04/13/2024
I used to think the spiritual path was all Love & Light.
But I was gaslighting myself in thinking spirituality was all about maintaining a high vibration and positivity. It took me years to understand it's not about being all love and light all the time. HA! 🤦🏼‍♀️
More than anything it's about intentionally embracing shadow and darkness as a path to love and light. We are dualistic beings in a dualistic reality, there is no light without darkness, and there is no good without bad. We only know life because we know death.
By demonizing one side of our duality, we stop or slow our evolution or growth. But that's what we have been taught - Every resonant story narrative we've ever heard can be mapped with the Hero's Journey, a tale of a hero conquering a villain (good vs. evil). What was not conveyed was that the villain is only the villain if the hero tells the story. Hollywood has painted a picture in our mind so concrete of the notion of good and evil, when really, humanity is deeply nuanced. No one/thing is all good, and no one/thing is all evil.
The part of the hero's journey that really created change for me was understanding the energies behind it. How the hero moves from the conscious world (light) into the unconscious or subconscious world (shadow) to overcome trials, tribulations and the ultimate death/rebirth of a part of them. From here, they travel back to their conscious self, integrating the subconscious lessons on the way. This is the cycle of our human journey, which is why these stories have resonance in the first place.
There is no growth without traversing your shadow and overcoming a part of the self. Evolution starts with consciousness, and then the material world follows.
