I re-found this delightful Telling from Celtic Mythology by the great Bard, Robin Williamson, with images of Silbury Hill, which I once Circled..... and just had to share it again.
"Everyone
carries a Shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's
conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an
unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions. One does
not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the
darkness conscious."
Carl Jung
"You must go into the dark in order to
bring forth your light. When we suppress any feeling or impulse, we are
also suppressing its polar opposite. If we deny our ugliness, we lessen
our beauty. If we deny our fear, we minimize our courage. If we deny our
greed, we also reduce our generosity. Our full magnitude is more than
most of us can ever imagine.”
Debbie Ford
I was remembering "The Shadow Effect" (see trailer below about the movie), which was mostly narrated by, and based on, the work of psychologist Debbie Ford, who wrote "The Dark Side of the Light Chasers", a book I've liked since I discovered it in the late 90's. I enjoyed the movie, particularly the appearances of Deepak Chopra and James Van Praagh. I admire Debbie Ford's work, although I have to confess, all that hugging in the workshops would no doubt drive me up a wall. I'm just not a hugger. And sometimes I get annoyed by the "do these exercises, make this realization, and you'll fulfill your destiny and be all you can be" idea..........I don't really believe in destiny any more, and trying to "be all you can be" can have some serious setbacks, like exhaustion, arrogance, and self-delusion. Which is "shadow", now that I think about it. Sometimes the prize is not about getting richer, more love, or a better job, not about "getting" anything - it's about deepening our souls, and in the end, that's all that matters. But I'm a crank sometimes, and what this movie has to say is nevertheless vital, pragmatically, personally, and collectively, because it's about the essence of integral consciousness.
"The well of your joy is as deep as the well of your sorrow"
Kalil Gibran
I've often written aboutthe importance of the The Dark Goddess,
and the importance of the Dark Goddess to all of planetary life now.
In other words, it's urgent that we develop true compassion for
ourselves, and thus, each other, holistic compassion. As individuals, the scales of Maat tip when too much
of ourselves are unconscious, hidden away in the so-called "shadow"
aspects of psyche. That's the true meaning of balance.
Perhaps
I should begin with one of my own "shadow" aspects, the "victim"
archetype. I felt like sharing the following quote from Carolyn Myss because I
agree with some (not all) of her observations about what she called "woundology".
"One
day, in passing, I introduced a friend of mine to two gentlemen I was
talking with. Within two minutes, my friend managed to let these
men know that she was an incest survivor. Her admission had
nothing whatsoever to do with the conversation we'd been having,
and what I realized was that she was using her wounds as leverage.
She had defined herself by a negative experience. In workshops
and in daily life I saw that, rather than working to get beyond
their wounds, people were using them as social currency. They were
confusing the therapeutic value of self-expression with permission
to manipulate others or define themselves with their wounds. Who
would want to leave that behind? Health never commands so much
clout!"
I want to comment first, as she does, that actual victimization, and
the psychic wounds that arise from these experiences, should not be
negated, nor should the "blame the victim" phenomenon ever be allowed to occur. Further, a sense of victimhood can be learned from our
parents, and can have roots that extend far back into family and
cultural history. Having said that, I also believe, from my own
experience in therapy, that healing and self-understanding comes from
being able to tell our painful stories,and by the telling we can integrate those stories into the larger story, developing compassion for ourselves and strength from those experiences. We "fore-give", and move fore-ward. The question of
whether this role is a shadow issue arises when one lingers in the role of "victim" because it is
familiar, and more importantly, it has great power because it allows one to avoid responsibility for anything, and even provides a kind
of social currency with others. To put it another way - you can't win with such a "victim".
In the past few years, entering my 60's and becoming a SAGA (no "crone" for me. Saga is so much better, a Finnish derived word that means both "old woman" and "long story")
I've been noticing how much the "victim" or "wounded" archetype has big
real estate in our world, as well as my own past persona. It's a shadow aspect that is rarely spoken
about, because, frankly, it has so much leverage and ambiguity attached to it. I've also had to
notice that there are individual interactions with people and groups
that are about supporting each other's insecurities - and success,
leadership, or individual accomplishments can be punishable by
ostracism. Believe me, I've been in circles with "victims" (myself included) that could deflate any natural leader or brilliant contributor in no time flat, and continually reduced the group to a comfy "circle of mediocrity".
