I have been parading around rather triumphantly over the past couple days in anticipation of the full moon in Capricorn. As any Capricorn (over age 30) might tell you, this is the best sign. We can be very much like cross-fitters in this way. Except that it’s a bit more literal, being that the Capricorn mascot is a #goat and its evolutionary function is to use self discipline and delayed gratification to achieve epic long term goals.
We all have Capricorn (and all the signs) somewhere in our charts, which means that even if you don’t quickly identify with these traits, there’s at least one area of your life that they’re available.
Lately, I’ve been directing this unwavering pursuit into what you might think of as “slaying inner dragons,” or “battling inner demons.” But I have always found phrases such as these counterintuitive. If I have dragons I don’t know about, I’m definitely keeping them.
I’ve noticed that whenever I come across something that I have a strong negative reaction to, that is always and unfortunately a sign that whatever I’m reacting to is something that either I subconsciously deeply care about and/or need to integrate into my psyche. There are exactly zero things that I like about the way this works.
When I first come across the negative thing, whatever it may be (snakes, rules, math, walking slowly, patriarchal value systems, the color red, winter, the “easy” way, straight lines, religion, privilege, sitting still, following directions, etc), my immediate pull is towards rejecting this aspect of my wholeness, and I take my sweet time resisting integration for as long as it remains psychologically pleasing to do so.
Even if I wanted to go right at it, and start trying to figure out how to soften these defenses, that would be a fruitless strategy. My inner protector is a cunning force. She has been upholding and reinforcing boundaries like a boss for most of my adult life and I remain grateful to have my sensitivities mostly intact in order to “prepare to live in the world,” as David Whyte says, “with its harsh need to change you.”
For a long time, I identified with my inner protector as part of my essential personality. I’ve always loved a good boundary (possibly a little too much). But I’ve recently become aware of another internal archetype that has been hiding, as they always do, right in plain sight: my inner destroyer.
Up until recently, this bad bitch has been operating under the cover of darkness, only randomly popping out like behavioral Freudian slips. I have been known to screw in a lightbulb too hard and crush the glass between my fingers. I’ve walked straight through screen doors with seemingly no resistance on the part of the screen, and I’ve never made it through the life of a smartphone without “accidentally” slam dunking it onto the ground and embellishing it with complex geometric patterns in the cracked screen. I mill around unknowingly slamming doors and cabinets, squashing unassuming insects under my bike tire before my conscious mind can snap back into the driver’s seat and swerve out of the way.
Now that I’ve caught on though, I’ve reassigned the destroyer to a more proactive roll as a sleuth, sniffing out the self-sabotaging patterns that the protector has learned to camouflage, usually as “other people’s things.”
I’m sure you’re all familiar with the concept of reflecting on a series of relationships that have all presented the same themes - for instance, all of your exes end up lying to you in one form or another, none of your superiors at work have ever recognized your talent or showed you any appreciation, or no one in your life respects your boundaries - and then having to come to the disappointing conclusion that the common variable in all of these circumstances is you.
Getting to the bottom of these scenarios presents an excellent employment opportunity for my inner destroyer, although she has had to adapt her tactics to proceed more unobtrusively. With every discovery, the mechanisms for protecting and detecting gain key insights about their counterpart and, like advanced learning algorithms, vastly improve their strategies for each successive round.
Sometimes the pattern gets upended just by finding it. These are my favorite scenarios, simple clean victories. Sometimes the pattern requires regular attention in order to practice different responses to it. This is probably the most common result.
And sometimes, in my least favorite scenarios, I have to go another layer underneath and get in touch with a subconscious emotional need that has been gnawing at my core and driving the behavior. I once had a therapist who told me that going into the feeling was the only way to release it. The session in which she relayed that information to me was our last one; I literally never went back to see her. That’s how much I resisted the idea.
Ah ha! 💡It’s one of those clues to a strong negative reaction that needs to be investigated.
Upon closer investigation, this is actually a two-part lead: resistance to the idea that I have to go into the feeling and, another equally potent and graciously less self-accusatory signifier: the cue to be suspicious about any and all supposed binary features of reality. Anytime I’m presented with a ‘this or that’ way of looking at the world, a lightbulb goes off in my psyche. Unlike Robert Frost’s road less traveled and more like Taylor Swift’s stage dive, the realization of a binary is my cue to look for the hole in the ground and dive right underneath.
A full moon occurs when the moon (the archetypal representation of the subconscious) is in direct opposition with the sun (the archetypal conscious mind), resulting in illumination. And the interesting thing about Capricorn is that the mascot is actually a sea-goat.
It climbs the tallest mountains and swims the depths of the deepest oceans. It’s a sign that intuitively knows the power of opposites. If you’re trying to reach a mountain peak without the emotional integrity of the depths, the climb will be laborious and empty. It’s the classic tale of reaching your goals only to find out that they weren’t actually as satisfying as you thought they would be.
So if you have any patterns in your life that are causing you to feel stuck, this full moon may be a potent opportunity to look for what underlying feeling or subconscious motive needs attention. If your inner protector is equally adept at keeping this from your conscious awareness as mine is, look for clues in oppositions.
When 2 roads diverge on the stage of your life, do not go gentle into that good night. Call upon your inner destroyer to smash the bottom out and rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Resources:
Poem: “Do not go gentle into that good night” by: Dylan Thomas
Poem: “Self Portrait” by: David Whyte