In the modern day spirituality movement for women, it’s natural to tap into the light side because it’s easy and comfortable and there is now double standard that comes along with it. The dark side of the Goddess movement touches on this edgy aspect of searching for your sensuality and humanity. While it has the word “dark” in its name, this movement is still a pursuit of enlightenment. By acknowledging this dark side, you also acknowledge your imperfections and negative aspects of your life like being selfish and greedy. This in turn will lead to better understanding your desires and intuition.
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In Six Vulnerable Conversations Between Two Women, life coaches Arielle Brown, Jamie Thompson talk about different topics each week for six weeks. This one is going to be interesting. It’s called The Dark Side of the Goddess Movement, which is a pretty charged topic. I’m proud of the work they’re doing and the conversation they have. If you find it to your liking, please visit iTunes, Stitcher, your favorite podcast app and leave us a review. Let us know what you think. For more shows, please visit us at TuffLove.Live.
Welcome to the Six Vulnerable Conversations Between Two Women. I’m Arielle and my special guest, Jamie Thompson, is here as we were discussing very edgy conversation for us. I’m an intimacy coach and educator. Jamie, would you state what you are?
I’m an erotic desire and intimate communications specialist.
We’re going into a conversation of The Dark Side of the Goddess Movement. When Jamie and I first got together planning out the different conversations that we were going to have, we started to talk about the goddess movement, the priestess movement, that’s occurring around modern day spirituality. Both of us simultaneously felt a lot of turn on and a lot of nervousness around having this conversation. I just want to create some space here both of us to share a little bit about why this is an edgy conversation to be having. I’m going to hand it over to you first, Jamie.
This is a little bit of an edge for me for a couple of ways. One is being a professional in the field of relationships, it’s interesting for me to come on and share such personal experiences in this way. This is definitely an edge and a different way than I’m used to sharing information. It’s a little bit deeper in the personal realm for me. It hits me in the gut a little bit like that. I feel like that’s part of what we’re uncovering here, the dark side of the priestess and modern day spirituality movement, is in not acknowledging the shadow and not acknowledging the mess that’s underneath. It feels divinely in line with what I’m going through right now in my own way.
It’s one of the things that I want to speak to, being a part of the goddess movement. I’ve lead full moon ceremonies and I’ve done sacred medicine study in Peru and in the United States. There’s been a lot of modern day spirituality. If you look around my room I’m sitting in right now, there are crystals everywhere. I’m a part of this movement in a way so it’s interesting and vulnerable to acknowledge where I see my own shadows are, to do so publicly in a way that might offend or piss off some people that I hold very dear. That’s a little bit where I’m at this like, “It’s a juicy place,” and I also feel a lot of internal permission and permission with Arielle as well. It’s like giving myself the permission to share anyway and to really uncover some of the dark side of what has also been a beneficial movement in many ways.
Thank you so much for sharing and for going first.
For me, it’s giving ourselves permission for specifically you because I relate with you. I live in the Bay Area of Northern California. In a way, I feel like I’m in the heart of the goddess movement. For the past three or four years, it’s been a movement that I’ve been exploring what is my relationship to it. In the entrepreneurial community that I work with and play within, spirituality is a core component of it. The challenging thing about this conversation is I have a lot of judgments along with the many rich things that the goddess movement has given women access to in terms of getting more deeply connected to their bodies and their sensuality and their divinity. There are a lot of things that I see that I find to be ingenuine, hiding core aspects of what it means to be a human.
I know without a doubt that many of the things that I speak to today, I am still playing out in my own reality. One of the dark sides of the goddess and spiritual movement in general is that in the pursuit of enlightenment, we seem to think that that means we can only divulge and reveal the pure perfect aspects of who we are. I know a lot of my challenge had been learning how to embrace myself as an imperfect human being, and especially not only as a human being, but as a coach and someone who’s putting herself out there in the world as someone who’s worthy of respecting and paying money to support them. To be able to talk about the shadow aspects of the goddess movement, knowing that it is a reflection of me and everything that we’re saying, is edgy.
With what you just shared, it almost launches into the beginning of what we’re talking about here. Do you want to just dive in and start with the first half?
