That beautiful and mysterious place on the other side of all things bright… is the place of shadows.
This is one of my “paper work” side projects that I often work on while letting the layers in my oil paintings dry. I usually have time for these experiments in the late afternoon when the sun comes to dance on the studio floor. This creative time is different than painting. Less intense energy. More soothing. Almost…meditative, as I sit punching paper with a pin to make tiny dots of light.
This piece has grown wild over the last few months with watercolor, pens, and pin punches.
And…shadow blooms.
Seeing shadows always has the effect of turning my mind to the darker side of psyche.
Many years ago, I committed to mediating everyday for one entire summer. The simple, sit down, close your eyes and do nothing but breathe…kind of meditation.
June was peace & calm. July was humid & smug. “Look at me being Oh SO spiritual!” August was a long count down to end this experiment in September. Just a few weeks of 30minutes a day looking into an inner mirror is really just a big open invitation to the shadow self!
If you’ve never heard of the “shadow self” it was Carl Jung’s idea. Basically all the “negative” qualities we like to keep hidden…even from ourselves. We are wonderfully complicated creatures:)
Anyone who has ever meditated with any seriousness has found their shadow-self hitching a ride on the journey to bliss. Mine shows up skeptical, shy, judgy, jealous, anxious, impatient and probably a whole lot of other things I’m still not ready to find out. Maybe it’s not so wise for me to admit even all that;)
Around that time Pema Chödrön’s book The Wisdom of No Escape came into my life. (*Forever grateful to another wise woman for that…she know who she is;) For me, it’s one of the those well loved books that has become wrinkled, stained and falling apart. There is wisdom on every page of this little book but I wanted to share this part of page 21 with you.
“We see how beautiful and wonderful and amazing things are, and we see how caught up we are. It isn’t that one is the bad part and one is the good part, but that it’s a kind of interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff. When it’s all mixed up together, it’s us: humanness. This is what we are here to see for ourselves. Both the brilliance and the suffering are here all the time; they interpenetrate each other. For a fully enlightened being, the difference between what is neurosis and what is wisdom is very hard to perceive, because somehow the energy underling both of them is the same. The basic creative energy of life - life force - bubbles up and courses through all existence.”
“Shadow work is the path of the heart warrior”
To me this art piece feels especially filled with that “interesting, smelly, rich, fertile mess of stuff” Pema is talking about.
As we head into shadow season it has me contemplating…if I go search for light I’ll find shadows. That is how I’ll know I’m actually near light. It’s all energy…so the wise ones tell me!
ps…if you have a book from a wise woman that you love so much it’s actually falling apart please let me know in the comments below!
