WHEN YOU DON'T LISTEN TO YOUR INTUITION — THE BLUEBEARD INITIATION

The sign arrived. Unmistakably. Almost insultingly literally.

I went ahead anyway.

This episode is about that, receiving the intuitive hit and overriding it, the moment we know and go anyway, what it costs, and what Clarissa Pinkola Estés understood about this pattern when she wrote about Bluebeard. It is also about why the reckoning that follows is not a failure. It is the initiation.

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Transcript

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Hi, how are you? I have been running this episode through my brain, for a few weeks now, and it just feels like the right time to, to talk about this. I'm recording this on Sunday, the 31st of May. It's the morning, and we have the full moon in Sag tonight. Sag is so much to do with our own accrued, often costly experiential wisdom that we've gained, you know, out there on the front line of our own lives. And I want to share a story about some of the most costly wisdom that I gathered about myself, about my intuition, about my 12th house moon, about my astrology. I had already studied astrology, by the time this experience happened, which is funny. I wasn't a practicing astrologer. Very big difference between those two things, PS, which I'm sure is obvious. I work with a lot of beautifully sensitive people, a lot of highly intuitive people, a lot of wonderfully creative people, many of whom, have been working to reestablish a connection with their intuition, and it's something that I care really deeply about. I just think it's incredibly important, in the individuation process of, of an, of a human to reestablish that connection or to amplify that connection. And I think in the world that we live in, and that we're walking towards, it is such a huge part of the next steps for all of us to really be viscerally connected to this incredible intelligence that we all have within us. Part of why I wanna tell this story is because... Well, part of why I've been thinking about it is because in Leo season, I'm going to run my intuition course again. It's the first time in... It's been two years since I, I last ran it. I, I think I've run it a, a handful of times over the years, and I want to run it for Leo season when the nodes change. There's so much happening. There's some very, very interesting, eclipses. And yeah, this is... this is why this story of Bluebeard and my experience with this archetype, is front of mind I think most of us have had this moment where we knew, you know, before the evidence arrived, before anyone could have told us, something in us, this quiet, clear, already certain aspect knew exactly what was true. And then we explained it away, or we reasoned ourselves out of it, or I would say we compassioned ourselves out of it. We decided we were, I don't know, being paranoid, overthinking, that this time would be different, that maybe the sign meant something else. And then lo and behold, we found out we were right all along. And I really wanna talk about what it actually costs to do that, and perhaps the reasons why we might do that in the first place. And I wanna use my own data, some of the most dramatic data that I have, in this moment where I asked for a sign and it arrived so literally, so literally that, I still think about it, you know, 12, 13 years later. And I went ahead anyway. I overrid, the intel. So today we're gonna talk about Bluebeard I'm sure so many of you have read Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. If you haven't, I think everyone should own it. Everyone should have a copy of it... If you haven't read it, it's dense. I'm not gonna pretend it's the sort of thing that you, read over the weekend. For me, it's something that I've dipped in and out of many times over the years, because it's like in the reading of the thing, of each story, there's so much to process and integrate. And this raises an interesting point, and I guess it's a big bit of the story. Reading about intuition, reading about the psyche and the integration of the psyche, and redeveloping our connection to our wilder, more, primal, natural, authentic aspects, is very, very different than having accrued the lived wisdom of the thing. Reading about intuition doesn't make one an intuitive master. It's being out there in the field, you know? Anyway, the reason I bring this up is I was reading this book in at the time I was in my early 30s. My early 30s were strong. There was a lot that went down in my early 30s. So much, and I'd love to tell those stories one day, mostly in a written form. And so I had been... I had met someone, and they were, he was unbelievable. Without sounding like too much of a wanker, I had, I had been a muse to several men in my late 20s, mid to late 20s, early 30s. I had a lot of boyfriends who were musicians, and I'd played that role This was the first person that I'd met where I, like I, I, I literally said to myself, "He's my muse." He was lightning. He was a live wire. He was Neal Cassady. You know, if you've ever read any of the work of the Beats, you'll know who Neal Cassady is. This electric, one of a kind, larger than life, like disgustingly charismatic creature who also is a little bit broken And this was true for this person Just one