David, ‘Lover’s Journey’ tantric-shamanic workshop 2024

The Lover’s Journey week shatters the walls you have built within yourself and lets you dance with all aspects of yourself in fullness, in love, in acceptance and the world breathes with you…I was able for first time to see my shame, to see those parts of myself that I denied that were sabotaging unconsciously my relationships with myself and others. And to own and love those parts as part of me that is real and true and to integrate them into a beautiful life….

Unless we make the unconscious conscious, it will control our lives and we will call it fate… Carl Jung

A good quote, perhaps feels true to you, but how… like really how?

We exist on two levels, conscious, the part that we have awareness of and the unconscious which sits below our everyday awareness, it’s where we toss those things we don’t want to look at or feel or believe are really a part of us. The parts that we hid from the world and ourselves in our shame or feelings of lack of worth.  And each of those levels, the conscious and the unconscious have masculine and feminine natures. Jung called them the Anima and Animus. The parts of our feminine and masculine nature that we acknowledge positive anima and animus and the parts we submerge negative anima and animus. 

There lies monsters, yes. Terrible but true. But also power and life and vitality and truth and the true enjoyment of life. We deny these parts of ourselves at great cost and waste of energy and life. Sometimes we spend almost all of our energy holding them back. Yet there is a drive in us toward wholeness and its very strong. WE will chose partners that force us to face our unresolved anger, that force us to find our assertiveness that we threw out because we were afraid of our aggressiveness and decided it was safer to be without power. We threw out our sensitivity because it got us hurt, and chose instead to not feel anything. Our unresolved anger is the part of us that loves us, that says no more, that forces us to change. We don’t fully own our feminine ability to manipulate, to seduce, to be in a full blown hurricane of jealous rage, but also to fully feel ecstatic sexual bliss, connection to the divine, to source. We don’t fully own our masculine drive to dominate, our capacity for violence, our tendency to live in our minds instead of our hearts, our ability and choice to disassociate and use others as ends rather than means. We deny this our shadow, but we also deny our undeniable power, to protect, to defend, to build. We deny our great love. We have as they say thrown the baby out with the bathwater. 

To acknowledge yourself in all its glory and horror. Picture all the qualities of the Roman or Greek Gods They LIVE in YOU! Temperamental, jealous, vengeful, moody, unpredictable, aloof, aggressive, impulsive, destructive, manipulative, chaotic, excessive. But also your hero qualities: Authority, justice, wisdom, powerful, protective, dignified, nurturing, compassionate, intelligent, strategic, fair, independent, charismatic, balanced, skilled, wise, adaptable, industrious, resilient, creative, dependable, peaceful, modest, humble, warm, stable, mystical, freeing, joyful, enchanting, charming, nurturing, and protective.

When you deny part of yourself your deny all of yourself. Your birthright is to live in your fullness, to take big breaths, dive into your life, own it, live fully your messy, chaotic, vital, sacred life.

The Lover’s Journey week shatters the walls you have built within yourself and let’s you dance with all aspects of yourself in fullness, in love, in acceptance and the world breathes with you…  I was able for first time to see my shame, to see those parts of myself that I denied that were sabotaging unconsciously my relationships with myself and others. And to own and love those parts as part of me that is real and true and to integrate them into a beautiful life….