The programming to be a good person runs deep.

Our parents were programmed and they programmed us with things like “Be polite!” “Be nice!” “Include everyone!” “Don’t stare!” 

In my childhood and even still in a lot of ways, it’s, “Don’t be so opinionated, big, inconvenient, needy.” “Don’t take up so much space.” “Don’t be so assured of yourself.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” “How can you be so sure?”

Maybe your programming was slightly different, but the thread that all these programs come back to is: don’t be you. 

Don’t show all sides of yourself. Be more predictable. Less wild and unruly. Be nicer. Be good. 

What does it mean to be good when you’re a child? 

Basically, it’s to have less needs and be more manageable. To be happy and go with the flow. To listen to authority without too much push back, because (and those of us who are parents know this) it’s way easier to parent if your kids listen to you. 

So we all have some variation of programming around good equals only acceptable parts of myself, not all parts of myself.

It seems very obvious to me that the ‘light and love’ teachings and veneers I see in a lot of spiritual teachers and coaches is just this same only good is ok programming dressed up with feathers and palo santo. 

If you are actually going to undergo or hold people through true alchemical transformation you are going to need to get dirty and go to dark places. 

You are going to have to open up all those basement rooms of yourself you’ve locked away and pretended you don’t have in the interest of being good.

You are going to have to face your shadow and your unconscious.

You are going to have to admit you take stinky s***s, get rashes, and have body odor.

You’re going to have to feel the ways you’ve been wounded and how that wounding has hurt other people, maybe even people you love.

You’re going to have to come to terms with the parts of yourself that don’t fit into a spiritual love and light groove. You’re going to have to come to terms with the parts of yourself that have ulterior motives and want to look cool, be wanted, and belong at all costs.

We are no longer living in the age of the guru.

We’ve seen venerated spiritual teacher after venerated spiritual teacher be brought down to the level of imperfect humanity.

Sex scandals. 

Cult accusations. 

Priests and altar boys.

Spending money on private jets, hookers, and drugs.

Using their power and influence for their own personal gain.

Ultimately, we’ve seen how even the most respected good people icons of our collective society have done some very seedy and sleazy things.

Ghandi slept naked with his teenage niece. Martin Luther King cheated on his wife regularly and was known to be a womanizer. These are just examples.

To me, I just see all this as a reflection of how far we’ve gone off track when it comes to placing one human being at a higher level than another. It points to how much distortion there is in collective spiritual communities, in general.

It points to the fact that when we exalt our “goodness” at the expense of our “badness” we inevitably create toxicity. When our darkness gets squeezed and locked away, it putrefies.

This is the age of The Mother. The age of interdependent wisdom. The age of the mycelium network. The age where we see that from the dark comes life itself. That light and dark aren’t so different and that one begets the other.

This is the age of integration and brining light into the darkness and seeing that they are two sides of the same coin.

This is the age of understanding that the soil under our feet is made of death and decay. And it is the only thing from which new life springs. 

New age spirituality and the idea that we need to go through some sort of ascension process is one giant bypass over the Truth which is every single one of us is holy and every single one of us is human. 

Doing our spirutal practices just right will not get us to some destination where we will then sit around and eat berries and live in peace and happiness the rest of our days.

We aren’t going to do plant medicine enough times to finally see the meaning of all life. That meaning is here, right inside us. You don’t need anything special to see it.

Practices are meant to keep energy moving. To keep our attention focused. My practices do not make me better than you. Your practices do not make you better than me.  There are no superior practices. There is no getting in any of it.

I have done everything from yoga to plant medicine to living for years with no running water or electricity, but my greatest practice is cooking dinner for my family. It is by far the most challenging thing to stay open and present with. 

That’s what I’m interested in now. A spiritual practice that brings me deeper into communion with my everyday, boring and very human life.

Sure; doing ayahuasca in the jungle may give you some deep insights into where your programming and grief comes from, but if you can’t go back to your most monotonous, frustrating life moments and apply those insights, plant medicine is nothing more than another way you’re searching for the jewel that lives within you, outside of yourself. 

We don’t need all the extra. We don’t need the crystals, plant medicine, feathers, spirit guides, or whatever. They can be fun and help us to focus our energy, but my spirituality doesn’t require any of it. In fact, all of it just becomes a distraction from the Truth that is so simple.

To find the jewel inside yourself, you must be willing to traverse the wilds within.

You must be willing to feel the pain you would do everything to avoid.

You must be willing to go to the places where you hate yourself and love yourself there. No substances. No distractions. 

That is where real Feminine power lies. Not in trying to change anything about yourself but in being with yourself in the dark corners.

You could bring me anything about yourself, any of your deepest darkest most private thoughts, any awful, unforgivable thing you’ve done and I will hold your gaze, steady, and with so much love. Because I know those spots in myself and I have stayed with them, when no one else would. 

A teacher guide cannot bring you to places they have not gone themselves. 

So choose your teachers wisely if you wish to actually transform and awaken. 

If you’d rather stay asleep and in the programming that good is better than bad, light is better than dark, then please by all means continue to search outside of yourself for the answers and be a good person. 

I will stand by my statement that the world does not need more good people, it needs more real people. 

Real people have all sorts of diametrically opposed and subtle differences within themselves. They cannot be sectioned off into neat categories.

Real people are multifaceted; mean and nice, beautiful and ugly, loud and quiet. 

Poet David Whyte says, “Maturity is the ability to live fully and equally in multiple contexts, most especially the ability, despite our many griefs and losses, to courageously inhabit the past, the present and the future all at once.”

All my writing and teachings here revolve around calling forth the mature feminine frequency that lives in us all, the Matriarch, and a real person attuned to that mature feminine frequency will be able to hold multiple contexts and versions of herself all at once. 

That is what the world needs; maturity, authenticity, and realness not a facade of light.

What comes up for you reading this?

Where are you focused on being a good person where you need to be more real?

Would love to hear in the comments. 🧡

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