of a kind, incredible. You know, the, the, the eyes that were so blue that it was that kind of like cult leader shade blue. Beautiful, electric, so interesting, hard to pin down And I had always been drawn towards very strong individuals. And what it's taken me a long time to realize is that's also me. I'm a very strong individual. I'm a singular creature, like we're all singular creatures. And for a while there, I was really drawn towards those people, and loved that in them without recognizing that within myself. I spent... It must have only been a few months with this person, but it felt like years. And they left, without saying goodbye to anyone, and essentially disappeared. And a missing persons report was, filed And for a whole year they were gone. I would, and I have since actually, I'd Google their name sometimes with obituary at the end to see if they were still with us. And I had adrenal fatigue as a byproduct of this very short but eternal feeling three months. I, I would say I'd even developed a little bit of agoraphobia. I couldn't leave the house for a long time. I was fried. I had been in fight or flight for that whole time, for this extended period that, yeah, I'd, I'd fried myself. In that year I had therapy, which was brilliant. And then a year later, I was on the train up into the mountains to do a four-day Vipassana sit, and I got a call from this person asking for a favor. They were in an institution in another state, and they were asking me for a favor. Not even a hello It was a we- it was, yeah, it was so activating to get that call. And then it was incredible timing because then I just got to sit with it for four days. And Came home, they had made their way back to the city that I lived in, and we... They, they wanted to meet. We had plans to meet in a park And already you're probably like, "Dude, okay, this is obvious. Don't go. Don't meet this person." And that day I read the story of Bluebeard And before, it was the afternoon when I was gonna meet them, before I met them, I was like, "Look, you know the back history. I, I need a really clear sign here. Is this not a good idea?" And yes, for all of you listening, it's like, yeah, it's obvious it's not a good idea. It's obvious. But there's something really strange when you experience trauma, and the loop is not closed. There's this part, for me at least, there's this part of me that just needed the, needed the clean ending, needed the loop to be closed. Silly, wouldn't need to do that now. Might, might still obsess over it for a couple of months, but wouldn't need that closure. So I wanna remind you of the story of Bluebeard before we go any further Bluebeard was this wealthy, uh Odds man. He had power, he had, a castle, he had all of these things, but he had a blue beard, and there was something about him that was marked out as odd. He came to court these sisters. He wanted to marry one of them. And at first, they and their mother were like, "Ew, no, there's something off here." The instinct was there. Like there's something broken here. There's something that's off And then everyone can feel it, right? But then everyone was charmed out of it. He put on this huge, party a- and, and wooed them You know, in a sense it's like, and I'm not saying this person was a predator, but the predator doesn't hide. I'd say the seduction is, like, part of the design. And what I wanna just really clearly say here is I was not a, a victim here. Like, I, I was not, doing anything against my own will. I saw all of the signs and was like, "Okay, let's go." And I wanna talk about that and, and the r- the, the possibilities of why a little bit later in this episode. So we- when we're reading a myth or when we're reading a fairy tale, like this story of Bluebeard, thr- through a Jungian lens, every part, every character, and even inanimate object represents a part of the self, a part of the psyche. So in telling you the story of Bluebeard, I'm also speaking to, an initiation of the self. An area of the psyche that Bluebeard initiates us into. Okay? So one of the daughters is seduced and is like, "Well, I'll, I'll marry him." And they go back to his large place. She receives these keys, a key to every room, but there's one room that she cannot go into, and that's the instruction explicitly said by Bluebeard You cannot look in this room. You cannot use this key. And so this instruction not to look is the thing that makes her look because the wild woman in her, her intuitive self already knows there's something in that room that she needs to see You know, it's like that instinct to look clearly at what you are actually living inside is not a weakness or a disobedience. It's nothing to feel shame around. It is the healthiest instinct available, and I know that we've all felt that in, in, in a myriad of ways. Her sisters come to visit while he is away, and he gives her this instruction, "Do not look in this room." And they're looking through all of the rooms. They're like, the, the splendor, the beauty, the abundance. And then they're like, "Look at this other room." They're older sisters. And what I learned when I was studying mythology with Maria Souza last year is older siblings represent aspects of our consciousness which are more developed. And it was the older sisters who were like, "You should