Reflections on my Feminine Integration Journey Throughout the Years

[Emerald]

I made a post the other day that it was my last post on this forum because I just get into a ton of pointless debates. And I shared publicly that it's my last post because I thought that to be my best bet for actually honoring that boundary of mine.

But I feel like I need a place to write that isn't a place that I've cultivated for my own online presence. It has to be a space managed by someone else, where I'm not in the leadership position. 

So, I'm going back on what I said the other day. But I am still sticking to my boundary that I will not engage in little pointless debates or engage in the rest of the forum.

I'm just going to use this space as a means to write about my Feminine integration journey throughout the years... as I haven't actually shared a lot about it in any context.

But I spent 11 years of my life deep in the belly of the beast of the millennias-long species-wide zeitgeist of resistance to the Feminine, facing into many very difficult and hard-to swallow realities of being a Feminine human being and a woman... under which are buried the keys to long-repressed Feminine power.

So, if you're interested in reading my reflections about my journey, feel free to do so.

But I won't be replying back to anyone who argues. This is a space for those who genuinely want to learn about the Feminine from someone who has had a very long and varied epic journey of integration with the Feminine... beginning with very deep Feminine repression.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Say the word and I am happy to moderate this journal with stricter standards for boundaries.

I am happy you have a space to express here!

Looking forward to the insights 

[Emerald]

The Initiation - 2008

To give some quick context for the initiation of my journey into the Feminine at the age of 19 (in 2008), it's important to understand a few things...

• From age 10 to age 19, I identified as female on the outside and male on the inside (not in a trans way)... and I was very proud of that. I had a ton of internalized misogyny. And I considered myself to be very different than and better than other women (even though I identified myself as non-judgmental).
• At this time, I didn't believe that Masculinity and Femininity were real. I believed they were purely social constructs... and I saw Masculine traits as energetically-neutral positive traits and I saw Feminine traits as energetically-neutral negative or unimportant traits. I was anti-Feminist but pro gender equality... but I was very anti-Feminine, because I saw Feminine-principled traits as negative.
• The only Feminine trait that I valued was physical beauty. But I saw all other Feminine traits as inferior, uninteresting, and shallow.

So, with that contextual backdrop in mind, I'll share the story of my initiation into the Feminine.

At age 19, I was sleeping in my dorm room at college... and I had a very powerful dream, which I'll share below...

"I am in a large furniture store with hundreds (maybe thousands) of cubicles that are set up to look just like the interiors of rooms. And each cubicle is about the size of a room and is fully furnished like a room.

I enter one of the cubicles that is decorated like a Victorian-era psychologist's office, like Sigmund Freud. (Note: This is about 4 years before I started getting interested in Jungian psychology)

Once I enter this cubicle, it's as though it's not a cubicle anymore. It's a regular room now. And it looks just like a Victorian-era psychologist's office.

I sit down on a high backed chair that matches the aesthetics of the room. And I am just sitting there for a time.

Then, a tall beautiful woman appears in the doorway. She's wearing a tight red business dress, and she has an hourglass figure. She has medium brown skin and looks like she might be Native American. Her black hair is tied up very tightly in a very neat bun on the top of her head. She is wearing high heals and her demeanor is sharp and powerful like a femme fatale from a film noir movie.

When I see her, I am immediately hypnotized by her beauty. I am in a stupor.

As I sit there with my eyes transfixed on her, she walks across the room and stands directly behind the chair I'm sitting on. 

She is looking down at me with a neutral but mildly seductive expression on her face. 

And I am looking up at her from the chair, completely and utterly enthralled at her presence and the fact that she's looking at me.

We are there looking into each other's eyes for a minute.

Then with a silvery deep voice, she asks me, "Are you ready?"

And I am so ready to do whatever she wants me to do. I am thinking we're going to become romantic, and I feel very desperate for it.

So, I immediately and desperately whisper out the word, "Yes"

Then, there is a 5-second pause, and she calmly exhales. This pause feels like a calm before the storm.

Then, all of a sudden, she inhales quickly and violently. And the inhale makes an other-worldly sound, the strength of a tornado's suction.

And in that same moment of the inhale, it sucks away all her beauty. And she transforms into an ancient hag who looks to be 1000 years old.

Her eyes are now empty black sockets. Her skin is thin, gray, and transparent, and I can see her skull through her skin. Her mouth is a gaping black hole that looks like a hole sloppily torn in a piece of discolored gray fabric. She is bald except for several strands of wiry gray hair that pokes out from random areas on her head.

The space around her is all dark.

Then, the gaping black hole of her mouth grows wider and wider and wider until it becomes the entire space around me. I am in her mouth being devoured by her.

It's like I've been sucked into a void and I can viscerally feel myself floating in the nothingness. It feels like a sleep paralysis/OBE experience, even though it is a dream.

Eventually, I move through the void... and I am deposited in my childhood kitchen. I begin looking under the cabinets where the Tupperware is kept."

This dream was very vivid, and I even drew a picture of the hag after I had the dream.

This was about 6-7 months before my first experience of the Feminine that I had repressed, which happened in my first medicine journey. 

In retrospect, I feel the dream was an initiation into the Feminine. And it needed to use a beautiful woman to lure me in and get me to agree to the journey... as beauty was the only thing I valued about the Feminine at the time.

