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| Facing My Shadow CC Jean Stimmell: August 2015 |
While meditating, I had a startlingly
real, dream-like vision of being chased by a malevolent presence until rubber-legged
and exhausted, I was able to run no more. To my immense surprise, when I turned
around to face my fate, I found out the dreaded enemy was me, my split-off,
vulnerable, frightened-to-death self, in need of understanding, compassion and love.
My experience is similar to what
happened in a masterful, mythological fantasy written by Ursula Le Guin, I was first exposed to in graduate school 20-years ago: Ursula’s protagonist, Ged, was also being
relentlessly pursued by a fearsome presence, yet when he finally turned to face
the shadow, Ged discovered they were both one:
“Ged took hold of his shadow, of the black self that
reached out to him. Light and darkness met, and joined, and were one.” [1]
Through the voice of Ged’s
friend, Ursula goes on to say: “Ged had
neither lost nor won but, naming the shadow of his death with his own name, had
made himself whole: a man: who, knowing his whole true self, cannot be used or
possessed by any power other than himself…”[2] Ged gained this power because he was no
longer divided against himself; he no longer has to live in fear of being
punished by higher powers who turn out to be, when confronted, only phantom
shadows.
I take this daydream vision,
as well as several of my recent dreams, as a sign that the armor of my ego is softening
and starting to crack open, opening up the possibility of entering a higher
consciousness and a deeper spirituality. But I know full well not to take
anything for granted. Nothing in this world is certain and, in order to allow
my fate to unfold, I must maintain a total commitment to “not knowing.”
As the Jungian analyst, Barbara
Sullivan, wisely says, “We need to find ways to swim in the murky
waters of our lostness rather than getting out of the water to live in
certainty."[3] My goal is to dive ever
deeper in the waters of my emotions, not get out!
I have written a lot about
this in my blog, my journey to descend from the tender-dry, joyless, abstracted
certainty of the thinking mind to immerse myself in the Waters of Life: my
emotions, my body, my sense of place within Mother Earth’s embrace.
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