It is pretty easy to notice the surface layers of the shadow, the ones that come up in everyday life, projected on my neighbor, political figures and others. But there are also deeper layers to the shadow, layers that reflect deep patterns in our culture and in our biology as human beings, layers that mirrors our core identification as a separate I.

The journey that happened some days ago is an example of an exploration into these deeper layers of the shadow. And as it shook me to the core, it is clearly going deeper than I am familiar with...

In this vision (or journey, or spontaneous active imagination) there was a parade of dark, shadowy and evil characters from many cultures and times, animal like, human like, gigantic, tiny. I found myself on the inside of each of them, living and breathing their life. And this I was not a separate I but the same one transcendent I in each of them, living and breathing their life. It was the I without an Other.

In the very beginning, seeing a dark large male figure in a black desolate landscape, silhouetted against a dark sky, staring out with red eyes like searchlights scanning the landscape, there was fear coming up, because there was still an identification with a separate I. But soon, there was only the one transcendent I, and an absence of Other and of fear. (Fear requires an Other, and in the absence of Other, there is also an absence of fear.)

Of course, even as powerful a shift as this was, it is another drop, another phase into owning more fully deeper layers of the shadow. There is always further to go, more to see and notice, additional layers to own, befriend, embrace, become more intimately familiar with.

Maybe the most surprising part of this was the fear that came up after the journey was over. A fear of speaking about this, or even writing about it anonymously here... Who can understand? Only the few who themselves have gone here. Those who have befriended these deep layers of their own shadow, seeing that this too is Spirit, this too is God.

And as I write this, I am (by coincidence) listening to Misread by Kings of Convenience...

How come no-one told me
All throughout history
The loneliest people
Were the ones who always spoke the truth...

A close reflection of the sober and somber mood I found myself in writing this.

Not that I see this as "truth", it is only how things appears for one individual at one phase of his path. But to speak this provisional truth is one way to find myself as lonely...!

Labels: currently, shadow