I was secretly obsessed with beauty... but hid it to avoid being like other women. And I would sometimes do things to make myself less attractive on purpose in order to come across as though I don't care that much about beauty.

I also think the rather violent way that the dream happened was because the Feminine in myself (and perhaps more generally) was angry at me for my rejection of it. 

Then, another piece of context for a future experience that happened 11 years later...

I participated in an Ayahuasca ceremony. And towards the end of my ceremony when there were still some hallucinations but not too intense, one of the female facilitators came up to me and held my hand.

And it was clear to me in that state, that (on some level of reality) she was my midwife and that I was giving birth to a new world.

She was probably around 40 years old. And I looked at her face... and she kept toggling back and forth between age 20 and age 60.

And she said, "That's it. You made it through." And her human grounded self just meant that I made it through my Ayahuasca journey.

But on another layer of reality, I knew then that I had been birthed back out by the hag that swallowed me 11 years prior to that. And she was now showing up in a more integrated form as this midwife who's helping me birth a new world.

I'll tell more about that experience in later entries.

These are more dreams and medicine journey experiences with the Feminine, but I also have more day-to-day experience stories that connect to my journey.

I'll write more later.

Edited Monday at 05:45 AM by Emerald

[Emerald]

43 minutes ago, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Say the word and I am happy to moderate this journal with stricter standards for boundaries.

I am happy you have a space to express here!

Looking forward to the insights 

Thank you!

[Emerald]

The Inciting Incidents to the Repression of the Feminine

As a child, until age 10, I had a very strong female identity. And I truly was a female supremacist in certain ways, as I just saw women as both kinder and smarter than men. And I saw my female peers as more mature than my male peers, and most of the smart kids in class were girls.

And at the time, I had a very strong identification with my mom. At the time, my mom was my favorite parent, as my mom is a very good mom to children under the age of 7.

I liked my dad too, but I just wasn't as close to him and I didn't resonate with many of his interests... with the exception of horror movies. And I would typically try to bond with him as a kid by daring to hang out in the living room while he was watching movies like It, Chuckie, Pumpkinhead, and all manner of cheesy (but at the time terrifying) horror movies.

But overall, I wanted to be like mom and do the things that mom does... and I was deeply uninterested in the stuff that men/boys were interested in. (This largely hasn't changed, as I'm still not interested in sports or cars or things like that)

But my mom's behavior flipped around when I was about 8 years old for reasons specific to her. And instead of being the supportive caring mom that I had henceforth known, things changed significantly. 

So, I was on "Team Mom" for the first 8-ish years of my life... and many of my interests were shaped by her expectations and interests. 

Then, from age 8 to age 12 as my relationship with my mom degraded further and further, I switched teams. And I was on "Team Dad".... and all of my role models became male role models. 

And I lived with my mom and dad until I was 12, when my parents split up. Then at 13, I went to live with my dad. And I only lived with my dad during the majority of my teen years and had long periods of time when I didn't see my mother at all.

I'm sharing all this to give you some of the backstory as to how this shift away from the Feminine happened during this time-frame.

At age 10, in the Summer before the 5th grade, I was riding in the passenger seat next to my mom. And I can't recall what brought up this topic of discussion. But she said something that I think impacted me and my relationship with the Feminine in a really strong way.

She said something like, 'Emerald, you should never trust women/girls. Women/girls are conniving and they will backstab you.' And she was ranting about women as though she wasn't one... and as though I was not a girl.

You'd think it was a father teaching his son how to be misogynistic.

But it was clear to me in this discussion that she was framing herself and I as existing in a loophole of being neither men nor women... and "not like the other girls".

Then, in the 5th grade (seemingly unrelated to this discussion), I decided that I was neither male nor female. This wasn't in a non-binary/trans kind of way, however.

It was more like, I saw myself as "the only good female". And I had to think about this as an absolute, so I would run into cognitive dissonance when my female classmates were nice people... and I'd create all these rationalizations as to why the "only good female" identity still applied to me and no one else.

And that year, I had a group that I hung out with, where it was just myself and three other nerdy guys. This helped me see myself as the loophole girl even more.

And what helped my narrative of divorcing myself from association with femaleness even more was the fact that (synchronistically) half of the girls in the class were genuinely mean girls.

So, during this year, I identified more and more with Masculinity and less and less with femaleness and Femininity.

And I came to seem maleness as being associated with moral goodness... and femaleness as being associated with moral badness. And I considered myself "the only good female" because of my renunciation of femaleness and alliance with maleness.

So, I developed a kind of misogyny towards girls that would rival an Incel. The only difference being that there wasn't the sexual frustration to go along with it. But the competition to be superior to women and femaleness/Femininity was totally present.

I think if I'd run across some "women shouldn't be allowed to vote" kind of nonsense back then, I think I would have hopped right on board with it (I probably would have seen myself as exempt from it based on not really being female in my own mind)... as there was a sense of wanting to be on the male team and to reign superior over the female team.

And there was also a lot of media that existed at the time, which had a kind of Pop Feminist framing... but was ultimately quite misogynistic in its own right in ways that I wasn't aware of.

There was always the "smart cool girl" character who's into traditionally Masculine things and who only has male friends... and the "dumb/mean girl characters" that are into traditionally Feminine things and only hangs out with other dumb/mean girls. 

