Shadow. "The Shadow Knows" The side of you that sabotages all of your good intentions. The dark secret you become powerless to because it might tell the world. It is that little kid inside who would rather bludgeon someone's nose than rather take the precautions needed to avoid painful situations. That steals our voice. The side of ourselves that is too scared to release certain behaviors for good, even though we know the harm they cause. They are our pacifiers that we fight, kick and scream to hold onto, even though our teeth are being pushed out. We think people might stare at a 45 year old man or woman who brings their binkie out to dinner, but not our shadow.

Ever felt like their is a wall between you and someone you met for the first time, is it yours or theirs. Which one of you is separate from the rest of us. It could be your shadow filling you full of doubt and uncertainty. It is telling you to fight or flee before it thinks some one will emotionally harm you. Most likely. The shadow is only protecting you from the pussy cats of this world and then leaves you helpless among the wolves. It acts like the bully that has no voice at home. So he goes to school to steal yours along with your milk money.

 

"The story is about the transformation of four shadowy interjects which are in particular contention for women: have no vision, have no insight, have no voice, have no action. In order to banish the predator, we must do the opposite. We must unlock or pry things open to see what is inside. We must use our insight and our ability to stand what we see. We must speak our truth in a clear voice. And we must be able to use our wits to do what needs be about what we see.!"
Clarissa Pinkola Estˇs, Ph.D. Woman Who Run With The Wolves

 

It is the side of you that becomes a psychic vampire. It latches onto others emotional well being, to drain it for your own self esteem. Either you are always succoring pity from those around you or you are stealing pride from others by verbally putting them down. It is also the voice that lashes out at those who do us no harm. For it finds it the only escape. We bottle up all our fears and stress and release it upon those who only wish us well. We project everything on the innocent, and then wonder why they run away screaming? Then we go right back and run into the same wolf packs that steals our identity and self value. In relationships the shadow is the side of you always desiring for the bad boy or the temptress that will leave you smoldering in the corner of your little shattered ego. We lie to ourselves that we can fix our codependent lovers, but we do not want them to change or heal. If they did that they would stop hurting us. The abuse cycle from our youth is so strong, and like any good parasite it wants to drain you for as long as possible. So that is why we find see saw relationships. We trade the three days of being royalty for the months of emotional or physical beatings that come with it. Most of us will run away from the serial killers and the mentally deranged psychopaths, but not the wolves in sheep clothing. We ignore the sharp canines that peer out from under the fleece that is worn backwards, or ignore the fact that his beard is blue.

There is an old saying " If you want to boil a frog, raise the temperature slowly!" If you throw us in the boiling water of danger, we jump right out. But the slow steady ever increasing harm, we ride like a train to its destination. Lobster said it is always easy in but hard to get out of the pot. Like many people smoke, but very few would decide to ingest strychnine or arsenic straight. But we can ingest those same chemicals in the smoke over time, and be OK with it. Even enjoy it! But allot of us are just in for the slow suicide. Our life's seem a chore that is over sooner the better. No we will not wish for suicide, but a life that will end in the next thirty years is fine We stopped enjoying the zest of life. Either we get caught up in the rat race or are told that enjoying ourselves is frivolous. Some of us had too much fun and find ourselves in detox, shunning anything that is not productive.

In Herman Hesse Stephenwolf, Harry haller is a middle aged man that is waiting for the slow suicide. If the bus hit him tomorrow it would be OK. In early life the wolf of his personality would poke its head up through his shirt collars, just to be put away by his Bourgeois parents. Harry has lived the life of poet , painter, and academics; but he felt no joy in them for the wolf was always held back. But one day he ventures into the shady back room of a bar where the latest jazz is playing through the curtains. Here he meets a woman who teaches him to dance, smoke, drink with zest, and make love to several partners. At the end of his adventures he is led into a theater of the mind where a drug dealing trumpet player explains the personality to him. Pablo teaches him that we are not one personality but many as there are pieces on a chess board. But we Stack them on top of each other pertaining to the person we are associating with at the moment. It is only when we can not control the stacking order, are we then schizophrenic. So Harry was brought to atonement with himself and was whole for the first time in his life. And life was to be enjoyed to the fullest.

In every life we must face the stage that we are introduced with our stranger, the Shadow. We all have the choice to commit murder when pushed to our limits. Or there is this thought we would if we could get away with it. Say rob a bank? Our shadow is different for each of us, and reveals issues we need to work through in this life. Why do some crimes in the paper hit us harder. Why do we remove all sympathy for some criminal and wish for reformation for others? Is the root of the crime a sore spot in our own persona. This is the shadow side proper. In Return of the Jedi, Luke was sent into a cave to confront his fears. A battle ensued which he confronted his arch enemy in which he removes his head from his shoulders; only to find the visor on the helmet fall away to reveal his own face. The sins of the father are the sons folly if he is not wise. When you follow your conscious drives that remove you from your river's current, the exhaustion and pain paid for swimming up stream never match the rewards given. You always fall short. You might find external success, but your heart knows better. Only if it could get the shades silent.

The shades are the minor demons, if the Shadow is the devil that resides in your breast. In Latin Demon is meant to be interpreted as a mental blockade. It was not until the mediaeval ages did demons take on the shape of external flying creatures with horns and filth clinging around them. Filth and chains like Jacob Marley's are all self inflicted and are real, but we can remove them ourselves. Then an exorcism could be said to be an extreme version of Freud's couch call. See Star Trek's Final Frontier for a Buddhist version from Spock's brother. Removal of all the shame, fear, and guilt that keeps your inner voice quiet and dreams suppressed. The sins that we are still trying to hide, the sins that might of not been ours in the first place. It is transforming that bully inside of you into its defensive counterpart. Taking the creative excuse maker and teaching it to paint and participate in life instead of running away. Taking your emotional time bomb and feel the loving explosion of a hug instead. The Shadow separates us from the rest of the world, the shades separate us from ourselves.

In Jon Boorman's Excalibur, Lancelot is awaken from his dreams of guenivere by a hostile knight in full armor. He confronts him to only put his sword in his side only to find his own face in the visor. He was wrestling with himself and his intentions to separate himself from his loyalty to his friend and king for his own desires. The shades are the slow temperature rise of the boiling frog. For these are much more dangerous, for their subtleties. They have been a part of us for so long, we sometimes do not even notice them anymore. They are our parasites and like any good parasites, they know just to take enough without killing their hosts. With the growing immunity and strength of the host, more they can feed on us until they have used us up after a full horror of a ride. At that point they offer us up to our shadows to deal with. At that point we are to weak or careless to resist our dark natures. But most of the time they just leaves us drained and empty so we do not interfere with other's shades that are feeding on their hosts. Kind of like in the Matrix the machines want the humans to be asleep in their illusion of a world so they could power theirs. Much like in Monster Inc. where the monster city is powered from kids screams awakening from their dreams. Or the Hitler regime with all the denial of the concentration camp on behalf of the populace. Or the Bush administration as it feeds on the fear it created and strives on as his population gives up its voice for the price of safety. Much like the peasants in the feudal system. We tend to give up our voices freely, for the safety that our bullies can bring.

We go blind to the harm and the separation from ourselves and the world for the price of a cheap flag and sticker that tries to convince our inner voices that we have unity. Atonement traded for a sticker. A world created from our own callousness. A world ruled by our negative shades that rest in our ego. Controlled by the vizier or evil witch. Our ego's stay in regency with these twos and our shades act out consciously. Knowledge is the key, Know thy self is the motto, and embrace all equally is the deed. Through this we shall find the.......

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