Yes. What Arielle is speaking to is honoring our own dark side and being aware of this experience with the modern spiritual movement. There’s a lot of value in our light, and we move with a lot of velocity sometimes towards that. We have these visions and we’re working on becoming our best self. In that process, it seems like sometimes we miss some of the shadow aspects which also have equal value. It’s like if we’re flying a plane and we’re only looking out one window, we’re not having a whole experience. I experienced some abandonment of myself in my own in that.
For a long time I had this issue specifically around money. I felt making a lot of money was really selfish. It was a part of me that wanted to be more spiritual that thought that. If I take in a lot then I am taking something away from other people, rather than if I take in a lot, I have so much more to give,” both in a literal sense and also in how I experienced it. When I’m fully fed, I let that selfish dragon inside have the things that it wants. The selfish dragon is sometimes a little child. It shows up in different ways, but it’s when I really feed her and let her experience having everything she needs, then the way that I show up in the world is with so much more space and I’m able to be of so much more service.
Dark Side of the Goddess Movement: For a long time, I had this issue specifically around money. I felt making a lot of money was really selfish.
In the goddess community, as I was going through this, I felt a lot of disapproval for my experience of giving permission for my own selfishness. It’s a really interesting thing because it ties in. It could be any shadow for anybody out there. It’s not just selfishness that just happens to be one of my favorite shadows, but there’s so many ways. When I was in the community, I noticed that there’s a culture that I felt was created that I was a part of that is not giving permission and approval for people who think differently or for people who aren’t in it, or for people who haven’t got it yet. That’s one of the areas where I’m aware of and looking at it and still looking at in my own life, where I am seeing someone else as another and not fully giving approval for their perspective as having equal value as my own. I’m a part of this movement and there’s a certain dogma about that movement. It’s like where am I abandoning myself? Where am I not honoring or giving permission?
I appreciate you bringing up the conversation around money. In all honesty, my experience at the dichotomy between the goddess movement and being financially successful has been a complicated, nuanced, and challenging process. I’m experiencing financial success in my life truly for the first time ever. It’s been interesting noticing, as I share more about my success, specifically in women’s circles or goddess circles, I’m noticing the feeling of not being received or the energy of not being able to be held. What it reflects for me is noticing my own experience of when I would see other women in the god, or just in general other women being successful financially. It’s like I couldn’t hold space for them.
Now I’m seeing as I’m experiencing this on the other side, how in a lot of women’s circles, we as women haven’t learned how to hold space for other women stepping into their prosperity. I relate to the goddess movement with the Earth, with a reverence for the earth, the goddesses of the Earth, and one of the biggest de Cross wirings that needed to happen for me to allow wealth into my life was to believe that I could be prosperous financially and still be deeply connected to the earth and not feel that it was an either/or, like I could be wealthy or I could love mother nature. I’m in a coven. We meet virtually once every other week. There was a woman in it who I have such a deep respect for.
She has been leading on a mass level a lot of goddess circles and I was able to bring discussion around money and my business, which is a conduit for bringing this awakeness, this intimacy, this connection, this truth into the world. I didn’t quite feel like it was permitted there. I guess my curiosity here as we start to move on to the next topic is how do we as women who identify deeply with spirituality, look at our relationship with money? Is our rejection of money that we don’t want it and don’t like it, or that we believe that we can’t have it because we don’t know how to form a relationship with it?
Does money mean something? Are we projecting a certain meaning of a certain kind of person that has money onto money, when money itself is neutral? It’s like technology. It’s neutral. You can use it for good, you can use it for bad, if we’re operating in good and bad. You can use it for whatever you want. For me, there’s been are conciling of what it means to me. I had to pierce through what seemed like a brick wall but was actually an invisible cloud of fog, I had to pierce through this idea of selfish, evil people are the ones who have money and they aren’t generous and they just use it to gluttonously have more money. That was my archetype for people that had money.