And the "smart cool girl" was seen as a kind of Feminist girl power kind of character. And it's clear in retrospect that the creators of the show were operating off of a shallow understanding of Second Wave Feminism... which is about giving women access to traditionally Masculine careers. 

And part of the ethos of Second Wave Feminism is, "A woman can do anything a man can do."

The issue with this framing, is that it still presents maleness and Masculinity as the superior thing that women are able to work hard and match up to. But it also tends to frame Feminine things and even womanhood as inferior to Masculinity and manhood.

This is further complicated by the gender neutrality idea, where gender and Masculinity/Femininity are seen purely as social constructs. 

So, this sense of superiority of Masculinity over Femininity ends up getting buried in the collective consciousness... but still exists there, even in Feminist messaging. 

So, in the building of my identity as a 10 year old, I was likening myself to "cool girl" characters who have traditionally Masculine (and therefore superior) interests to more Feminine "popular dumb shallow mean girl" tropes that are the foil to the cool girl.

And EVERY girl in my era was watching this kind of thing. 

So, it was very easy for me to identify as the "cool Masculine nerdy girl who only has male interests and male friends"... and to make fierce enemies with the "popular Feminine 'mean/shallow/dumb' girls who only have female interests and female friends."

And the entire 5th grade year, me and these 5-6 girls in my class were in this drama triangle nonsense loop... where I was super misogynistic to them and they were super misogynistic to me in different ways.

I remember one time, my friend Spencer and I spent the entire time at recess singing a mean song about the meanest girl, "Joy to the world Marylin's dead. We barbecued her head..." It's a common kid rhyme, where you talk about what you did with their body parts... like "What happened to her body. We flushed it down the potty. And round and round it goes. And round and round it goes."

And we just spent the entire recess time just making up new line to the song for each body part, like , "What happened to her hair? We fed it to a bear." or "What happened to her eyes? We fed them to a guy." And so on.

So, I had a ton of misogyny... and male friends and an identity and worldview built off of a cultural blueprint of resistance to the Feminine... both shaped by pop Feminist ideas and long-standing misogynistic societal patterns.

And it's clear to me now that it all began with my mother wound... and her flipping 180 on me when I was very young.

And her statement of "Don't trust women" might have hit the nail on the head a bit too much, and it set me up to play out all that drama triangle stuff with the girls in my class in the 5th grade.

Then, during Summer camp after the 5th grade, my overt misogyny wained down... because I got along with almost everyone at my Summer camp. It was just a much more accepting space than my elementary school.

So, I had plenty of female friends there.

But I still had the macho identity and saw myself as more like a guy than like a girl. And I spend the entire Summer in arm wrestling matches with the guys at the summer camp, and I could still beat most of them then because it was before puberty.

Then, after Summer camp, I decided that I was going to be popular in middle school. And that meant dressing in a sporty but Feminine way. This only worked for the first few weeks. But because I was specifically trying to get away from my 5th grade identity, I just put on a new identity.

Then, when that fell through, I had established a group of mostly female friends to hang out with who were not Feminine in a way that was threatening to me. We were all definitely Feminine on some level... but we were all kind of off-beat and could be seen as deviating from the Feminine in significant ways.

So, I left behind the surface-level identity of being the "only good female" and my priorities became different.

Then, in the 7th grade, I decided that, "I'm a non-judgmental person that accepts everyone." And I modeled my identity after pop cultural conceptions of wise and non-judgmental male role models like Jesus, the Buddha, Bob Marley, etc.

I also came to see men and women as only being different because of social constructs.

So, because of all the identity and value shifts at the time, within a couple years... I changed the surface of my relationship to girls and femaleness. 

And by the time I was 12, I saw girls and guys as equal. And I saw Masculinity and Femininity as not real, and just social constructs. And I saw myself as an accepting person who feels equally about everyone.

And all of this buried my deep internalized misogyny under layers of identities and worldviews.

But I still unconsciously held onto that sense of difference and superiority from other girls/women. And I was still dealing with the mother wound. 

And I still saw Masculinity as being superior to Femininity. And I didn't look up to any women. I only looked up to men.

And the only thing I valued about my femaleness was being beautiful and able to be admired by guys.

This undermined my capacity for full sovereignty, as I saw my value as only existing as a beautiful object in the eyes of men.

And I would cover that over with more Masculine ways of operating in the world. But all was sitting on the foundation of what the external Masculine would think and feel about me.

And at age 16, I could not fathom of a version of myself that I wanted to grow into past age 30, as I felt I existed only in the minds of men... and if men stopped looking, I would disappear.

This is ultimately because of this rift with my Feminine side and mother wound. I couldn't value myself as a Feminine person, despite being a mostly Feminine person.

I could only value myself as a Masculine person... but only if I look beautiful and Feminine. (like the "cool girl" trope from movies and shows in my childhood)

I had to be a woman on the outside and a man on the inside, or I felt like life was meaningless.

And I knew that beauty is a temporary human state. No one stays in it. So, once I turned 16, I felt like my life was on a timer to a lack of meaning.

Edited Tuesday at 05:25 AM by Emerald

[mmKay]

Glad you're still here

[Emerald]

5 minutes ago, mmKay said:

Glad you're still here

Thank you

[Emerald]

Veruca Salt and the Pejoration of the Beloved

When I was a child, I was raised in a middle class household. My father is a mechanic, and he used to own his own shop... Wilkins Automotive. And my mom was his "secretary" back in the 90s when they were still together.

