Gold in the shadow

As long as we have a body, there will be shadow. The goal isn’t to “get rid of” the shadow or even to “fully integrate” it, as its emanations are ever-emerging by way of psychic creativity.

Rather, to illuminate and engage it more consciously, as partner, emissary, lover, and friend. At times emphasizing our union while at other times privileging our separateness and personal integrity.

Here, multiplicity is as holy as unity; differentiation as sacred as oneness.

It is only through cultivating a conscious, embodied relationship with the unfelt, marginalized, and the unlived that we will come to know the light held within the black sun, a region of the heart that contains the opposites of shadow and light.

The shadow is not some worthless, neurotic repository of unenlightened thoughts, feelings, and impulses, but hidden expressions of wisdom, creativity, and soul, awaiting redemption and a sanctuary in which it can unfold and disclose.

That which falls into the shadow will inevitably be evoked, enacted, or somatized, for that is its nature.

It does so not to harm or take us down, not as an obstacle to the path but as the path itself, as a wrathful emissary of it. It, too, longs to return to its rightful place in the larger ecology of what we are.

The purpose of shadow work is not to eliminate shadow, but to open space in which it can reveal.

My next live online course will start in September - The Soul Alchemist: Trusting Your Inner Guidance. To receive information about the course, which will be sent out later in the summer, please sign up for my mailing list below. 

Mailing list 

Website 

YouTube channel

The Soul Alchemist: A New Online Journey

The Soul Alchemist: Trusting Your Inner Experience

Save the Date: my new six-week live online course will launch in September. 

Additional information available soon.

There has always been something unique about the autumn season for me, personally, a particular doorway and transition into a felt sense of the center; the center of who and what we are as well as into the center of Reality itself.

This time for me has often involved a real awakening of the feeling-body, a certain attunement which includes both spirit and matter.

The golden colors, the changing light, the falling away of the old - these are all expressions of the alchemical process of yellowing, a vital aspect of the transformational path - inviting us into a new way of being with ourselves and the world - an inner recycling and reorganization which mirrors processes occurring in outer nature.

In honoring the transformative potential of this time of the year, I want to offer a dynamic relational field and holding environment in which we can gather this autumn, rest our nervous systems together, ground and awaken our bodies, and open into the mysteries of healing and somatic presence.

This new live course - The Soul Alchemist: Trusting Your Inner Guidance - will include meditation and experiential practice, guidance about the embodied transformative process (from both psychological and spiritual perspectives), and conversation where you can share your experience and ask any questions you might have.

As open, sensitive human beings, we’re deeply affected by unlived psychic and somatic experience, as well as the speed and frenetic-nature of the times we’re living in. This effect is often subtle and can generate a deep restlessness and exhaustion.

Through embodied re-attunement, centering, and shifting our psychic center of gravity, we can be here for ourselves and others in more wise, skillful, and compassionate ways, revealing a freedom, spontaneity, and creativity that is always, already here.

Pieces of the unlived life

Inside the body the lost ones travel, carrying our dissociated experience and unfelt feeling, taking up temporary residence in our muscles, cell tissue, organs, and breath.

Scattered pieces of soul gather in our eyes, shoulders, and bellies, and in the secret places within our hearts.

They’ve become frozen and crystallized there, and display their longing to come Home by way of our dreams, bodily-felt emotions, and the variety of symptoms we experience.

If we’re unable to access them, to feel what they feel and tend to their tears, they will make their way deeper into the underworld and into the soma, awaiting a future moment when conditions are ripe.

Even if our primary interest is in spiritual transformation, we can’t separate out any unresolved relational trauma, attachment wounding, and narcissistic injury we may have experienced.

This unheld and unmetabolized material shapes our perception and forms a psychic template through which we’re able to imagine ourselves, others, and our world. But this happens outside our conscious awareness, from within the depths of shadow.

As we’re invited to “just be in the present moment,” we have to remember that in the present moment the ancestors are there with us.

They not only take up residence in our bodies, our hearts, and deep in the soul, but they are our bodies, hearts, and souls. Psyche is multiple and polytheistic.

They arrive invited or otherwise, along with the lost, crystallized orphans of psyche and soma, the spinning figures of our unlived lives, and the rich landscape of our implicit memory.

We’re not alone in that “present moment.”

What does the Other have to say about us and our meditation practice? Have we asked them and listened carefully to their response, with devotion and care?

Have we lamented their tears and grieved their pain?

To what degree have we met them, and accepted them with love? And sought their wisdom on the nature of past, present, and future.

Photo: Lappohja Beach, Southern Finland - heartbeat

My next live online course will start in September - The Soul Alchemist: Trusting Your Inner Guidance. To receive information about the course, which will be sent out later in the summer, please sign up for my mailing list below. 

Mailing list 

Website 

YouTube channel

The alchemy of self and other

Usually when we speak about “others” in our lives, we are referring to those on the outside we are in relationship with, that we care about and matter to us.

It’s important to attune to them and how they’re making sense of their experience, what keeps them up at night, brings them alive and touches their hearts.

While we each bring our own unlived life into the in-between space where our subjectivities intersect, there is also a third thing, the field itself. It has its own autonomy and intelligence, and is an equal partner in the relationship.

This is the realm of Hermes, guiding the alchemist in her work, which is one of pure devotion – love of the materials in the vessel, and of the vessel itself.

In addition to the external other, there is also an “other” who is moving inside us, a misplaced piece of soul who has become split off from the totality. Just like external others, these ones also long to be known, held, and loved.

They are shape-shifters and will manifest in an infinite number of forms – as vivid emotions, dream images, somatic tenderness, and an aching for union, as they seek us as a vessel in which they can incarnate and come alive.

Relational alchemy unfolds not only with an external other but simultaneously with the dissociated figures of psyche and soma, who are linked in mysterious ways.

It is to the degree we are able to empathically attune, listen to, feel, and hold the emerging inner Other that we will be able to truly accompany those in our lives.

If we’re unable to attend with devotion to the inner darkness, chaos, and contradiction, we will never be able to practice intimacy with these same qualities as they are inevitably evoked by those we allow to matter to us.

Perhaps this evocation is the true role of the Beloved, to re-introduce us to the vastness, majesty, and the unshakeable wholeness of the tender human heart.

My next live online course will start in September - The Soul Alchemist: Trusting Your Inner Guidance. To receive information about the course, which will be sent out later in the summer, please sign up for my mailing list below. 

Mailing list 

Website 

YouTube channel