The Loss of Intellectualizing

Inanna's first Gate

In the ancient myth, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, descends to the Underworld in an archetypal pattern of death and rebirth. This post is Part Three of a multi-part series. Part One, Inanna Descends to the Underworld in Real Time, and Part Two, Inanna’s Plan B, are available in Modern Mythology.

“Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the Underworld are perfect.

They may not be questioned.”

When we left Inanna last time, she was standing at the entrance to the Underworld, pounding on the first gate, rudely demanding: “Open the door!” The gatekeeper, Neti, forced her to cool her heels - outside - while he scurried to consult with his Queen, Inanna’s dark sister, Ereshkigal. She tells Neti to lock the seven gates and demand one of Inanna’s divine powers at each one. At the first gate, her crown, symbolizing her intellect, is removed.

The loss of intellect as a navigational tool rocks your whole world. This loss is about identity: Who Are You? Hint: it isn’t your calculating, judging, scheming ego that pulls experience toward you like a hungry ghost - certain about everything. To be who you are in truth, who you think you are must die. The ego doesn’t usually go gentle into that good night, either. Sorry, but the ego dies kicking and screaming unless you’ve had a lot of training in surrender, and even then, a descent into the shadow is about loss of control. It’s never finished until I cry out: I don’t know anything!

Our senses operate on a species-specific bandwidth. Reality is vast and overwhelming. No creature comprehends it all. The brain is a reality filter that allows some ideas and experiences and rejects or ignores a whole universe of others - dogs can hear sounds that people can’t, and we can see colors that dogs can’t. The sounds are still there even though you can’t listen to them. The filter people use to define their psychological reality is their story, and it limits perception and creates an experience of reality in similar ways. We remember events that fit into our personal story, like a bird weaving a nest. We forget events that don’t fit.

In my mid-thirties, I sat at a kitchen table, drinking into the night with two of my brothers, one younger, the other older. The myths of our childhoods licked their lips and crept from the shadows as we sat under a single overhead light. Before long, we sailed our kitchen table-ship between the worlds. First, we hooted at the exploits we got up to as scruffy children and then rebellious teens. We laughed until we cried: You were always like that. Naturally, given the nature of our upbringing and the drinking, the stories turned dark. I told of a time when our father profoundly hurt me. It was so still as I bared my soul that I sensed the night itself was listening. The brothers met the exposing of my wound with a resounding: ‘Daddy never did that!’ But I was sure of every detail in my version and bore the repercussions for a long time. Then, the younger brother narrated the story of his wound, which I didn’t recall.

I believed and reinforced that story. I had told it to therapists. Why? It was emotionally true. Our response to the world is a construct the ego builds. That is not to say terrible things don’t happen all the time. They do—the stories we make of them, even one moment after, are full of choices we don’t even realize we are making.

When the gatekeeper removed my crown, I was already one step from homelessness, though I didn’t know that yet. I had just awakened, gasping and sputtering like a woman held underwater for too long. And I knew. My beloved was having an affair. The proof was in the phone bill. The flimsy nightgown clung to my legs as I read through the itemized calls - to her, to her, to her. He was with her that moment - away on business - or so he’d said. The foundation I’d built my life on was a fiction. My carefully constructed persona shattered, leaving shards in a circle around my feet.

Nothing was real. Nothing was true. I didn’t know anything. I had fallen in love with a sparkly projection of my father, my upbringing, the movie version of my culture, the rules of gender, who he was supposed to be - who I thought I was. I had never seen past my projection far enough to meet the man I thought I loved, and we’d been together for five years. Every psychological problem I didn’t even know I had was exposed. The decades of healing ahead were revealed in that moment. It was awful.

But now, from a distance of 30 years - it’s beautiful.

Ego-shattering is a terrible blessing. Neither our memories nor our collective histories are accurate. We know History is not objective, yet we cling to false narratives as if our fortunes depended on them—because they do. To experience reality, all stories, all clinging to false identity and conditioning, must stop—complete surrender. Since we are usually unwilling, the gatekeeper squeezes our circumstances shut and takes them.

We are the mythologizing animal. Every person and every culture has a story. Collectively, we call this process our History, which is only partially true at best and a complete fabrication at worst. Our core myth is the story we tell about reality and our place in it—our worldview.

American culture is losing its crown. I fear this could result in the loss of our crowning achievement: our representational democracy. Our airways clog with purposeful disinformation. But the truth has always been slippery because it’s a construct, an agreement. No one is right, and the people who think they control the mythmaking can’t possibly stay in control. There are more things in Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld than are dreamt of in that little philosophy.

As discussions turn nasty over the H1B visa, Trump voters are just starting to understand that he sold them a myth, and he isn’t even president yet. The left suffered the loss of their crown when he was elected - again. Honestly, my heart goes out to the diehard MAGA - and all of us. Most of us will pass through the gate, politically aware or not. It’s a rude awakening. The terrible loss of the crown reveals a deep, systemic lie that returns us to the country's foundation. The earth opens under our feet. The mind screams: Nothing is true! And that’s the crux of it. Nothing the ego claims as true or pursues with such certainty is real. Reality isn’t made up of thoughts at all. To experience reality, you must drop below thought, expand beyond personal boundaries and cultural conditioning, and recognize that we are all one. The mind must break open. And we will.- but first, there are six more gates in this descent. We must convert suffering to compassion. But remember, this is a story about rebirth.

The ways of the Underworld are perfect.