

To Adjoin The Instinctual Nature Does Not Mean To Come Undone, Change Everything From Left To Right, From Black To White, To Move The East To West, To Act Crazy Or Out Of Control. It Does Not Mean To Lose One's Primary Socializations, Or To Become Less Human. It Means Quite The Opposite. The Wild Nature Has A Vast Integrity To It

Our Own Sorrows Seem Heavy Enough, Even When Lifted By Certain Long-term Joys. But Watching Others Hurt Is The Breaker Of Most Any Heart.

If You Have Ever Been Called Defiant, Incorrigible, Forward, Cunning, Insurgent, Unruly, Rebellious, You're On The Right Track.

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Freud's Translator Accidentally Omitted 'fashion' In The Psychoanalytic List Of Primary Instinctual Drives; Along With The Drive To Sexuality There Is The Drive To Wear Odd Garments That May Cut Off Circulation, Occlude Vision, Make Toes Grow Sideways, Cause Riots.

My Brain Has No Heart, And My Heart Has No Brain. That's Why When I Speak My Mind, I Appear Heartless And When I Do What's In My Heart I Seem Thoughtless.

The Body Remembers, The Bones Remember, The Joints Remember, Even The Little Finger Remembers. Memory Is Lodged In Pictures And Feelings In The Cells Themselves. Like A Sponge Filled With Water, Anywhere The Flesh Is Pressed, Wrung, Even Touched Lightly, A Memory May Flow Out In A Stream.

God Forgives Us. ... Who Am I Not To Forgive?

Solitude Is Not An Absence Of Energy Or Action, As Some Believe, But Is Rather A Boon Of Wild Provisions Transmitted To Us From The Soul. In Ancient Times, Purposeful Solitude Was Both Palliative And Preventative. It Was Used To Heal Fatigue And To Prevent Weariness. It Was Also Used As An Oracle, As A Way Of Listening To The Inner Self To Solicit Advice And Guidance Otherwise Impossible To Hear In The Din Of Daily Life.

To Be Ourselves Causes Us To Be Exiled By Many Others, And Yet To Comply With What Others Want Causes Us To Be Exiled From Ourselves.

It Makes Utter Sense To Stay Healthy And Strong, To Be As Nourishing To The Body As Possible. Yet I Would Have To Agree, There Is In Many Women A 'hungry' One Inside. But Rather Than Hungry To Be A Certain Size, Shape, Or Height, Rather Than Hungry To Fit The Stereotype; Women Are Hungry For Basic Regard From The Culture Surrounding Them. The 'hungry' One Inside Is Longing To Be Treated Respectfully, To Be Accepted And In The Very Least, To Be Met Without Stereotyping.

The Wild Woman Is Fluent In The Language Of Dreams, Images, Passion, And Poetry.

Tell The Truth About Your Wound, And Then You Will Get A Truthful Picture Of The Remedy To Apply To It. Don't Pack Whatever Is Easiest Or Most Available Into The Emptiness. Hold Out For The Right Medicine. You Will Recognize It Because It Makes Your Life Stronger Rather Than Weaker.

While Archetypes May Emanate Through Us For Short Periods Of Time, In What We Call Numinous Experience, No Woman Can Emanate An Archetype Continuously. Only The Archetype Itself Can Withstand Such Projections Such As Ever-able, All Giving, Eternally Energetic. We May Try To Emulate These, But They Are Ideals, Not Achievable By Humans, And Not Meant To Be. Yet The Trap Requires That Women Exhaust Themselves Trying To Achieve These Unrealistic Levels. To Avoid The Trap, One Has To Learn To Say 'halt' And 'stop The Music,' And Of Course Mean It.

Stories Are Medicine. They Have Such Power; They Do Not Require That We Do, Be, Act Anything - We Need Only Listen.