look in that room." So she goes against the, the politeness, the socially acceptable part of herself, and breaks his rule, his one rule. And when she puts the key in the door, she opens it up, and she sees all of these dead wives, the bones of all of h- his, all of her predecessors It's death, it's the cost, it's the carnage. Um, it's, it's his murderous impulse, let's say. And closes the door. The key is now bleeding It's like that knowing, once it's been received, once we cross, cross that threshold, it cannot be unknown or unfelt, and you can't get rid of it. You literally can't wipe off the blood. She's wiping it. She's trying to clean it as best she can. It's just moving from different areas of the key. It will not wipe clean And we could say like, this is the mark of the initiation. She saw what she needed to see, and she can't go back to not knowing. Now again, this is a threshold that we've all crossed within ourselves. We may have had a hunch, we saw the thing, and then what did we do with that information? Some of us can continue on with the facade or with our wounds. We can play them out. We can play out our destructive tendencies for even longer once we've seen this thing. Some of us are highly experiential. I think I am one of those people. And for me, this Bluebeard experience was one that... It was one of those experiences, I know you've all had them, a lot of you have them in, during your Saturn return, where you do the thing that maybe cognitively you know don't do that, or this isn't the right path for you. But you do the thing, and it's so intense, and it's so extreme, and the repercussion, the cost is so extreme that you know in your bones, "I will never, ever, ever do that again." So long story short, she becomes cunning, which is, But there's one, I'm just trying to see if I can see it on my... Oh, it's in my bedroom actually. It's called The Vital Spark. Great book. Incredibly good book. Highly recommend. A lot more easy to digest actually than Estés. No shade on Estés, what a legend, but highly recommend The Vital Spark by Lisa Marciano. Um, what was I saying? Yes. So she develops cunning, and she is saved. Bluebeard comes back, sees that she's opened the door, essentially says he's going to she's going to end up there, and he de- she delays. And then her brothers, you know, more of it's, it's her instincts, it's her survival mechanism, comes in and saves her, and eradicates Bluebeard. That's a nice way of saying it. Eradicates. So I walk to the park, get the train, walk to the park. He's there. He's shining. Again, just effulgent. So charismatic. It, it's hard to... I mean, they're always charismatic, aren't they? Let's be real. They're never, they're never sheepish, mild characters. Walk over to him, so, like, happy and s- so, like, adrenaline is just pulsing through me, which I mistake for attraction and excitement, but it's adrenaline. It's, it's a response of, like, "Don't go there." And we hug. We say hi. The first thing he says to me, "I just tried to dye my beard blue." I'm, I am not joking. This person, I had just read Bluebeard. I had just asked for a sign. And while I was reading Bluebeard, he was trying to dye his beard blue And There was so much going on in my body at that moment. It was the elation of seeing him and knowing that he was safe and alive and seemingly with it. And then there was this reckoning happening within me of this is the most literal sign I've ever received. I've always been intuitive, but that doesn't mean I've always trusted it. Certainly doesn't mean I've always listened to it, and I'm, and I don't think I'm alone there. So there was just so much going on, and we spent the afternoon just hanging out And I, I saw him. I kept seeing him, but it was, it was a smaller amount of time. Maybe it was six weeks, maybe it was two months. And to be honest, I was more of a nurse maid during that time or a caregiver It was worse. It was much worse. It got to the point where, he had been taken away to an institution. I'm laughing, I'm not laughing 'cause he was unwell, I'm laughing 'cause it's just such an e- such an exaggerated s- story. Like, it's such a dramatic story. And I'm also, like, aware of, like, "Oh my God, what are they thinking of me as I tell them this?" And I wanna get into that a little bit. But what I realized, because I, while I walked into the situation, I also had a level of awareness from all of the work that I had done. Still, still walked headlong into, into it, but I had a level of awareness that I hadn't before. I wasn't as naive as I was the first time. I could see more clearly, and yet I still felt a responsibility to care for this person that wasn't actually my responsibility. And that was a very, very hard lesson to learn This was by no means a great romance. Like, it was strange in that area I was just so drawn to them. It was that perfect storm. And I realized while they were away that I had to leave the country. Speaking of extremes. I just knew in my bones that if this person was around... It's like there was this part of me, at that age anyway, and at that level of experience anyway, it would be a different situation now. I wouldn't be in that situation now. I realized that there'd be a part of me that would be wanting to check in on them and make sure they were