The real work was in actually removing myself a little bit from the goddess community in order to do this work. I wasn’t able to do it inside of it because of not having approval for it. Some friends, clients, people that I know are coming to me are like, “How do I do that? I want more money.”It’s almost like, “Is that okay to want more money?”Then this guilt comes along with it. It’s interesting because I also associated with money moving on as also this idea of masculine and feminine energy, and having the things that are not okay within the goddess movement. That’s what we’re looking at here. One of the other pieces is this idea that our sexuality has to be a certain way. We need to be super feminine. There’s almost this experience that I need to wear a certain dress, I need to wear certain beads and jewelry. I need to elevate my voice in a certain way. This is real for me.
The voice elevation.
Be really soft in a way that isn’t natural for me. This is a big one because I am very raw, crude, and loud. There’s an element of my being, in my essence, that I found myself wanting to adjust so that I could fit in to this cool goddess movement. Part of that being as well was to speak to this is that I can hold a lot of masculine energy and have the ability to hold a container for myself for my feminine to come out without necessarily needing a man to support that as well. Then the choice of consciously surrendering is amazing as well. I felt like there was no approval for directness or for these aspects that I like and enjoy and wanted to keep for myself. I found myself having to hold like, “It’s okay for me to be different in this. It’s okay for me to not show up as the archetype that all goddesses are.”
I relate to a lot of what you’re saying, specifically the feeling of when I show up to an event where it’s goddess and spirituality oriented, that voice elevation, that I need to be smiling, that I need to embrace every woman as though I have known her forever. I It’s challenging because I look at the places where I still do that and that’s just a challenge for women in general. It’s like women are coming out of having so much feelings of competition and scarcity with other women. I almost feel like we’re overcompensating to let me overly let you know that I love you so you don’t think that I hate you.
A lot of what I’m hearing is that there’s a lot of shame in the goddess movement, whether it’s shame to admit who we really are in our imperfection and our messiness. There’s this idealized image presented around what we need to look like, how we need to speak, how we need to act. If we are struggling with money, we don’t want to talk about it. We’re caught up in jealousy less. Another thing that’s going is there’s a lot of open relating, polyamory and the conventional relationships. It’s like we don’t want to talk about the jealousy. We don’t want to talk about the judgment.
We don’t want to talk about the aspects that inevitably come up within us because we’re primal, carnal human beings who like to eat and sleep and fuck. We wind up hiding these huge aspects of who we are and not giving ourselves approval to be the entirety of it. In reality, in order to embody this idea of the goddess that we’re talking about, we need to give ourselves approval for all of the things that we’re snipping at the tip in order to fit into this package.
It would be valuable for us to share in a little more detail maybe a couple of the pieces that we felt like we have been sniffing. What have we been snipping off? Do you have something for that?
I’m not snipping much right now. I feel free but the thing that comes to mind for me is I practice non-monogamy. I have multiple partners and I have a primary partner. My primary partner is one of the most amazing men that I know. He’s also a crass mother fucker who can objectify the shit out of me. It’s part of why I love him because of the way that he is just gritty. I noticed the part of me when I’m with him into like different social situations. There’s part of me that wants to censor him because I want to protect people from the experience of feeling the discomfort of someone who’s not going to fit into the pre-described spiritual container.
Here’s one thing for me, I’ve been talking as a woman. I feel like the socially acceptable taboo thing to do as a woman in their powers to talk about sexuality and the area that I’m starting to go more deeply into, which is the next edge for me, is psychedelics. To me, they’re both ways of accessing consciousness. It’s not really about sex, it’s about the connection that we create through the sex and similar with psychedelics. What I’m excited about is to take like the sensuality aspects almost off the table. I know I’m a sexy being. I know I’m a sensual being. I almost feel women who are stepping out into positions of visibility and leadership, sex appeal is the pre-described part of the package.
Not to say that we shouldn’t own and embody those things, but I see for myself how in the past I’ve used that because I felt like that’s a part of what’s going to have people accept and approve of me. The parallel between moving into talking more about psychedelics and also my primary partner who’s just a gritty crass person, is that I’m turned on around just being more real and embracing, not playing into gender norms or the way you’re supposed to be, but just going more to the heart of the matter and what’s real and true.
It’s like following the true desires internally instead of conforming to what you’re supposed to be as an expert in your field or as a member of the goddess movement. How can I actually tune into what I want? I’m wearing sweatpants right now because I started my cycle yesterday and I wanted to be super comfortable. Is that appropriate? Is that okay?
