Post by keltickelton on Nov 4, 2006 22:32:40 GMT -5
I'll bet most people steer away from this one, without giving it much thought! Oh, Goddess! Anything but look at my shadow! It's already an unconscious thought and decision before even considering the topic consciously!
This seems like a difficult topic to approach and this is the culmination of various energies and thoughts that came together in a creative moment, and I took my best first stab at it.
What is the shadow? It's you! It's the part of you and me that we stuffed into denial. It's a cultural phenomena and no one escapes dealing with it, but everybody seems to try. Denial = Shadow. We live in the land of denial, and are accustomed to hiding half the world, half of reality, half of ourselves from ourselves as a way of life!
A mother in a mall tells her son to pick a balloon and he picks the pink one. His mother puts it back and says it's a sissy color and has him pick another one. The little boy most likely takes the part of him that instinctively chose pink and stuffs it into the shadow. A child speaks what one of the adults is thinking, and the adults get angry toward the child. Boom! The natural telepathic ability of the child, gets, for the most part, stuffed into the shadow. A little boy is finger painting in the kitchen. His mom gets distracted by a phone call and chats with a friend. When she finally turns attention back to the boy, he has felt the divine flow of inspiration and has painted the kitchen wall with his creativity. The mom yells at the little boy, like he had just killed someone in the family, and screams for him to never do it again. Boom! The divine flow of creativity gets stuffed into the shadow, because it's too dangerous for survival. When you're really small, pleasing and displeasing mom can equate with survival. The over reaction of the mom, guilt over not supervising him, anger at herself, all gets dramatically dumped on the boy. The Shadow of the mom, teaching the boy to use the shadow.
How do we break the cycle? Only by facing our own shadow. Facing something that has been labeled dangerous to survival, and connected with our primal survival instinct, is scary. We're not likely to do so unless we really intend to.
We all have a shadow, most of us don't want to even acknowledge it, because our ego is whispering all the time, and shouting when necessary, "Don't go there! You'll die!" We're not conscious of the information, or that ego is speaking with us. We're trained to believe that we are our ego, and not that it's just one of our tools. It's suitable for keeping us from walking off a cliff when we're spaced out. It's not suitable for putting on the throne and making it ruler of our lives.
Facing one's shadow can be as scary as facing death! It's what we all need to do most, and what none of us wants to do. Sometimes we have to loose someone close, go through a near death experience, or some other experience where fate hits us hard, before we're willing to face it.
Hard fate can be avoided by facing the facts and dealing with them as they come up. But we're trained from a young age, not to. Saturn gets us sooner or later, when we refuse to learn.
When I discovered "the shadow" it was through the men's movement, and a speech from Robert Bly about the Shadow. When I recognized how it was described and how it worked, I made a conscious decision to explore my own shadow. As entrenched as the shadow is in our culture, I think it takes a conscious, courageous decision and commitment, to deal with the shadow.
I don't think we can be truly pagan or truly anything, without taking on the shadow consciously and dealing with it. Is it that basic? (Ha ha! "What shadow?!")
I know a man in Germany who's occupation was "Rich son." He got a video camera back when they were new and expensive. One day he discovered that he had left it running while he moped around and did his non-thing all day. He sat down and watched it! It changed his life! He saw himself! He immediately responded by making a decision to do something with his life!
I think cam corders and mirrors are excellent tools. Especially if you think you can't afford to get professional help to see the part of yourself that you are habitually NOT looking at. Professionals in various occupations use them all the time and have to watch themselves beyond getting sick of it, to evaluate their performances and catch the shadow.
Notice there is no judgement of denial here. When you are young and indeed helpless, denial is a marvelous tool of survival. It could be seen as a brilliant piece of art created to save the day! The problem is, that it's set into place closely connected to basic survival instinct. And once set there, it is challenging to break it down and rebuild it. And because it worked so well, we cling to it, like our life depends on it, instead of simply putting it back into our "bag of tricks" and enjoying the fun of coming up with new ones.
