The Dance of Love and Shadow

Throughout our lives we have divided ourselves between that which we accept, and that which we disown. That division separates us from the oneness. This separation is so painful, we often further divide and separate from the parts that feel a pain for which we have no answer. The way back to the light for these banished parts of self is through us. Each piece of self holds important keys for us to become all that we are.

So often the impotence we feel to manifest who we are on this earth reflects the reality that we have misunderstood, run from and disowned faces of ourselves that have the resources we need to fully express ourselves. These faces wait in the shadows for an opening to return.

Often the energy of the third love: that which is born in the space between two people, offers the hope to our shadow of finally being reclaimed. The deeper the love, the deeper the pieces of disowned self that are drawn to be present for it.

This creates a profound tension within us: On the one hand we are opening to more and more of our love and our partner. But in order to do this we are challenged to embrace more of our partner’s shadow in our love. The judgment that separates us from our own shadow, also separates us from those aspects within our partner.

At some point the opening runs into this barrier of judgment and an inertia of stalled momentum occurs. This is a point of profound crisis in every relationship, which often leads to its end if the groundwork has not been adequately laid up to that point to weather it.

In order for our love to grow, we must begin the arduous task of embracing the orphans within we have littered throughout our past. And who remain stuck, and frozen there. In the heat of love, these faces begin thawing, floating up to the surface of our consciousness, where we are likely to panic when we meet them. This is the troubled water of relationship. As we are spooked by the old ghosts we have long forgotten, we are likely to distrust our partner. “Surely it is their fault I am having such a difficult time.”

The difficult time we are having is born of the difficulty we have accepting ourselves, and the aspects of our partner that we similarly judge. Nothing is more painful, more challenging, and more potentially healing or destructive as the dialogue that occurs between two people at such times. How this space is navigated will determine the fate of the love you share, and the  relationship with your self. It is not for the faint of heart. Most people, recognizing that they lack both the muscle and the skill for this work, bail from relationship long before it enters this terrain.

This journey of  integration is an endless path that lasts throughout our physical existence.  On this path there is a bigger journey that is taking place. When a truly deep relationship enters our lives, the great work of returning home to the one self that spans lifetimes takes another step forward.

This can need detailed help from a shaman outside of the relationship. Healing the grief of a loss that has no dimension in this life time can be not only disorienting, but terrifying. When the complexity of what we draw to us in relationship is greater than our skill to cope with, we will retreat from the relationship and the challenges it indirectly triggers.

This is a most painful piece of relationship. How is it we can abandon the love for a partner who’s only crime is their capacity to love us so deeply that it evokes experiences so deep we do not know how to cope? The wounds that stir in us are not theirs, but ours. Our inability to respond to their call is not our partner’s responsibility, but ours. Nevertheless, it is our partners who we leave when we abandon ourselves. The grief of such recognition and the poignancy of such moments is can be too unbearable to see in the eyes of the one we love. So we hide, using shame and guilt to numb and diminish one of the most profound moments of the human experience, where we face the truth of our ego’s current inadequacy to respond to the challenge of integrating our full selves.

Action: What all this points to is the need for help. We cannot do and know and be all that is necessary for us to make our journey home without embracing the larger self and the many allies that attend that self. An attitude of humility to the possibility of all things, a willingness to receive and to work in partnership are key and cornerstone for our journey.

Contents

Cresting the Waves:

A guide to sailing through life on

Relation-Ships

Dane E. Rose