Shadows

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There was something I needed to do, my inspiration told me.  It wouldn’t be difficult technically speaking but would require great courage and a strong will to change the status quo that had become my world of late.  So, I lit the white candle at the alter and I sat down, took a deep breath and closed my eyes.  In moments, I saw two of my guardian angels, Jacob and Aaron.  Jacob asked me if I was ready and I said, “Yes, let’s do this.”   Just then, my beautiful friend white owl showed up.  We climbed on her back and we were off then to soaring through the night sky and then into the mouth of a cave at the bottom of a mountain in the desert.  We were headed to the underworld. 

The underworld is often greatly misunderstood and so let me clarify that by underworld, I do not mean Hell or Purgatory or anything biblical by any stretch.  The underworld is a different plane all-together and is most convenient for inter-dimensional travel when one is properly prepared and guided.  I’ve traveled the underworld a good number of times when called by my intuition to go within and begin “seeking” for answers.  This time, it wasn’t an answer I sought but an aspect.  An aspect of my own existence I could feel living and breathing inside of me…a creation of sorts.  I had created an inter-dimensional being, a monster you might say, one called rage.  She came to see me many years ago and has wreaked havoc with my sanity a time or two over the last ten years but I didn’t know what she was entirely or where she came from.  All I knew was that she was one very powerful creation who captured my attention so completely at times.  When we first met she hit me with energy so hard in my heart I was unable to move.  I faced her briefly but all I held was fear and bewilderment.  I didn’t have the wherewithal at the time to understand.

The last time I saw her I was in meditation and she leaped at me in my mind’s eye and in that moment I both saw and felt the strength of her power.  She was hideous, terrifying, flaming matted red hair, yellow orange eyes, shrieking, long dirty nails, pale bloodless skin and dark stripes that were similar to tribal tattoos.  This was many years ago and I was in no way prepared for that encounter.  I shut down my meditative practice not understanding that I had only just met an aspect of me, a representation of repressed pain, anger and hurt that was left to flounder on its own unrecognized.   When you get closer to peeling away the layers of the beliefs and lies you’ve been handed or created about your own life, sometimes your own shadow sides will call to you.  Mine did and I answered that call.  I understood the hows, the whys and what was that I had to do.

We traveled through the underworld fast but I caught glimpses of the beautiful light, crystals and different worlds carved into the sides of the cave walls that acted much like live picture frames that you could step into.  With my intuition I guided the owl straight ahead to a tiny perfectly round tunnel where I saw moonlight.  Snowy climbed the tunnel for miles until we arrived on a plane that appeared to be not unlike the Earth but it was some place a little different.  The scene was serene but the energy was not at all so I knew we were close.  Up above a night time sky appeared as it would have on Earth and before us a large black glassy lake that reflected the light of twinkling stars now and again.  A great oak tree rose large and looming across a short field of flat grass and I knew somehow that was the meeting place.  We gathered twigs and rocks large enough to make a safe fire ring.  We lit the flame and we waited.  I held hands with my guides and said a prayer that I be given the strength and the courage to hold nothing but love and compassion for the being I needed to meet.  No sooner had I finished the prayer and felt the pure peace of it washing over us when my guest arrived.

She was animal like, lithe like a cat and she suddenly sprang animal like from the darkness to the far side of the campfire’s light.  I spoke to her then, “Come, please, I will not hurt you.”  I could see her eyes glowing in the darkness and I felt her anger hit the space of peace we had created.  Knowing her heart as I did, since it was the one beating inside me, I put more force and focus into expressing love non-verbally from the center of my heart.  I spoke to her again and asked, “Would you like to join us and sit for a time?”  She seemed to bristle a bit but then stood upright taking slow and deliberate steps closer.  She was strong and fearless in her power and Jacob and Aaron both gripped my hands a little tighter no doubt for reassurance.  I spoke to them intuitively to ask them to let go of my hands and just hold a space of love while I worked.

