Undomesticated is a project in which we’ll explore how the feminine side of reality got stuffed out of our awareness, and how this has caused all kinds of mayhem in modern society. As conscious individuals, we have the opportunity to reclaim our repressed desires, power, and ‘manifesting’ potential, which requires a deeper understanding of the feminine & the shadow as a whole (but more on that later).

First, I want to lay the groundwork with a story - the story of how we got to where we are now.

As usual, this has the potential to be triggering. So I want to state why I’m telling this story first:

1. To empower us (especially women) to step out of feeling victimized by the current system and view history through a more neutral (and thus empowering) lens.

2. To humble us. Nowadays, there are flocks of people on the internet simmering in resentment at our current societal systems. Hindsight in 20/20, and it’s easy to look back and see what could’ve gone better. It’s easy to see the imbalances & injustices now, but does that make us enlightened? No. To assume that we would never engage in an oppressive system is deeply naive. Having chips on our shoulders will lead us to lose touch with our own inner oppressor & what it’s capable of (I remind myself of this just as much as anyone else).

Man vs Nature

The traditional man’s version of history is that his kind is the best. His kind has done a great job, and there’s nothing to question. Nothing to make amends for. Meanwhile, the average American feminist’s version of history is that men selfishly shaped the Western world at the expense of everyone else, especially women.

Neither of these stories is the full truth. And when we lose our objectivity, we can’t see all of reality and navigate it with power.

We need more context, something that’s often missing in public discourse. We need a more objective, detached view of our civilization's development so we can graduate from victim consciousness & defensiveness to see the bigger picture.

So what is the bigger picture?

We are where we are now because the men in charge were terrified of the feminine and how much more powerful it was than them.

When you look at the Western world with all its red tape and obsessive controls, this is what our ancestors chose as a way of dealing with the terrifying, harsh, and confusing realities of Mother Nature. They chose to battle and resist her for the sake of their own survival, and any of us might’ve done the same.

Said another way, if I dropped you in the middle of a desolate forest right now with no information and no tools, you’d probably develop an aversion to Mother Nature too. The feminine is wild and vast - predatorial animals, hurricanes, tornados, starvation. Not to mention, mystical experiences we as humans are ill-equipped to understand (eg. when your know-it-all friend takes too many magic mushrooms & gets humble real quick).

Rules, systems, structures, control

When faced with the feminine as a force of nature, man saw himself as vulnerable and weak by comparison. Over the centuries, this compelled him to create rules to manage the environment. Some of these rules were genius, others were superstitions that led to atrocities like the witch trials.

To make sense of things, man simplified, he reduced, he domesticated. He sorted things into good and bad, right and wrong. He created religions like Catholicism and Christianity, becoming paranoid about his place in the universe. We deemed ourselves sinners, unworthy mortals in contrast to a perfect man in the sky.

These beliefs allowed us to survive, much like the OCD sufferer’s unnecessary repetitions soothe their anxiety. When we shrink and oversimplify the world, it becomes more digestible.

When we consider the yin-yang amalgam of all that is, it is by far yang that affords control and survival. Yin, meanwhile, affords quality of life and a healthy loss of control - what we often call surrender. Thus we can see how without resources or support, it is very hard to survive without prioritizing yang - linear, logical systems that ensure we find food, protect ourselves from warring tribes, and get our work done. Yes, even if we have to threaten, punish, and control people to get their cooperation.

And so patriarchy is intertwined with our survival instinct. It is not merely rooted in the hatred, dismissal, and control of women for the sake of it. While this has often been a side effect, this story leaves women with nothing but pain to guide their understanding of life, and this is fundamentally disempowering. It leaves women assuming that their attention should go toward justifying their existence & proving their value to the men in charge.

But this is already the status quo. Demanding a new system from those who run the system only serves to reaffirm women's fictional status as subservient, not in power.

Instead, we heal by doing the unthinkable: We empathize with the patriarchs.

Anything else traps us in the endless, unconscious cycle of oppressors and oppressed so eloquently portrayed in Animal Farm.

Suspicious of the Feminine

Arguably, we have only had enough safety & awareness in recent generations to even begin balancing masculine and feminine. Consider the 1970s and what we could call a ‘feminine’ movement toward free love, community, music, and the absence of war. While its intentions were pure, we suffered the pitfalls that arise with too little structure - drug addiction, STDs, risk-taking behavior - It was all too big a jump from the tamed 1950s, and yet another confirmation to the patriarchs that chaos is unsafe.

All we’ve ever known is yang dominance – structure over play, logic over creativity, outer achievement at the expense of inner development. Though flawed, this system has worked well enough for us to triple our lifespan as humans, giving us more time to figure things out.

From this lens, it’s clear that the feminine was not cast out at random. Instead, it was believed to be a liability. Too much chaos would be the downfall of civilization, or so the patriarchs thought. They believed that if the feminine were free to do as it pleased (via their wives, daughters, or non-conforming sons), we would die.

Having reached its extreme, masculine dominance has no more to offer us and can only take from us going forward. Mental illness, poor health, poverty, violence, the destruction of the environment, and belittling of spirituality are all symptoms of a culture starving for feminine guidance.

But many still cling to masculine dominance out of fear, greed, and misunderstanding, not seeing that it’s a classic case of diminishing returns.

I know this because when I look back on my life and the ways I’ve betrayed myself and my own feminine side, this was why. I was ignorant, I was afraid, and I sure as hell wasn’t giving up control. My story is the same story as the most vile of patriarchs - abusers, tyrants.

This does not excuse the behavior of those who contribute to the cancerous continuation of masculine excess. It is simply to say that there was likely no way around this. That we prioritized rudimentary systems of survival, often at the expense of all else, was the best that we could do at the time.

Undomesticated is a project about what’s missing in our culture - healthy feminine power - what it is, how to get it, and what's in the way of it (for both sexes).

With practice, we can evolve out of survival mode and re-access the raw, primal power of the feminine that lives in us (though we may currently be frightened and confused by its shadowy manifestations).

It all begins with a calm, neutral understanding of why and how we got here.

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