The Comic Horror of Finding Your Animus

January 03, 2024

When you dig into the Self, things can get gonzo very fast.

In meditation today I saw my subconscious animus—a whale of a woman on a spotted, torn couch…there was a lady in Beavis and Butt-Head that looked a bit like what I saw. She was a sex phone worker in the cartoon, but in this vision, she only squat on the couch with her mouth agape and vibrating. I heard nothing. I got the sense that this was my inner critic—a thing that creates confused imagoes of the people I know in my head and tries to convince me they’re the actual people (imagoes is the fancy word for that), a tyrannical thing is only pacified by reaching goals.

The split off ego in a man I suppose will often turn female, and it doesn’t like him. Not a bit. Once you start getting away from this energy, it shows itself. This is the first time I’ve seen it. That must mean I’m doing something right. It must also be said that most men have no idea they have an evil bitch who is really a version of themselves that never got to live but wants to experience living in their back brain by throwing reptile impulses at the whole person whenever anything even slightly annoying happens.

Like having the ghost of an obese nag for a wife. Only it's really just me. Don't laugh. Yours is similar. It may not be ugly or lazy. It may be gorgeous. It may be male or female or both. But it hates you. In the most extreme cases it fucks up your life for you. It'll pet your head, too, is the thing. Think about that for a minute. Maybe of you do not have this in the extreme and may be making Kevin Hart eyes at me right now. Well, lucky you. Weirdos like me get stuck with this bullshit.

You find it with shadow work. I’ve said a bit about this work, now that I have more experience with it…well…allow me a to be a little pretentious for a moment, eh? I don't think I've said what's next about it yet, it damn sure feels like new savvy. Anyway, shrink I’m not, but—

In the first part of shadow work I seem to have dug into my own shadow ego, but it’s not the shadow side/energy of the brain. See, that's the observer. There's no I in there. It's more like what.

The left brain's shit observations about the personality, long gone unnoticed by the self will cause this thing to identify with itself under your nose, using your ego to do it. You begin to contrast and compare yourself to the ideal of yourself (and that against everyone you meet or see on TV) until one of you wins the battle and splits off. Note: This stuff happens unbeknownst to the ego, or that little thing that types all the thoughts you think are You and likes to ask You stupid questions. What’s the fancy name for that, the idealogue? The demagogue? An amalgam. In all cases a cheap fucking asshole. Archetypal. I can’t remember the exact name for sure and I’m too wiped out to look it up. But people try to be those things, fail, and we get these goddamn influencers proving themselves (wink).

Fuck it. They get paid, some. But I digress.

The next step is to see what happens when I learn to make this thing (shadow, animus, et al) help rather than hurt. I don’t know that yet, not all the way. I just got to that part. Most people don't know they can. You can. It's your brain, nothing else. Quick comic relief--I like to think that if I DID get the full on DID* experience of a PTSD* bred Tyler Derden, I'd be able to tell. It'd be a hologram, and I would know, I've tripped acid, it must be similar. I had a shimmer on the street after days and days awake, did I ever talk about that? I could tell the difference. It freaked me out. Maybe that's part of what got me the fuck out of there.

Applause for the well-rounded! Wouldn't it be nice? Soon, soon, got to be. Okay. Let's move on.

Christ. When I write like this all I see is that I have so much to learn. I feel like I don't really know any of this stuff, but it works for me, so it seems like I know. Seriously. If it doesn't look that way it means I'm doing this right. Thanks for following along.