A few weeks ago my friend Pam and I went to Santa Fe to visit a used bookstore. Driving into Santa Fe I noticed a new healing center named, not surprisingly, “Love & Light.” After seeing their sign, I told Pam if I ever open a healing center I want to name it either “Get Real” or “Get Over Your Bliss.”
Yes, I was being a bit snarky. But what is up with our ongoing obsession with light?
The word “light” is everywhere – staying in the light, lightworkers, bringing in the light, ad nauseam. Over the ten years that Pam and I have worked together I’ve lost count of how many healers and clients I’ve encountered who “only work with the light.”
I understand the attraction. So much of what we see in the world around us is shadow: war, hunger, school shootings, displaced and broken families, etc. In response we’ve become enamored with the light. But what if the darkness we see in the world is a manifestation of our personal and collective shadow?
We live on a dualistic planet. Even in nature, this polarity is inherent: day/night, summer/winter. Everything here, human beings included, has at least two interdependent sides. Even our physical senses operate on the principle of duality. We know what cold is because we’ve experienced hot.
Rather than living with these dualistic pairs as little paradoxes, we split them. We judge them and set them in opposition to each other. The most enduring and damaging example of this is the polarity around good vs. evil and light vs. shadow. We equate light with good and dark or shadow with evil. We humans have pondered the good and evil paradox for as long as our species has existed. Many of us continue to turn to religion or some other external authority to define good and evil for us.
Isn’t our ongoing obsession with light just a New Age way of reinforcing the same old duality?
Along with our light obsession we’re talking a lot about wholeness. Wholeness is inclusion, not derision. Wholeness means having it all: joy, fear, day, and night, light and dark. Wholeness includes the principle of balance. When we cling to light while talking about wholeness, we put ourselves at cross-purposes. Our obsession with light is way out of balance.
Both complete darkness and pure light are equally blinding. Just as day and night serve each other, so do darkness and light. Even our ability to see the world around us is dependent on the interplay of light and shadow.
We each carry a capacity for love equal to our capacity for fear. Love and fear are interdependent, like day and night. When we keep turning to the light because we want more of it, we push the shadow away. Cutting off shadow equally restricts our capacity for light. The way to more light is through the shadows.
Many people associate personal shadow with “all the things I don’t like about myself”, i.e., shortcomings and flaws. That’s only half the story. Shadow is comprised of disowned parts of self. Many of us are just as quick, if not quicker, to disown our strengths as we are to push away our flaws.
If that doesn’t make sense, think about how you respond to being complimented. Do you say “thank you”? Do you deny or refute what’s being said? Do you both try to both deny and accept by saying “thank you, but…”?
Your response to compliments is a simple way to gauge your relationship with your shadow. Pushing a compliment away can be a largely unconscious reflex. When you deny a compliment you: a) disown the strength the other person is reflecting back to you and push it into your shadow, b)disown your ability to receive and c) deny the other persons experience of seeing something s/he liked in you.
Whether or not you agree with what’s being said is irrelevant. A compliment comes from another person’s experience with and perception of you. It belongs the other person, not to you. It’s not yours to deny. Being complimented is an exercise in receiving.
The reasons why we disown our strengths can be complex. You may believe that denying your strengths prevents you from being boastful and keeps you out of ego. You may be holding some fear around what others might think if own your strength. You might be afraid of the responsibility that comes with claiming your strength.
Regardless of the reason, denying your strengths is a movement away from wholeness…and authenticity. Authenticity asks us to be who we are. That includes claiming our strengths.
Far from being a black hole, your shadow is your personal gold mine. Your shadow contains reservoir of power and creativity that can be accessed by forming a conscious relationship with it. In its unconscious state, the shadow is both a harsh critic and a vehicle of self-sabotage.
The energy you put in to rejecting your shadow actually feeds it. If you give your shadow enough energy, it can take on a life of its own. A disconnected shadow often manifests as explosions of emotion and behavior that can feel like you’ve been taken over by an external force.
Your shadow is part of who you are. You can’t remove it. You can’t completely hide or disguise it any more than you can hide the way you smile or the color of your eyes. If you don’t relate to your shadow directly, it will come out sideways.
Your shadow is also your greatest resource for growth. If you want to sprout a seed, you don’t put on the sunniest window sill in the house. You bury it in the dirt. The seed germinates in darkness with the sun doing its part from the outside. We human beings are also born from shadow. We spend nine months in the darkness of the womb before emerging into a world that includes light.
That fecund darkness is still there, waiting to be used. The true source of the light so many of us are enamored with is the darkness. As Jung said "One does not become enlighted by imaging figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."
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