I’m wearing his shirt and I’m not wearing any pants.
Sometimes I call it the entrepreneurial mullet. The top is ready and the bottom is not. It’s fun. When we hopped on, I felt this urge and this thing inside that was like, “I really want to have fun with Arielle in this playful way. Can we bring that?” Are we allowed to not be serious as professionals? Are we allowed to bring this? Then like noticing that conversation of like, “Am I allowed to?”and then being like, “That’s interesting,” I want to play. I want to have fun with this stuff. It gets to be dynamic and we get to bring this whatever elements we want.
We don’t have to fit into some box, which is essentially part of where the goddess movement stemmed from, women not wanting to fit into the 1950s housewife box anymore. What’s interesting about movements a lot of the time is it seems like you trade a box for another box. It’s like just always having this noticing of like, “What water am I currently swimming in? What box am I currently in? Where is the ceiling formed right now?”What I’m noticing is perhaps I’ve traded the box of the goddess for a professional box.
Dark Side of the Goddess Movement: We don’t have to fit into some box, which is essentially part of where the goddess movement stemmed from, women not wanting to fit into the 1950s housewife box anymore.
I just heard that in what you’re saying. It’s really interesting because it’s like, “How can I continually be in this conversation even while being a professional in undoing the ideas and the identities that I’ve attached to that I have to be?” That is a lot of what I also teach in relationships. What I’m working on doing in relationship is undoing and letting go of these preconceived notions, identities, and ideas that I have boxed myself into, and allowing a more pure present moment experience of self to come through, that isn’t rehearsed or maybe has never happened before. It feels different in this moment. It’s like allowing whatever wants to come through to come through without all the filters of like, “I need to be this and I need to be that.”
I’ve almost experienced, especially in the thick days of perfectionism, a bullet-pointed list. That’s my Virgo coming out. There’s this bullet-pointed list of like, “You need to be X, Y, and Z.”If it applies to all those things, then go ahead and speak, go ahead and say it, which is so against my nature as a really outspoken human being. It’s interesting as going through a lot of this development. This is expanding into personal development from spiritual development as well, how we then have this idea of, “Now I need to show up as this thing that I just discovered and I don’t get to be whatever is real for me in this moment anymore.”
The thing that I want to say is fuck it. There are so many people fitting into the box of what it means to be professional in order to be successful. The cool thing is we’re doing it. We’re figuring it out and doing it. What I’m finding in the conversations that I’m having with people, and where the direction that I’m moving with my clients, people are tired of this box. The number one thing that we’re wanting to learn is how to break out of the box and not follow any of the constraints that society has placed upon us. When I hear you talking about stepping into a different movement as its own different box, it’s like with the goddess movement, that’s a beautiful aspect of ourselves that we get to identify with.
That’s why I like to go into these different disciplines and pull different pieces. The goddess movement is like the priestess movement is like the psychedelic movement is like the sexuality movement. They’re all aspects of who we are. that the goddess movement and just for women in particular, I feel like we as women are still just learning to trust that we are allowed to exist in the world in some capacity, but we’re just learning how to be who we need to be to be accepted in the work world. How could I actually just let myself be messy, be vulgar, be unprofessional and trust that I’m still respected? It’s related to the whole slut shaming thing. We can’t be too out.
We as women in the goddess movement can own that we love sex if it’s sacred. What about the part of us that’s a cock worshipper? What about the part of us that likes to get sucked? Especially in the goddess movement, so many women are caught in the scarcity cycle of replacing spirituality with material world safety and prosperity. Our willingness to relate in a carnal way to those desires is very much related to our ability to bring in prosperity, to bring in money. The shame for those desires and the energy of shame, the shame for not being perfect and having it all figured out, is the number one thing that keeps what we desire at a distance.
With that shame, sometimes what it covers up is arrogance. It’s like, “That shame’s there. I’m not going to look at it because I am now an evolved human being.” I don’t have primal sexual desires anymore. I only have tantra sex, and I’m going into it because that’s something that I have experienced, my own shame, coming up around being someone who really enjoys different kinds of sex and enjoys power play and some of the more taboo nature and enjoys. I was in a relationship with a woman for two years and part of the reason why I left that relationship, and we ended in a really amazing way, it was a natural evolution of it, part of what was missing for both of us was this experience of having primal men sex because both of us are more feminine than masculine.