The reality is that my dad isn't much of a business guy... he's more of a craftsman who knows a lot about cars. And he used to be really into tearing apart and rebuilding old cars and making them into hot rods... and drag racing them. (And there were many times where my mom, sister, and I would hide in the woods nearby to where my dad was racing to be there in case he got in trouble with the law.)

So, my mom was doing most of the business stuff. So, she was more of COO of the business, whilst my dad was the face and owner of the business.

But my dad had the business for over 30 years. He just closed down several years ago... though he is still working as a mechanic for another shop.

But in the 90s, when my mom was running the business end of things, he was making pretty good money. And we were blue collar middle class whilst most people my parents knew were blue collar working class.

Before he met my mom, he was working as a mechanic for a couple who owned a shop. And they were paying him $25 per week for full-time work as a mechanic. And they allowed him to sleep at the shop.

My dad grew up quite poor. And he's too kind and accommodating for his own good. So, I can only imagine that that's why he was willing to accept such low pay. He's always said he can sleep under a rock and not care much about it.

Then, when my mother was expecting me, I think she was the one that convinced him to start his business... as $25 per week wasn't going to cut it.

So, he started the business... and he did quite well. He was one of the main mechanics in my hometown that specializes in fixing transmissions.

But because he grew up so poor, he prided himself on being able to buy me toys and all kinds of fun experiences as a kid. And I know that he genuinely got a lot of meaning from being able to make my childhood fun.

And in his raspy Southern voice, he'd sometimes joke with my mom about me being, "Spoilt and rurnt." (Rurnt = Ruined in Southern-ese) And my mom would joke back with him about it.

And I really liked having fun and having toys like any child does.

But in ways that I don't think I expressed, I tended to feel very guilty about the idea that I am spoiled.

Like as a very young child of perhaps 3 or 4 years old, I saw my first commercial about starving people who didn't have food. And the commercial was asking for donations.

And I got really stressed out and cried, "I'll give them my food!"

Then, I always felt really awkward about being middle class because I thought we were disgustingly rich. In reality, we were probably pretty average. But I thought we were so privileged and sheltered because we lived in a brick and mortar house, I had a bunch of toys, and we'd go to a theme park about once a year (I live in Florida).

And because of this sense of being spoiled, privileged, and sheltered, I always felt like I was behind my peers in terms of experiences... even when I wasn't.

And I remember, when I was 7 or 8, that my mom painted my room blue. And I really liked having a blue room. But I was mortified at the idea that, if I ever had a friend over to visit, that I would be so embarrassed for them to see how rich and spoiled that I was.

So, I always felt very conflicted about receiving positive things. And receptivity is a major component of the Feminine principle... which is why I'm bringing it up here.

And I wanted to be a good and humble person... and not a spoiled and greedy person.

Yet... to my perception, I had a rich father who was very willing to spoil me.

And I thought that my dad was rich because my dad never kept money in the bank. He just kept a giant wad of money in his pocket at all times. So, if he ever needed to pay for things, he'd pull a big wad of money out of his pocket which was a combination of 100s, 20s, 10s, 5s, and 1s... plus a whole bunch of change.

He probably walked around will like $200 or $300 with him at all times. And to my perception, he was rich. And he never ran out of money back then.

So, even though we were probably regular middle class people... my perception was that I was this rich little spoiled princess, like Angelica Pickles from Rugrats or Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka.

And negative spoiled characters like Veruca Salt formed the basis of my perception of the Beloved Archetype.

The Beloved Archetype is a Feminine archetype that pertains to the capacity for receptivity to unconditional love... that needn't be earned or worked for.

The Masculine counterpart to the Beloved Archetype is the Lover Archetype, which gives love unconditionally.

And one needs both of these archetypes integrated in order to have a positive and non-transactional relationship to giving and receiving love... and other things as well.

So, anytime I'd receive things as a child, I'd want them... but I'd feel guilty and like I was being a Veruca Salt.

Then, after my parents split up when I was 12, I went to go live with my dad.

And that meant leaving my middle class childhood home, where my mom still lived. And I went to go live in a trailer park with my dad. And it was a single-wide trailer that was infested with cockroaches.

And the trailer park was filled with other kids around my own age.

Also, because my mom was no longer running the business, my dad's business continued but didn't thrive as much as it did in the 90s. So, we were a bit more modest in our means.

So, this felt very relieving because I no longer felt like I was some rich princess cloistered away in a brick and mortar house... I was just a regular working class girl from a blue collar working class background. And I would try to hide the fact that I had such a cushy childhood because I was very ashamed of it.

Then, once I got to be around 14 years old, I started to develop a very strong working class ethos around working hard for every single dollar that I get. And I was bound and determined to prove myself not sheltered and not spoiled... but humble, and street smart, and a very hard worker. 

And I had a lot of biting judgments towards the people who would mooch off of others, especially those who would mooch off of my dad. (My dad is a very kind persona and a giver, and he can be easily taken advantage of by moochers)

Or I'd even judge when it wasn't a mooching thing at all.

For example, when I was a teenager, I lived with my stepmom and my two twin step-sisters who are my age. 