All The "not Readies," All The "i Need Time," Are Understandable, But Only For A Short While. The Truth Is That There Is Never A "completely Ready," There Is Never A Really "right Time." As With Any Descent To The Unconscious, There Comes A Time When One Simply Hopes For The Best, Pinches One's Nose, And Jumps Into The Abyss. If This Were Not So, We Would Not Have Needed To Create The Words Heroine, Hero, Or Courage.

A Healthy Woman Is Much Like A Wolf: Robust, Chock-full, Strong Life Force, Life-giving, Territorially Aware, Inventive, Loyal, Roving.

Do Not Cringe And Make Yourself Small If You Are Called The Black Sheep, The Maverick, The Lone Wolf. Those With Slow Seeing Say That A Noncomformist Is A Blight On Society. But It Has Been Proven Over The Centuries, That Being Different Means Standing At The Edge, That One Is Practically Guaranteed To Make An Original Contribution, A Useful And Stunning Contribution To Her Culture.

Long Ago The Word Alone Was Treated As Two Words, All One. To Be All One Meant To Be Wholly One, To Be In Oneness, Either Essentially Or Temporarily. That Is Precisely The Goal Of Solitude, To Be All One.

I Hope You Will Go Out And Let Stories Happen To You, And That You Will Work Them, Water Them With Your Blood And Tears And You Laughter Till They Bloom, Till You Yourself Burst Into Bloom.

Latina Women Are Proud To Be Called Mrs. That Simply Means That We Have A Family.

Just Because A Woman Is Silent Does Not Mean She Agrees.

When You Feel Bad, Find A Person To Talk To And Cry With, To Tell Of Your Anger And Other Helpless Feelings.

For Myself, Solitude Is Rather Like A Folded-up Forest That I Carry With Me Everywhere And Unfurl Around Myself When I Have Need.

When Seeking Guidance, Don't Ever Listen To The Tiny-hearted. Be Kind To Them, Heap Them With Blessing, Cajole Them, But Do Not Follow Their Advice.

As Long As A Woman Is Forced Into Believing She Is Powerless And/or Is Trained To Not Consciously Register What She Knows To Be True, The Feminine Impulses And Gifts Of Her Psyche Continue To Be Killed Off.

Healthy Wolves And Healthy Women Share Certain Psychic Characteristics: Keen Sensing, Playful Spirit, And A Heightened Capacity For Devotion. Wolves And Women Are Relational By Nature, Inquiring, Possessed Of Great Endurance And Strength.

To Create One Must Be Able To Respond. Creativity Is The Ability To Respond To All That Goes On Around Us, To Choose From The Hundreds Of Possibilities Of Though, Feeling, Action, And Reaction And To Put These Together In A Unique Response, Expression Or Message That Carries Moment, Passion And Meaning. In This Sense, Loss Of Our Creative Milieu Means Finding Ourselves Limited To Only One Choice, Divested Of, Suppressing, Or Cendoring Feelings And Thoughts, Not Acting, Not Saying, Doing, Or Being.

Be Proud Of Your Scars. They Have Everything To Do With Your Strength, And What You've Endured. They're A Treasure Map To The Deep Self.

At Bottom Is The Best Soil To Sow And Grow Something New Again. In That Sense, Hitting Bottom, While Extremely Painful, Is Also The Sowing Ground.

Story Is Far Older Than The Art Of Science And Psychology, And Will Always Be The Elder In The Equation No Matter How Much Time Passes.

A Woman Who Is Starved For Her Real Soul-life May Look 'cleaned Up And Combed' On The Outside, But On The Inside She Is Filled With Dozens Of Pleading Hands And Empty Mouths.

I Am Built Close To The Ground And Of Extravagant Body.

All Strong Souls First Go To Hell Before They Do The Healing Of The World They Came Here For. If We Are Lucky, We Return To Help Those Still Trapped Below.

The Most Important Thing Is To Hold On, Hold Out, For Your Creative Life, For Your Solitude, For Your Time To Be And Do, For Your Very Life.

