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Ah, Liz, I feel that you have beautifully articulated a potent piece of your prima materia. This council you speak of is a kind of archetype all on its own … the inner judge and jury that C.G. Jung called the “negative animus,” a kind of introjected voice of the collective that can attack a woman’s psyche insisting that she “is wasting time, blowing it, has nothing worthwhile to say, is not further along in her life etc. etc.”
Your work with the circle of plants and rocks feels like the beginning of a healing – a transforming of the inner critic to responsive beings you can relate to and a potential inner ally – and yet, there is clearly still work to be done. The transformation did not complete with this one vision quest ritual. And indeed, perhaps the work of transforming the critical council to a compassionate, wise and loving inner guide is ongoing as we are constantly bombarded by negative attacks from the outer collective environment as well as from residual trauma response patterns from childhood. Perhaps in order to liberate ourselves from this tyranny, we have to understand that the council goes beyond the here and now to touch on our earliest wounds. And it also goes beyond the personal to include the transpersonal / cultural effects of modernity and colonialism that infringe on the sanctity and innate creativity of the psyche.
So, although this prima materia is very personal to you, very painful and also very rich with possibilities of gold and growth, in doing the inner work required to transform it, you are also working to transform a cultural reality that oppresses you as well as others.
I appreciate your succinct summation of the issue:
I would say my lead is the existence of this council, and perhaps the gold is their willingness to shift their intention and my willingness not to abandon myself in the process.
I love how you are inviting the council to be willing to shift their intention to one of support rather than attack and in that way opening to the possibility of relatedness between you and the archetypal energies of the psyche … but I also appreciate your recognition that your work is to not abandon your own authentic nature, to stand for the truth of who YOU are as you deal with them!
Sometimes, the council can have useful suggestions and helpful critiques but it is important for you to NOT ABANDON YOURSELF but rather hold steady in your own centered self-hood so that you can recognize through your own body felt sense when the voices are destructive and diminishing rather than helpful. If the council is just being “mean and critical” then you get to tell them to take their opinions elsewhere!