A while ago I had a dream that really freaked me out. It was violent and so vivid. I dreamt this guy attacked me in the backseat of a car and I stabbed his skull with a knife several times. He died, but the dream continued where his friends were chasing me all over the place. I kept trying to hide in crowded buildings, jumping in the sea where hundreds of tourists were swimming, but they kept finding me and chasing me throughout the dream!
TMI? (Keep reading please😂)
The Dark Man Dream
Today I read about “the Dark Man Dream” in Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ book, Women Who Run With the Wolves.
She said that almost every woman has this dream by the age of 25, but that it’s always some kind of threat by a man – that the woman feels physically terrified, often waking up gasping for breath, groaning, etc.!
Here’s what’s so important to note about this type of dream: Estes has interviewed leaders and founders of movements across the world such as:
- Las Guerrillas Compañeras – warrior sisters in the Quebrada outback of Central America,
- Women in the Cofradios des Santuarios in the U.S.,
- And civil rights proponents in Latino County…
…And all of them have had these types of dreams. This Dark Man Dream acts as an “initiation” or propellant to their activism and purpose in the world.
Estes mentioned 3 reasons why these dreams are important to remember and pay attention to.
3 Reasons to Pay Attention to Your Dark Man Dreams
1. Something Is Changing Within Your Subconscious
You’re moving from one level of understanding and consciousness to another. This shift in your energetic level of knowing means you need to take some kind of action!
Maybe you’ve been complacent in your business. Running through the motions. Doing what everyone else is doing. Taking action from “should” rather than joy and your higher calling.
Maybe you feel a pull toward some type of action. But you’re shying away from it. You’re avoiding that next step, making that difficult decision. You’re wrestling with your own power.
2. A Wakeup Call
There’s something in your personal life or the collective culture you live in that is “off.”
Feeling the danger and unease from the Dark Man Dream reminds you that it’s time to stay strong. Vigilant. Continue (or start) the work at hand.
Estes recommends asking yourself these questions:
- What stands behind these proscriptions I see in the outer world?
- What goodness or usefulness of the individual, of the culture, of the earth, of human nature has been killed, or lies dying here?
She stresses the importance of feeding this instinctive wild nature: nurturing it, sheltering it, helping it grow. That wild woman archetype within us is what helps us get out of paralysis and into action.
3. Your Creative Fire Is Active, But It’s Running On Empty
If you’re cooking noodles in a pot, but there’s no water in the bottom – your creation sits there smoking all by itself. The fuel for your fire gets ashier and ashier, and your creation gets charred and ruined.
This happens when we find: “Every reason to do anything and everything except sit there, or stand there, or travel there in order to execute whatever it is that we hold dear.”
The Dark Man Dream symbolizes that there is an “intruder” in our psyche who is stealing our fire, stealing our vim, and robbing us of the place, the space, and the TIME to create.
Here’s the biggest thief of your creativity:
When that judgemental voice inside you has a very low opinion of you. Tells you why you can’t do it.
And instead of hitting him in the head and running away, you grovel at his feet.
When you learn to bop him in the head, you’re able to take your ideas and your art far more seriously than ever have before.
And let me tell you: No matter what excuses you might conjure up – at the very least, you can create work that elucidates that dark man in your dreams!
“Why Such Emphasis on Creativity When I’m Just Over Here Tryna to Grow My Business?”
Because creativity IS your fuel to grow your business.
Authentic creativity helps you market in a way that’s unique to you.
It helps you write INNOVATIVE language that makes your message stand out and resonate with your ideal clients.
Creativity produces offers that are aligned with your vision for your business, instead of copy/pasting what other coaches are doing.
And here’s what can kill that creativity like nothing else:
- No integrity of vision,
- No deep insight,
- No original voice,
- No decisive action.
If you want to banish that predator in your subconscious, you have to pry yourself open to see what’s inside.
You have to use your intuitive abilities (we ALL have them) to dissect and understand what you see below the surface.
You have to speak your truth in a clear voice.
And you have to use your wits to figure out what needs to be done about what you discover.
How?
Estes gives an incredible image of what exercising our alertness to the predator looks like:
When we practice listening to our intuition and our voice, we uncover the intuitive powers given to us at birth. Over the years, they’ve been buried and covered over with ashes and shit.
They’re still under all that…they just have to be uncovered, washed, and brought to the surface. When we retrieve these powers, we summon our inner Wild Woman.
