Lisa Marie Rankin:

Welcome to the Goddess School podcast. In today's episode, we are going to explore the beautiful, often vulnerable, sometimes painful experience of shedding personas. And we're gonna look at how when we shed our personas, they give us access to our true self, our true essence. And, in fact, we become stronger than ever. Now, to guide us on this journey, we are gonna connect with the Sumerian goddess, Inanna, and she is the goddess of heaven and earth. And she's going to show us that strength really comes from descending into our own depths, shedding our layers, and embracing our whole selves, even those parts of ourselves that we have suppressed or repressed. Now, first, though, I wanna introduce you to a few Jungian concepts that is going to help with this discussion, and those are the persona, the self, and the shadow. So first, let's talk about personas.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Now we wear different mask all the time. So, you know, some of my personas are mother, lover, podcast host. Right? These are all personas, and there's wrong with any of these personas. We need them to be able to show up and to get along effectively in the world, but we are not our personas. We are actually much more than that. And the problem starts to happen is when we fuse with them. We confuse who we are with a role that we play and they get us a little bit further from our true essence which is our self. Now when I talk about self, I'm talking about the self with a capital s.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So Jung Carl Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst who has brought us so much juicy wisdom that we can use today in our personal development and spiritual paths, he would define the self as the archetype of wholeness. So it's everything that we believe ourselves to be, who we believe ourselves to be, how we present ourselves to the world, but then it's also everything that we don't even know about ourselves. It's our unconscious. So it's what we consciously know and it's also what we don't know. It's our unconscious and we can also think of that as our shadow. The self includes all of it. So when we have a persona, that role that we play, often we identify with that. And when something happens, whether it's a divorce, the children going off to school, or maybe a layoff, we can feel really stripped bare because our personas are also like armor.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

They protect us from our vulnerability. But it also serves as a reminder that we are more than that. There's other parts of ourselves that want to evolve. Now Carl Jung would say the the importance of discovering these other parts of ourselves is this is the process of individuation. This is the process of wholeness. Now the interesting thing so our unconscious, our shadow parts, they're often at odds with our personas, with our ego, with who we think we should be, how we want to interact with the world. And that makes sense because we've suppressed them or repressed them because they don't line up with who we think or who we want to be. Yet there is so much strength and wisdom in these parts.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So today, I wanna talk about the different personas that we wear, what happens when we get cut off from our persona, and how we can start to evolve to become more whole by embracing some of the shadow parts. I'd also like to say Carl Jung has this beautiful quote. He says, I'd rather be whole than good. Because if you are on a personal development path or a spiritual journey, which I suspect many of my listeners are, I believe sometimes we feel that we are doing this so we can get to a state of perfection. Right? Where maybe it's like we cultivate this beautiful sense of equanimity and we are never befazed by anything, or we are terribly kind and compassionate all the time. And, yeah, maybe we wanna trend in that direction. As Yang said, I'd rather be whole thing good. We're looking for these shadow parts, these lost parts.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Not that we want to be controlled by them, but we don't want them to control us. So another beautiful line that Carl Jung has said or written, I'm not quite sure which, but he says until we make the unconscious conscious, we will be ruled by it and call it fate. And we see that when we get ourselves into the same types of relationships and we're like, I don't know. Why does this keep happening to me? Why am I always dating the same type of guy? Or why am I always getting myself into this situation at work? And that's because 90 to 95% of our behaviors and actions are actually ruled by the unconscious. So today, we are going to explore all of this, and I'd like to do so by sharing the myth of Inanna. Now before I get into the myth, I just want to say whenever we're looking at myths or fairy tales, and both can be used as a window of our psyche. They really represent everything that's going on within us, both consciously and unconsciously. So when we're looking at a myth or a fairy tale, we are not just one of the characters.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Often, we like to identify, again, the sense of identification with the protagonist, but we are all of the characters. We're also the villain. We're the supporting characters as well too. And that's why myths and fairy tales really provide us with this beautiful map of the psyche. So we don't identify with just one aspect of ourselves because we are so much more expansive than that. Let's talk about the goddess Inanna. So she's the Sumerian goddess of heaven and earth. And she's often associated with fertility, like crops and animals, and she played a central role in marriage ceremonies.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

She was very much a sexual goddess and associated with sexuality. Now if you read very early writings and hymns, Inanna seems to be unabashed in her desire and indulging in her sexual desires and fantasies. Nana is kind of a goddess that has it all. She's the sexy goddess of heaven and earth, the goddess of fertility. She has a husband, the musi. Then one day, she decides to go to the underworld to meet with her sister, the queen of the underworld, and her name is Ereshkigal. Now this was somewhat of an unusual decision because only the dead go to the underworld. Inanna dresses in her beautiful goddess clothing, gowns, crowns, jewelry, and she takes her servant, Ninshuva, with her.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Inanna knows that this plan is not without risk. In fact, it's sort of fraught because, again, only the dead go to the underworld. So she instructs her servant. She says, listen. If I'm not back in 3 days, come get help. I've probably died. So as Inanna descends to the underworld, she needs to pass 7 gates before she can meet with her sister, Ereshkigal. At each gate, she is asked to remove some of her clothing or some of her finery.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So she has to remove her crown, her gown, her cape, her beautiful jewelry. So we can think of all of our garments too. In this case, there are protective layers. They show the world who we think we are, who we want them to interpret us to be. So by the time she gets to the last gate, she's completely naked. She's completely vulnerable. And this is how she meets her sister, Arashkigal. Now Arashkigal is not happy to see Inanna, and she gives her a that deathly stare, looks her straight in the eye.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And as a result, Inanna just drops dead. Ereshkigal just curiously picks the body up and hangs Inanna on the meat hook. Now her servant, Ninshuber, is waiting for her, and Inanna doesn't return. So, finally, after 3 days, she decides to go get help. So she asked all of the gods for help, but only one god, Enki, will help. So from the dirt underneath his fingernails, he crafts these 2 little creatures that are able to descend into the underworld, and he tells them how to enter undetected and also how to win the favor of Ereshkigal and he also gives these little creatures the water of life so that they can revive Inanna. Now, as these creatures approach Ereshkigal, she's moaning like she's in pain or she's giving birth and they start to offer her their sympathy and compassion. She moans, oh, my insides.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