okay. And I had lost all of my vitality very rapidly that I had slowly clawed back over the year that they had, gone missing. And, I was at work and I wrote to my, one of my bestest friends in LA, and she was like, "You can come and stay with me," and her excellent husband So I applied for a bank loan. I'd never had a credit card or had a bank loan or any of these kind of things. I applied for a bank loan, I got one, I quit my job, I packed up my life, and within two weeks I was in another country, and I didn't come back for four years. I I had to remove myself from my... Which also meant that I, I was away from my family and my community, and I lost a lot, And I, you know, from America I went to England. My dad's English. I'm, I'm English. I've got an English passport. And I lived there for three and a half plus years, and it was idyllic and so beautiful. And I had one of the most beautiful, healing, loving relationships of my life. I think we all have a Bluebeard story, and I hope it's not as intense, and dramatic, and life force-draining as my own. I really don't want that for anyone. But there's a few things that I wanna touch on here because we are always receiving the... We're always in communication with this highly intelligent, subtle data, which is our intuition. I mean, that, my example there was not subtle. It, it, it was just everything in me being like, "No." And I still walked through the door and, and, and paid the price, you know? Which is again, like I was saying, it's why I would never do anything like that again because I, I have that lived wisdom, the, the, the figurative scars etched on me. Um, but there's a few things here that happen, I think, that many of you might be able to relate to. The longing often overwrites the knowing, you know? The signal was very clear, but underneath it was a want, a want for the story to be different, for this person to have changed or somehow miraculously gotten better. For the vision that I had of what it could be to actually be the storyline and not a projection and not a fantasy and, and I would say not a delusion, which is what all of those things were. I think the longing isn't a weakness, it's human But when it runs louder than the reality, you know, it's like if you have that ability to see people and you can see their treasure, you can see their divinity, and you're able to, like, g- grow that thing so it becomes who they are, even if it's actually well-hidden and the practicality of who a person is is absolutely not their ultimate form But if you're one of the many people who fall in love with somebody's potential, or you're able to see that glimpse of who they are and you think, "I could help them. I could heal them," then you know you're in really dangerous territory, and it's incredibly hard to see that when you're in it, and it's sad It's really sad. When You see who somebody is at their core, but their core is so far away. Having known somebody like this who really falls through the cracks of society, you know, lives within a gray zone that we just... Is still so taboo. It's hard to not wanna do everything you can for them. And at the same time, like I said, it's not my responsibility, which sounds so harsh, but the cost was so great to my own vitality to tend to somebody, and it wasn't actually my business. And there's so much I wanna say here about being boundaryless, which I will in a second. But I think the second part is, like, the ras- rationalization is fast and it's fluent. You know? The mind that goes to work dismantling that knowing Doesn't feel like self-betrayal from the inside, you know? It feels like I'm being reasonable. It feels like fairness. It's like not wanting to be the kind of person who makes decisions based on, I don't know, a sign or fear, or a fairy tale she may have read that morning. The override often sounds like maturity, and I, and, and so does empathy. So does, like, unbridled compassion, like I've just been touching on. But I can... You know, I can just help them. I'm strong. I can help them Like, isn't this a worthwhile thing to do? You know, it can sound like giving someone the benefit of the doubt. It can almost sound virtuous. The other thing I wanna talk about here is, is, is boundarilessness, because I think that's a big part of it. As I've said a lot of times, like, my moon's in the 12th house, and that's a boundaryless area. When you're looking at a chart, there is someone's nurture... Sorry, someone's nature, but there's also nurture Which is bringing in more of that psychological astrology, more of that Jungian lens, like the lived experience of the early socialization, the adaptations that were made. And, like, if you're a backyard astrologer, don't read somebody-- don't read that in somebody's chart. Unless you've trained in that, don't do that, 'cause you could really... You could, you could do harm. But it's an incredibly interesting thing to look at. And I know for myself, and, and I've been thinking about this a lot in the last few weeks, boundarylessness is an interesting thing, right? 