Tag: shadow

Shadow Dragons in a Crowded Head

“I finally figured out that I’m solitary by nature, but at the same time I know so many people; so many people think they own a piece of me. They shift and move under my skin, like a parade of memories that simply won’t go away. It doesn’t matter where I am, or how alone–I always have such a crowded head.”
― Charles de Lint

At times I feel like a combination of memories and people I know. Their voices and beings rolling around inside of me. They are all myself, as Walt Whitman said “I am large. I contain multitudes” and we all do. Sometimes I believe that we draw people into our lives who express all the different aspects of our being. We can even see which aspects we’ve neglected by the type of people we are currently encountering and how we feel towards them. In my experience, the people who get to me are those who exhibit aspects of myself that I have yet to reconcile. Behaviour that I’ve either balanced or haven’t needed to I can pretty much shrug off. In this way, people who irritate or infuriate me often become my most appreciated teachers as they point the way to those parts of myself I don’t want to face.
Blessings, G

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ProjectionProjection by G A Rosenberg

 

Snakes on a PlaneSnakes on a Plane by G A Rosenberg

Strange Child Dreams

“Don’t start brooding about that, too,” she says. “Everybody’s got a piece of stranger inside them. It’s what lets us surprise ourselves and keeps things interesting.”
— Charles de Lint

 

Stranger Self
Shadow self
Part of me left on the shelf
hidden back on the rack
behind that old paper stack
The part of me I never knew
the part of me I outgrew
so I had thought
so I was taught
tho the Dreamer has come through

 

When I was a kid, there were very few things I was closed off to. At night I would have visions and dreams and speak to all manner of beings. Was it in my imagination? Perhaps tho quite often the dreams would end up coming true in ways that were to surprise me.
Not all the visions were comforting ones. I dreamed my parents divorce way before it happened. Some of the dream beings I would talk to were a bit intimidating. As kids we take it all in and don’t look so much at good and bad, positive and negative as much perhaps as calming and frightening.
Still, at a certain point those visitations went away. Oh I still get some interesting answers tho the channels are not quite as clear as they once were tho clearer than they’ve been in years. Imagine tho how great it would be to open up the way we did when we were kids while keeping the experience, knowledge and wisdom we’ve gained since…
Blessings, G

 

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Shadow PoolShadow Pool by G A Rosenberg

 

Yes One Nears InfinityYes One Nears Infinity by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – January 6 2012

“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
–Carl Jung

 

Who do you trust with your dark side?  I want people to see me at my best and most positive. There are relatively few people I feel safe enough to show my shadow, my ignorance, my dark and negative side. Why? What am I afraid of ? If Jung is right, doesn’t it work in reverse, by showing other’s my darkness, I allow them to encounter their own shadow? My claim up to now is that I don’t wish to offend but in reality isn’t it that I have not yet found the courage to do so? Do I really have that much fear that mommy will slap me for saying the wrong thing?
It seems of late as if I have been given more and more pieces of myself. Not all of them are pretty
Blessings, G

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Page of Swords

Tarot – Page of Swords by G A Rosenberg

All manner of things be Wheel

 

All Manner of Things Be Wheel by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – November 3 2012

“Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
― Milan Kundera

 

To me this  speaks of facing our shadows, the parts of ourselves that we needed when we needed them and still can feel like comfortable old friends even as we’re sure we’re past them. Those parts can easily be the spiritual onlookers watching us rise saying “Jump Jump, come back to us. You know us and we can play the games we played at an earlier time. The vertigo can hit like a wave of nostalgia towards the who we were  even as we realize we can not be that again. Well actually we can, we can play those mental photographs and fix the lessons feeling compassion for who we were and acknowledging it as part of ourselves. The past is ever contained within our beings. The Fool always has his bag with him. But then the time comes to face our future as well. That dynamic between who we were and who we will become is magical indeed and is happening NOW at every instance of our being.
Blessings, G

 

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Tree in a Reality Storm by G A Rosenberg

 

Serpentine Doorway by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 2 2012

“I have learned silence from the talkative, tolerance from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind. I should not be ungrateful to these teachers.”
― Khalil Gibran