They moan right back. Oh, your insides. Then she moans, oh, my back. Sympathetically, they moan, oh, your back. She moans, oh, my poor feet. They moan, oh, your poor feet. Eventually, Arushka, girl starts to feel better, and she credits these creatures for her recovery because they were able to share her pain. They were able to offer her empathy.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

In gratitude, she offers them a gift. She says, thank you so much for being with me. What could I possibly do to repay you? I'll give you whatever you want. They see Anana hanging on that meat hook, and they look over there, and they said, we would like her. And she doesn't really know why they want this dead body, but she gives it to them. They sprinkle some water of life on the goddess, and Inanna starts to return to life. She's stronger than ever. She's been stripped bare.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

She's met her shadow, and now she is reborn, so she starts to rise up from the underworld coming back to her realms of heaven and earth. Of course, the underworld has a rule. You might be familiar with it. If one soul leaves, a new one must arrive. So Inanna needs to find a replacement for herself. When she returns to the to the upper world, she spares all of those who have mourned her death. However, she learns that her husband, Dumuzi, has not mourned her death. So guess who she sends in her place? Yes.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

She sends her husband back to the underworld. So in this myth, we see that Inanna loses a piece of her identity or power at each of the gates. And we very much can see this in real life too, whether we are using our relationships as a sign of I am loved or our jobs as a sign of I am smart, I am worthy, when we lose them, it can be a little soul shaken. In this myth, we see that she has to discard her crown to robes and jewelries, all of these items that represent her divine role, her authority, her importance. As she moves deeper and deeper, she's eventually stripped bare. So she meets her sister, her shadow, completely vulnerable and So we can see the shedding of personas in this metaphor is the journey of self discovery and transformation. So, again, in our everyday lives, we often wear these personas to fit societal expectations, roles, or even as defenses against pain and rejection. But true transformation really requires that we not identify with these outward affects that we may have spent a lot of time cultivating, but with the self, the part that includes all of us, what we know and like about ourselves and also the parts that we don't like.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

This is represented by Inanna's sister, Ereshkigal. Only when she's able to meet these deeper parts of ourselves can she be reborn, and then she's stronger than ever. Similarly, often our personas or the refinery that we wear protect us. We often can think to ourselves, if I'm just the compliant daughter or the loving wife or the hardworking manager, then I will be safe, then I will be protected. And, again, there's nothing wrong with personas, but they're just not who you truly are. And when we identify with it, we're incomplete. The goal here is to become whole. So I wanted to give you an example of how I've had to shed a persona in my life.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

So in 2019, I left my job in the corporate world, and I was in the corporate world for, say, about 22 years or so. At this time, I worked at a prestigious financial services company. I was a UX designer, and I was definitely ready to go. There were things that I wanted to do. I was feeling very uninspired. There were had been a lot of reorgs, and I wanted to explore other interests at that point. Yet this job, this role was really part of my identity. I felt safe, protected, and provided for.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

An interesting part of this role so at the company that I worked for, they had full time employees and contract employees. The full time employees, which I was one of, had a green badge. The contractors had a red badge. Of course, there was nothing wrong with contractors. In fact, they were fantastic. However, I felt a lot of pride in having my green badge. Like, I was the chosen one. It was a display of worthiness.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Like, I was going to be cared for like I belonged. And since this company that I had worked for was very well known, I also felt like it acted as a sale of approval. So when I met someone, and I remember even when I started dating my partner, he seemed really impressed with where I worked. I was telling his family about it. So when people heard where I worked, they immediately assumed that I had my shit together and that I was smart. So once I left that job, I felt that identity was gone, and it did feel like there was this gaping hole that I had no validation. What would people think of me? How would they know that I was competent? So it was less I lost my badge, and I truly did miss my green badge, which I also felt helped set me apart. But, of course, that's not who I truly was.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

And if I had clung to that identity, I wouldn't have gotten to do all the things that I really wanted to do, like spend more time with my children, dive deeper into my passions of Ayurveda, spirituality, psychology, write a book, start my own business, or be here speaking with you today. There was a persona that I had to let go of to discover more of who I was. Nevertheless, I still dream about that job and still sort of miss my green badge too. So we can think of what it is that we are clinging to and really consider how is this keeping me safe, but, also, how is it keeping me stuck? What would I be able to be if I didn't have this persona? And I definitely encourage you to spend some time thinking about that. So I want to leave you with a few prompts to consider. I suggest journaling them, but thinking about them as you take a walk is okay too. The first one is, where in your life have you worn armor to protect yourself? Again, you can just think of the current personas, maybe the ones that you are experiencing right now. And then consider, how has this armor or persona served you? How has it kept you safe? And, also, how has it held you back? And the last one is, what would your life look like or what could it look like if you took off the armor? If you loosened the persona, if you let it go, what would that open up for you? So I suggest you reflect on those three inquiries and see what comes up.

Lisa Marie Rankin:

Now remember, Inanna's journey to the underworld is a reminder that, yes, our personas are useful. They do provide protection, but they're not who we truly are. It's through shedding our armor and revealing our true selves that we become whole and most connected to all of our power. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I hope it gave you a lot to think about, and I will see you very soon. Be well, beautiful ones.