And my dad would also give freely to them, which made sense, in retrospect. I definitely don't just them for taking what my dad offered them.

But I recall one time, my dad tried to give me and my two step-sisters $50 each. 

And my step-sisters quickly and eagerly took the money, as you'd expect that 14 year olds would.

But I had already built up a value framework that saw taking that money as unethical, spoiled, and weak. My view was that money that wasn't worked for wasn't earned shouldn't be accepted. 

So, I said "no thank you" to my dad's offer to give me $50. 

I also was planning at that point to become emancipated so that I could begin working as a 14 year old, so that I could have the power to earn my own money... as I didn't like receiving my living just on the basis of being a minor.

So, I built up and whole value framework, identity, worldview, and rules for myself that was a total rejection of Feminine receptivity... and a total rejection of my capacity for unconditional receptivity... and a total rejection of seeking support from other people.

In my mind, it was only things that I earned and worked for and achieved independently that made me valid and valuable enough to deserve to exist in reality.

And I was quite harsh on myself , in that I felt that not earning my keep was a sign that I was too morally weak and un-stoic to deserve to simply exist.

But I remember once that my dad took notice of these values around earning everything I have from my own efforts. 

And he said, in the slow way he speaks when he's impressed, "Wooow! Emerald's not spoiled at all." 

It felt like such a major acknowledgment for my moral strength and work ethic... and the fact that it was a rare and valuable quality in a world full of takers. (Bear in mind, I was surrounded by a ton of rednecky people. And many of them had very low standards of moral behavior, as they just didn't want to sacrifice. So, I built my identity off of non-example to many of the more "degenerate" people in my community)

I had finally matched up to the working class ideal of being the type of person that pulls themselves up by their bootstraps and doesn't complain about it and stoically gets on with it.

In a world full of Veruca Salts, I'd finally proven myself to be Charlie Bucket... and I maintained that value, until I was 20 when everything fell apart and I awoken to the repressed Feminine.

But I really looked up to my dad at this time and modeled a lot of my tendencies after him...

• Kindness and lack of judgment (even though I had a ton of unconscious judgments)
• Working hard every day at a task that I'm devoted to 
• No quitting my task that I'm devoted to
• No complaints about hard work
• Keeping it stoic and non-emotional 
• Earning every dollar I make off based on my independent effort
• Never asking for help or support 
• Never accepting a handout

And this parlayed into a strong work ethic that took me through my first job at 16... and in my work ethic whilst I was in college.

But I had the working class ethos down pat. You just work every day as hard as you can and you don't complain about it... and you take 100% responsibility without accepting any handouts.

Then, when I was 20 years old, this identity fell apart because I failed to maintain it. I had built it up and kept it up from age 14 to age 20. And I based my sense of existential validity on my capacity to maintain moral strength and stoicism in my work ethic. But that all came crashing down then.

And it happened to be right when I got a glimpse of the Feminine that I had pushed away. (more on that later)

But what's interesting is also that, many of my medicine journeys pertain to re-integration of the Feminine.

And in one of my journeys, God (as a Masculine presence) told me that the game he wants to play with me is like a game where he is in the lover archetype role and I am in the beloved archetype role. And he will give everything to me unconditionally and I will receive everything unconditionally. 

And in my mind's eye, he showed me an image of Paris Hilton... who I often think of as a Veruca Salt type.

She has a rich father. And she's someone that I associated as being famous for being spoiled and lavished with riches by her rich father. And I had a lot of biting judgments toward her and others like her when I was a teenager.

And God told me in that journey, that he would be like the rich father and I'd be like the daughter that receives everything just for existing. He was just going to give me everything. 

So, that's been a lot of the way I've shifted my mindset... where I recognize everything I've ever gotten was not earned but given. I may have worked... but I never worked FOR anything.

Yet, there's complication here. Because in some way, struggle is exactly the gift that I wanted to receive. It felt like a gift to me to get knocked down a peg financially... and go from middle class to working class.

So, I eventually realized that I threw a Veruca Salt fit about being middle class and said, "Daddy! I want to be working class! I want to know what it's like to earn things and to understand what it's like to depend on myself!"

And the gift was received... because daddy always has his checkbook out.

More on this in future writings.

Edited Tuesday at 12:09 AM by Emerald

[Emerald]

The Queen Dream - 2022

I had this dream back in 2022. I'll share the dream and reflections on it...

"I enter into a Burger King with my husband and my two children, and we go sit down at one of the tables in the lobby.

There's a commotion at the other side of the lobby of the Burger King, where a bunch of men are queued up in a line to do a meet and greet with the Queen of England. (I had this dream several months before she died, so she was alive at the time irl)

I hadn't realized that there would be a meet and greet. But I really want to meet the Queen. I am very excited about it, even though I wouldn't feel very compelled to do so in real life.

So, I tell my family that I want to go and meet the Queen. And I leave the table and enter the queue of men. I am the only woman in the queue.

And even though it's a fairly small space, it's like there are hundreds of men there. And it's as though the queue never ends.

So, I wait and wait and wait in line for a long time. I'm not even able to see the Queen because there are so many men there.

At some point while I'm waiting, I look up to ceiling and I realize that this Burger King has two floors to it.

The first floor looks just like a regular Burger King. 

