Spotting Your Wild Inner Green Man – How to Tell When He’s about to Bust Loose
Your inner Green Man –
how do you know that he’s breaking from cover?
An inner Green Man lurks inside each of us.
Usually, he (or she – think Women Who Run with the Wolves) is firmly contained; pushed below our mind’s conscious surface by survival and pragmatics-dominant thinking; our daily focus is often on jobs and responsibilities.
However, we can only live like this for so long. Every so often, our inner Green Man gets ready to break loose.
How do you spot – and even nurture and protect and cherish – your wild and elusive inner Green Man?
Detecting Your Inner Green Man – A Quick Questionnaire
See if you’re having uncontrollable cravings for any of the following:
- An eco-adventure, white water rafting, or even a weekend camping trip – anything to break up your daily pattern,
- Planning or planting your garden, going on a garden tour, or visiting one of the great gardens – a strong need to connect with nature and to grow green things; this would include planting a container garden for an apartment balcony, or even bringing in a plant for your desk,
- Visiting your local farmer’s market – even choosing to shop in a food store that has the best layout of fresh fruits and veggies; feeling nurtured and inspired just being around fresh produce and flowers,
- A sudden interest in making salads, experimenting with sprouts, raw foods or juicing, or finding locally-foraged foods – becoming more aware of how much your body and spirit are nurtured with the freshest of live food sources, or
- Finding the absurd in corporate protocols or social mores – and being irresistibly drawn to knocking over a few apple-carts.
Your Inner Green Man – Essential to Your Happiness and Well-Being
Our Green Man archetype is usually hidden within our known, safe structures – such as our churches and other formal belief systems.
Our inner Green Man – like our inner Hestia – is one of our two rest-and-recharge archetypes. Neither our Green Man nor our Hestia is a core power archetype – I reserve that designation for the six archetypes that are included in the first great life journey identified in the Kabbalah and visually depicted as Cards I – VI in the Tarot’s Major Arcana.
However, just as our Hestia brings a sense of calmness, structure, and order to our lives, our Green Man serves an equally important role – he brings a vibrant, exciting, and necessary exuberance, wildness, and chaos.
When our lives get too static, boring, or predictable – or when we’re living under a self-imposed regime that is truly untenable – our Green Man comes to our rescue!
His innocent enthusiasm, exuberance, and zest for all that is living and growing freely help us break out from self-imposed expectations, boundaries, and commitments. When we truly need to “think outside the box,” our Green Man is our strongest ally.
Our Green Man Is Our Inner Wild Child
Our Green Man may have us zipping through a tree canopy.
Our Green Man takes us out of our known, safe, familiar structures and environments. He takes us on the wild-and-crazy ride through nature.
Our Green Man may lead us to something dramatic and adventurous – something that gets our adrenaline pounding, such as white water rafting or zipping through the tree canopy.
If we are of a calmer nature, our Green Man may take us on a garden tour, or spark our own interest in gardening.
Our Green Man Can Emerge Any Time
Whenever we bring more of nature into our lives, our Green Man is speaking to us and through us.
We’re used to seeing our Green Man emerge when we plan our summer vacation – especially if that vacation involves being outdoors.
Our Green Man inspires us to use nature as we place seasonal decorations around our homes, such as a mantlepiece filled with evergreen boughs.
However, our Green Man comes in every time we do something that has us touching nature.
He can show up when we arrange a cornucopia of harvest vegetables for our Thanksgiving centerpiece.
He emerges when we select the Christmas tree, or decorate our mantles with a luxuriant arrangement of holly and evergreens.
Our fascination with growing foliage plants, flowers, and vegetables is part of our inner Green Man.
Our Green Man silently creeps in as we voraciously consume the seed catalogs that arrive in dark winter, or as we plan our spring gardens.
If we can’t take a full vacation, our Green Man leads us to the farmer’s market to pick out the best of the seasonal produce. He may have us signing up with a community-supported agriculture program.
Nurturing Our Green Man Is a Way to Take Care of Inner Self
Our Green Man is often hidden in our lives, just as a Green Man image in an old English church would often be hidden behind a sward of greenery. (The instance to the left is of a Green Man in the Rosslyn Chapel.)
Our society tends to push our Green Man further into the background. We all too often live in situations where “time off” (for either sickness or health) is meted out in hours, and is carefully accrued and spent. Although we have many conveniences in our lives, we also have huge time-depleting factors, ranging from commute traffic to the allure of social media.
Most of all, we are rewarded (or at least made to feel semi-secure) when we play by the rules. We often feel that our very survival is threatened if we step out of bounds; when we dare to think (much less speak) for ourselves.
Is it any wonder that a part of us feels hugely squelched and repressed? This is the part that we need, in order to feel vital and alive.
Thus, when our Green Man emerges, he is making his way upwards through a hugely repressive layer of conditioning.
He emerges at such a cost to our feeling of safety-and-survival that – when he does come forth – we need to give him attention.
Caring for, giving permission to, and nurturing our inner Green Man will be the subject of the next posting on this blog.
Alay’nya, author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.
To your own health, wealth, success, and overall well-being –
Alay’nya (Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.)
Author of Unveiling: The Inner Journey
You are the Jewel in the Heart of the Lotus. Become the Jewel!
Check out Alay’nya’s YouTube Channel
Connect with Alay’nya on Facebook
Follow Unveiling: The Inner Journey on Facebook
Unveiling, by Alay’nya, currently has an overall five-star Amazon rating.
This blog series develops themes originally published in Unveiling: The Inner Journey, published by Mourning Dove Press.
Unveiling: The Inner Journey Is “Highly Recommended” – Midwest Book Review
We are the stars of our own lives, and it’s time we started acting as such. Unveiling: The Inner Journey is an empowering memoir from Alianna J. Maren as she advises readers, in particular, women, to take control of their lives, guide to something worth unveiling to the world and allow ourselves to be pleased with our place in the world. Unveiling is a strong addition to general inspiration collections tailored to women, highly recommended. From Bethany’s Bookshelf, Midwest Book Review
Read this and more reviews of Unveiling: The Inner Journey.
|
Paper |
Kindle |
|||
Copyright (c) 2013, Alay’nya (Alianna J. Maren, Ph.D.). All rights reserved.
Related Posts: Green Man – Leading Up to This Point
Related Posts: Green Man – What to Read after This One
Related Posts: Hestia (Our Other Rest-and-Recharge Archetype)
- Hestia: Our Rest-and-Recharge Archetype – Part 2
- Practical Archetypes – Identifying Your Archetypal Roles Over Time (Strong focus on Hestia archetype)
- Hestia – Your Rest-and-Recharge Archetype
Pingback: Position Yourself for the Long-Term: Fine-Tuning Your Blog Categories | Mourning Dove Press
Pingback: Your Inner Green Man – Gentle Giant or Raging Tyrant? | Unveiling: The Inner Journey
Pingback: The Magical Turning Point – And What It Means for You | Unveiling: The Inner Journey