I took a deep breath and visually embraced the fullness of my own creation.  She was terrifying in appearance just like something from a horror movie but I was not afraid.  I'm not exactly sure why.  Maybe it was that  I could feel the heart of her because it was my heart.  I knew she would not hurt me somehow even though she was angry enough to destroy me.  I stood my ground, looked her in the eyes and let loose nothing but the energy of compassion and then I broke the silent tension between us.  I asked her if I could come sit beside her.  She didn’t speak but made it clear by her demeanor she cared not one bit for me.  I knew better but didn't let on.  Bolstered by strength and sheer determination I walked carefully and slowly around the campfire and I sat down next to her.  With everything in me I focused all of the love in my heart on her, surrounding her, supporting her and fully feeling and ultimately knowing her.  I asked her to look at me sensing her great discomfort.  She looked at me with eyes glazed over still angry, still in the fullness of her emotional rage but nonplussed I pushed forward anyway.  I saw the black stripes on her arms and legs, her back, her body and I reached out slowly and touched one on her left shoulder.  It was not a stripe but a scar.  When I touched it and sent it love, it disappeared and the scars in her arm returned to normal looking skin.  She was shocked but felt the healing.

I paused a moment to let her consider the thought I sent her…I can bring you great healing if you would but let me.  She snarled, “Why should I?  You were the one that created me.  You were the one who ignored me, my needs, my desires and left me behind without a single thought or care.  Why in all of God’s creation should I trust you to bring me anything but misery?”  I answered, “Because I created you and I have nothing but love to offer you if you would be willing to explore and to understand all that has truly transpired.  I reached then for her right shoulder and where the scars were I touched them with my hands bright with pink light and her other arm returned to normal.  I did the same when I touched her back and all the scars disappeared replaced by normal looking skin.  When I felt the back of her heart, I knew she wanted nothing but freedom, just like me.  Seizing the opportunity in her moment of doubt, I moved quickly before her and knelt in front of her face to face, surrendering and yet completely in control.

We stared at each other eye to eye for long moments.  I reached out and touched the black mark scars on her forehead and where I gently traced with the intent to heal and ease her pain, they too disappeared just like the others.  She let me then hold her face in my hands and I whispered, “I love you” over and over again until her pale skin changed to pink and scar-less.  I smoothed back the wild flaming hair and at my touch it turned smooth as silk.  She released into me the anger she held and she sat there in the fire as I clothed her and spoke to her softly words of understanding, words of apology, words of honesty and understanding compassion.  She looked me in the eyes completely transformed and she wrapped her arms around my neck and she cried.  She cried for what seemed an eternity and her tears filled the lake behind her and I knew that she created that lake with angry dark tears.  I told her that there was no need to be angry any more.  We talked of specifics, of scenes from the past and in lives past.  I asked her to let me know when she was ready to join with me and become whole once again.  She said she was ready now on one condition.  I agreed and then asked her to state her condition.  She then said, “You must always stand in your own light.”  She held out her hands then and took both of them in mine and we were instantly transported to a place in time I spent as a child.

Outside of a small church located in a local amusement park I had been to many times we materialized.  We sat there in the sunlight under a tree near a lake.  She had transformed the former scene where I had originally found her.  We spoke then of happier times and she relayed to me the things that hurt her, the things that made her angry that later turned to rage.  I helped her understand the truth of things beyond what she perceived as a child, young woman and then later an adult.  In that moment another aspect arrived and then another.  With each we joined together after spending time to understand, cry, laugh in the sunlight and release the smoky untruths we held as perception unquestioned.  We merged then into one being, one heart beat in peace and in love.

The next scene carried an intensely powerful moment with my own mother, of love, of words, of truths in a long line of angry and troubling relations passed from mother to daughter and daughter to mother.  I felt so much love for my own mother, the same love I felt for my daughters and I whispered “The path to healing you mom is to return to your own mother’s love and so on and so on back through time for time is meaningless and proximity is not as important as you think.  I told her I absolved her, loved her and wished her every success in her journey.”  I was pulled then back to my present reality.  With eyes closed still and feeling nothing but peace and love, I thanked the Divine Mother for such a healing journey.  After a moment of silent pure gratitude I opened my eyes. The lone candle burned still flickering in the darkness on the alter, seeing Snowy, Jacob and Aaron fading from my mind’s eye at peace.  Stunned by my own courage, stunned by the depth of my own love I knew the healing of my own shadows had begun and in that healing the real work had begun.

© 2014 Jaie Hart (photo and words)