Embracing and engaging with our shadow, that darker aspect of our nature that has been the subject of much debate and discussion in psychological and spiritual circles, has always intrigued me, no less than now, as it is frequently an issue floating through my mind these days.
I seem to be increasingly aware of my weaknesses, of which there are so many, and those darker unpleasant features of my personality which may manifest as selfishness, anger, control and manipulation, prejudice, intolerance, envy and so on.
When I’m having a bad day, the seven deadly sins appear to have been bestowed upon me in abundance and I may well have invented one or two extra ones that even Satan himself hadn’t considered viable. In my catholic boyhood I gave many a priest a real treat when presenting my list of misdemeanours in the confessional. One old cleric even gasped in horror through that “grill of supposed anonymity” separating us in the confessional box, as I related the many awful things I had done in the preceding week, some true, some a little embellished, and one or two from the realms of utter fiction but included for comic effect and the hope that the reverend father would suffer such severe apoplexy upon hearing my evil deeds, that I’d get off with a divine suspended sentence and a few Hail Marys. After all, my boyish mind concluded, if I’m going to hell I may as well do it in style with not a little humour. I also had a lingering problem; if God invented spiders, what was wrong with putting plastic ones in my sister’s bed? After all, aren’t we all God’s children, whether possessing two, four, six or eight legs? And my sister’s subsequent terror at the sight of such creatures was simply her opportunity to confront her shadow. So maybe I was actually helping her though suffice to say she didn’t see it like that!
After an evening lecture on the Human Aura some years ago, a lady approached me to ask me a question. She was a little troubled. She had seen another clairvoyant privately who had informed her rather tactlessly that she had much darkness or “black” in her aura, and she felt she must be a bad person with so much evil lurking deep inside her. “I must be a terrible woman,” she said in a very anxious tone. I reassured her, telling her that everyone has patches of darkness in their auric field. We all have in our past pain, sadness, things we regret doing and saying, either in this life or an earlier one. Without this we couldn’t understand the darkness and pain in another, since we would have no reference point in us for it to register and resonant with. Furthermore, she was a therapist and healer, and it is essential that to be able to work with the pain, suffering and inadequacies of others we must have this experience in our own palette of memories, some of which will probably still be active in our attitudes and behaviour at times. We all have dark moments which we later regret indulging and feeding. And, whether we like it or not, we are therapists and healers because we need to be, first and foremost: we need to explore the darkness and unpleasantness in ourselves as we assist others to do the same. They are bringing to us our life mirrors to look into with them. Healers and therapists do often wonderful compassionate work, but largely for themselves and their own growth. The darkness the patient brings to us is primarily a gift to help us while we reach for the lightness in us, healing ourselves as we assist our patients in their own healing journey.
In these “me” times there is much evidence of the darkness in our world as many individuals often seem to be very self-centred and self-obsessed, arrogant and unkind. This is a downside of the “Love Yourself” mantra of much of the new age stuff which, if inappropriately emphasised and overdone, can lead to ego fuelling of the most selfish and destructive kind. I have observed such patterns often in apparently well-meaning and supposedly liberated individuals where what is termed self-love becomes an excuse for selfishness. Yet there is also so much light around, so much beauty available to us and in us, waiting to be acknowledged and permitted to work its healing magic and set us truly free. The light is stimulated deep inside when we seek to recognise the generous, loving and unconditional nature of our true self and give it voice – and opportunity for creative expression and action. This includes the dark bits. When we approach them in love, they help to heal us too. In one sense, dark bits are only light we don’t understand yet. If we truly embrace ourselves, mind, body and soul as one, and bring love to the darkness, it will then enlighten us. Thus we realise our shadow is a valuable messenger we have created over time which simply seeks our awakening so we may “be” love rather than “give” it: “be” light instead of having to “summon” it from somewhere outside.
It is not really light against darkness we face, but light pretending to be darkness whose true messages usher us back to realise our innate, long hidden splendour. Light brings understanding, love and a wonderful awareness of belonging to life and all that we perceive as goodness. It really opens our hearts. In this time of rapid and profound change and growth, it is inevitable that our shadowy dark bits of light are increasingly active. We all need to learn, grow and open increasingly to the new possibilities before us, and this requires much understanding, many lessons learned and often some radical letting go. Helping us in this task is a service that is right up the street of our friend the shadowy dark bits. After all the name of the much demonised Lucifer of course means light, so maybe the devil was working for God all along!
