“In the end the Shadow was only a small passing thing: there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.” ~ Tolkien
‘Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens’ ~ Carl Jung
Our wounded self is our dark or shadow side, not because it is bad but because it is cut off from the light of God. It lives in the darkness of fear and the heaviness of false beliefs instead of in the light of love and truth. Moving toward “enlightenment” is moving into the light of truth. When we heal our fears and false beliefs, our energy lightens. We may even hear from others, “You seem so much lighter!”
Doorways to Darkness
Just as the light of God enters our hearts when we choose to open to love, the darkness enters when we choose to close our hearts and act from anger, fear, shame, judgment or hurt.
Our anger, fear, shame, judgment and hurt are the cracks in our energy field through which the darkness enters. The darkness can also enter when we cloud our energy with drugs, alcohol, nicotine or sugar.
The Shadow, the Inner Child
Becoming immune to darkness means never acting out of the wounded self’s feelings of fear, anger, shame, judgment or hurt but always moving into intent to learn about these feelings. Through purifying ourselves on the physical and emotional levels by eating well and doing our healing work on our journey of self transformation, through our inner alchemy as we become SOLID GOLD , we can hear our spiritual guidance and connect with our sacred self. Being in conscious connection (and dialogue) with both our sacred self, Inner Child and shadow self is one of the goals of Shadow Dancing. We begin to heal the cracks through which the darkness enters, and we shine the light of truth into the wounded self’s fears and false beliefs, our Dragons.
When we feel hurt, angry, judgemental, shamed, blaming, depressed or frightened, our dialogues are with the wounded aspect of our Inner Child since the Inner Child is our feeling self. These painful feelings come from our own unloving behaviour toward ourselves. However, when you have been operating most of the time from the wounded aspect of your inner child, you cannot suddenly become a loving Adult in order to do the dialogue process. We cannot bring light to darkness with darkness. In other words, we can’t heal our darkness by being furious at it. We can transform darkness into light only by learning about and loving the darkness.
We heal darkness only with light the light of love. Our challenge is to love the part of us that we judge as bad, unlovable or unworthy, and it’s a challenge that calls for the loving Adult