 Within ourselves, we possess every trait and its polar opposite, every human emotion and impulse. We have to uncover, own, and embrace all of who we are, the good and bad, dark and light, strong and weak, and honest and dishonest.
If you believe you are weak, then you must seek out its opposite, and find your strength. If you are ruled by fear you must go within and find your courage. If you are a victim you must find the victimizer inside you. It is your birthright to be whole: to have it all. It only takes a shift in your perception, an opening of your heart. When you can say ‘I am that' to the deepest, darkest aspect of yourself, then you can reach true enlightenment. It's not until we fully embrace the dark that we can embrace the light. I've heard it said that shadow work is the path of the heart warrior. It takes us to a new place in our consciousness where we have to open our hearts to all of ourselves, and to all of humanity.
Letting the Light in
In a recent seminar, a woman stood up crying. Her name was Audrey. She was in tremendous pain. She had terrible thoughts, she admitted, and was ashamed and embarrassed to share them because then we would know she was a truly bad person. After a long discussion, she finally confessed that she hated her daughter. She was so upset I could hardly hear what she was saying. She repeated it softly, over and over: ‘I hate my daughter.’ Everyone in the room was looking at her, some with compassion, others in horror.
I worked with Audrey for a while, explaining that if hate was what she was feeling, it was okay. She needed to accept the hate she felt for her daughter. I asked how many other people in the room had children. Almost everyone raised a hand. I asked them to close their eyes and try to remember a time when they might have felt hate for their children. Everyone found at least one memory of feeling hate. Then I had them imagine what gift hate could give them. Some said sanity, some said love, and others said release of emotion. Everyone saw that they had no control over the emotion itself. Even when they didn’t want to feel hate, they felt it sometimes.
Seeing that she was not alone helped Audrey give herself permission to feel hate without judgment. I explained that we all needed hate to know love, and that hate only has power when it is suppressed or denied. I asked Audrey what would happen if she embraced her hateful feelings and waited to find their gifts instead of suppressing them. She still looked ashamed, her head down, so I told her a story.
The gold beneath the horse manure
One day, twin boys went off with their grandfather on an outing. They walked through the woods until they came upon an old barn. When the boys and their grandfather stepped inside to explore, one of the boys immediately started complaining: ‘Grandpa, let’s get out of here. This old barn stinks like horse manure.’ The boy stood near the door, angry because he now had manure on his new shoes. Before the old man could respond he saw his other grandson running happily through the barn's many stalls. ‘What are you looking for?' he asked the second little boy. ‘Why are you so happy?’ The boy looked up and said, ‘With all that horse manure in here there must be a pony somewhere.’
The room was now quiet. Audrey’s face was shining. She was beginning to see the gift of her hatred – the pony – in this aspect of herself. This shift in perception allowed the negative energy she had carried around for years to be released. Audrey understood that her hateful feelings were a defence mechanism, which protected her boundaries around the people she loved. Even though this hate had caused her great pain, it had also been the catalyst for her spiritual journey and the impetus for her to seek out her own inner truth.
There was more gold to come. Two weeks after the course Audrey's daughter called her. Audrey was feeling good about herself so she took a risk and told her daughter how she had felt for the past couple of years. Audrey explained how she had embraced her hateful feelings in the course, and when Audrey finished speaking, her daughter started crying. She cried and cried, releasing years of pain and emptiness, and expressed all the hate she had felt for her mother. When she was done she asked her mother to meet her for lunch. Sitting across from each other, they were able to feel the special connection that a mother and daughter have, and they vowed to express any and all emotions from then on so that nothing would ever keep them apart again.
If Audrey hadn't been brave enough to express her hate, this healing wouldn't have been possible. Both mother and daughter had so many suppressed emotions that anytime they got into a room together, there would be a blowup. The hate needed to be expressed and embraced so that its gift could be revealed. The gift of Audrey's hate was love. It gave Audrey a new, beautiful, honest relationship with her daughter.
When the shadow is embraced....
Every aspect of ourselves has a gift. Every emotion and every trait we posses helps show us the way to enlightenment, to oneness. We all have a shadow that is part of our total reality. Our shadow is here to point out where we are incomplete. It is here to teach us love, compassion and forgiveness, not just for others but also for ourselves. And when the shadow is embraced, it can heal us. It is not just our denied ‘darkness’ that finds its way into the recesses of our shadow. There is a ‘light shadow', a place where we have buried our power, our competence, and our authenticity. The dark parts of our psyches are only dark when they are stuffed away and hidden. When we bring them into the light of our consciousness and find their sacred gifts, they transform us. Then we are free.
From The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, copyright 1998 by Debbie Ford, published in the UK in 2001 by Hodder & Stoughton.
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