The second floor is up really high (maybe 3 stories above the lobby that I'm waiting in). And where you'd expect to see a ceiling, there's an atrium that opens out to the upper floor of the Burger King.

It's like, if there were someone who was on the upper floor, they could look down from the atrium like a balcony and see the entire bottom floor from a birds-eye view.

And unlike the lower floor of the Burger King, the upper floor has a very dark psychedelic kind of vibe. It also reminds me of the vibe that a laser tag place of roller skating place has. (Note: I'd never gone to a Meow Wolf before when I had this dream in 2022. But in 2024, I went to one, and the upper floor of the Burger King had a Meow Wolf vibe)

I continue waiting in the line. And in the end, I never get to meet to the queen. It's like, I get to the front of the queue, but there are just more men there... and I end up going to the side where everyone who already met the Queen go after having met her. But I don't feel I've met her... but I am confused."

This dream is an interesting one... as it combines the real Queen of England with a Burger King.

So, the dream seems to reflect some relationship between the Feminine and Masculine governance archetypes... Queen and King. 

The Masculine polarity of governance (Kinghood) is external and is about leadership.

The Feminine polarity of governance (Queenhood) is internal and is about sovereignty. 

And since there's a comparison between a real queen and a fake king (the Burger King), it implies to me that there's some lower expression of the Masculine that's acting as an obstacle and preventing me from being able to "meet the Queen"... the Queen being a representation of my own sovereignty and capacity for true self-governance and connection with my internal compass.

Sovereignty is the capacity to make decisions from the inside... on the basis of the question "What do I really want?"

And an interruption in sovereignty is when we project our authority outward onto the external world and get caught up in the illusion of obligations and have tos. So, instead of asking, "What do I want?" as the basis of decision-making, someone who is disconnected from sovereignty will ask, "What do I have to do?", "What is my duty?", "What are the rules?", "What do other people expect of me?", etc.

So, the fact that I am having to wait in a large queue of men to meet the Queen, seems to reflect a dynamic that I have historically struggled with... seeing the male gaze as a standard to conform to, and as part of the ground of meaning.

And there have been many times, where I have semi-consciously or unconsciously prevented myself from dressing ornately in the way that I want to dress and feel myself dressing... because I didn't feel like I matched enough to the standards of the male gaze in my own mind.

But that's only one small facet of how deeply my sovereignty was wrapped up inextricably into my romantic and sexual drivers back then. All of it was in one big tangled clump where my drivers for meaning, beauty, connection, sex, and authentic soul expression were all wrapped up into one giant knot, where I couldn't tell where one driver began and the other driver ended.

And it's only after a couple very powerful Ayahuasca journeys that happened after this dream that I was able to untie these drivers, and understand what I really want in terms of authentic expression without it being wrapped up in my drivers towards sex and connection with a man.

So, at the time of this dream, there was still quite a bit of entanglement between my sovereign desires and what men generally find pleasing.

But now, several years later, there's a lot more differentiation between those drivers.

Part of that has to do with shifting out of my own Masculine giver mode... and into a Feminine receiver mode. And instead of trying to please, I try to be pleased... which was something I struggled to access for many years.

From around age 20 to age 33, I had a really hard time focusing on my own pleasure during sex. It was a lot more comfortable to focus on giving pleasure. And I could only feel turned on if I was doing the pleasing... and not being pleased. 

These were blocks to both sovereignty and to receptivity... which are both components of the Feminine Principle.

I only wanted to make decisions externally based on what my male partner desires and to give them what they desire. So, my sovereignty was projected outwards... and I was giving rather than receiving.

And the dream reflected this dynamic in an interesting way... as the Burger King is like a lower and less integrated expression of the Masculine. A higher expression of the Masculine would be more focused on giving to the Beloved... rather than only receiving.

And I think this "lower floor of the Burger King" with so many men queued up in it blocking me from the Queen represents immature men that I've encountered throughout my life in a variety of contexts who are more focused on extracting value from women rather than providing value for a woman.

And men who are immature in that way, will want to block a woman from her sovereignty and power... and to extract from her rather than pour into her. And men in this position will feel threatened by a sovereign woman, as they already feel quite powerless to women.

And what I had been taking for granted as a universal male desire for a woman in lack of power/sovereignty... I had eventually realized that there's more of an insecurity around "What if I'm not enough?" for men who feel threatened in that way.

Then, the fact that the Burger King has an upper floor, hints at a higher expression of the Masculine than the one happening on the first floor.

And the fact that it gives off a psychedelic vibe makes me think of a few things.

One is that my experiences with Ayahuasca always bring me in touch with Masculine facets of God... and it's reminiscent of those experiences.

But also, there's an association between the Divine Masculine and the sacred geometry often experienced in psychedelics journeys.

Then, there's the idea that I feel I need to wait in line behind a bunch of men to "meet the Queen"... which seems to represent this sense that the men in the dream represent that I saw men as middlemen and threshold guardians to the door of my core sovereign self.

[Emerald]

Macho Emerald

When, I was 10 years old, I identified more with Masculinity/boyhood than I did with Femininity/girlhood for reasons that I wrote about in some entries above.

Prior to age 10, I had a very strong female identity... and tended to see the interests and temperament of women and girls as superior to the interests and temperament of men and boys. So, I had this "team girl" thing, at the time.