Shadow Work is harsh. I think a stubbornly internalized and
unrealized need to retain the role of "victim" is on the same page as
the unconscious need to dis-empower or denigrate the perceived gifts and
strengths of others. We cannot afford to
genuinely victimize ourselves by clinging to the exhaustive role of
"victim" at a certain point in the quest for maturity - equally, we
cannot afford to "make ourselves small" and hide our light so that
others will "like" us, nor unconsciously coerce this tyranny on others
so we won't feel "threatened". Empowerment is like the symbol of the
Tree of Life - as above, so below, as without, so within. The roots run deep, into dark waters.
"He governs the flowing of all waters, and the ebbing, the courses of all rivers and the replenishment of springs, the distilling of all dews and rain in every land beneath the sky. In the deep places, He gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo of that music runs through all the veins of the world in sorrow and in joy; for if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomed at the foundations of the Earth." J.R.R. Tolkein, "The Silmarillion"
I've been wanting to share my archive of not just masks, but stories from the 20 plus years of the "Masks of the Goddess" Project. Here is the story of Bast, from a 2000 performance directed by Diane Darling. I think Bast was pleased............
Bast
Her
paws whisper on temple floors
Her
eyes
luminous as the moon
Her
ears pricked,
alert to danger
Her
whiskers sense currents from the unseen world.
Guardian
of cats and women and children
Posessor
of the uchat, the all-seeing eye
Bast
wards against dangers in the spirit world -
Evil
beings, enchantments, nameless things
Visible
only to cats.
Daughter
of Ra, the sun
Lady
of the East, the Moon
Her
eyes hold light in darkness
Listen:
Ra
the mighty sun appears at dawn as a baby
At
sunset he is dying, and when he dies
Darkness
falls.
But
Bast prowls the Nile, gazes into the setting sun
I love stories, discovering the stories that "wrap themselves around old bones" and wrap themselves around each of us. With masks, the story is as much a part of the mask as the mask itself. Masks are by their very nature "vessels for Story", stories ever evolving in mysterious ways. If you let the mask "talk to you", much can be revealed. While re-visiting the Superstition mountains not so long ago, I remembered an encounter I had once with a persona of the land, a Numen of the mountain. She spoke, I listened. Her name, I think, was the Bone Goddess.
THE BONE GODDESS
I was the first one.
I am this land,
and you no longer know
me.
Ah well. So what. I've been here a long time.
A long time.
In the beginning, I was alone.
Alone in this place.
Me, and
Old Man Mountain,
sleeping beneath the hot sun.
Running when the sun was young,
waking up the People in my country:
Ho, Hare, Snake, Mallow, Saguaro.
There
were more People then.
Some have gone.
We spoke together then, laughed more.
These ones, these new ones,
they think they own the place.
Ha! They dig and dig,
but they will not find me!
Listen, I will tell you something,
since you have come here
with your hands empty.
You are full of holes.
Sometimes a person stands up and just walks outside
and keeps on walking into the sun, and does not know
why.
There comes a time when you have given so much of yourself away
there
is nothing left, when you have become transparent,
when you can be seen through
to the bone,
when your spirit has become woven into bad things.
That's when you find yourself in my country.
Walk into the desert
sit beneath a cholla and be silent.
Notice the shapes of bald mountains.
Old Man, sleeping.
The shape of his
shadows,
the shape of the sky, the color of shadows.
That is when you must find
beauty
in a cholla
crack in the sun like an old bone.
That's the time when you
must collect your own shadows.
I may help you.
Bring your offerings if you wish,
I will
give them to the Bird People, the Mouse People, the Lizard People,
walk in the shimmering heat,
the silence, you may find me.
If I want you to.
I may tell you stories that wrap themselves around old
bones,