At the first scent or sound of the predator, she comes bounding over fences and through brush to come and fight her old nemesis. When she defeats him, we are invincible to culture, personality, psyche, or any other force that tries to dictate: how we should look, dress, act, or behave.
Whatever pressures try to compress our souls, it cannot change what we are – what is dictated by our wild, creative consciousness.
It’s important that we don’t treat the Wild Woman like an icon to be hung on the wall, but a living being who can be summoned at any time, under any conditions.
The wild woman doesn’t act “nice” or “sweet.” She draws the line and she means it (aka boundaries). This often includes getting rid of negative external situations/people that are trying to diminish our soulful experience.
THIS is what pushes the predator back where he belongs.
What Pushing That Predator Away Looks Like IRL
You have to get rid of the old to make room for the new. This happens physically, in your outer life, AND internally, in your mental space.
Here’s how I’ve cleared out the old to make room for the new:
- In October, I cleansed my apartment from any clothes I didn’t wear anymore.
- I ripped the pages out of all my old journals and burned them.
- I cleaned every square inch of my apartment.
- I got closure on my relationship with my mom, confronted her on the ways she did (and still does hurt me), and closed off the last line of communication I had with her (She wasn’t willing to work on repairing the damage, unfortunately).
These steps are going to look different for you. You need to look into your own life and emotional space, and ask:
Where am I sitting in old energy that doesn’t serve my emotional health and creativity?
What Embracing the Inner Wild Woman Looks Like IRL
In Greece, I hiked in the Olympus mountains and was super alert to the energy that came through the nature there.
I jumped into the ice-cold sea and let the freezing water reset my nervous system.
In my work, I tried out a new method for my copywriting:
I went into a psychic trance where I embodied my client. I went through all the chakras, all the identity points of her identity and embodied them as my own. I wanted to understand her ideal clients on a spiritual/energetic level.
I saw myself (as my client) raised up into the atmosphere like a queen of flowers. Her crown on her head, her dress flowing through space and down to the earth with cherry blossom flowers – each one of those flowers being her clients.
“I” (she) asked them all to tell her whatever they wanted to tell her. They shared their struggles in life, in business, and what they want and truly desire. And when I came back, I channeled all of that into my copywriting.
Do other copywriters do this? I highly doubt it.
Has it been incredibly powerful in the results my clients are getting in their launches? It sure has.
Would I have EVER have thought to do this if I hadn’t actively worked on crushing that mental predator and embracing my authentic creativity? Heck no.
So as you dig into your subconscious and your outer world and activate your creativity, remember this:
Pay attention to the symbolism you find in your dreams and the activities you do. Be deliberate about clearing away old shit and ashes that are burying your intuitive, creative self. Don’t be afraid to be weird and strange to embrace your most authentic self.
Still pretty abstract, right?
Let me share some practical ways you can summon your inner Wild Woman.
9 Practical Steps to Nurture Your Creativity and Let It Take the Reigns in Your Life
Look for ways to dig away the shit and ashes covering up your intuition and creativity. For me that’s been:
- Therapy to help me learn how to feel and heal from past traumas and how to continue to nurture daily fears and other emotional blocks that come up
- Studying chakras and learning how to heal subconscious traumas stored in my body
- Going deeper in meditation and opening myself up to energetic visions (I lead you through one of these in my 2-day masterclass series, Activate the Power of Your Voice)
- Working with a spiritual mentor
- Doing daily freewriting (or stream of consciousness writing) to see what thoughts are circling around in my brain and what unhealthy bits I need to address with my therapist and/or spiritual mentor
- Writing down my dreams and energetic visions and asking myself curious questions about them through journaling
- Spending AMPLE time in nature alone – meditating at the top of a mountain to feel connected with its power and energy
- Spending less time with people who don’t believe in energy or spirituality, who bring me down and make me feel like I have to hide or downplay its influential role in my life and mental health
- Spending more time with people who DO embrace the “woo stuff” (for me, that’s pretty much my online friends and my spiritually aware clients)
Let Me Help You Incorporate Authentic Creativity In Your Next Launch
If you’re a spiritual coach or entrepreneur (or are trying to become more so), send me an email to ask about embodying your inner Wild Woman in your copywriting. This looks like connecting deeply (and energetically) with your clients on their struggles and desires.
Addressing these effectively in your sales copy and messaging is going to help YOU fall in love with your offers more, and will empower your ideal clients to sign up with you.
If you’d like more support with this, feel free to reach out to me for a 1:1 session together. You can email me at [email protected].
