Transition Times - by Dennis Engleman

Day Two of the Ninth Wave and Universal Cycle (as describe by Carl Johan Calleman) ended May 1 with the beatification of Pope John Paul II.

Night Two of the Ninth Wave and Universal Cycle began May 2 with the demise of Osama Bin Laden.

Both events, obviously, are highly significant historical markers. There is a sense of transition in our times, of resolution for situations that had seemed impossibly intractible - while unprecedented developments also unfold, full of promise and potential.

This transition represents both an opening to the new and a closing of the old, movement beyond limitations of the past into more spacious realms of possibility.

How this process manifests at the collective level could be linked to a subject many know personally: the core wounding of childhood as it manifests in the adult experience.

It common, cliché actually, for those engaged in introspective therapies to arrive at a point where they conclude that most (if not all) their problems have resulted from the failure of their parents to provide what they needed as children. Not only did they not get the unconditional love that they craved, but they may well have received what they did NOT need, namely abuse and mistreatment.

From this analysis emerges a revamped opinion that is highly unflattering to mother and father. Deep hurts are uncovered and anger exposed as the child become adult gets in touch with wounded feelings that were repressed or denied in the formative years.

This is no doubt a healthy step in the process of self-recovery, but it is only a step. Many people get stuck there thinking they have reached the end point. After all, it is a convenient escape from responsibility if one’s inability to relate or behave well can be traced to faulty upbringing.

But beyond the recognition that the world represented by our parents damaged us when young is another and more mature recognition step, namely that they did what they needed to do so we could have what we needed to have. The wounds we got were the ones we were supposed to get, because they illumine the specific areas in ourselves requiring healing and transformation.

Realizing this takes blame away from the parents – more importantly it takes “power” away from the parents as in, “they had the power to make me less than myself.” And it gives power back to the individual through presenting the case that all events, including those that seem debilitating, serve one’s growth in soul maturation - whose ultimate intended end is victory.

As parents wound a child, so the world has wounded mankind as a collective child, thus forming the challenging conditions out of which this “child” must arise and reclaim its true nature. Victory starts to assume tangible form as individuals wake up and stop unconsciously following the script of that early patterning.

We are not called to repeat our parents, either in what they were or what they made us to be, but rather to transcend both them and ourselves.

Nor are we called to continually repeat the world in its ageless cycle of false assumptions about reality, of its “wars and rumors of wars” and every form of self-forgetfulness that has kept the beings we are, having been created in the “image and likeness” of God, opposed to God’s very truth.

There is no doubt that powerful energies are manifesting through the events surrounding one world leader’s beatification and another’s death. Yet it is ours to decide how we will respond to those energies – whether we will continue to feed the patterns of the past or choose a new and far better direction.

Let our decision be to release the parental patterns of the world and reclaim our own power. Let it be to not repeat the limits of childhood, but rather to claim victory over these and manifest the image and likeness of God that we truly are.

Let it be.

For the Love of Bees: A Life of Abstractions

By Maria Louisa

Prologue

As a teenager I had a romance with honeybees.  The promise of their delicate amrita emphasized by the threat of their salient sting.  To me they were summer: sweaty and golden.  Their yellow and black suits zipped tight as they sliced through a topaz dome.  I decided to raise a hive in my backyard and so purchased a colony.  I had the euphemistic notion that bees, like dogs, were acutely aware of fear and would not sting if I were emanating “good vibes.”  So I always performed the necessary tasks of beekeeping without any tranquilizing smoke, or protective gear.  My armor was the trust I had for the bees. 

     Until one day they swarmed me. 

     In the deep center of summer, when their activity was prolific and their defenses spiky, they surrounded my bare flesh with the potential of pain.  My mother was freaking out from the second story deck.  I called up to her as calmly as possible while getting stung in the face, “Mom! Get the hose!”

I recently saw a news clip on facebook declaring that two species of honeybees are now extinct.  These particular species are crucial to the world’s agricultural superstructure.  In light of their dwindling populations, the role of these fierce mini laborers is becoming potently pronounced.  Human’s entire network of nourishment relies on their miniature fluttering and zippy to and fro.  Albert Einstein made the statement “If honey bees become extinct, human society will follow in four years.”  If the bees die, we die.

