Looking To Your Shadow For The Source (Of Light)

The feeling is still with me this morning. I have to go a little--or a lot!--further into this whole 'positive projection' business. One of the reasons is because the consensus seems to be that the 'problem lies with negative projections,' i.e., that people need to own their shadows. Well, I am hear to say that people need to own their Light too!

There are just as many devastating, destructive, and debilitating consequences from not owning one's own Light as there are from not owning one's own shadow. While we are all quite familiar with the consequences and ramifications of the latter (shadow-projection) we are not that familiar with the former (Light-projection). But that needs to change. It is time for us to ask why we elevate certain others into an exalted frame of reference we suppose is reserved for the few.

Distancing The Dark

Yes, of course we can take things that we would prefer to not accept about ourselves--i.e., potentials and psychic presences that we hope to divest ourselves by casting them onto the backs of the Other. Indeed, we all know about the 'pot calling the kettle black.' There is nothing unfamiliar about that! In fact, it is understandable that we might want to get away from our own personal 'dark-side,' or just refuse to acknowledge that we all have the potential for harbouring the toxic slew of ignorance, greed, and malice. I mean, those are not pretty and lovely little traits to have are they?

So, purify yourself by seeing them in everyone else. 'He did this...' 'She does that...' They are always like this...' 'It's them... they did it... it is part of their race... creed... ethnicity... sexual orientation.... gender.... yadda... yadda... yadda.' Been there, right? Own your shadow. Fess up to your capacity for the Dark--for creating it, for maintaining it, for spreading it thick and thin.

How Does Dark Come About Though?

This gut of mine is telling me that there is a reciprocal relationship between negative projections and positive projections: that the projection of the dark is also denial of the light. I am wondering if it is at all possible to have the presence of shadow material is there has not already been a previous denial of the Light. For instance, what if the shadow of our so-called cynicism and critical attitude toward others is but the denial of a Light that is Wisdom? What if each shadow element is but the facet of a Diamond (ala A. H. Almaas, I suppose) like Awareness and Luminousity that is our True Nature? What if we can arrive at our Gifts through the shadows? What if we can find our Wordsworthian 'clouds of glory' there?

On one level a 'shadow' is only created by an obstruction of the Light. For there to be shadows there must be Light. Light must be Present for shadows to appear. So, when we talk about shadows we have already implicated the Presence of Light.

Now, when someone is putting forth a suggestion about how to deal with one's 'shadow' it doesn't necessarily need to mean that one needs to engage and treat one's so-called 'shadow' as if it were real. In other words, you don't have to 'objectify the shadow' and make it real when all that shadow is is but your orientation to the Source of Light.

Where Is The Source Of Light: Alpha/Origin-Light & Omega/End-Light

For example, if you put the Light in front of you (techno-utopianists, future-shockers, living for tomorrow people, planners, goal-setters) then you are creating a huge shadow behind you--a shadow that others may walk in; a shadown that the past (which is why techno-freaks are always tearing down yesterday) is forced to abide in because of your orientation to the Source.

On the flip-side are the Retro-Romantics who place the Source in the past--and to which the future is then made to abide in the shadows (apocalypse, government conspiracy, environmental melt-down, by which I mean the extreme versions). For those who orient to the Light as if the Light were behind their considerable shadow is projected into the future.

In both cases--techno-utopians or retro-romantics--there is a generation of a vast shadowland that both the past and the future are thereby perceived to exist in. Either the past is the Dark Time... or the future is the Dark Time. Both are realms of shadow-projection--just in different directions, temporally speaking.

Living Without Shadow

Immediately I assume that the question now turns to 'Can one live without shadow... completely?'

Well, not if the Source of Light is outside of you!! If you perceive that the Light is an 'other' (Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, Allah, God, Jehovah, Maharishi, Sri Sri Sri Sri Bobba Lula, Ken Wilber, Andrew Cohen, Adi La-di-Da) then you will personally create and maintain shadows in your life, your personal relationships... your world. You will have to then deal with the consequences of having perceived the Light as 'external' from where you AS THAT now abide.

The same goes for perceiving the Light in an 'other-time' (as Heaven, as Utopia, as Golden Age, as New Age, as 2012, or whatever). When you do so you literally create shadow-matter by your assumption of the Light as existing elsewhere.

But what happens when the Light is You, in You, as You, and You Are That? What happens when you realize that the Source is your constant Illumination. That the Light is not greater in him or her, or this or that, or then or there? What happens when the Light is vertical shaft of Glory that connects Heaven & Earth right where you Is?

That's why you see the paintings of the Saints with Halos. They cast no shadows, nor do we, when our whole person is aligned with the Source, the Light, the Luminousity that Alone Is.