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I am sure it is NOT coincidence that my reading today in Elizabeth Lesser's book The Seeker's Guide (p 185-186 in the Heartfulness section) included the following -
SHADOW-WORK
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. - Jesus
Jung called the secret shame and the old voices buried in the dark heart the “shadow”. He wrote, “by shadow I mean the 'negative' side of the personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide …” In their excellent anthology, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature, Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams use the term “shadow-work” to describe “the ongoing inclusion of that which was rejected” in our psyches. “The goal of shadow-work”, they write, “cannot be accomplished with a simple method or trick of the mind. Rather, it is a complex, ongoing struggle that calls for great commitment, vigilance, and the loving support of others who are traveling a similar road.”
Jung himself warned that shadow-work was a delicate process: “Each piece of the shadow that we realize has a weight, and our consciousness is lowered to the extent when we take it into our boat. Therefore, one might say that the main art of dealing with the shadow consists in the right loading of our boat: if we take too little, we fly away from reality and become, as it were, a fluffy white cloud without substance in the sky, and if we take too much we may sink our boat.” We may know people who float around like clouds, unwilling or unable to recognize their own darkness, who consistently try to cover their anger with a smiley-face sticker, or their grief with a joke. And we also may know those whose boats are sinking from the weight of their unconscious emotions - those people who take everything to heart, and then don't know how to handle their feelings. They may be full of rage or despair, or embittered by the trauma and misfortune that have come their way. Shadow-work is a balancing act, a slow process and a stage of growth whereby we fish in the waters for the darkness that leads to the light.
In A Little Book on the Human Shadow, my favorite of all the shadow literature, Robert Bly writes a short passage that describes the shadow beautifully:
When we were one or two years old we had what we might visualize as a 360-degree personality. Energy radiated out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche. A child running is a living globe of energy. We had a ball of energy, all right; but one day we noticed that our parents didn't like certain parts of that ball. They said things like: “Can't you be still?” Or, “It isn't nice to want to kill your brother.” Behind us we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don't like, we, to keep our parents' love, put it in the bag. By the time we go to school our bag is quite large. Then our teachers have their say: “Good children don't get angry over such little things.” So we take our anger and put it in the bag. By the time my brother and I were twelve in Madison, Minnesota, we were known as “the nice Bly boys”. Our bags were already a mile long.
All of us are dragging a bag of shadows behind us. Being a girl, I put in my bag things like my sexuality, my aggression, and the tidlike ebbs and flows of my emotions. My mother told me girls weren't supposed to be sexual beings; my father expected that women should be sweet and yielding; and the culture maintained that women's moods were way too fickle to be trusted. All that went in the bag. “We spend our life until we're twenty deciding what parts of ourself to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again,” writes Bly. Shadow-work is getting those parts out of the bag in such a way that we heal ourselves and our relationships without causing more harm.
There is a great meditation now with Julie Zipper over at Soulgarden.tv (see this date - “Leo Chapter 1” for July 30, 2009. Just listening to it, caused a wave of sadness to come over me. It is about creating a dwelling place within for our inner child and then, inviting that child in and asking it questions. Then, I went out on my hike and did that. The dwelling is so very beautiful, and I will add here that it is so safe and secure, that I marvel at both of those aspects. My inner child told me her name. It was quite a surprise, for I would never have chosen that name, but I like it. She is much like I was at about age 5 or younger.
When I was in Chicago for Celebrate Your Life, at the end of the workshop with Cheryl Richardson, I had an “accidental” opportunity to meet Debbie Ford for whom the Shadow is a heartfelt subject. So much so that she has a new dvd just out called The Shadow Effect (A Journey from Your Darkest Thought to Your Greatest Dream) that includes Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, James Van Praagh and Mark Victor Hansen. I recently received this by ordering through the website. Mine says it is a Special Interactive Edition, which is supposed to facilitate doing some of the processes and they have a Shadow Starter Kit, you can receive, there at the website link.
When I met Debbie Ford, one of her integrative coachs was talking to her. I ended up having an extended conversation with her, including the possibility that I might do work with her someday, though I felt I needed to address other issues first. Shadow Work came to my awareness early in my days at Zaadz when a group that included Peggy J were interested in it but I just wasn't able to go there - then. Christy Lee (the integrative coach - christy@whispersofyoursoul.com) recommended highly to me that I get Debbie Ford's book The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, which I did but have not started on yet.
There is “work”, that it has come to me in inspiration, that I am to do. I have already begun the “research” portion of doing that work and I am certain that Shadow Work is going to come into my life in a definite way - sooner, rather than later.
So, you can expect to hear more from me, about this subject, as I delve into it.
Deb
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