     Do these bees grok their profound effect on the entire world?  Do they realize that their frantic gathering of fragile flower gold is feeding the silver urban centers that harbor humans like a hive?  We too, like the bees, zip here and there performing our daily gathering and dispersing.  And do we realize that, like the bees, we are affecting the entire earth with our most mundane movements?  Our morning latte in its disposable container, our superfluously blazing interior lights, the barbaric wrappers encapsulating every single object we use or consume, the coal burned with a tedious Google search, and another Google search, and the next, and then back to facebook, then email, then maybe someone messaged me, or maybe now, or now, or now… each frivolous Google scorching coal in some isolated data center in the Midwest.  Isolated until its lethal fumes waft downwind to the nearest toddler pushing his Tonka truck under the mask of innocuous blue sky.

     It is not only these flippant atrocities that accumulate, out of sight.  Diminutive acts of beauty that seem ensnared by small bubbles of space and time actually ripple out infinitely.  The genuine smile, the authentic artistic expression, the truth speaking, the bike ride, the reuse of a container.  Like the bees, our smallest actions are shaping the entire mandala of life that kaleidoscopes in living color on this absurdly spinning planet.  

     The safety gear needed now is not to protect us from the bees, but to protect our world from the loss of the bees. And this safety gear is not heavyweight canvas suits or narcotizing smoke, but daily awareness, and daily choices that nurture life.

     Life is one great interconnected whole, but the absurd thing is that we don’t know it, as Einstein pithily expressed: “We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness.”  We are cognitively disconnected from the actuality of coexistence, interconnectedness, of our influence on the planet, of the planet’s influence on us.  We are living in a fragmented world—a world of abstractions.

     As humans, our intellectual capacity and manifestation is increasing exponentially.  Still, we are wired for survival.  But now there are countless ways to meet our survival needs: the store stocked with alien concoctions, the internet to order our specific brand of adornment, the television to nurture our social hunger, the car to get us to the office, to make calls for a company, that produces machines for a factory, that constructs bulldozers, that make roads, so other people can get to work, for some other corporation, ad infinitum, and somehow this brings the food to the table for the multitudes.     

     It is no longer, chop wood, make fire, get warmth.  No longer, whittle bow, hunt buck, get food.  We are aware to some degree where our food comes from: we can conjecture that most things stem back to soil and sun.  But most of us no longer feel the grime of mineral rich dirt between rough pads of finger skin.  We no longer look in the cow’s eyes before we take her life.  Our fire is a push of an upward arrow on the heat box.  Our social network has become a hologram on a flat screen.  Fundamental information regarding our subsistence now comes to us in abstracted form, as disconnected data.  It has become intellectual, rather than corporeal.  We are largely disconnected from tangible impact and immediacy.    

     For example I got a bit of info about the honeybees—they are going extinct.  I know that this is crucial to my survival, but yet, I am able to compartmentalize that knowledge and forget about it.  If I still cultivated my own hive of bees, and those little workers pollinated my farm that fed my family, and they began to die, I would surely know the severity of the situation.  And I would be forced into action.  It is more disjointed when after I receive this info I can visit the well-stocked grocery store and, like usual, purchase my organic apples and broccoli.

     Bees are a symbol of communication.  They rely on intricate exchanges to relay info that is crucial to their epic daily work.  Like the bees, humanity’s communication is dying, or at least reconfiguring in drastic ways.  This is the crux of the conundrum of abstraction.  We no longer have direct interaction with the resources, life forms, and people who allow for our survival.  We have compressed contact to a rapid firing of the finger digits and we have lost the tactile proximity that breeds awareness and connectivity.

    I am not concretizing this as a negative thing—the fact we live in a fragmented, abstracted world.  But it needs to be addressed if we are able to progress with the rapid rate of technological evolution.  We need to find a way to navigate the shape shifting nature of survival on our modern Earth.

     How do we, like the bees, live in a way that supports the fundamental infrastructure of the earth?  How do we perform our perfect part, rather than, like the immense threat of invading plant species, suck the very life out of the planet that sustains us?  Every little action has an effect, a ramification.   Not that we should live like a Jain, zealously tiptoeing so not to squash a bug.  Death is an inevitable, and beautiful, part of life.  But if we continue in our current trajectory we will soon be on the long list of extinct species we are amassing.  

     It is not about living in fear, but it is about living in awareness, realizing our autonomy, realizing our capacity to choose, to steer away from the swift currents of consensual society’s downward spiral.  If we don’t consider our actions, we will go with the lowest common denominator, which at this point is supporting a mass human suicide.   It is the small actions that add up to big consequences.  Everyday we make choices, or choices make us.

