our shadow selves

Relative isolation can be a good thing.

At first you feel lonely or loopy or like the only sane person skipping around in an insane world, which makes you feel paranoid and half-convinced that you're crazy and everyone else is sane, but if you really look at it, no, your brain and rationale are pretty sanitary as they are.

ALL THESE THINGS ARE NECESSARY for you to be productive in your isolation. In order to find self hood. In order to come closer to a state of sovereignty.

Though, there are times when you are ready to reengage with the world in a new way, with new eyes and feel discouraged. Because the only thing that's changed, it seems, is you.

So yes, there are times I get a little restless, a little impatient. Sometimes I just want to shake them, but what can I do? I am only responsible for myself and for my own transformation, though if people are interested in certain modalities of living, I do have information I'd be more than happy to share with them.

Before we get into it, let me get into what this is NOT.

This is NOT me seeking for external stimulus, an artificial culture of identification, or a state of codependence.

It's me, seeing a lot of really cool shit that's happening RIGHT now, RIGHT in front of us - right INSIDE of us. The period of deconstruction, Pluto/Shiva, transmutation and transformation. The masks falling. The confrontation of the Shadow Selves - because if we find ourselves ignoring them now, they will force their presence upon us. Of course, if we aren't ready for them, then there is a chance we may perish. Not physically, but we may end up irrevocably harming our selfhood.

The shadow selves (I think a Carl Jungian thing, but not positive) are the parts we can't handle, we can't deal with, so we stick them in the closet. And they are a useful part of ourselves. We need them in order to move forward.

I mean, a child born into the world cannot provide for itself. It needs to be taken care of. The ego in that sense, takes care of you, after you've thrown all the "bad stuff" in the closet.

How selfish you are, how jealous or possessive you can be of others. Your materialism.

So what happens when you can't confront your shadow self? When you've forgotten you've forgotten it?

My understanding is that when you are ready to face them in any capacity, your shadows will manifest in the physical realm.

Were you once an ignorant asinine jerk in highschool? You can confront that shadow in a multitude of ways. You can meet the physical manifestation of your former incarnation, only this time, it's that asinine jerk in your workplace who beats women. It's an exaggeration of what you could have become had you not chosen to eschew that part of yourself.

You feel immediate repulsion, a strong taste of anger or judgment. Maybe not even guilt, because you're not that person anymore, in fact, you forgot you were that person.

OR you could meet someone who is, though kind-hearted, a bit low in self esteem, constantly placing the worth of others above her own. She's a bit sad, and you want to help her. But after a while, you get frustrated when no progress is made and you become coldly critical or closed off. So that whenever you confront this person, she BRINGS OUT that asinine jerk you were in high school.

Now why does this happen? Why are our shadow selves so important, when they are all the bad and horrible parts of ourselves? Every dark, pathological fantasy of rape, incest or murder?

Because denying that mildew is growing on your shower curtain doesn't make it go away. Sure, you just push it aside and forget it's even there because - first of all, you had no money for cleaning supplies - and second - your curtain has become so black with mildew that after a while you think that you own black shower curtains. Your forget that it was originally purple or beige.

But if the mildew is never addressed, it will continue to spread and when you turn on that hot shower, the steam will release the mildew and fungal spores and enter your lungs, making you sick. At first it's very subtle, but if you never address it, it will eventually make you sicker and sicker -- and you may not even know what it is that is making you sick.

With the shadow self, you one day have enough money to buy some rudimentary cleaning supplies. Maybe a bottle of Formula 409 and a dual-sided sponge. That's it. Cleaning will not be easy or pleasant, but it will be possible. But you develop these things, you receive these things JUST as the mildew is ready to release its spores.

The shadow selves come to you at specific junctures for specific reasons. To embrace and understand the shadow self is to come to a greater understanding of the self. Now, why is this important? Understanding the self? Because it helps you get more strongly connected to your intuition. When you are more strongly connected to your intuition - when you just KNOW something - you are less inclined to allow yourself to be ruled by Uncertainty.

