Dancing With Our Shadow

THE SHADOW DANCE

She sees her image in the glass, -How fair a thing to gaze upon!She lingers while the moments run,With happy thoughts that come and pass,

Like winds across the meadow grassWhen the young June is just begun:She sees her image in the glass, -How fair a thing to gaze upon!

What wealth of gold the skies amass!How glad are all things 'neath the sun!How true the love her love has won!She recks not that this hour will pass, -She sees her image in the glass.

Louise Chandler Moulton [1835-1908]

"The outer forms of our lives can change in an instant, but the inner reorientation that brings us back into a vital relation to people and activity takes time. " ~ William Bridges

Our dark side contains all the events, stories, and things we wanted to hide about ourselves. Some things on the dark side of ourselves are creative things that we decided did not serve us at some time in our lives so we stacked them in the closet of our dark side. These might be things like being smart if you are a girl. Thinking boys do not like smart girl/women. So you hid the intelligent part of yourself to never show it in front of men or boys. Well, I found a lot of hurtful things too. I found child abuse. I had hidden it away and it was pouring out in my life, jumping out and making me act out without having any control over the hidden emotions.

Many of the ideas hidden there are someone else’s ideas that you took on for yourself. They may not serve you well now. I found it helpful to look for these idea then I could say," Well that was never my idea in the first place so I don't have to think it anymore. Jung said, "To confront a person with his own shadow is to confront him with his own light." I believe that by integrating ourselves both negative and positive we become a whole person. As we allow our holiness to unfold we become more self loving and authentic. Debbie Ford says"The Shadow Process gives us access to loving all of ourselves. This deep and profound work teaches us how to love each and every aspect of our humanity. It enables us to embrace both the darkness of our smallest self and the brilliant light of our highest self. Making peace with our dark side is a sacred journey. It demands rigorous honesty, courage and a great deal of compassion. Embracing our shadow delivers us emotional wholeness and the absolute freedom to be who we are. When we are filled with self-love and self-appreciation, we automatically attract the miraculous experience of love and appreciation from others."

The shadow contains all we judge as unacceptable to show the world all that we judge bad or unacceptable about ourselves. . We expend huge amounts of energy hiding this side of ourselves from the world.. Huge parts of yourself is lost in the shadow side. When we reclaim this part of ourselves dreams are realized. The energy we were using to suppress all of these "unwanted unacceptable parts of yourself. " is made available to you once more. As long as one will not adopt your dark side and claim her, bring her to the light and celebrate her; we are at war with ourselves. We will continue to draw people into our lives that will mirror for us. This is the Universe trying so hard to show us the inner, give us a chance to heal. Haven’t you wondered why some of those angry, depressed people were showing up in your life. Well, they are mirroring for you the dark side of yourself. The Power we once gave away can be reclaimed by loving all of ourselves. Wounds from old situations and experiences heal, we learn from them and go on. Some of the things we thought were a deep flaw became an great asset. Embracing our shadow is self love we then love all of ourselves, not just parts. We will not become perfect. But, we will become all we can be at this time in our lives. It is about revealing to ourselves and the world all our talents and abilities, all our flaws and humanness. It is about being authentic. Being authentic takes so much less energy we have all that energy available to create the kind of person we want to be.