Neither of us were really holding that. We ended up fluidly switching. Developing the ability to hold a masculine container was an excellent skill in that relationship. I came to this part of myself that I was like, “I need to be with a man. I want to get fucked in a different way.”It feels good to say because it’s like finding this part. What if we have parts that aren’t satisfied within the box that we’ve created? Then what? I feel like that’s where we can almost follow this internal desire into like this part that feels inconsistent with who I am now is actually leading me to my next evolution, even if it doesn’t feel like it fits within the identity of the evolution that I’m currently in.
Part of the way that we actually move into something else is by acknowledging and feeling into walking into that room of this new part, this new primal part of myself, walking into that room and being like, “What’s in here? It’s interesting in here. This is a new room. What is this? Where is this coming from?” Because we don’t know, there’s this misconception about our own shadow material that if we go into it, we’re going to get stuck there. It’s really interesting because what happens when you turn on the light in a dark room? It’s not dark anymore. It’s now a part of the light, essentially, when we really go in and actually face it and look at it. It becomes a part of the experience that we have and that we carry and not something that is being repressed, not looked at, and judged in the shadows.
It’s super freeing for me. I’ve seen it with clients and a lot of the women that I work with also that are in relationship. They’re in a relationship and they have these desires that they’re like, “Am I supposed to want this? I’m not supposed to want this.”Then there’s shame, and it’s like that shame is actually showing us something that wants to be seen. That shame is so valuable, so important, and so yummy, and can turn into a deeper connection and deeper understanding of self and more freedom and so much just deliciousness. Life just becomes more juicy when we’re experiencing ourselves as whole individuals, including the shadow.
I want to speak one piece too like shame and selfishness, and then I’d actually love to go into talking a little bit about the impact of the goddess movement on women’s relationships with men because I think that would be a great spot. This is something that I’ve been figuring out about selfishness. I myself have had shame for feeling like I’m a selfish person. I want a lot, I really do, and I’ve learned how to ask for what I want, and I’m willing to ask for what I want. I’ll always continue to desire. I just had an experience with these eight people where we were doing a lot of rage work, where we literally got to come up with all the shadow aspects of who we were, these different statements, like, “ I’m selfish,”“I don’t love my body,” “ I don’t care about other people.”
Each person in the group claimed one of those statements, and then you lied on the floor, they pinned you to the floor, and you had to fight your way up onto your feet as they were saying these things to you. I went through this whole process of fighting myself up, standing up and looking at my partner who I told to tell me I was selfish. I got to this place where I just got to own like, “I am selfish.” I’m actually in ownership of the fact that I am selfish and that it’s okay. The reason we’re afraid of being selfish is because we’re hungry.
Most of the people who are afraid of being selfish are underneath starving because we don’t have approval. If we don’t have approval for the fact that we’re hungry, it’s going to be impossible to actually fill ourselves up. We just wind up becoming a hungry ghost. We wind up just pulling for all of these things, begging for sustenance, but because we don’t have approval for our desire, it just winds up falling through our systems. It’s only when we find approval for our desire that we can create a container to fill ourselves up with. When we get filled up, we have the space to be self-less.
We need to learn how to fill ourselves up first. That’s what I’ve been learning how to do, to find ownership for the fact that I do have desire so that my thirst can actually be quenched. The more I allow my thirst to be quenched by having the income that I desire and having the experiences that I desire and the relationships that I desire, the more I noticed my ability to put my attention outwards. That’s a piece that I want to throw in there.
Receiving is not only about having the desire. There’s another piece that you’re speaking to that’s really important, and it’s receiving. It’s like having the desire and then letting yourself experience the receiving of it, so it doesn’t just fall through. Then you become like, “I just need more.” You’re allowing yourself to fill up with the desire and take in more, but not without the process of fully embodying and receiving it.