Uncertainty causes stress which creates the parent of all addictions. When you are ruled by Uncertainty, you are not ruling yourself. You are ruled by the words "should" and the words "trying." To "try" is not to DO or to manifest. So forget trying. "Should" is also another word that indicates that you are operating under the sovereignty of another. (Sovereign meaning the unquestioned Ruler.)

Operating under the Sovereignty of Another, meaning that you are voluntarily giving your authority to Someone Else. In effect, instead of Creating Yourself, you are Being Created. That means, someone else, some other entity or social structure is creating the persona you choose to wear in order to protect yourself from external reality and find community in that external reality. For when you feel lonely.

If asked that question: WHY ARE WE HERE?, deep in my heart I do believe that the task and point of all human existence is to become completely sovereign. To become responsible for ourselves, all parts of ourselves. And the way to get to that is through Self-knowing.

The thing is, sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking that our egos - or WORSE - our personas are who we are. That persona = self. Or that ego = self. But that is not true.

The persona and the ego are mere tools. They are the USB cables and flash drives to our hard drives. We NEED these USB cables and flash drives to download and upload new information, to interact with other technological interfaces. But the USB cable is NOT the computer. The flash drive is not the hard drive, your Word documents, all your files you've stashed away and forgotten about.

Shadow selves are those diary entries, those emails that you can't delete. It's like deleting Windows. Windows AREN'T you in your present state, but you need an operating system for the computer to even function, don't you?

So the day you get your bottle of 409 and sponge, you're like, "Shit. There's mildew on the curtain." And you don't have the money to buy a new curtain and you can't throw it away either.

Free Will: So you can choose to ignore it or you can choose to clean it. Ignore it, you'll chronically get sicker every time you take a shower.

Now here comes the 2nd problem. You don't know how to clean it. You've been so spoiled your whole life that you've never once had to get on your knees and cleaned something really filthy and hazardous to your health.

So you spritz your 409 and start scrubbing away with the yellow side of the sponge. You do this for an hour. You get so frustrated you leave the bathroom.

It didn't work and you ended up getting mildew and fungus under your fingernails, GROSS!

So you can ignore it. Or try again. This time, you use the green scrubby side of the sponge and some of it comes off, albeit very slowly. But it's progress. And then you try spritzing 409, leaving the bathroom for half an hour, and the scrubbing it again after the solution's set. All of a sudden, ALL that gunk is coming off! And you're covered in it at this point, but you don't care, because you are getting a clean curtain, but more than that, you are learning how mildew works, how the cleaning products work, and how to clean it YOURSELF.

You understand a part of your bathroom soooooooooo much better now and now understand what to do at the first signs of mildew. And what's more, the more you clean it, the more adept you are at finding cheaper, more effective cleaning products.

THAT would be my analogy of a healthy confrontation with the shadow self.

And after the shadow self is the Anima/Animus/WiseOldMan/WiseMother archetype, and after the process of getting in touch with that intuitive, wise aspect of yourself, you finally reach the SELF and become a whole, fully integrated human being.

It is a process by which we become truly sovereign and truly free. You cannot find freedom when operating under someone else's sovereignty. You cannot find Wholeness or intuitive Knowingness when you are ruled by uncertainty.

And, not to discourage you, but there is more than one shadow hiding in our closet, and they will come out to play and fight with you when the time is right and you are equipped with a stronger emotional and intellectual capacity to deal with the darker sides of your character.

You can expect for it to feel painful, you can expect to get sick. But you can also expect to fully understand this side of yourself and, in understanding it, know what to do when it presents itself. And NO, it does NOT mean shoving it back into the closet... the closet... the closet... (sorry, random R. Kelly reference.) You can expect, through accepting and understanding these parts, to be on your way towards true freedom and sovereignty.

Freedom in a political paradigm doesn't exist.

But spiritual freedom, freedom of the mind, of the emotions and of the intuition - these things can be found and readily accessed at any time once you allow yourself to go through this process of becoming a fully integrated being.