'Cause I'd say on a level we all arrive as, as psychic sponges. We all arrive, like, open to life. And at the same time, we have primal body instincts from the get-go. Very, very strong primal instincts. My body knows what it needs. It will cry out to get that need met, as a very basic example. And then depending on our circumstance, depending on our family unit, our early childhood, ear- early authority figures, the narratives that we're playing out, this is when, you know, so for me with that twelfth house moon, yes, I had an imaginary friend. His name was Patrick. I, you know, I grew up in a household where, you know, my parents talked about their own ghost stories, like their own lived experiences of ghosts and, et cetera. This has never been unusual to me. For me it was really normal. I had a lot of clairsentience, you know, that ability where you're in the room and you're reading it, and you learn to read other people first, long before you learn to read yourself. That's me, and that's so many of my clients. And, and I would also say, like, that's so many people who work in these fields. And And when there's a learned boundarylessness, that's when it's, dangerous, for want of a better phrase. When, in, in your childhood and adolescence, if something happened or things were happening and your body was like, "No," or like your intuition was like, "No," like this is in- un- injust or whatever the thing was, but then you had to override your instincts, your intuition to exist within the family, that is a recipe for many a bluebeard initiation You know, because that's, that's somebody who doesn't have a container. And, and this was me at the time. And, and this was why this was such a great learning. I was not checking in with myself. How do I feel here? Do I have any energy? What do I need right now? Everything was focused on this person. And again, it was, it was such an exaggerated situation. This person was in a crisis. But then I, you know, I realized later on that that was their, that was their whole s- that was a lot of their story. That was normal. That level of chaos was a normal, you know, quote-unquote, "normal" experience for them. Whereas for me, it was a very heightened thing to be witnessing and engaging in.- So I, I had this ability to, like, absorb other people's realities or problems or, or needs as my own. You know? I didn't have the architecture yet, the infrastructure to distinguish what was mine and what belonged to someone else, what was my responsibility and what was not. You know? And I think that's... A lot of us have had that experience again, um And it really took me removing myself from the experience, even from my, my country to be able to look back on that and grow from that, but grow from the inside, nourish my inner world, tend to my own needs. And for any of you who, who recognize what I'm saying within yourself, I really think a big part of that is, like, when we're growing boundaries, we're growing them with ourselves first. That first boundary for me was building that container of the self, learning to build the safety to apply that lens that I'd trained outside for, for, for necessity, to have the safety to apply that to myself, to put that empathy and compassion that I was, spending on, on... out, out, in, in an external sense onto myself, and that was difficult. And that's why I teach this, because it's hard. And I... and it's the thing that, that, that shocks me, you know? It's like, um, to give you a mundane example Who has ever said I need to... I know deep within my bones that I need to take care of myself a bit better in this particular area. And so you make the commitment, and it's coming from a genuine place. It's not forced. It's not something that you saw somebody else do, and you're like, "Oh yeah, I should do that." It's come from, like, deep within. And then have you noticed the struggle to do the thing, to keep your word to yourself? That, that's what I'm talking about, that gap there. It's, it's really, really interesting. 'Cause it's like we need to develop that inner safety that we can take care of ourselves, do the things that we want to do, whatever it is. It's gonna be different for everyone. Um, but yeah, that was it. It was like I didn't have a container. I, I was boundaryless. And yes, I had the ability to, to, know what somebody needed and then want to tend to them, and not even check in with myself, 'cause I didn't even know how to do that in a healthy way. But to escape outside of myself by putting all of my focus and my energy on somebody else and tending to them and you know, again, this was many, many, many years ago, and it was that last year that I was away when I really realized, like, I could read for people. I could, I could take all of my astrological knowledge. Like, I'd, I'd never stopped studying. I'd read for friends, that whole time. But it was, for me, having the framework of astrology As my work, that created an incredible boundary for my natural abilities. Again, there's a huge difference between having an ability, or abilities, and then them being a skill. Huge, huge difference. I've just written about all the 12 signs and I have highlighted one of the significant abilities of each of the signs, and then what it takes to actually form that into a skill. A skill is something that you consciously wield. An ability can remain unconscious. My empathy, my compassion, that lack of containment, self-containment, you know, was all running unconsciously, and now, like, it's my, my, my boundaries are... Like, I don't