This might actually be a good place. When we posted on Facebook yesterday about questions that people might have about the conversation, one of the women posted a comment about, “Are you going to speak about the cultural appropriation and race when it comes to the goddess movement?”Jamie and I had a conversation about this because it’s a really relevant topic. When you look at the goddess movement, probably 95% of the women that you see in the goddess movement are white. To me this brings up a conversation of privilege, like the privilege that we have as white women. We started to go into like, “Do we want to go here? Do we want to have this conversation?” It is such an important conversation that has so much charge with it. Why don’t you speak a little bit to that, and I can add in as well.
Where I want to start with this is that speaking to this in a socio economic, cultural appropriation, the relevancy of that is high. It hasn’t been the area that I personally have been pulled by my own inspiration and desire to learn about in an external type of way. I feel that probably the person who asks the question has more depth in this area than I do. I just want to be honest about that and perhaps that is a part of my own shadow. There’s this holding space for that to potentially be true and also that I follow where my highest desire is in life. If dealing with the cultural appropriation of the spiritual movement is someone’s highest inspiration, I’m super inspired by what they’re doing in the world and how they’re doing it. There has been some ways where I’ve coached and supported them in being more effective in that. That piece of the movement isn’t my personal expertise.
It’s an important piece because I notice the places where I do still have judgment for the fact that I’m not as educated as I would like to be in these areas, I have this similar feeling of we’re all brought into this world with certain gifts, like certain messages, certain things that we’re meant to bring into this world. For me, it’s been intimacy and connection. How do we actually show up vulnerably and authentically as who we are?
To me, the area of privilege and cultural appropriation is something that, simply because of the essence of what it is, hold such a dear place in my heart. I don’t feel that I have the background or the wherewithal to be able to speak about it in a way that will do it justice. I just wanted to take a moment to name that and acknowledge that. That’s something that even though I’m not an expert on, it’s something that’s in my awareness and something that’s important to me.
There’s so many amazing things that we can do in the world. One of the things that I’ve been playing with is choosing and following through with the thing that is of the highest turn on for me at this time. That’s what great leaders do. They find something that absolutely turns them and lights them up that they have to talk about and they have to follow. If you dilute yourself by making everything your mission, then it’s not as potent. I’m an advocate of us making whatever is the most important thing to us our mission. If everyone did that, the world would be a very different place.
The other thing that I want to name here to cycle it back around to the goddess movement are the spiritual movements where we want to act like we’re completely perfect and enlightened in all ways. The humility of being able to say, “I don’t know,” the ability and humility to be able to say, “This is important to me, and I noticed the places that I still have work to do here,” and, “I don’t know,” for me it’s like not I could go into shame about the fact that I don’t feel more able and inspired to talk about this subject or I can just share like this is what my truth is.
I imagine in the goddess movement or in any other type of spiritual movement, our ability to be humble and be able to name the places where we don’t know but we have a desire for vulnerability and connection, is the way to bridge a lot of the animosity, anger and disconnect that currently exists in these types of conversations. Why don’t we open it up to people who might have some thoughts, reflections or questions about anything that we’ve spoken to. People who would like to bring their voice on the call and ask a question, I invite you to share.
I go to Red tents, They have this thing that you must have a long dress, you must be like the earth mother with long hair. I haven’t got long and I’ve even had a comment, “You look nice with your hair. Why don’t you grow your hair?”It’s not me. I did go through a phase of thinking I should wear a long skirt for this and sometimes be belly dancing and not be on the invitation, wear something flowing. That’s not really me. I like the60s. I want to see short skirts. It’s only knee-length, but that’s, going against the grain. Talking about cultural appropriation, you were saying that sometimes you feel a shame or embarrassment that you don’t know enough yet.
If it’s something that just doesn’t resonate with you, to me it’s like taking on something that isn’t naturally yours. Everyone seems to be a shaman. The value in that is that it’s an indigenous thing. It’s passed down from generations and it’s almost in the DNA. If that does resonate with you, then that’s fine. It seems to be that’s part of the kit for women’s circles that you must have this kind of dress, this kind of hair, this kind of imagery. It’s like another way that you have to be a woman. It’s like replacing patriarchy with this other box.