     We can peer lucidly into the habit of the everyday.  What drives us?  What do we live for? It is possible to purport lofty ideals that in actuality never once penetrate the daily humdrum.  The simple turn of awareness onto our selves and our lives is the key that begins to unlock the mystery of living in an abstracted world.  We have too many choices.  And in some regards we are bound by choicelessness.  It is a delicate navigation of these paradoxically coexistent states that helps us to fabricate an authentic existence, an existence that, like the bees, supports the health of the planet and its creatures.

Epilogue

     2 A.M.  MLK day, 2011.  The wind invites me out into its wild whispers.  In an oversized duffle coat and my pajamas, I step into its fervor.  Tree limbs wrinkle against an indigo backdrop.  I am pulled to the river 8 blocks west. 

     The robust wind presses through wires and a crackle of branches.  Chimes ignite fragile melodies.  The neighborhood sleeps and I walk through their dreams.  I am so domesticated that as I walk into the wooded mystery of a neighborhood park, I feel lurking and company.  My heart ablaze, adrenaline a vein shot and concept.  I pass vacant tennis courts, wet with the fate of winter.

     At the river, the surreal scene spreads open before my eyes.  The wind has whipped through this river valley for eons and it wails now with archaic mystery.  This night the wind speaks to me.  As the world rests I am tutored by revelation.  It presses its force into my chest.  It splits me open.  It instructs: “Allow.  Trust.” It cries: “Allow the bigness that is beyond you to move through you, to provoke action, effortless action.”  It begs: “Stay alert, stay awake, though the world may sleep.  Allow the flight of the bees to animate your daily dance.  Be yourself fully, and you support the world.  Heal your inner fractures and you will mend the world.  Open your eyes and the world opens before you.  Live for this awareness, this perpetual opening of your eyes.  Live in commitment to process, to holding a delicate equilibrium of paradoxical forces.  Live for your miniscule thread that perfects the pattern. Live for your perfect part.  Live for the love of bees.”

Form is Emptiness, Emptiness is Form

From Robert Anton Wilson's preface to his book Cosmic Trigger, volume 1:

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- "contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised." In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

Wilson was the first author to turn me on to the concept of Model Agnosticism. I consider the revelation of relativity to be one of the most significant gifts ever received. It allows for play and exploration of heretical worldviews without becoming ensnared by the trappings of Belief.

Just yesterday I received an email from my father, a french man who identifies with leftist intellectual Jewish atheism, but whose early childhood was peppered with Parisian love of apocalyptic prophecy (See: Nostradamus). Despite his denial of Higher Reality, he confesses a private appreciation for the interpretive art of quatrain and psychic navigation of future possibilities.

My father's email came out of left field. I was shocked to discover the contents of the message. He appears to be genuinely concerned that Nostradamus' prophecy about the End Times is beginning to come true, as evidenced by poetic passages seemingly alluding to the nuclear meltdown in Japan and the insane political violence taking place in the middle east. The next location to get hit, according to those who interpret Nostra's quatrains, will be the West Coast of the United States. I currently live in Oregon, and my father's email expressed concern that I might be in danger here on the west coast.

According to my father's sources, the end of the world began just two days ago, on 4/11/11. I wonder whether my father recognizes the encoded numerical implications of this date, where the latter four numbers (11/11) add up to 4, represented by the month of April. Thus 4/11/11 suggests the unfolding of 4 into the division of 11/11.

Considering his atheistic perspective, I can't help but suspect that there is some indwelling human need to arrange seemingly disconnected forms, such as the day of the year and the simultaneous occurrence of disaster somewhere in the world, as both a form of play and a way to confront the imminence of death.

It is not enough to simply speak the words "I am going to die some day." An excerpt from the book Illuminating the Path, by Khenchen Palden Sherab and Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal, speaks to the necessity for human beings to contemplate the nature of death and emptiness:

Just simply sitting there and saying "It is all empty," is like putting a little cup upside down - the little space in the cup becomes a narrow, limited emptiness. It is essential to understand the heart of the matter.

By analogy, it is not enough to simply know that the world is in a phase of transformation. As human beings, we have a deep indwelling desire to track the inevitable disintegration of order, that we may sink into the deeper levels of reality. Yet to track political and natural disasters alone will not satiate this desire. By tracing world events in a non-linear and irrational fashion, such as numerology or poetic quatrains or whatever else, we bypass the small-cup-emptiness of Consensus Reality's doom and gloom. Engaging a non-consensus-reality meta-narrative allows us to experience the world in a way that feels more private, sacred, and personal.

