Duality – Ambivalence – Brace Yourself:

Complications Abound – as we try to absorb the lessons of The Shadow, we must realize that the shadow resides within ourselves. We ARE The Shadow – our own rival, enemy and saboteur. But how can we “escape” or “defeat – ourselves?

Dreams – Sometimes you dream about things you don’t want and people you aren’t. Strong feminists dream of rape, vegetarians dream of meat, pacifists dream of fighting. It’s confusing. What gives?

Language Isn’t Subtle Enough to Explain You – Your personality is a harvest of all feelings, all thoughts, all ideas, rippling through you in a vast subconscious well. Your unconscious connects with the “collective unconscious” of other people – dead, alive, even fictional. Why isn’t “hate-love” a word? You experience that emotion regularly. How about “fear-attraction”? Common! What I’m suggesting is that we need to accept the fact that a “personality” is a dynamism, not a slogan.

Challenge – We can’t “defeat” the rival within us – we absorb him. We can’t destroy our self-enemy – we understand and forgive him. We can’t imprison our saboteur –we must convert him. Jung says we will never understand – much less manage – the darkness in others until we confront our own darkness, our split desires. Facing this might seem the toughest part, but YOU ARE A WARRIOR. Use your Training Journal as a Fever Chart. Artists routinely “play” along their edge, peeking over it and imagining life on the other side. Summon up your Creativity.

Art is the best way to express our inherent dualities, an enormous relief since it’s non-committal. We are all Works In Progress. Actors are our contemporary Shamen who assume forms in public we realize can’t express their private selves. Or do they? Of course, you’ll have to face the surprise of your relatives when your work becomes public: “Where did THAT come from?” But if truth be told, we’ve always been surprised to be related to those people.

Danger – Society seeks to label and to rank. Rank limits & ultimately stigmatizes. We need to explore our fear but we are afraid of becoming our fear. A simple safe word can’t work when people – bankers, politicians, therapists, employers – are so financially untrustworthy. That is why our inner identification of ourselves as Brave Exploring Warriors is so vital. The vastness of our potential cannot be explicated by language alone. We will never be butterflies pinned down in a museum box for the instruction/curiosity of others.

Opportunity – Appreciate the magnificent evolving complexity of your Self. Don’t slam any door too soon. Sometimes the worst labeler, the most determined jailor, is Us. We are deeply afraid of wandering in the forest and losing the way to find “home”. But Brave Explorers carry Home within them. As Nelson Mandela used to quote from his prison cell, if we are the captains of our souls we can be the masters of our fates. We can learn to tolerate a little ambiguity/uncertainty/ambivalence. (Henley.)

#Haiku: Yinyang

Life’s grind
Readies thought muscles for
Paradox;
Sleep/wake
Love/hate
Live/die