Often I remark how much more beautiful most of the light in the Human Aura appears when compared to those qualities the individual usually reveals in their demeanour and behaviour, attitudes and thinking. The higher bodies of our auras show that we all have in us brilliant, remarkable qualities, qualities that we hardly ever allow to flower in our outer lives. As the Nelson Mandela inauguration speech exclaimed, perhaps it is our light we fear, not our darkness. Perhaps we are afraid to be enlightened. We are often afraid to be too loving, kind, generous and wonderful in case it is viewed by others as weakness, not cool and so makes us vulnerable. But if we have courage, daring to befriend and engage our dark, shadowy bits with childlike loving hearts, then we can transform our lives, healing ourselves and our world, and our auras glow with a sublime radiance. Loving and recognising our shadow as a friend and valuable teacher, who, gradually, is awaking us to our true inner beauty, sets us on the path to a glorious luminance, a true light in the world.
It’s not at all easy, as I know rather too well, but it’s worth the effort. Be loving, kind, selfless, powerful and light up your world. I’m trying too!
Anyone want some plastic spiders?
Looking ahead…
One of the challenges of clairvoyant vision is what I sometimes call “the curse of the clairvoyant”. People often think that I know everything and have a clear view of the future as if it is set in stone and unchangeable, which is palpably not true. As one who seeks first and foremost to empower the individual, to help them in discovering the magical ways in which they can change their lives, often miraculously, and distrusts much low level psychism, poor astrology and other forms of divination which, in some hands can be very damaging, I do wrestle with a dilemma. Frequently I am aware of patterns in people that are very likely to happen – I often give them a % of likelihood rating, saying this is 60% likely to occur, that 80% etc.. Sometimes one sees a “dead cert.” that is well on the way to happening or something in an individual’s life that is so important that I know they won’t avoid because at a deeper soul level it is a vital part of their mission or way here on earth, however difficult it may appear. On other occasions it is a “fork in the road” of their lives and their future does depend upon how they exercise their free will. In such circumstances one route may be so much easier or more fulfilling, even quicker than the other alternative. All these options of course “do lead to Rome” as the saying goes, eventually, Rome being a metaphor for enlightenment, but some challenges are avoidable without doubt. It is often stubbornness and fear that take us down the harder way!
I am also asked about the bigger picture. Is the global financial crisis solved, will we avoid nuclear war and so on? Not always easy to answer, sometimes impossibly so, we all have to recognise that life is about learning, growing, becoming wiser. If we don’t learn from some experience or other then it will continue to happen, becoming increasingly difficult with each reoccurrence until we wake up and recognise the message. That is karma or reaping and sowing. It is not a judgement from a vengeful deity but the working of a perfect spiritual law of cause and effect. With this in mind, whilst there is much to cause optimism in our world, there do seem to me many important unlearned lessons for the human family globally that wait in store for us, especially where an old system is past it’s “sell by” date, obsolete and needs to be replaced with something better. Banking, finance, money and excessive materialism and even greed look like candidates to me for more upheaval as few lessons appear to have been learned and a little tinkering at the edges, the sticking plaster approach, is simply not enough. Our world is consumerism mad at times and this must change. So I think more rocky times are ahead for the global economic system in the next few years, unless we all wake up and find the peace in our hearts that will assuage our absurd craving for more and more things and “stuff” for ourselves, irrespective what others may have or need.
I also see that in this emerging age of the team, the group, the community, egocentric individuality will also bite the dust. We have to learn that we neither can nor will do “it” on our own, however independent we may think we are – which is anyway an illusion. Our self-reliance is meant to be employed for the benefit of the group, and we are truly meant to work and live together in families, partnerships, teams. I’m not sure we’ve got that one yet either and I expect significant changes in the coming years concerning that issue.
Never a rampant conspiracy theorist, and always a believer in the essential goodness and vast potential of the human being, I do however see some challenging times ahead for those who seek to keep things as they are. It won’t work from what I see so we have to be courageous, adaptable, and flexible, fuelled by goodwill and increasingly in tune with our inner nature or times could be difficult for some.