I have chosen to illustrate one method of NCR mapping in the following image.

I begin by selecting a section of the world. In this case, Central America. There are 8 countries in this section of the world. For the sake of simplifying the work, I have chosen to focus on the three six-letter country names. 666 is the number of the beast, an appropriate sequence to invoke for the purposes of radical prophecy and divination.

The three six letter words (Mexico Panama Belize) are divided into two isosceles triangles, one upright and the other inverted. Interestingly, all three of these names divided perfectly into vowels and consonants, respectively. Whether we choose to interpret this as coincidence, conspiracy, divine synchronicity or something else altogether will depend upon a pre-existing map of reality.

I have chosen to identify the alphanumeric correspondences applicable to each letter. This could be described as one branch of the Science of Non-Consensus-Reality. There is a precise method whereby we escape from our minds and into the ephemeral world of empty forms. These empty forms, or letters divorced from their initial significance (names of countries), are being systematically twisted by a series of processes in order to reach an apotheosis of Higher Significance. However, the capacity for enjoyment of this process depends on the practitioner (occultist), and likewise, the final meaning at which he or she arrives typically depends on a pre-existing bias of some sort, be it apocalyptic or otherwise.

The simple arithmetic of this process reveals a higher order of alpha-numeric correspondence. We have now arrived at what the occultist would be inclined to call magickal formulae for deriving further meaning. The numbers 15 and 40 are imbued with divine significance, tying the names of these three six-letter names of countries to an abstract sequence of alphanumeric correspondence.

On and on spins the merry-go-round of my interpretive process. The numbers 40 and 15 may be applied to an infinite number of different world events, from times of the day to quantities of objects to age of significant persons, all with the final result of escaping from the linear modes of relating to the cosmos.

When our data has become so totally abstracted from Consensus Reality that the resulting information can only be said to exist as phantoms of our imagination, we then stand at a critical point. The insane mystic makes the error of trying to drag his imaginal work back into Consensus Reality and prophesize future events. If he suffers from paranoia, his interpretations will be apocalyptic. If his human needs are taken care of (food, shelter, clothing, social life) then he may be inclined to see these synchronistic data points as evidence of the compassion of the Universe.

As quantum physics has demonstrated, we are the observers who affect the experiment. All form is perceived by the mind, and may therefor be dubbed imaginary. In realizing the emptiness of form, and simultaneously, realizing that emptiness can be perceived only through the study of interrelated forms, we are illuminated!

The Divine Mother - by Dennis Engleman

In the silent, hopeful moments before dawn an image sometimes presents itself of a mankind preparing to live angelically in this world rather than as the devil’s henchmen.

I see people for whom truth is the only frame of reference. People whose personal darkness of despairing demons has been reconciled and saved, ending the curse of eternal damnation; people who have chosen consciously to serve the sacred in order to extend compassion into a wounded populace.

As the First Day of the Universal Underworld draws to a close, I lend my prayer to those of many others:

May this planet no longer be called “a man’s world,” but rather honored as the abode and manifestation of the Divine Mother. I pray that this material maternal being which has nurtured every living creature be respected and acknowledged, and her forceful movements seen for what they are.

In this way earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and erupting volcanoes may be understood not merely as physical seismic events, nor even as irruptions of mankind’s collective unconscious into manifest reality,

But as expressions of a powerful living Presence

Whose voice needs to be heard.

Flight of the Eagle ~ A Dreamer’s Journey through the Heart of Consciousness

Deep asleep, the curtains of the dreamscape opened. There I am walking and talking with my friend Dawn, along a shore-side park by an expansive lake in a mountainous setting. Devyn, Dawn’s teenage daughter, was with us too, playing in her own imaginative wonderland. Her laughter echoed our way, reeling in our awareness. Devyn was now not playing alone, but was accompanied by an enormous Bald Eagle. The Eagle joined Devyn’s playful energy, poking about and hoping up and down around her. Whoa...

The Eagle and Devyn shared an infectious comfort-ability. Engaged in a strange game of tag, they pursued each other. The Eagle would gently peck Devyn and comically flap its wings to create a big breeze, almost blowing her over. This went on for sometime as Dawn and I watched in amazement.

