More about shadow

This election season has been more intense than any I have experienced. I just had a long phone conversation about it. I didn't mean in my first post to omit all the other shadow areas - and not just in our national politics. It is pervasive. I just learned that there was a Hilary Clinton nutcracker that was clearly sexist and anti-woman, even carried in what we think of a "respectable" stores until patrons protested. It comes in subtler ways as well. This is also shadow material. And the anger, fear and rage that have not been acknowledged and expressed are part of the shadow material. It doesn't help to vilify anyone.

The only way beyond is to acknowledge, at the very least to our own selves, what we feel and and what we fear.

There are a number of ways I have been working with my own shadow. Conversation helps. I remember Danaan Parry, who worked with people in Ireland when there was internal warfare. One of the things he did was to bring Catholic and Protestants together, have women and men talk as separate groups, and then all come together to share their experiences and feelings about being a woman or being a man.

For my own personal work there was therapy, which brought up and released childhood hurts (some of them quite serious) that I had not acknowledged or healed. Shamanic healing went further and helped me to be aware and release more from this lifetime and past lives. Flower Essences have been and continue to help me to understand myself and become more balanced and stable on all levels. Most recently I have used Holosync from Centerpointe. This rests on work from Prigogine, feeding slightly different frequencies into each ear. This causes new neural pathways to be built into the brain, and in the process increases the ability to handle stress.

Because it has been so powerful for me, I continue to work with clients using the shamanic/energetic healing, flower essences and conversations.

I invite you to the conversation.

Healing the Shadow

It is clear to those who know and work with "shadow" issues that Barack Obama has brought up the shadow material for many people in the United States. What is shadow material? That which has been denied, pushed into the dark recesses of the mind and heart.

So, when I recently "got it" on a deeper level, it wasn't really a surprise. Essentially, in this country, we have projected a lot of fear and anger onto people of color. Barack Obama is now very prominent in the national psyche, and therefore heightens these issues.

What happened for me was a series of emails, sent originally by an acquaintance who I would not have thought would be so vitriolic. As the emails went back and forth between a number of people, some were nearly hate mail, and some seemed for more sane and heart centered.

I found it quite interesting at the same time I really did not enjoy the enmity. My first reaction was to use logic. For example, some said Obama was born in Kenya, not in the U.S., and therefore would be ineligible for the office of President. I suggested that if this was actually true, then it surely would have been highly newsworthy and would have appeared on all TV channels by now. And I also thought the Democratic Party surely vets its candidate for President quite thoroughly. Alas, this logic only made it worse!

There are other things being said - words such as terrorist, fraud, and thuggery - that I do not understand. The man I see in Barack Obama is thoughtful and intelligent in words and deeds; and persistent certainly. Some have said "statesmanlike."

As I thought about it, I got a glimpse of a long time sickness in our beautiful country. It is coming to a head. We are now facing our shadow - our shadow as a nation born of slavery and oppression.

And then I felt the weight of this on all people of color here in the States. And then of the caste system, and the various shades of skin all over the globe. There may be places where this is not an issue, but I wouldn't bet on it.

We (and I mean personally and collectively) must face our fears: personal, political, and global. I pray we begin today. I hope we each vote for the person we believe in, and let go of our fears and angers.