have to think about them anymore because they're, they're so ingrained. But now when I'm in a session with a client or I'm teaching, like, all of my abilities are there, and they're present, and they're big. They've grown so much through having containment, which is a really, really interesting, wild by-product of boundaries. You know? It's like the, the, the, the skills grow. When they're conscious, they grow. Um, and then when I finish a session, or I finish with a, a class, I can put the, I put the laptop down. That's it. I don't think about it again. There's the financial exchange. There's the energetic exchange. I'm not just giving, giving, giving. I'm receiving. I'm being asked to share my lens, which is huge, right? I'm not being boundaryless. I'm not, I'm not just giving, advice to people who haven't asked it. I'm being sought out for my lens. So yeah, th- these are some really... This is the practicalness the practicalities of building, of, of taking what was, a leaky as F ability and sharpening it into a very, very well-honed skill that just continues to get sharper. So again, I'd say like you can't read your way to the wild woman. You can't observe your way into a strong connection with your intuition, there is a level of work. That, that's just the truth of it. There's literally, you've gotta do work. And I know so many of you already know that 'cause you've already walked these paths. Like, we've all been initiated in different aspects of our own psyche, you know? Like, we all know that there's a cost, and there's a level of consciousness. Consciousness takes work. It's attention, it's focus, it's sustaining the thing, it's showing up, it's being in devotion to the thing, you know? Me reading the story and then having it play out, you know, it's like the initiation wasn't the chaos. The initiation's what I built from it Even, even overriding it in such a dramatic fashion, was an incredible learning that I'll always Like, I, I wear it, you know? It's like if I had a, if I had some kind of, like, life cloak which had all of my stories weaved into it, this would be an effing major part of, an effing major part of the, the visual representation of my life. Life cloak, I like that. I feel like that should be a thing. Um, you have to reckon with your own patterns. You have to recognize your patterns, your wounds, your beautiful, sweet wounds. For me, like, part of that was, like, a level of self-destruction, and I, and I would say I wasn't con- I, I was I w- I could sense I was drawn towards things that were taboo, things that were darker, things that were more intense in nature, because I had experienced intensity from a young age, and there was a level of this, of familiarity. But I had to really tend to those things with nourishment and care and, and that same level of empathy and compassion that And, and vision that I was able to see in, into others. I had to apply that to myself. The hopes and the dreams that were not real, they were fantasies. You know, whatever, whatever it is for you, it's like we have to recognize these things. We have to tend to these things So in closing, I'd say that developing this relationship with ourselves, with our own intuition, like really developing it, not reading it or reading about it, not intellectually understanding it, but building that actual living relationship with our own inner world, like building that container, those structures Is Building or reestablishing, 'cause it, it's already there. It's like tuning our inner ear... Like tuning our outer ear back into our inner ear, you know? J- back towards ourselves. That work is, is everything to me, because, because of the, the s- this story. Because of these stories that I've lived and gathered, and teach from. I think it's why I'm a really good astrologer because I ha- I've always had these abilities to see, and to hold space, and to see deeply into somebody, to be able to connect with people, and then astrology provided that container. And it's why I teach intuition. And I, and let me just say, like, in, within Moon Oracle, within this course, I'm not doing the work for you, 'cause that's... would be missing the point entirely. I've created these experiences, or I've brought in these experiences from older times, that you get to experience. A lot of my work is experiential because, we really learn from being on the frontline of our own experience, not just reading about it. Reading about things can really shift our perspective and bring in so much medicine, but it's you building the thing yourself, or you experiencing the thing that yourself is what's going to grow your trust in a way that nothing else can, you know? If you're interested in that, the wait list is below. If you're interested in taking my quiz to see which of the Claires you're very dominant in right now, that's below. It's free. But yeah, I hope that this lands. I have a lot of compassion and love for that version of myself. She was raw and, had really good intentions, but was making a mess of it. But it's kind of like because she did that I get to be here now recording this and telling you this story. And yeah, I'm forever grateful to my own experiential nature and the intensity at which I, um, engage with life lessons. I hope you all have a great week. I'll be back next one