You spoke to something and I just want to name it. It’s like there’s an experience of like how and why are we doing the thing that we’re doing? What is my intention with this? What is my intention to play and have fun? Can I just go and let this be play and have fun, or is this something where I’m trying to fit in? Is this something where I’m experiencing a lack and so I’m trying to overcompensate? I don’t feel feminine inside so I’m overcompensating by being super feminine on the outside.
Whereas sometimes a woman can walk in jeans and a tee shirt and be embodying the feminine in such a way that it’s like, “That’s where my intention goes,” instead of to all the dresses. It’s also really fun to put on a dress sometimes. It’s just noticing like you’re speaking again to the piece of the intention, like why am I burning Paula Santo? Do I like the smell of it or do I think that it somehow has me fit in to this community or somehow makes me a more spiritual person?
Everyone’s got this deep-seated need to be accepted. I think authenticity is everything. If you’re accepted because you’re wearing a mask, to me it’s not real acceptance. If they can accept you in your authenticity, then great.
Thank you so much.
I want these dialogues to be a place where we can all feel permission to just have real conversations, where we stop walking on egg shells and we’re willing to say the real true, edgy, vulnerable saying and trust. The baseline intention is connection and understanding. I feel like so many of us are walking around fearing saying the wrong thing for being persecuted, made wrong or shamed. We’re in a place now where we need to learn how to connect to our voices and learn how to be honest while simultaneously staying open and connected to other people’s experience, and how to not live in any one box so that we don’t have to make our box right and another person’s box wrong. We’re talking about how to weave our own realities and find what is authentically true for us without making anyone else’s experience wrong.
Dark Side of the Goddess Movement: Many of us are walking around fearing saying the wrong thing for being persecuted, made wrong or shamed.
This is how we’re going to find the freedom. This is one of the places where you and I match up, this underlying thing of how do we drop into flow? How do we drop into this space where we’re all looking to connect with our magic. We’re all looking to connect with how do we find our magic that allows us to flow and weave through the world? Ultimately, we’re figuring out how to be ourselves, and we can’t be ourselves alone. The only way to really create that alignment is to be who we are as we are witnessed in front of other people. That’s what creates the alignment. These conversations along with sharing our perspectives are also inviting you to step out a little edge farther and share the real vulnerable thing that’s arising for you as we speak.
I’ve been in and out of the goddess community for probably about 35 years, mostly in Southern California. Some of the things you’ve talked about feels like a lot of things we’ve been talking about for the past 30 years. Some of them seem very different, especially about the money. I got in a place early on when I was a Christian, I was in this place of people with money were like money is the root of all evil thing. That was taught to me in childhood so it was a big thing back then. The people that seem to be in the highest elevated spiritual realms are people that give up everything and have nothing.
There’s a lot of value placed on that early on and it’s not something that I see so much now. I hear this complaint you had about the goddess community and not embracing women who are abundant. It’s just been such a long time coming that a lot of women communities, we don’t have that experience. A lot of us don’t have the experience of abundance, so to create something for people that have it is like you’re asking me to do something I’ve never done before and that I don’t have, so I don’t know how to embrace you.
What I hear is your desire that because you are in that space, maybe that’s something you create for the rest of us to open into or expand into. It’s an invitation for you to create the thing that you want. I would love to be part of that because I have had a crazy relationship with money all my life, from being the candidate who has to get into the dumpsters to look for things to sell so that we can continue to live, to having an amazing career where I made a lot of money and tried to get rid of it as soon as it got into my account because I was so uncomfortable having a lot of money. I used it for good things, I helped other people, I created experiences for my family. Now I’m back in the place where I’m driving for Lyft every day and I’m like, “I have $50 in my account, now I’m going to go buy some groceries.” It’s this weird relationship to abundance and scarcity. It’s the edge that I’m living on right now. How that relates to the goddess community, I’m not really sure.
I had an interesting experience with somebody that I lived with the other day where we’re creating this women’s retreat. We both got into this constricted, stuck place and I’m like, “Why do you not want to do this with me?”She had this strange image of me as like a goddess worshiper and being like all light and things had to be nice, good, sweet, and that my rituals were going to be fluffy and all this stuff, and I’m like, “Do you know me? Is that your experience with me as a person?”The goddesses that I love are like the dark goddesses.
