let’s talk archetypes!

today we're exploring what it looks like to be owning your sovereignty and remain in alignment with your heart when it comes to excus... errr i mean reasons for not pursuing the creative life of our dreams. and we'll be playing with empowering archetypes.

before we get any deeper into it, a note on “empowering”, “power”, “badass”, “leap”, and any other words that are meant to be inspiring, and so often have the potential to trigger the fuck out of us.

when we hear something that triggers us, we tend to close off. our bodies give us the closing signals, and so we turn off our heart as well. today, i invite you to allow triggers to activate you instead. open just a little if opening wide feels overwhelming or unattainable. feel into what the trigger activates in you. give that tender place inside you some love. find your deeper truth. for that matter, take everything i say and filter it through your own heart and your own truth.

archetypes can actually be helpful here, as they are not conforming to our society’s limited way of seeing things in dichotomies: black and white, good and bad, strong and weak.

here is a helpful example: for a woman to be embodying her crone archetype is to be in her power. the crone is an archetype that doesn’t get much love in a culture where women are only valued for their youth, looks, and ability to bare children. so when we think crone, we immediately get images of frailty that we associate with old age in our western worldview. but for a crone to be in her power is to own her wisdom and know her value (that often is at odds with the values of our society) with a refreshing “don’t give a damn” attitude.

if you wonder if you ever had power to begin with, know this: you are here, pursuing that deeper knowingness of your heart in spite of the thousands of messages you’ve received in your life telling you you are wrong. you’re a fucking badass. and your unique weirdness is exactly the medicine that the world needs.

phew, that was quite a parentheses. back to today’s prompt.

please gather:

- a journal or notebook
- some art supplies that make you happy and you enjoy playing with (paints, crayons, pencils, etc)
- collage papers - cutouts from old books and magazines, including images and words that inspire you, and printouts of old work of yours that inspires you
- scissors and glue (or decoupage medium)
- a large piece of paper (from a sketchbook or a recycled paper bag. anything works)
- fun extras: glitter, feathers, fabric scraps, etc.

hopefully you got a chance to do the pre-game work and write down your vision for the creative life of your dreams. it’s a good practice to write down your vision daily. we have to know what we’re shooting for. even if it’s just to enjoy every day to the max. it’s shockingly easy to lose focus.

i will say this again, because we need to hear it every time, hundreds and thousands of times: if you have a vision, it is yours to create. you belong to what you long for. and even more importantly, you are absolutely capable of the life you desire.

the journey from here to there may have lots of twists and turns, but there is one key element to creating that life: it’s becoming the person who already has everything she needs and everything she desires.

the things that she does every day are the things that create and maintain that vision. she operates at the frequency of fulfillment. she expresses herself freely and unselfconsciously. and she is already inside of you.

today you are going to connect with her and start getting to know her as an archetype. you will learn how to start embodying her.

this is how easy it is to access her: feel her.

write out your vision or simply imagine your dream creative life. be detailed enough to really feel into what it would be like to already have everything you want. stay with that feeling. what does it feel like in your body? enter the experience of having that dream life by being the woman who lives it out. as you are feeling it all, what images come to mind? symbols? animals? elements of nature? favorite characters in literature? famous historical figure? classic archetypes?

imagine you are putting all of those images and feelings into the cauldron of your body. you are concocting the woman who already lives out her desires directly into your body by staying with the feeling of already having. as you do practice this brewing an concocting her daily into your body daily, you start to embody her.

it’s always nice to have a visual reminder of this badass that you already are and embodying more and more fully every day. so make one. use your art supplies to make a collage, painting, drawing, or assemblage of this badass archetype that will serve as a reminder. make her as serious or silly as she feels to you. what goes into the cauldron? sexiness? a wicked sense of humor? glitter? antlers? fishnet stalkings? have fun with it.

i’ll leave here a couple of things to be aware of as you are starting to embody these epic parts of you more fully. two common ways we tend to come out of alignment with our hearts:

• focusing on circumstances. when we focus on all the exterior reasons why “we can’t live out the creative life of our dreams”, we are playing into old patterns of victim mentality rather than practicing our power of choice, and using everything, including perceived limitations, as a way to activate our creativity. when you give too much power to your circumstances, you put yourself in a box. you essentially choose stagnation and death. instead, when you live from the heart, you make aligned choices in the here and now that are in integrity with your truth and your higher self. follow what is alive for you rather than what the circumstances dictate.

• acting out of fear of rejection. when your choices are dictated by fear of being rejected, this is a projection. what it means is that you have already rejected the parts of yourself that you fear would keep you from belonging. realizing this is a grieving process. allowing yourself to grieve is how you start to heal, it is how you save yourself and ultimately save the world. (saving the world is not the goal, in case that starts to put unnecessary pressure on you. it is just a natural outcome of staying true to yourself. the world needs more people who are aligned with their hearts.)

enjoy inspiring yourself today by creating an avatar for the most badass version of yourself - according to you.

all love,

-anca.