Friday, May 31, 2013

Vacationing on the Shadow Side of Life

The Shadow Side...it's that place you thought you were meant to stay forever and ever

Nope. We are not meant to stay in the shadows. No way - we need the Light and we get it from the Sunny people who share our lives with us. Yet that is beside the point. As spiritual beings we were never meant to live and to camp on the Dark Side of Life forever, only to visit, and the people who we visit with are either meant to be there with us and learn, or are simply meant to be there with us to learn also as well as to teach us. When their lesson for us is finished and we have been taught something, and when they have learned from us what they are meant to, even if that  lesson is placing hurt on someone else, that is when our time with them in the shadows is done. It is at that point where all those emotions that we have or had when we were in their presence come into play for us, and that is when we are meant to ponder the things that we are feeling, rather than only going through the motions of emotion.

The Motions of Emotion

Whether it is that we need to learn to not hurt other people, or if we need to learn how to deal with our own hurt through them, the Shadow Side will always teach us what we need to learn, and the Shadow Side will never lie to us, and the Shadow Side is always very appealing to us especially while we are learning from it. When we learn from it is when the parts of our Spirit that we cannot deal with NOT looking at - the part that tells us that it is inviting us to play in the realms of the darkness, to visit where we have been, where we are comfortable, and where the most damage to our Souls come from- this is the purpose of our Shadow...so we can see, ever brighter than before, our own Light of Spirit.

The most damage to our souls comes from that place where we kept these people who we loved, who we trusted, who we have and had much in common with. On my end, I was given the keys to unlock the reason why I do not do certain things with certain people, and I found out dearly and through nothing more than my asking...actually my Soul asking, for that lesson in what it is that I do NOT need. This is where the majority of us has been these last few months, and in that time we have allowed the people who we most shared time with go their way and learn their lessons, and in my case, that lesson came in the form of someone who I share heritage with, who I dearly trusted, who I thought had my back...then the truth happened. I found out that they could not be trusted, and that it was not for more than what the ego wanted, and it came in the form of arrogance and hit me in the head, heart and soul like so many bricks through a window.

It hurt. They're gone. I learned. What did you learn? I am betting a WHOLE LOT, and that you just do not realize it yet, but it will come to you. It always does, the lessons we learn on the Path that only the Fire-Walkers know.

Like a ton of bricks

When we leave for retreat, go on vacation, we prepare ourselves for relaxation, not learning. Yet, in the time that it takes us to get to that point of where we are going, we find out that there was a lot of work that happened prior to our arriving at our destination. We go through the motions, are excited at the thing that is before us, and then we go on our way, and in this case we were on our way back from the Shadow Side of Life, on our way back from the longest time ever that anyone has spent at "The Resort of Learning," and we were served up with the most important lesson of all, and it was not that we could not trust someone else, but that we could trust anyone at all. The lesson came in the form that we could trust someone else, could put ourselves out there for their world to see, and did our part in the process of bringing the lesson to ourselves and when we did that, we learned more about us than we did about the people who taught us. This is as it is meant to be. Unless we know ourselves, how can we think that we will ever know other people?

Yup...that's right - while you were in the Shadows with these people, you learned more about you than you did about them. They were just who showed up and showed you who you are according to them, and my only thing to say about that is that when they showed up, you were not the same person who you are now, and in that time they were able to mesmerize you into believing what you would about THEM but not addressing that you existed. Of course, they KNOW you were alive, but to have learned from them what you have in the time that you did you see that you are now more polished and way more refined than you were prior to the discovery that what you went through sucked but was needed. 

What you lived through and made yours IS yours, because you can never NOT go through those things - you can never not have heard what you were told, and you can never not see what you saw, never not feel what you felt, and never not know the pain of the truths that they brought to you. You have learned about what it is like to hurt through another's actions, through another's ways of being, and in that shadow you saw yourself there, and while it might have appealed to you, throughout the time you were learning from them, you knew then like you know now that while they were awesome teachers, their time is over with.