The true self within, longing and striving to express itself. It's at odds with "the Shadow", all the things that "are not supposed to be" according to the rules of living we have allowed ourselves to be yoked with, that inhibit the expression of who we really are. The inner "Book of Laws" is mostly in the shadow. Some of this yoke of rules may still have it's place. But some of it is totally misinformed, based on a mistake, and making things difficult for us every day, working against our best interests, because we forgot we wrote it in our book of laws and that it's still in effect. Much of the book of laws is written on a whim or a mood of the "authority figure" (parent, guardian, teacher, etc.) of the moment, reacting perhaps to their own identity crisis. This book of laws is directing us constantly not only in how we act, or resist acting, but also how we perceive the environment and reality.
The spirit is longing to creatively express itself in life. And the outer persona, the vehicle and interface through which the spirit can express itself and interact with the world, is busy trying to please everybody and stay out of trouble.
How do I catch myself? Casteneda called it the "art of stalking." Imagine that you are a hunter and your "true self" is the prey. Imagine yourself a private detective hired to spy on yourself. It's routine, mundane work for the most part. Imagine yourself an alien scientist sent here to study human behavior. Watch yourself like you never saw yourself before. What are the things that you habitually do and don't notice? What are the things that constantly upset you? Can you look at that upset ness like a curious enthusiastic scientist and say, "Aha! What's going on here? Let's examine this!" It requires inspecting and examining everything from a different perspective. Things that regularly irritate or upset us are wonderful clues! They are clues to "the Shadow." We are easily upset when we see something in someone else that we have judged as wrong in ourselves or don't like about ourselves, but tend to project them outward on someone else rather than own them and as Nightshade Star said, "embrace" them as a disowned part of ourselves. Like a child that we banned from our presence a long time ago, and now it will do anything to get our attention again and ask why it's been labeled "bad." In the end, you can walk up to the jerk, and instead of being angry at him, shake his hand and say, "Thank you for incarnating my problem for me!"
I can also suggest measures to counter the false programming. What has helped me immensely is following and practicing The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I've been practicing them for a little over a year, and they keep taking me to deeper levels of understanding how I function.
Like a lady witch friend says, "Only after the big cancer scare and the subsequent recovery time, did I really start to face myself. It's scary everyday. Some days I'm braver than others days and face more hard truths. Those are the nights that I go to bed a little more proud of myself." Agreement No. 4 is "Do the best you can." And that will be different on any given day. And it's an ongoing challenge. The tricky part is that it is always near you. Figuratively, it is right behind you where you can't see it. It is any part of you that you have "stuffed" into denial in order to survive. And a certain part, a function of you that is connected with basic survival instinct is busy keeping everything that's been placed in "the Taboo bag" hidden from your conscious awareness with intelligence and creativity.
A simple but effective exercise is working with the mirror. I think most people tend to dismiss this one, too, because it's so simple and because it has to do with personal truth. I go and look into my mirror and look myself directly in the eyes. I say, "Kelton, I love you and I accept you, just the way you are. And I trust you to make the right choices." Should I repeat it? It's that simple. But I challenge you to do it once, let alone every day, at least once, for 21 days. It takes about that long to change a habit, with a new one. Once you get used to working with a mirror you can go deeper and see faces from different life times and all kinds of magickal stuff. But who wants to be honest with themselves?
When I asked my healer friend, Peter in Germany, "How do I see my own blind spots?" He suggested that I pay good attention to what I advise others, as it's probably what I need to hear.
Get a cam-corder and record yourself doing everyday things. Do the mirror exercise I described above. Keeping a journal is an excellent suggestion from a friend. With a journal you can look back and follow your progress in tracking the shadow. Enlist professional help if you can. Most of all, it's a commitment and a decision. Decide to "catch" yourself. You can make the deepest commitment you've ever made and make it to your true self. Commitment is very powerful, and once it's made the universe begins to open doors of opportunity.
If you want to discover personal power, the big secret is that's it's hidden in the shadow. It didn't go anywhere, you just stuffed it in the bag that you've been carrying on your back, and making your load heavier, while you have successfully convinced yourself that you're not carrying a bag at all! When facing things that scared me shit less, my response afterwards was, "Duh!" slapping forehead with open palm, "Why didn't I do this a long time ago?!" Only because I let my ego tell me I would die?
In my own exploration of the shadow, I have discovered amazing treasures that were hidden there! In my own view in the meantime, how can anyone have a serious personal practice, without determining to explore the shadow? And I'm learning to take a playful approach and even have fun with it.
