Many of us have realized that we are here to "do healing." Healing means "making whole," and it's become common wisdom that the only REAL healing you can do is healing YOURSELF. That means that what we're doing when we heal is "making ourselves whole," which implies that we are currently in a fragmented or "separated" state.
If you think of yourself as being fragmented or separated into two basic "halves," one half is the "you that you know yourself to be" (your identity or self-concept), and the other is "your shadow" (everything you're quite certain you AREN'T). For most of us it is very difficult to imagine that somehow we "are" everything we know we aren't. Our current, well-established belief of who we are naturally makes it difficult for us to imagine "being" something else at the same time, especially something as vague and ominous as "everything we aren't."
To help clarify the discussion, we'll distinguish your "self" (small 's') as your conscious, everyday identity, your self-concept, who you think you are when you're in a "normal" state of mind. We will call this your "ego." We'll use the term "Greater Self" (capital 'S') or "True Self" to refer to the "whole" or healed you that includes both your ego AND your shadow (everything your ego thinks you aren't).
Whatever else you say about emotions and feelings, you have to admit that you just "wouldn't be your self" (little 's') without your own, familiar feelings. That's why we think we're going crazy or becoming "possessed" when unfamiliar or "out of character" emotions or reactions show up in our lives. However, there is another, more positive way to look at these disturbing occurrences. Remember that anything that feels like it isn't "you" must be a part of your shadow, and when parts of your shadow start to show up in your "self's" experience, this is HEALING. This is because healing is "making whole," and it is your shadow and your ego self that come together to make your whole/healed Greater Self.
This also points out a very reliable way to recognize our shadow when it comes knocking: in "feeling" terms, our shadow is anything and everything that we reject, deny, disdain, fear, hate, recoil from, and just want it very much to go away and leave us alone. This is very important, because if you were raised like I was (on Earth, 20th century AD), you were very emphatically taught that you should never, ever play with your shadow. When we were little and had smaller vocabularies, our shadow was just called "bad." Now that we're grown up, we use words like "wrong," "obnoxious," and "evil."
People who are very different from us tend to make us uncomfortable. For example, if you think you are a "nice" or "considerate" person, then it's the loudest, nastiest, most obnoxious brute that you will feel most repelled by. Clearly, if our ego identifies with niceness and considerateness, then nastiness and obnoxiousness must be part of our shadow, where we can safely label it as "not us."
What feelings do you have when some obnoxious brute yells obscenities at you? Fear? Anger? Disdain? Do you very much want the whole situation to just go away and leave you alone? If you answered "yes" to any of these questions, Congratulations, you've just successfully recognized and distinguished a part of your shadow. The shadow part is whatever qualities and behaviours you perceived that provoked your uncomfortable reaction.
This is why relationships are often referred to as "mirrors:" we tend to see in OTHER people all of the qualities and characteristics that comprise OUR OWN shadow; that is, everything that we think is "not us." Relationships do not mirror our ego back to us; rather, they mirror back our shadow, the other, unacknowledged half of our Greater Self. You might think you'd prefer to have it the other way around, but remember that we're here to do our own healing. The mirror of relationship, along with the guidance of our uncomfortable feelings, provides us with the ability to see and recognize our shadow, which is a necessary prelude to healing it. No, it isn't comfortable, but if it was, it wouldn't be part of your shadow. If you were told that this healing thing was going to be all fun and no work, then you should definitely go ask for a refund, right now! ... read more ...