They come in, rip off your fucking mask, and spit in your face and say, “Give me you,” like, “Be who you really are.” We had this amazing, intense conversation and we were just like, “Add it.” Then were about so turned on about this, “When’s this retreat we’re going to do?” It’s crazy how we get these ideas in our head of what the goddess moving is or what goddess worshipers are, like everybody’s the same, always wearing these white, slowly furry dresses and were all sweet and kind to each other, because we’re just trading matriarchy and patriarchy. They’re still these pyramids of power. When really, it’s just embracing whatever the other person brings to the table as just another aspect of ourselves, that whole other thing.
I want to say thank you to the way you met what I said. I felt a lot of openness and receptivity which had me feel relaxed and safe to engage in the conversation. Especially from the generations of how things have evolved. The importance to be able to like create bridges between these different generations of the goddess movement is something that I feel a lot of inspiration around because it’s also separated. I want to thank you for that and also inviting your input. It’s refreshing, I love it. We have a couple minutes left. Jamie, do you want to say anything as well?
Yes. I loved hearing your input. I love hearing from people of different generations. It’s valuable and it’s always very humbling for me. I loved hearing you talk about how you embodying the goddess that’ll spit in your face and say, “Bring me all of you.”That’s amazing. I’m like, “Where’s that goddess?” That’s really cool. I love that you’re playing in that and that’s inspiring to me. I’m inspired by the ability to bring. Maybe it’s like a sector of the modern movement or something that is missing a little bit of that.
I’m imagining this goddess circle that Arielle was talking about where everyone’s being kind to each other and then it’s like, “Now all bets are off. Let’s start revealing truth. Let’s start revealing truths about what are the aspects that are coming up in our field together right now, what actually is coming forth,” and then getting to play through that and getting to be seen in that and having it be okay. You demonstrated that and did that with your roommate and it sounds really fun.
There’s a whole new track we can go here. I want to honor that. Thank you so much everyone. Jamie, how do people get in contact with you if they want to learn more about your work?
One of the best ways to get in contact with me currently is actually through my personal Facebook. It’s at Facebook.com/MissJamie Elizabeth. My website is also www.RelationshipFlowState.com.
For those who are interested in getting in touch with me, you can visit my website, www.ArielleBrown.com. These recordings are going to be uploaded to TuffLove.Live/Six-Conversations. Thank you everyone, we will see you next time.
Thank you so much Jamie and Arielle for doing the show on this really important topic, The Dark Side of the Goddess Movement, something that might be a little challenging for people to hear because of the whole Me Too where women are, and it’s important to show all sides of every experience. Thank you so much ladies, for doing what you do, I’m really grateful. For more shows, please visit us at TuffLove.Live, and go forth, take care, and I appreciate you showing up. See you soon.
Resources mentioned:
About Arielle Brown
Arielle is a Relationship Expert & Intimacy Educator. She specializes in helping people to create deeper connection and intimacy their relationships and greater community. In her private coaching work with singles and couples, she helps people create or revitalize relationships that are authentic to the needs, values and desires of each person. Her group facilitation and workshops focus on cultivating deeper levels of intimacy with others through conscious communication, energetic attunement and sensory awareness of the body. Learn more at www.ariellebrown.com.
About Jamie Thompson
Jamie Thompson is an Erotic & Intimate Communication Expert and founder of Relationship Flow State. She specializes in creating a safe space for conscious couples to have open communication while exploring a new edge of passion, depth, and erotic flow. Jamie combines study of the Quantum Field, communication techniques based in Neuroscience, and somatic movement reprogramming with 10 years of coaching experience to help clients harness their erotic intelligence. She also has an online program to help couples and individuals become fluent in the four ‘Erotic Desire Languages’. Mention this podcast to be considered for a complimentary strategy session and receive a discount code for upcoming programs. Email support@jamiethompsoncoaching.com for details.
Follow Jamie on Facebook for more Exquisite Eroticism: www.facebook.com/missjamiethompson
Find out your ‘Erotic Desire Language’ on Jamie’s Website: www.jamiethompsoncoaching.com
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