A stillness set in between them and the Eagle approached. The majestic bird bowed its head, and Devyn responded by mounting the back of the Eagle and embracing it in a Loving hug. Then, right before our wide-eyes, they took flight over the lake. Excited cheers cascaded from the sky, raining down the feeling of liberation onto us. The epic Eagle swooped down, skimmed the water’s surface and blasted into the sky, through the clouds and into the rays of the Sun.

As a new set of clouds moved in, the Eagle safely returned with Devyn. Devyn hugged the Eagle once more, dismounting and spinning in circles with glee. The Eagle watched Devyn and immediately peered directly into our hearts, silently assuring us that the path to flight is through the heart of a child. The infinite potential of innocence made manifest as gentle adventurousness, delicate strength and alert appreciation. The dancing balance of masculine and feminine forces, playing with one another in complete honesty. In that moment, I opened my heart to feel this truth, the Single Truth. In this space an earnest child-like thought took form, humbly stating... “Hey, I want to fly on the Eagle.”

In a quantum-leap, the dream shifted and I found myself seated securely on the back of the Eagle, soaring in the sky. I looked down below, taking in a deep breath and letting go of the illusion of limitation. We flew as One into the heights, climbing altitude into wispy levels of atmosphere. In these upper levels, from this perspective, bliss is allowed to express itself. Here, freedom is the domain of the free. Funny, I look back now, how our atmosphere relates to where we are at-most-fear.

Feelings of nervousness and uneasiness at times arose in these heights, but were quickly dissolved by the liberation and confidence I felt. For, I had full confidence in the Eagle, made certain by the Eagle’s confidence in itself. A wave of energy swept over us, now reversing direction into a rapid decent towards the Earth. We dove fast, strong, poised. As we got closer to the Earth, I felt pressure building within myself, but the Eagle, steadfast and determined, flew straight down unflinching. The ground approacheth, closer and closer, and at a single centimeter before impact....whoosh, a perfect size portal opened up for us to comfortably continue our descent.

At first I was surrounded by just rock, dense layers of sediment, but soon, as we continued on, a new vision arose. I began to see an immense landscape, which I could only relate to as the Lower-Self, the realms of the unconscious. Shifty magma, streams of plasma and liquid metal merged, collided and exploded in fractal-archetype soup. The seemingly viscous chaos molded into expression-filled faces, skeletal systems, modern buildings and highways of prayers, fantasies and fears. Collective consciousness in constant flux, awaiting further recognition of itself. A massive mandala made up of a disarray of organically-organized in-genuity, all pulsating around a center point, which was our direct destination. During this descent through the underworld the Eagle’s focus held unwaveringly towards the center, and unlike myself, distracted not by the busy surroundings. Here, we approached another seeming breaking point, now moving further into the darkness of the center ...

Entrenched in utter darkness my faith began to shake, the foundation, though, holding stable by the Eagle’s persistence. And then, without fail, we approached the Light. This time, passing through a veil of shimmery Light Substance, we entered what seemed to be the palaces of inner Earth, the depths of our wildest imagination. Here we were surrounded by grand kingdoms and crystalline cities woven of Light-grid tapestries, inhabited by millions of beings who appeared to be diligently celebrating, working and creating. I saw galactic gardening, synchronicity sharing systems and elemental education exchange. I felt an incredible sensation of Love sweep through me, feeling deeply connected to this place, its inhabitants and its sense of eternal joyous service.

Still, though, we flew ceaselessly to the center of this crystal kingdom. It appeared as though we were approaching the power Source of this miraculous mystery, a conscious-breathing spherical Love-Hub of Limitless Light. The Eagle and I began to journey through this blindingly bright Star-like space into its own central core, a central-point paradoxically dark. It was then, as the Eagle and I began to pierce the membrane of this veil, the event horizon where the Light met the Dark, the very place where Thing holds No-thing in an eternal-kiss of rapture, that I completely surrendered and let go...

And in this moment, I was now alone. The Eagle having completed its mission, disappeared as so too did the memory of it all. I was now pure consciousness floating in endless space. I was it, it was me....and in the very moment I realized I am I, another quantum-leap brought me elsewhere. This time it was all very bright, it was morning time and I was awake lying in bed. A being buffet of inexplicable feelings still fresh, my reflections marinated in the bands of light making their way through the blinds, merging me back with myself for the dawn of a new day.

By Brendan

Psychic Heliocentrism - by Dennis Engleman

Four hundred fifty years ago the typical European believed the Sun and all other planets, indeed the entire universe, revolved around the earth. Copernicus set this false concept on its ear by looking into his telescope and noticing that the facts were otherwise.

