That's Wild, Man!
How Welcome is Your Primal Side?
“No matter how much it gets abused, the body can restore balance. The first rule is to stop interfering with nature.” - Deepak Chopra
Stop interfering with nature…that seems to be something we’ve long forgotten in the very heady, too-rigid cultures of the Western world. So often disconnected from our bodies, emotions, instincts, spontaneity, and pleasure~ trapped in limiting beliefs that hold us like a thin rope holds a domesticated elephant~ we’re stuck in traps due to our own choosing.
So what is the way out? How can we heal this divide that has pushed reason to the cliff on one side of a gorge and feeling to the other? Where is the bridge? And, when it doesn’t yet exist, how can we build it?
As someone whose mental abilities were well fostered, from utero, I grew up sharp, analytical, and discerning- all phenomenal qualities to be sure. But my capacity for feeling was not so cultivated; I didn’t have any physical hobbies I was passionate about, conscious emotional intelligence was not a thing in our household, and being wild? Forget that 🫣
I was the opposite of wild: excessively “mature,” and proud of it. This quality, as well as my intellectual prowess, earned me a lot of attention. It wasn’t until my teenage years that I felt motivated to get more in touch with my emotions, as the feelings that had been suppressed rose to the surface and demanded their due attention.
The second half of my life has focused on developing a healthy relationship with my emotions, body, and instincts, and then integrating this feeling (feminine) side of me with the intellect, vision, and spirit of my logical (masculine) side.
Almost 30 years in now, and nearing the point at which I will have been living consciously to some degree for as long as I was living unconsciously, I’m seeing a gorgeous integration of my feeling and logical poles ☯️
Now, my story favors the order I’ve laid out~ overly masculine (logical) to overly feminine (feeling) to integration and balance. Your journey is very likely different in some way; I encourage you to contemplate your pendulum swing…
—> What has occupied most of your time- your feelings or your mind? How can you lean into the other pole more? How well do your feelings and your mind communicate with each other? If you’ve found balance integrating both poles, how can you lean more into both to promote expansion?
For me, at 15 years old, I needed to get in touch with my wild side- the side that says “Fuck all of everything. This is what I want and I’m going to do it, regardless of outer or inner logical influence.” It’s taken me 15 years to access an extremity of that feeling pole that was on par with my very developed logical side and integrate the two to the extent that they’re constructive, functional, and loving with each other.
And, oh my goodness, life continues on the up and up 📈
Embracing my wild- my raw desire, my passion, my self-trust, the divinity of my emotions and body…has given me access to a life that continues to evolve beyond what I could ever have imagined when so consumed by my mind…
What happens when we integrate consciousness and instinct? Civility and wildness? The masculine and the feminine? ☯️
—> We allow ourselves to elevate to our personal next level in a balanced way, with a full sense of self.
Living in animal bodies, our instincts are intelligent.
Imagine any animal you’re familiar with and consider how it would act if its hearing, sight, taste, smell, touch, and any ‘sixth senses’ were dysregulated significantly from its “normal.” How would that affect the creature? Now, how would it affect the species if 90% of the population, overall or in a specific location, was experiencing this same thing?
That’s what we’re workin’ with in this overly heady, hypernovel society y’all…
Runnin’ around or totally stuck, making decisions or caught in inaction, repeating cycles based on stories in our heads…so out of touch with our sensing nature.
And I don’t mean to demean our overly heady society below an overly feely one- I aim for balance. I also see a push to swing the pendulum so far to the other side- the feeling side- to compensate for the overly rigid culture many of us were raised in; this will also result in imbalances and disharmony.
Regardless of which direction a group or an individual polarizes to, the crucial piece is that they are consciously polarizing- polarizing not due to rejection or codependency but from deep self-awareness, choice, and personal responsibility.
Animals evolve in conjunction with their environment- there are reasons why our bodies are the way we are, whether we are aware of them or not, and whether we can ever be aware of them or not. As we shift and change through time, staying in touch with our instincts and building our conscious awareness of them is pivotal…
G.K. Chesterton wrote: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”
As we are knocking down, oh so many, fences these days~ an organic reaction to way too many fences being put up~ we would do well to pause, and contemplate, “What genuine benevolence was this fence doing?” And, before knocking it down, consider, “How are we going to consciously navigate the consequences, both destructive and constructive, of the lack of fence?” 🧐
Asking such questions can help us rearrange, repair, and selectively destroy our cultural fencing, as opposed to dealing with the uber-chaotic consequences of absolutely no fencing, in a space that was previously relying on quite a lot of fencing.
A Wild person tames themself to what they want.
Wildness is not an invitation to destroy anything and everything. Neither is it an invitation to follow each and every whim, with zero intention or purpose. The lion does not eat when it is not hungry. The dog does not bark when it is resting. A skunk does not spray when it does not feel threatened…
All of these examples assume that the animals’ nervous systems are regulated and functioning optimally. Then, they organically integrate their work, play, and rest states.
Many of us are not so regulated and are over- or under-reactive to the stimuli in our lives. We can change this by learning to listen to our insides- our bodies, our feelings, and our thoughts- with loving acceptance, while remembering that we, as the listeners (the observers) are the parents, the guides, of the many parts of us. It’s not for our thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations to control us, but to be understood by us 🧘🏼♀️
And as we cultivate this deep, nuanced harmony inside ourselves, we spread it in the great One system.
Sensical wildness, the wisdom of the natural world, will inevitably live out.
Do you want to live out with it? Do you want your offspring and the offspring of your family and friends to have the viability to follow this current of life?
If so, you better learn to ride that intelligently wild wave… 🌊
How are you practicing integrating your civility and your wildness into the greatest version of yourself? Where do you feel stuck in this process? I’d love to hear from you!
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