Crone Priceless says, "Catching yourself is the most fun you'll ever have!"[/font]
This seems like a difficult topic to approach and this is the culmination of various energies and thoughts that came together in a creative moment, and I took my best first stab at it.
What is the shadow? It's you! It's the part of you and me that we stuffed into denial. It's a cultural phenomena and no one escapes dealing with it, but everybody seems to try. Denial = Shadow. We live in the land of denial, and are accustomed to hiding half the world, half of reality, half of ourselves from ourselves as a way of life!
A mother in a mall tells her son to pick a balloon and he picks the pink one. His mother puts it back and says it's a sissy color and has him pick another one. The little boy most likely takes the part of him that instinctively chose pink and stuffs it into the shadow. A child speaks what one of the adults is thinking, and the adults get angry toward the child. Boom! The natural telepathic ability of the child, gets, for the most part, stuffed into the shadow. A little boy is finger painting in the kitchen. His mom gets distracted by a phone call and chats with a friend. When she finally turns attention back to the boy, he has felt the divine flow of inspiration and has painted the kitchen wall with his creativity. The mom yells at the little boy, like he had just killed someone in the family, and screams for him to never do it again. Boom! The divine flow of creativity gets stuffed into the shadow, because it's too dangerous for survival. When you're really small, pleasing and displeasing mom can equate with survival. The over reaction of the mom, guilt over not supervising him, anger at herself, all gets dramatically dumped on the boy. The Shadow of the mom, teaching the boy to use the shadow.
How do we break the cycle? Only by facing our own shadow. Facing something that has been labeled dangerous to survival, and connected with our primal survival instinct, is scary. We're not likely to do so unless we really intend to.
We all have a shadow, most of us don't want to even acknowledge it, because our ego is whispering all the time, and shouting when necessary, "Don't go there! You'll die!" We're not conscious of the information, or that ego is speaking with us. We're trained to believe that we are our ego, and not that it's just one of our tools. It's suitable for keeping us from walking off a cliff when we're spaced out. It's not suitable for putting on the throne and making it ruler of our lives.
Facing one's shadow can be as scary as facing death! It's what we all need to do most, and what none of us wants to do. Sometimes we have to loose someone close, go through a near death experience, or some other experience where fate hits us hard, before we're willing to face it.
Hard fate can be avoided by facing the facts and dealing with them as they come up. But we're trained from a young age, not to. Saturn gets us sooner or later, when we refuse to learn.
When I discovered "the shadow" it was through the men's movement, and a speech from Robert Bly about the Shadow. When I recognized how it was described and how it worked, I made a conscious decision to explore my own shadow. As entrenched as the shadow is in our culture, I think it takes a conscious, courageous decision and commitment, to deal with the shadow.
I don't think we can be truly pagan or truly anything, without taking on the shadow consciously and dealing with it. Is it that basic? (Ha ha! "What shadow?!")
I know a man in Germany who's occupation was "Rich son." He got a video camera back when they were new and expensive. One day he discovered that he had left it running while he moped around and did his non-thing all day. He sat down and watched it! It changed his life! He saw himself! He immediately responded by making a decision to do something with his life!
I think cam corders and mirrors are excellent tools. Especially if you think you can't afford to get professional help to see the part of yourself that you are habitually NOT looking at. Professionals in various occupations use them all the time and have to watch themselves beyond getting sick of it, to evaluate their performances and catch the shadow.
Notice there is no judgement of denial here. When you are young and indeed helpless, denial is a marvelous tool of survival. It could be seen as a brilliant piece of art created to save the day! The problem is, that it's set into place closely connected to basic survival instinct. And once set there, it is challenging to break it down and rebuild it. And because it worked so well, we cling to it, like our life depends on it, instead of simply putting it back into our "bag of tricks" and enjoying the fun of coming up with new ones.
The true self within, longing and striving to express itself. It's at odds with "the Shadow", all the things that "are not supposed to be" according to the rules of living we have allowed ourselves to be yoked with, that inhibit the expression of who we really are. The inner "Book of Laws" is mostly in the shadow. Some of this yoke of rules may still have it's place. But some of it is totally misinformed, based on a mistake, and making things difficult for us every day, working against our best interests, because we forgot we wrote it in our book of laws and that it's still in effect. Much of the book of laws is written on a whim or a mood of the "authority figure" (parent, guardian, teacher, etc.) of the moment, reacting perhaps to their own identity crisis. This book of laws is directing us constantly not only in how we act, or resist acting, but also how we perceive the environment and reality.