To Create One Must Be Willing To Be Stone Stupid, To Sit Upon A Throne On Top Of A Jackass And Spill Rubies From One’s Mouth. Then The River Will Flow, Then We Can Stand In The Stream Of It Raining Down.

One Of The Most Calming And Powerful Actions You Can Do To Intervene In A Stormy World Is To Stand Up And Show Your Soul. Struggling Souls Catch Light From Other Souls Who Are Fully Lit And Willing To Show It.

Story Is A Medicine Which Strengthens And Arights The Individual And The Community.

The Craft Of Questions, The Craft Of Stories, The Craft Of The Hands - All These Are The Making Of Something, And That Something Is Soul. Anytime We Feed Soul, It Guarantees Increase.

We Are All Filled With A Longing For The Wild. There Are Few Culturally Sanctioned Antidotes For This Yearning. We Were Taught To Feel Shame For Such A Desire. We Grew Our Hair Long And Used It To Hide Our Feelings. But The Shadow Of Wild Woman Still Lurks Behind Us During Our Days And In Our Nights. No Matter Where We Are, The Shadow That Trots Behind Us Is Definitely Four-footed.

Asking The Proper Question Is The Central Act Of Transformation!

When We Accept Our Own Wild Beauty, It Is Put Into Perspective, And We Are No Longer Poignantly Aware Of It Anymore, But Neither Would We Forsake It Or Disclaim It Either. Does A Wolf Know How Beautiful She Is When She Leaps? Does A Feline Know What Beautiful Shapes She Makes When She Sits? Is A Bird Awed By The Sound It Hears When It Snaps Open Its Wings? Learning From Them, We Just Act In Our Own True Way And Do Not Draw Back From Or Hide Our Natural Beauty. Like The Creatures, We Just Are, And It Is Right.

Anytime We Feed Soul, It Guarantees Increase.

When Women Hear Those Words, An Old, Old Memory Is Stirred And Brought Back To Life. The Memory Is Of Our Absolute, Undeniable, And Irrevocable Kinship With The Wild Feminine, A Relationship Which May Have Become Ghostly From Neglect, Buried By Over-domestication, Outlawed By The Surrounding Culture, Or No Longer Understood Anymore. We May Have Forgotten Her Names, We May Not Answer When She Calls Ours, But In Our Bones We Know Her, We Yearn Toward Her, We Know She Belongs To Us And We To Her.

I Call Her Wild Woman, For Those Very Words, Wild And Woman, Create Llamar O Tocar A La Puerta, The Fairy-tale Knock At The Door Of The Deep Feminine Psyche. Llamar O Tocar A La Puerta Means Literally To Play Upon The Instrument Of The Name In Order To Open A Door. It Means Using Words That Summon Up The Opening Of A Passageway. No Matter By Which Culture A Woman Is Influenced, She Understands The Words Wild And Woman, Intuitively.

It's Not By Accident That The Pristine Wilderness Of Our Planet Disappears As The Understanding Of Our Own Inner Wild Nature Fades.

I Have To Go To The Woods, And I Have To Meet The Wolf, Or Else My Life Will Never Begin.

Ours Is Not The Task Of Fixing The Entire World At Once, But Of Stretching Out To Mend The Part Of The World That Is Within Our Reach.

Anything You Do From The Soulful Self Will Help Lighten The Burdens Of The World. Anything. You Have No Idea What The Smallest Word, The Tiniest Generosity, Can Cause To Be Set In Motion...mend The Part Of The World That Is Within Your Reach.

It Is That Holy Poetry And Singing We Are After. ... It Is The Wild Singing We Are After, Our Chance To Use The Wild Language We Are Learning By Heart Under The Sea. When A Woman Speaks Her Truth, Fires Up Her Intention And Feeling, Staying Tight With The Instinctive Nature, She Is Singing, She Is Living In The Wild Breath-stream Of The Soul. To Live This Way Is A Cycle In Itself, One Meant To Go On, Go On, Go On.

