The Loss of Pretending and Avoidance

Inanna's Third Gate

In the ancient myth, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, descends to the Underworld in an archetypal pattern of egoic death and rebirth.

This post is Part Five of a multi-part series. Part One, Inanna Descends to the Underworld in Real Time, Part Two, Inanna’s Plan B, Part Three, Inanna’s First Gate, and Part Four, Inanna’s Second Gate, are available in Modern Mythology.

“When she entered the third gate, from her breast, the double strand of beads was removed.” Wolkstein and Kramer

This gate removes the structures of avoidance: pretty magical thinking, protective ritualized behavior, numbing addictions, cherished-outcome prayer, affirmations, compulsions, and obsessively buoyant thought patterns. Spiritual practices lose their power to keep you out of the black hole—the Underworld—your shadow. Once-useful techniques are as empty and flimsy as a soap bubble. The repressed shadow is exposed, and all methods to keep it at bay blow away with the wind. We may no longer claim: We are better than this!

In the individual

Everyone knew everyone in my small New England town. I was the girl whose parents fought violently until the police came, the daughter of a woman repeatedly admitted to psychiatric hospitals for suicidal gestures, the daughter of the man who fell from his boat and drowned. “Was that a suicide?” they whispered. Then, I became the young adult who drank all night and went to work the next day, still drunk, who was warned by a local police officer, an old friend of my father, that they were watching my cocaine habit.

I decided they were all too judgmental and provincial and moved far away.

In Los Angeles, I was that cute young woman who worked in a psychiatric hospital and took teenagers to AA meetings and group therapy. I applied the points system to their behavior. I wrote in their charts with a clinical, detached voice. I worked in community theater, trying to make a shiny career as a Hollywood actress. I was the young woman at the new age church trying to control my thoughts to manifest abundance and have the career of my dreams. Change your thinking, change your life! I attended church two days a week and took classes to become a licensed spiritual practitioner so I could help others. I taught workshops and held retreats. I attended a ministerial school and had aspirations to have my own church.

When the third gate squeezed shut, my ability to pretend was removed.

The hospital closed suddenly due to very real abuses of patients and insurance companies. My mother paid a month’s rent while I terror-searched for work. I gave notice to the landlord so I could use the security deposit for the next month. The roommate situation I was counting on fell through. I had no job and 50.00 left.

I prayed for Grace, for the courage to call my mom for more money. I prayed to stay out of fear, to know I was safe and protected, and that everything would work out for the highest good.

When I finally called my mom, the only thing between me and homelessness was 48 hours. She said, “I can’t support two households. I’ll buy you a one-way ticket home.”

My breathing slowed; my vision opened, and I saw my fears as reality. If I went home like this, I’d become the sick one everyone pitied. The family would insist on therapy and medication. I feared hospitalization because I secretly thought I needed it. But my family wouldn’t do anything about their own bad behavior or woundedness. We all would work on mine. I would be flayed, but no one else would peel back any layers. My mother’s role would shift to me: I would be the crazy one who expresses the whole family’s suffering so the rest of them could pretend.

“I can’t,” I heard myself say.

“What are you going to do?” she demanded.

“Pray and trust God,” I said.

“But that isn’t a plan,” she was pleading now.

“I can’t call you for a while. Your fear will infect me, and I can’t create anything from that state of consciousness.”

Now, as the parent of a young adult, I shudder. I was three thousand miles from her. I was going to stop calling her two days before I became homeless—my poor mother.

At the time, though, I had little energy for compassion. I was in survival mode.

My worst nightmare bloomed around me. I had no safety; I had no home. People at church said to trust God. Pray and do whatever comes to you. That afternoon, in deep meditation, as clear as a bell, I heard: There is no job. My body froze.

Then rage snapped me to attention. “What the fuck does that mean? What kind of God are you?” I yelled at that inner voice until my throat hurt. “You take care of me!” I demanded. Then, I bargained, begged, and wheedled, but the voice remained silent. I grabbed a bag of Oreos and went to bed. The god I believed in and all the rig-a-morale that went with him was dead.

In the collective

As with our families, we are born into a dynamic already in motion for generations.

The third is a terrible gate - the apocalypse - the slow revealing of our shadow. We enter an upside-down world where compassion is derided, and calls for kindness are vilified. Ignorance is no protection. This exposure has the ring of destiny, the air of synchronicity.

As U.S. culture loses the ability to pretend we are exceptional, the dark workings become visible. Hypocrisy becomes so apparent that we cease to be offended. What once would have ended political careers is blandly accepted. Many celebrate cruelty. Lies and truth have changed places.

Our god image is a power-over god, a war god, an angry, jealous, even petty god. Since the Puritans, this God has favored rich white men. The fact of their richness was the proof. Whether you believe in it or not, ours is a fear-of-god religion. Because we fear our God, we are terrified of death. Fear of death runs through all our institutions. It was running when the state hanged witches in Hartford and Salem, slaughtered millions of buffalo to defeat the native Americans, propped up dictators, and dropped bombs on innocent people. It’s running when we believe we can never have enough money, enough power, or enough safety. It’s running us all the time.

The shadow emerges in ways that cannot be ignored. The disaster spreads before us. Many will wake up at this gate: the price of belonging is too high. We are horrified by the things done in our name. Our culture has created this shadow over hundreds of years. Directly or not, everyone participates and is responsible, even if your role is to rebel. The fact that others have planned, voted for, and carried out the plans does not protect us. Our shadow emerges, and it is long and dark.

“Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the Underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”