Today is All Soul’s Day, the day when the veil between our world and that of spirit is the thinnest. I send blessings to you and yours, friends and family in this world, and the other parallel word, where the dead dwell. Happy Halloween too!
Light Workers: Awaken to your Dark Side
Jackie tends to have trouble saying no; helping others comes easily. Lately she is realizing she ends up feeling drained at times when helping. She just had a friend live with her and family for six weeks, when it wasn’t supposed to be that long, and when this friend had other options before homelessness, it turns out. Jackie wants to know – why do I get in these situations? Feeling drained isn’t a good thing, for me or others…
This time of year of increasing physical darkness is often a time when our shadow side gets more illuminated. This deepening dance of illuminating darkness is also a planetary theme, as the planet attempts to transition from the competition/survival paradigm to the cooperation/sustainability paradigm. There are lots of challenges with this, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you want to help the world. How to help? What to do? Well, most light workers came exactly for this work; to help that shift.
You can find ways to make contributions to the larger dynamics; there are plenty of movements you can join. And, another important way to do this “work of a lifetime” is in your own backyard. This is the dance with the dark side, or our shadow side. That shadow is that area of our mind/body/heart that has been trained to hide, to skirt truth, to avoid confrontation, to play it safe. It had to do this dance in the past to survive, to get attention or love, and/or to follow the rules and be accepted.
At first you’re blind to your own dark side dynamics. Then after a while, you start to see patterns or areas of life that are not working, that feel stunted. You get the sense that you struggle more with certain issues than others do. That’s where these incredible times can help. It’s all about shining light into all the dead zones, and the trauma spots, so they can be healed. These are the places where you had to create a way of behaving and reacting that may have helped in the past, but is not serving you now.
It’s usually uncomfortable at first to dance with the dark side, but after a while, it does get easier. And that feeling of healing and creating a new pattern is so intimate and fulfilling. Plus, your life starts to improve, as you allow in more love, abundance, truth – all that good stuff that increases fun and creativity.
WHAT IS THE DARK SIDE EXACTLY?
The dark side develops as a protection against a younger or more vulnerable part of you that was getting mistreated in some way. This mistreatment is just the way it goes on earth, for various reasons. Spiritually speaking, it’s thought that you actually pick these “growth edge” situations before incarnating, in order to continue your soul’s education and healing over lifetimes.
It can help when you can hold a larger view like that. Hey, it’s my continuing education, oh goodie. Yet, as a child, when you get hurt or traumatized, when that shining soul light you’re expressing gets told, “Shut the hell up”, by a busy or troubled parent, you are bewildered. You take it personally, either blaming yourself or the other/world. You develop strategies to stay safe, to not attract that negative attention again (or conversely, to get attention at any cost, or to be defiant and fight that authority, etc.)
So your particular dark side dynamics develop in response to some kind of wounding to your soul’s expression. You were forced into this dance usually to survive, or to avoid getting hurt. Core beliefs then spring up that reinforce this pattern and its stance. Yet this stance and perspective on the world and how it works – well, it’s flawed. It’s based on self-protection or trauma reactions, neither of which are accurate.
Whenever there is an opportunity as an adult to step beyond this conditioning, to “up your game” or take your life to a higher level, alarm bells ring. This dark side will need to be healed before you can proceed. It can feel “wrong” and certainly uncomfortable to form a new groove in your mind/body because that training and wounding go deep. This is your own dark side, and this is where the light is shining brightly these days.
Next week I’ll talk more about what this dark side dance asks of us, and share how Jackie is taking steps to heal this very common dynamic of giving to others at the detriment to oneself.
Blessings and thanks for your dark side dancing,
Denise Barnes