Beyond Dark and Light

In all medicine/indigenous cultures, there is a recognition of the experience of 'dying to the self' in order to move forward, or be 'reborn' into a new life.  Only in the neurotic west, and only because Freud 'won' the psychiatric worldview over Jung,  do we equate 'dark' with 'bad', even evil.  Jung's voice of integration,  taken as it was right off the ancient world's page, joined the other, underground impulses, where the broader spiritual worldview of 'many parts' as One,  was embraced. 

The East is closer to a sense of harmony between Forces,  and under even that is the millennium of Knowledge, when Mother Earth as Mystery School was a designated assignment - to uplift, to educate, to redeem.  No matter what 'side' you were on,  what gender(s),  what script to run, lessons to learn, what comrades and loved ones to work with, what geopolitical stressors to bear....no matter what,  every one comes with every aspect of life bundled into seed packets.... with our potential to grow.

Growth is not dark or light.  Growth is the constant in this process we call Life.  Whether my growth looks good to you,  or not,  my growth is a product of the complex interaction of many many aspects of things,  with much of it is now happening in our global devolution, and our corner of the universal neighborhood.  I have had to wrap my head around what the internet community is circulating about cosmic events of all kinds.  Meanwhile our own geopolitical stakes raise ridiculously higher all the time.  In my time off work,  I felt myself falling under the pressure of so much which seems imminent....just as all Big Change feels...like the birth of a baby,  its the last bits that are indeed the hardest.

I always liked the term 'shamanic descent'.  Just as the medicine people know how to create and conjoin in major initiations, which prompt and feed the psyche with liminal material and build the bridge to the 'new life',  my little vision quest is giving me the incredibly rare space and time to empty myself out- in order to fill myself up.  Depression is an emptying out;  or rather the recognition and fear of emptying.  Week 1 of staycay was an emptying.....

it was emotional tsunamis and lost dreams...it was a curving in on myself seeking solace and safety within The Mother's womb.  And then it was loving that part.   The part that hurts, that hides.  We judge a lot of things that deserve our scrutiny.  But too much we judge the lost and hurt parts of ourselves.  We enforce the PC of the spiritual world; we forget that we play all the parts,  we seek these experiences,  we need to understand.

Once I let someone listen,  it all began to make sense again.  The 'sisterhood' of remembering brought me back to all the good things in my life, not the least of which is the long friendship that gave me that lifeline.

 The pressure finally began to ease a bit, and my excursions into running, or finding good farmer's markets or breathing into the space of simple rest has been fortuitous, timed to the High Holy days on the Jewish calendar.  So many of us are breathing peace back into the picture...., the wars and rumors of wars feel unhinged again from their timeline.... Like those last few pushes,  we work with all our might to bring our Good future into the world.  And very often that Work is so deep within,  it takes an intrepid soul to find the precious light, to find the courage, the stamina...to find the insight, to find the way through.