The spirit is longing to creatively express itself in life. And the outer persona, the vehicle and interface through which the spirit can express itself and interact with the world, is busy trying to please everybody and stay out of trouble.
How do I catch myself? Casteneda called it the "art of stalking." Imagine that you are a hunter and your "true self" is the prey. Imagine yourself a private detective hired to spy on yourself. It's routine, mundane work for the most part. Imagine yourself an alien scientist sent here to study human behavior. Watch yourself like you never saw yourself before. What are the things that you habitually do and don't notice? What are the things that constantly upset you? Can you look at that upset ness like a curious enthusiastic scientist and say, "Aha! What's going on here? Let's examine this!" It requires inspecting and examining everything from a different perspective. Things that regularly irritate or upset us are wonderful clues! They are clues to "the Shadow." We are easily upset when we see something in someone else that we have judged as wrong in ourselves or don't like about ourselves, but tend to project them outward on someone else rather than own them and as Nightshade Star said, "embrace" them as a disowned part of ourselves. Like a child that we banned from our presence a long time ago, and now it will do anything to get our attention again and ask why it's been labeled "bad." In the end, you can walk up to the jerk, and instead of being angry at him, shake his hand and say, "Thank you for incarnating my problem for me!"
I can also suggest measures to counter the false programming. What has helped me immensely is following and practicing The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I've been practicing them for a little over a year, and they keep taking me to deeper levels of understanding how I function.
Like a lady witch friend says, "Only after the big cancer scare and the subsequent recovery time, did I really start to face myself. It's scary everyday. Some days I'm braver than others days and face more hard truths. Those are the nights that I go to bed a little more proud of myself." Agreement No. 4 is "Do the best you can." And that will be different on any given day. And it's an ongoing challenge. The tricky part is that it is always near you. Figuratively, it is right behind you where you can't see it. It is any part of you that you have "stuffed" into denial in order to survive. And a certain part, a function of you that is connected with basic survival instinct is busy keeping everything that's been placed in "the Taboo bag" hidden from your conscious awareness with intelligence and creativity.
A simple but effective exercise is working with the mirror. I think most people tend to dismiss this one, too, because it's so simple and because it has to do with personal truth. I go and look into my mirror and look myself directly in the eyes. I say, "Kelton, I love you and I accept you, just the way you are. And I trust you to make the right choices." Should I repeat it? It's that simple. But I challenge you to do it once, let alone every day, at least once, for 21 days. It takes about that long to change a habit, with a new one. Once you get used to working with a mirror you can go deeper and see faces from different life times and all kinds of magickal stuff. But who wants to be honest with themselves?
When I asked my healer friend, Peter in Germany, "How do I see my own blind spots?" He suggested that I pay good attention to what I advise others, as it's probably what I need to hear.
Get a cam-corder and record yourself doing everyday things. Do the mirror exercise I described above. Keeping a journal is an excellent suggestion from a friend. With a journal you can look back and follow your progress in tracking the shadow. Enlist professional help if you can. Most of all, it's a commitment and a decision. Decide to "catch" yourself. You can make the deepest commitment you've ever made and make it to your true self. Commitment is very powerful, and once it's made the universe begins to open doors of opportunity.
If you want to discover personal power, the big secret is that's it's hidden in the shadow. It didn't go anywhere, you just stuffed it in the bag that you've been carrying on your back, and making your load heavier, while you have successfully convinced yourself that you're not carrying a bag at all! When facing things that scared me shit less, my response afterwards was, "Duh!" slapping forehead with open palm, "Why didn't I do this a long time ago?!" Only because I let my ego tell me I would die?
In my own exploration of the shadow, I have discovered amazing treasures that were hidden there! In my own view in the meantime, how can anyone have a serious personal practice, without determining to explore the shadow? And I'm learning to take a playful approach and even have fun with it.
Crone Priceless says, "Catching yourself is the most fun you'll ever have!"[/font]