I knew this when my Soul started screaming at me, that there were better things and better people in my life than the last teacher who hurt me BADLY did. I knew that in order for me to know who I am, that I needed to be in the awareness that was them that was also me, so that I could get through to my own Self the message that I am way better than the messes that I have encountered, that I no longer need to be that one person who is willing to give away the heart, the soul, the creative nature within, that those things are mine and mine alone and that it is MY option to trust others with it. NO ONE can say that what they went through was more harsh than this or that, because the truth in it all is that it is ALL harsh, but when is learning which is required by the Soul NOT harsh?

It is harsh because without the harshness there can be no way that we will see what is the more agreeable softness that is our truth. Without the harshness and without the nature of that pain and without those people who we grow in closeness with, we will not learn. Teachers, if we can recall back to the day when we had them in high school, are not meant to be soft. They are meant to be creative in the way that they teach us, and when talking of things that are of a creative and spiritual nature, it is our teachers of and in Spirit who come to us in the form of a friend, or a stranger who becomes a friend, and is they who give to us those lessons that we so dearly need and for the most part have chosen for a long, long time, NOT to see the similarities that are there from teachers who came to us from our past. They might have within them the idea that they are on the take, and this is the energy that they will bring with them and will hide from us, and this is the lesson that we will learn, and this, too, is the Fire-Walker's Path that we will be led by them on...and of course, this is the thing that mars us the most.

We are marred by their actions, by their lies and by the things that they bring to us in the form of those nasty little habits, those adorably magnetic temptations that bother us in our sleep and which bring to us that deliciousness that is the Flesh. The deliciousness that is the Flesh can be in the form of anything that is...I don't know...any one of the Biblical Seven Deadly Sins. Where it is that we need to hang back, these teachers bring to us the energy that is overdoing things. Where we need to stop hiding our selves, this is where these teachers will bring to us the energy that is exposing ourselves so that we can finally see what is there that others see that we are refusing to see. This is what it means to be tempted, in the most Biblical fashion, by the people who are brought to our lives through our Souls. We think we know what we need, and the people who come to us think they know what we need, too, and while they are in our awareness, it is our Soul that makes us see things that we need to see, but it is our Ego that makes us want what we know is not good for us or our growth.  They show up in the manner that is "friend," because of the need for the Ego to trust what the Soul already knows is the right thing, is the correct energy, and mostly, is the greatest most reliable teacher for us. In sticking with the idea that we have been vacationing on the Shadow Side of Life, these "friends" who visit our awareness can also be thought of as being our tour guide as we walk through this part of the Path, as we follow the Fire-Walker's Path.

Then one day, we actually "see" them...and what scares us so much as that we also see ourselves there as well. We see their Souls and we are affected by the sadness and the darkness there, by the idea that they have dragged their own selves through the flames of life but most surely have not bothered with the Path of the Fire-Walker. And it is vehemently, absolutely, completely important that we all take the walk of Fire, that we bother with the pain that is there, and most of all, that we realize that we were meant for the pain, meant for the lesson, meant for the thing that ate our lives for a little while and then regurgitated us with a newness that is foreign but at the same time, familiar.

The Shadow Side of Life can be thought of as being akin to Sin City, to the things we see happen and the things that insult our Souls, and most of all, the things that rocked our world. But unlike things happening in Sin City staying secret and staying there, the vacationing that we each do in the Shadows is not meant to be hidden but meant to be seen and known by the world and the renewed Soul who we each are - that is what is meant to be seen, and that is why we walk the Path of the Fire of Life....so that we can be refined by the Fire of Life and so that more than before, we can see who we have been and more than that, who we no longer are. We find that the difficulties we walked through made us sharper and more refined, much like the refinement that polishes diamonds in the rough which also go through the fire, through the cutting away by the jeweler's hand that which is no longer needed.

This is what our little vacation in and on the Shadow Side of Life has given us as the trinket, the souvenir that we did not realize was the thing which our Soul begged for....it begged for the Shadow, and the Shadow drew us out, told us its secrets, gave us what we needed, and then suddenly, we came back to our Selves, back to our purpose, and most of all, back to the reality which is in manifest for us, and by us.

Viva Las Shadow Side !!

I Love You All !
ROX



Camera Artistry by Randy Jay Braun
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