Amazing if I have learned these things then I have to ask myself what have I been teaching? Sanity? Wisdom? Patience?. Perhaps I need to keep asking myself this at any given time. What am I teaching by my words and actions. This gets driven home to me quite often when I notice my teenage son emulating behaviours of mine that I don’t even want to admit to. Bits of my shadow self that I still haven’t worked my way through.
Still gratitude of all of these things I find to be paramount. No matter how difficult my life may be, I feel grateful for the challenges that come my way even from those who have been less than kind, less than tolerant, and less than silent. Of course grateful for the good stuff too. Always that
Blessings, G

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In My Sights by G A Rosenberg

Flame War by G A Rosenberg

Back to Freedom and Responsibility

‎”There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

– Carl Jung.

I’ve run from many things in my life. I have avoided a lot more. So very often, I’ve run from seeing parts of myself that I didn’t want to see. It seems I didn’t  run very effectively.  I would run, geographically and consciously into new circumstances that would bring another part of myself that needed to be faced, usually something I had been even more reluctant to deal with. If I decided to stay and deal with that part of my shadow, a feeling of amazing liberation would occur. Then the original thing I had run away from would show up in a new guise so that I would have to deal with it again.
I believe consciousness will out and that one’s shadow can only be suppressed for so long before it emerges.
I feel several themes in this blog seem to be converging and perhaps a more personal approach may be necessary. In the next few weeks, depending on my own high level of distractibility, I will be sharing more about my own experiences of facing and avoiding responsibility and my own shadow.

 

Travel notes. Today we fly back to Vancouver. I find that this trip has been fruitive on many levels. England and Ireland have amazing beauty and my spirit is renewed. Blessings, G

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Knight-Time Watch by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 16 2012

“You may never understand
how the stranger is inspired
but he isn’t always evil
and he is not always wrong”
–Billy Joel, The Stranger

Who is the stranger that Billy refers to in the song? He is our shadow self. The unexpressed side of our being that many of us keep a tight lid on out of fear. What am I so afraid of? I used to ask myself this all the time. Occasionally I would examine my fears. I am afraid that people will see me for who I am and they will reject me? It took me a long time to realize that what I was afraid people would see was that stranger, that shadow side of myself. The side of myself that sometimes disapproved of others or who got angry or demanded attention. I was so afraid that I kept throwing myself into situations where I was forced to either acknowledge those parts of myself or bury them deeper. Far too often I did the latter.
That’s the thing about repressing our shadow side however.The more we repress it; the stronger the shadow becomes and eventually if we don’t acknowledge it, it breaks free around the edges and causes all kinds of potential harm. Where does this fear come from? We all have this hidden side and if we can see it in ourselves then surely we can give others room to show theirs as well. If repressing our shadow makes it stronger, what happens if we bring it into the light?

‎”To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.”
Carl Jung
“Good and Evil in Analytical Psychology” (1959). In CW 10. Civilization in Transition. P.872

Somewhere along the way, after finding myself in situation after situation where i was forced to confront myself both what I showed and what I tried to hide away, I grew tired of trying to force the genie back in the bottle. These days when some new aspect of myselhe pops up, I find it interesting rather than frightening. I know that acknowledging that these parts of myself exist doesn’t mean that I have to act on them. I can just say “Hmmm, look at that” That doesn’t mean that I have a perfect handle on it. there are still parts of myself I don’t necesarily like. It has just become a bit easier to acknowledge them.
Blessings, G

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Quote of the Day – December 30 2011

“All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.”
— Carl Jung

“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. ”
— Richard Bach

“And if you ever hear me calling out
And if you’ve been by paupers crowned
Between the worlds of men and
make-believe
I can be found.”
— Dan Fogelberg

Some nights I feel more real than others. Are those the nights that I actualize myself more or the opposite? I dance among the fictions, the things I’ve experienced and the things that people may believe about me. I realize that any autobiography becomes to the witness that resides at the back of our consciousness at least partly a work of fiction. Namaste, G

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Eye in the Lotus by G A Rosenberg