But at age 10, things flipped around because of dynamics with my mom.

And as younger kid, my favorite color was pink. And I had always really wanted to wear pink frilly dresses and was drawn to anything colorful and sparkly. 

But at 10, I decided intellectually that I hated the color pink... largely because it was a cultural symbol of girlhood/Femininity. And it was a cool thing to do to be a girl who's "not like other girls" and who's not interested in Feminine interests but who's interested in Masculine interests.

I think these characters were well-intended for girls who genuinely didn't resonate with Feminine things, as it gave representation for girls who were genuinely tomboys or who didn't resonate with Feminine interests. 

But it also depicted girls/women who had more Masculine interests as being superior in many ways to girls/women who had more Feminine interests... and it depicted her more as the "everyman" main character who was more authentic and real, compared to the fake/stupid/superficial girls who are into Feminine things. And it even depicted them as faking it or just liking Feminine things because of peer pressure.

And there was even a whole narrative where girls being interested in dolls and make-up and dress up and things like that, where it was all framed as a product of cultural conditioning... which may have discouraged girls from being interested in the things that boys are interested in.

But no such discussion was happening relative to boy's interests. 

So, it framed it as  "girls who are interested in Feminine things as only enjoying them because of cultural conditioning that expect them to fit into the Feminine box. Otherwise, if she could really be herself without the influence of these cultural conditionings, certainly these girls would have been more interested in the things boys are interested in."

And this always confused me and caused me to always be looking at myself as a product of social conditioning... and not a sovereign individual with sovereign preferences. It was like... "Liking the color pink and liking fashion can never be authentically enjoyed. It's always a product of conditioning. Therefore, in order to become authentic, I must reject those "fake preferences" for "real preferences" (aka Masculine preferences)."

So, it caused me to call into question all of my preferences from childhood as the product of social conditioning. And I saw it as inauthentic... and so I tried to become more authentic by sloughing off these conditionings.

I just didn't actually know how to do that. And so, I took the cultural symbols of independently minded female characters, who tended to hate pink and be tomboys. So, those became a blueprint.

Bear in mind, it was easier to be liked and fit in as a girl/woman with Masculine preferences. You get a lot more respect and are seen as more likable than girls/women with only Feminine interests or who come across in more culturally Feminine ways. So, this identification with the "tomboy girls who aren't the like other girls and hate pink" actually served me very well socially once I got into middle school and beyond.

But this divorce from my Feminine interests at age 10, led me into a year-long tendency towards trying to prove myself macho enough to be one of the guys.

Like, in the 5th grade, I only had male friends. And I did some small things to try to fit in... like playing soccer at recess.

But it showed up the most when I was at Summer camp the Summer after the 5th grade and before middle school.

At that time, I tried really hard to be "one of the guys"... probably because I didn't have many male friends at Summer camp. In retrospect, this probably made me feel shaky in the Masculine identity I was trying to cultivate... as I only had male friends during the 5th grade.

But I was always trying to arm wrestle everyone to prove myself strong. And because it was before puberty, I was able to beat about half of the guys.

I also had this thing where I decided that pain doesn't have any effect on me. 

And I even quite masochistic because I wanted to show that I could be stoic, even when I'm in pain.

And because pain meant something positive, as it gave me an opportunity to prove my identity of macho-ness, I really was able and willing to feel a lot of pain without much reaction.

Like, one of the things that I'd do, is (very conspicuously) I would have two girls with long sharp nails scratch down both of my arms at once as hard as they can. And the game was that I wasn't allowed to flinch.

I also had this thing where, even if I got really hurt, I'd have to pretend that I didn't.

Like, there was this really jerky kid named Calvin at the camp who was right around my age... maybe a little older. And he was always such a dick.

And we were inside of big room with a linoleum floor playing indoor four-square.

And Calvin and I both jumped for the ball, collided, landed on the very hard floor, and slid 5 or 6 feet across the floor. 

And it hurt SOOO bad!

Calvin was crying his mean little eyes out, writhing around on the floor.

And I felt exactly like how Calvin looked, and I wanted to cry.

But I couldn't let my pain be seen because I had to prove myself the most macho "guy" at the camp.

So, I quickly jumped up from the ground onto my feet and pretended like it didn't hurt at all. 

And I started to taunt Calvin for crying and calling him a little girl.

This wasn't the only time that something like this happened. There was another time, where we were all playing indoor dodgeball in the same room.

And one of the very athletic male camp counselors (who was probably 20 years old), threw the ball really hard to try to hit me somewhere on the body to get me out. But he got me square in the face.

And the ball made a very loud sound on impact. And everyone stopped and turned to look at me out of concern. (Mind you, I was always very short and smaller than other kids my age. I was frequently mistaken for being 2-3 years younger than I was. So, even though I was 11... it probably looked like an 8 or 9 year old got pelted in the face)

And it hurt SO bad! But I couldn't let my pain be seen.

So, I just expressionlessly, calmly, and silently walked away from the dodgeball area and walked to the bathroom to make sure that my nose wasn't broken or bleeding. No damage had happened.

I came back out just as calmly and expressionlessly. And people were remarking how they thought that I'd be hurt and expected me to have a stronger reaction to it.

