It's been a while.
Instead, I find myself furiously posting on Facebook in an effort to call out the Emperor's new clothes. It feels like trying to shout into a hurricane.
But it's one of the ways shout anyway.
And part of my shouting out is in doing my own inner work.
In turning towards my own contribution to the harmmaking in the world and doing what i can, being responsible for my part, I become the change agent in my own life and in this way changing what i contribute to the world.
A big part of that is my commitment to shadow work.
I have been doing shadow work for about six years now.
Facing the Minotaur is the biggest body of work i have completed and something i am immensely proud of.
My immersion in shadow work leads me to see the world through the lense of shadow, which is particularly helpful at this time where so much unbelievable destruction and dissension is becoming common place.
In a world where we are now so desensitised by a barrage of bizzare and harmful things that we watch in stunned horror at the Amazonian rainforest and its people being destroyed, the Sonoran desert being irrevocably harmed for a wall that will do nothing, the English economy tank, the American economy be 'ordered" to invent new markets... and that's just this week.
So i look at shadow.
In shadow work we understand that we have a persona or a face we present to the world. This usually, in a effort for us to succeed in the world, to find love and belonging, persona is a mixture of "good" qualities like friendliness, hard working, family oriented, kind, ambitious and a few "bad" qualities greed, selfishness, meanness.
Usually the "good" outweigh the "bad". Usually we think we are pretty good people.
This persona is brittle. It's often easily cracked in defensiveness or stress and through these cracks, the other contents of our being come through. Often these contents are likely to be "bad"; rage, viciousness, destructiveness etc and they come pouring out through the cracks and cause havoc.
Often we blame the "other" for the presence of these "ugly" things - we find ways to quickly disown them, find some scapegoat or some one "less" than us to be the owner of these disgusting traits.
But the truth is we are like the ocean. The surface of the ocean is vast and we can think we see the ocean; we watch it change from glassy smooth to storm whipped waves and we can think we know it. But underneath is a huge and complex ecosystem that contains huge life force. We can't afford to dismiss this in knowing the ocean of self. The leviathans and predators that live there will "get us" if we ignore them and are unwilling to take them into account when we are out swimming around.
We have to understand the hidden and alive aspects of the self and we have to do it in a hurry.
Otherwise we run the risk of not taking responsibility for the things that we can change. We will get drawn into the seductive power of following someone who let's us off the hook by blaming "the other" for our woes. We will be righteous in defense of our own blamelessness and perfection and this, in its most vicious form, gives us permission to destroy.
We have to learn to abandon our defense of persona in favour of understanding our own hidden and harmful characteristics.
We can reclaim our own drive to destruction in order to stop it being expressed outside ourselves.
But we have to do it now.
Stop believing it's all "their" fault.
Start seeing our full selves; the sharklike self and the glorious dolphin - we need to SEA ourselves into responsible action.
Instead, I find myself furiously posting on Facebook in an effort to call out the Emperor's new clothes. It feels like trying to shout into a hurricane.
But it's one of the ways shout anyway.
And part of my shouting out is in doing my own inner work.
In turning towards my own contribution to the harmmaking in the world and doing what i can, being responsible for my part, I become the change agent in my own life and in this way changing what i contribute to the world.
A big part of that is my commitment to shadow work.
I have been doing shadow work for about six years now.
Facing the Minotaur is the biggest body of work i have completed and something i am immensely proud of.
My immersion in shadow work leads me to see the world through the lense of shadow, which is particularly helpful at this time where so much unbelievable destruction and dissension is becoming common place.
In a world where we are now so desensitised by a barrage of bizzare and harmful things that we watch in stunned horror at the Amazonian rainforest and its people being destroyed, the Sonoran desert being irrevocably harmed for a wall that will do nothing, the English economy tank, the American economy be 'ordered" to invent new markets... and that's just this week.
So i look at shadow.
In shadow work we understand that we have a persona or a face we present to the world. This usually, in a effort for us to succeed in the world, to find love and belonging, persona is a mixture of "good" qualities like friendliness, hard working, family oriented, kind, ambitious and a few "bad" qualities greed, selfishness, meanness.
Usually the "good" outweigh the "bad". Usually we think we are pretty good people.
This persona is brittle. It's often easily cracked in defensiveness or stress and through these cracks, the other contents of our being come through. Often these contents are likely to be "bad"; rage, viciousness, destructiveness etc and they come pouring out through the cracks and cause havoc.
Often we blame the "other" for the presence of these "ugly" things - we find ways to quickly disown them, find some scapegoat or some one "less" than us to be the owner of these disgusting traits.
But the truth is we are like the ocean. The surface of the ocean is vast and we can think we see the ocean; we watch it change from glassy smooth to storm whipped waves and we can think we know it. But underneath is a huge and complex ecosystem that contains huge life force. We can't afford to dismiss this in knowing the ocean of self. The leviathans and predators that live there will "get us" if we ignore them and are unwilling to take them into account when we are out swimming around.
We have to understand the hidden and alive aspects of the self and we have to do it in a hurry.
Otherwise we run the risk of not taking responsibility for the things that we can change. We will get drawn into the seductive power of following someone who let's us off the hook by blaming "the other" for our woes. We will be righteous in defense of our own blamelessness and perfection and this, in its most vicious form, gives us permission to destroy.
We have to learn to abandon our defense of persona in favour of understanding our own hidden and harmful characteristics.
We can reclaim our own drive to destruction in order to stop it being expressed outside ourselves.
But we have to do it now.
Stop believing it's all "their" fault.
Start seeing our full selves; the sharklike self and the glorious dolphin - we need to SEA ourselves into responsible action.
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