The Importance of Starhawk’s “City of Refuge”

As predicted, levels of intensity, exposure, and reactivity continue to increase, so we best learn how to deal with rapidly thinning veils. I’ve said for years that this is not a time for keeping secrets and hiding from your Shadow, as the energies no longer support codependency, collusion, treason, or sweeping things under the rug. They just don’t. I’m rarely surprised by “shocking” revelations, as I read people’s energy signatures and therefore notice the darkness amidst the light, the smudges, the shameful feelings, fear and Shadow boxing. We will see more and more of this as the veils continue to thin.The Hopi prophecies even predict people losing their minds due to enhanced abilities to “see.”

Best remedies?

As I have said for years, we must each address our own Shadow. Doing so takes tremendous courage and often results in internal and public shaming or rejection by friends, family, and society. Do it anyway. The energies do not support running from your own Shadow. It is far easier to address the Shadow from a place of quiet safety than to have a Tower Card situation force you to do so, but these times offer lightning strikes and paradigm shifts galore. As Carl Jung said, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

Learn to recognize your own responsibilities of giving away your own power, and learn how to reclaim any energies forcibly taken away from you –by whatever means provide strength and power to, not power over. The means of reclamation themselves usually demand engagement with your own Shadow. As within, so without. Walk the Middle Way of Atreyu. Sift through complex moral dilemmas and move beyond black and white thinking. Find your own firm moral compass in each situation by assessing your heart, intuition, facts and your awareness of others’ energy signatures. Freedom requires responsibility. Get used to it. There’s much, much more to come in terms of revelations.

And now, onto some recommended reading:

Starhawk has released a sequel to her highly prophetic novel, “The Fifth Sacred Thing,” which I’ve referenced many times on this blog, especially that novel’s exploration of El Mundo Bueno and El Mundo Malo. I still recommend reading “The Fifth Sacred Thing,” but the urgency of our times leads me to suggest her latest novel, “City of Refuge” even if you have not previously read “The Fifth Sacred Thing.” This new novel begins right where the earlier novel ends, and it deals with issues we are now — or will very soon be– facing as all the old structures ordering life and perspective crash and burn.

Specifically:

How do we convince people to walk away from their own enslavement if they have no concept of anything better?

How do we transition people from utter dependency into an empowered life if they’ve only known slavery, abuse, learned helplessness, and top-down control?

How do we integrate vast armies (real and metaphorical) of people “just following orders,” whether in the military, political “honey traps,” cults, torture chambers, or areas of life where these ways seem like “the only ways available”?

What do we do with people who have been so abused and broken that all they know is abuse?

How do we instill a positive sense of Self in people who have lost their own humanity through abuse, educational and media brainwashing, and/or collectivism?

How do we treat people who have failed — sometimes in spectacular ways — but who repent of those failings and attempt to make restitution?

What do we do with unrepentant psychopaths with every likelihood of repeated and increasing offenses?

How do we tell the difference between them?

How do we get real food into people who’ve only subsisted on chemicals, heavy metals, addictive BigPharma drugs, Frankenfoods and processed pseudo nutrients?

How do we fight for change against powerful, conscienceless forces without resorting to their level and methods?

How do we teach broken, abused people to lead themselves without ourselves becoming the next pop icon, guru, dictator, villain, or cult leader when the people we are helping project the only things they know onto us?

How do we step into leadership roles when that triggers our own need for Shadow Work, as well as others’ unresolved Shadows massively projected onto us?

What is truly compassionate, and how do we navigate hierarchies of compassion?

These questions and more run throughout Starhawk’s masterful “City of Refuge.” It’s a gritty, disturbing, yet redemptive book, and I cannot recommend it highly enough during these troubled times.