The Quintessential Feminine Self Stands At The Center Of The Psyche And It Is Wild, Meaning Natural And Free, And Utterly Wise. It Is Not 'something' We Must Strive To Create. This Self Is Already Fully Present, Burning Strong And Waiting For Us To Come Into Its Presence.

Artfulness Is Not Simple Entertainment, Especially During Upheaval, Unleashing Creative Life Is Sacred Duty.

This Kind Of Forgetting Does Not Erase Memory, It Lays The Emotion Surrounding The Memory To Rest.

The Deterioration Of Symbols Is Natural. They Wear Out, Needing To Be Reclaimed, Recreated; Returned To The Spirit.

Solitude Is Not An Absence Of Energy Or Action, As Some Believe, But Is Rather A Boon Of Wild Provisions Transmitted To Us From The Soul.

How Does One Know If She Has Forgiven? You Tend To Feel Sorrow Over The Circumstance Instead Of Rage, You Tend To Feel Sorry For The Person Rather Than Angry With Him. You Tend To Have Nothing Left To Say About It All.

Rather Than Chairs And Tables, I Preferred The Ground, Trees, And Caves, For In Those Places I Felt I Could Lean Against The Cheek Of God.

The Predation Of Wolves And Women By Those Who Misunderstand Them Is Strikingly Similar.

...stories That Rise From Deep Suffering Can Provide The Most Potent Remedies For Past, Present, And Even Future Ills.

Some Say That Sudden Knowledge Of Mystical Matters Is Accomplished Only In Complete Quietude, Or That Creator, In One Of God's Many Forms, Appears Only In Orderly Ways That Are Beauteous And Picturesque, Or That The Mystical Appears Only In Completely Silent Ways. All Are True. Except For The 'only' Part.

If You Have Never Been Called A Defiant, Incorrigible, Impossible Woman… Have Faith. There Is Yet Time.

It Is In The Middle Of Misery That So Much Becomes Clear. The One Who Says, 'nothing Good Came Of This' Is Not Yet Listening.

Asking The Proper Question Is The Central Action Of Transformation- In Fairy Tales, In Analysis, And In Individuation. The Key Question Causes Germination Of Consciousness. The Properly Shaped Question Always Emanates From An Essential Curiosity About What Stands Behind. Questions Are The Keys That Cause The Secret Doors Of The Psyche To Swing Open.

A Prayer Refuse To Fall Down If You Cannot Refuse To Fall Down, Refuse To Stay Down. If You Cannot Refuse To Stay Down, Lift Your Heart Toward Heaven, And Like A Hungry Beggar, Ask That It Be Filled. You May Be Pushed Down. You May Be Kept From Rising. But No One Can Keep You From Lifting Your Heart Toward Heaven Only You. It Is In The Middle Of Misery That So Much Becomes Clear. The One Who Says Nothing Good Came Of This, Is Not Yet Listening.

What Is That Which Can Never Die It Is That Faithful Force That Is Born Into Us That One That Is Greater Than Us That Calls New Seed To The Open And Battered And Barren Places So That We Can Be Resown. It Is This Force In Its Insistence In Its Loyalty To Us In Its Love Of Us In Its Most Often Mysterious Ways That Is Far Greater Far More Majestic And Far More Ancient Than Any Heretofore Ever Known.

The Doors To The World Of The Wild Self Are Few But Precious. If You Have A Deep Scar, That Is A Door, If You Have An Old, Old Story, That Is A Door. If You Love The Sky And The Water So Much You Almost Cannot Bear It, That Is A Door. If You Yearn For A Deeper Life, A Full Life, A Sane Life, That Is A Door.

Friends Who Love You And Have Warmth For Your Creative Life Are The Very Best Suns In The World.

We Wish To Make Rage Into A Fire That Cooks Things Rather Than A Fire Of Conflagration.

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Wangari Maathai

Alexander Pushkin

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