But then, I was just like, "Eh. It wasn't that bad." (but it was very bad)

So, I was really trying to prove myself to be tougher than all the guys there. And this will somehow created a scenario where my relationship with pain was very non-resistant because I saw pain as the grist for the mill that I needed to prove my maleness.

As I said before, I've never been trans. But at this age, I was trying to prove myself tough enough to be male. 

Age 10/11 was the peak of this behavior for me. But there are many ways that I can desensitize myself to things that are genuinely over my boundaries because of this capacity for detachment.

It's like the opposite of the Princess and the Pea, where her capacity for Queenhood is determined by her sensitivity... such that she can feel a small pea underneath 12 mattresses.

Instead, it's like... if the pea were a knife and it was stabbing me... I wouldn't feel it much. I'd be stoic and invulnerable.

So, I was really focused on trying to shut down my sensitivity... as it had always been something that's made fun of by my peers. I have always been a naturally very sensitive person.

But in that macho year when I was 10/11, I repressed my sensitivity and convinced myself that I am stoic, strong, and invulnerable to even extreme pain.

And I really believed that... and because I believed that, I could open myself up to a lot of pain without flinching.

So, I became quite adept at this component of my Masculine side.

But I pushed away my sensitivity and my vulnerability to do so, as it only led to negative social consequences. And I got taken less seriously.

But other kids really respected my pain poker face... and thought of me as a chilled out person who didn't get too emotional.

So, it was situations like this that led me to identify myself further with Masculinity and build a very Masculine-principled set of values... and disidentify with Femininity.

Edited Tuesday at 08:58 PM by Emerald

[Emerald]

Sacrael

This is a dream that I had back in 2021 that centers more on integration with the Masculine and Feminine...

"I am downtown with my best friend Shanna and a handful of other people from out of town. We are in downtown Saint Augustine at night (I live in Saint Augustine irl), and we’re sitting crossed-legged on the ground off by the side of San Marco, while a bunch of vehicles drive by us. We are in our early 30s but we are acting like a group of teens.

It is both Christmas and Halloween. It is known as common in the dream that Christmas and Halloween sometimes happen to fall on the same exact day.

I am sitting across from a guy that I find somewhat attractive. He is skinny and clean-shaven with short dark hair. He is probably between 28 and 33 (I was 31 or 32 when I had this dream). He is a bit rebellious and immature though. It is clear that this is my first time meeting him.

We start playing a game where we’re supposed to talk shit about the towns we live in and go back and forth trading snaps. Neither of us is playing it correctly. We’re just saying random stuff.

The whole group is having a good time. 

Suddenly a large vehicle that looks like Santa in an open sleigh pulling an ambulance-sized shiny red freight box drives by us and takes a sharp left turn in the opposite direction of us. The freight box comes a little too close for comfort. 

And we realize that we’re sitting in a somewhat dangerous place... especially on a holiday. There are bound to be drunk drivers out and they might either run into us or take turns too sharply and hit us.

So we decide to disband. But the guy and I decide to walk together.

We’re walking around the historic downtown area and talking as we walk. We walk for quite some time. 

Saint Augustine downtown looks very old... like we’re actually walking around in an 1800s town. I think there might even be some snow on the ground, which never happens irl because it's Florida.

Something happens with my shoes. Like one of them becomes uncomfortable.

As we’re walking, I tell him I have to go do something and that I’ll catch up with him later. We agree to meet in the pub that I have to go into.

Now, I’m not sure what I have to do at this pub. I’m not sure if meeting him is the reason why I’m there. Or if it is some other man I have to meet. 

But I decide to go into the pub early at any rate... either early to meet the guy I was just talking to or early to meet another guy.

I ask the bartender (who reminds me of my friend Andrew from my hometown) if everything is ready. And he says that, “They’re not here yet”.

But he has three types of alcohol set out at a table for when they are there.

There is one glass of clear liquor for me. And then one glass of dark liquor for the guy that I will meet there.

And then there is one glass of “sacrael” for a third person. Sacrael is pronounced “sac” like in Sacramento and “rael” like how Israel is pronounced in the song “Hark the Herald Angels Sing."

I ask the bartender about Sacrael because I’d never heard of it.

He told me that it’s alcohol that’s been put through a special process that makes it okay for holy men (like priests) to drink. He uses different words to describe what it is but that’s the gist of it. 

Sacrael has a whitish bluish glow to it compared to the other two beverages.

I am torn between whether or not to hang out in the bar and wait for the guy to show up.

I know there’s something clandestine about the meeting. And lots of people are in on the plan... including the bartender.

And I’m there to early to play my role. But I don’t want to go back out into the cold. I don’t want to wait. 

But it is clear that the alcoholic beverages being set out feel like a code... similar to the “one if by land, two if by sea” which is a code that Americans did during the American Revolution to signal that the British are coming."

Upon waking and interpreting this dream, it felt very clear to me that the three glasses of alcohol represented a marriage ceremony.

The clear liquor was for me (In real life, on the rare occasions where I drink, I only drink clear liquor. I have an aversion to dark liquor... and red wines.)

The dark liquor was for the mystery man I was meeting for the plan.

And the Sacrael (which was in the middle of the other two glasses) was for the priest. 

To be continued... I'll add more to this entry tomorrow.

[Talinn]

I appreciate being able to read this, particularly in the dream elements and the patronage of your mother's femininity