ST Healing Love-IntoBalance October2022 - Flipbook - Page 18
These last several years have given us much to grieve.
For many, quarantine and social distancing have been a
call to look inward, and this has not always been easy.
Our personal and collective shadow sides are harder to
hide these days, opening up a portal to radical self love
- a chance to see and embrace all that we are. We are
abundant beings. Plentiful in our laughs and cries, sorrows
and elations. Just as rain and lightning precedes growth
and transformation, it is also capable of bringing death and
destruction. We ought not to hide our own abundance,
which comes in both life-giving and life-denying ways.
In doing so, we’re more able to accept and honor others’
abundant light and shadows equally.
The message is clear: We are all capable of giving and
denying life. We are at once all of our best and worst
qualities. In fact, joy, beauty, and generosity would not be
possible without sorrow, ugliness, and greed.
The message
is clear: We
are all capable
of giving and
denying life.
We are at once
all of our best
and worst
qualities.
When we try to deny or cancel our shadow sides, we
cut ourselves off from parts of ourselves and essentially
imprison those sides perceived to be “ugly, nasty, evil”
parts, and blame, shame those aspects of ourselves. More
likely than not, the result is
that the shadow side
becomes an
energetic
enemy,
our own
monster shadow locked in an internal tense
battle. Some of this is conscious - most of it
is unconscious. It is all draining. We harm
ourselves further. When we do that, we often
feel unworthy of love, anxious about being
“right, not wrong,” and blame ourselves for
others’ displeasures or unhappiness. We
spiral down a spiritual hellhole.
We can’t cancel or deny our shadow sides—
those parts of us that cause harm. We
must face them, even embrace them so
that we can do the inner work that allows
us to blossom in our wholeness. This takes
love—radical love of ourselves, and a deep
commitment to inner balance. If we can
have, and practice radical love for ourselves,
we are more able to have and practice honest
love for others. Consciousnessly seeking
balance within, we become more capable of
cultivating balance in our relationships, in our
communities, in our ecological and social systems.
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Healing Love: Into Balance | A Brown Paper