And while a corrected reorientation of cosmology ultimately formed in the intellectual framework of general mankind, this shift has yet to occur within his deeper psyche.

If we posit the Sun as symbolic of God and the earth as symbolic of personhood, an emanation of spiritual reality into manifestation, it is clear that mankind as a collective has continued to believe the entire cosmos revolves around himself.

The “me” dominated (and denominated) mentality so prevalent everywhere is behind all expressions of control, manipulation and domination of others. In the scientific, political, economic and even religious realms, the concept of ME trumps all other considerations.

This “me” may be expanded to include a community, a tribe, a business, a state, or a nation – but the principle remains the same. ME must be defended at all costs. ME must succeed, ME must overcome, ME must live and not die!

At this point it must be acknowledged that such an attitude of virulent self-preservation is destructive and reflects psychic immaturity and ignorance – much like the geocentrism of the 1600’s.

Wisdom is recognizing that what one had imagined “special” about oneself is both ordinary and expendable, and only the divine within is precious.

Psychic heliocentrism comes about through a shift of focus to the heart-space, in which the ego is relegated to its proper role as an orbiting functionality around the divine Self, eternally intimate with God.

This transition of consciousness, one must hope, is accelerating throughout the world. But it does not come about through reliance on ideation.

Political parties, for example, are by definition and default separating entities that depend on the egos of their members for cohesion, and whose underlying goal is to subsume all opponents. The same can be said for nation-states. We will not help the world by taking sides on issues, but rather by becoming “side-less” within ourselves.

By reorienting from a perspective in which the center is “me,” to one where the center is the true Source and Foundation of “me,” we begin to live out a new paradigm.

The wisdom that comes from this will reveal how we can most effectively serve the global transformation.

A Celebration of Crisis - By Dennis Engleman

“Consciousness is a continuous process of unfolding,” writes Thom Cavalli, “punctuated by dislocations and reunions.” These dislocations are necessary so that opposite polarities of consciousness, which are incomplete in themselves, can view each other clearly and make the adjustments necessary to come into synthesis and reunion again.

Such dislocations may come in the form of crisis, an abrupt intrusion of imbalanced energy into what had seemed a stable field. Under the influence of this intrusion hitherto hidden psychic factors make their unexpected appearance.

Crisis serves to expose polarities that have been suppressed by the prevailing order. Polarization manifests the Yin/Yang in its more extreme states – a turbulence we interpret as chaos and experience as disorientation and distress. And yet such chaos can be a necessary prelude for those opposing polarities to be reconciled.

In the realm of self-awareness, the Yin/Yang polarities are represented by consciousness and unconsciousness. Within a person's unconscious are repressed patterns (called shadows) that reflect our disenfranchised self – ways we have been, things we have experienced, that we intensely dislike and so push out of awareness. Being unconscious, they can irrupt into waking life without our quite realizing what is happening or the part we are playing in it.

To bring one of these patterns into consciousness requires dreaming it awake – luring it into objective view where it can be witnessed in all its luridness. Such a dreaming awake usually produces an uncomfortable situation thoroughly infused with the wounded qualities of our suppressed psyche, a drama in which antagonist and victim seem indisputably identified.

Once such a psychic polarization has occurred, an opportunity for resolving that irrupted pattern is at hand. The shadow cannot be effectively confronted until it has manifested consciously, therefore bringing it out - through dreaming it awake - is a necessary (though extremely difficult) part of the healing process.

When the urge becomes overpowering to assume some past role, along with the familiar (though usually unpleasant) emotions that role dictates, this is a signal the shadow has emerged from unconsciousness and is parasitically living through us. We, as host of this unintegrated manifestation, assume its unconscious state and therefore offer no resistance to its imbalanced energies.

In fact, the natural propensity is to identify with superficial characterizations (victim, perpetrator, etc.) and fully accept the shame these roles prescribe. Nourished by this, the shadow drinks from the intensity of our involvement in the drama it has unleashed. After filling up at the pump of our darker emotions it can slink back unnoticed into the unconscious until hungry once more.

In that moment when the shadow seems most powerful – in its outward manifestation – it is paradoxically also most vulnerable. Here is the point of intentionally “dreaming it awake,” for in bringing unconscious content into view we have the chance to sooth and balance disturbed and distorted portions of our psyche that are usually beyond reach.

Taking advantage of this weakness is challenging however. To begin with, we must recognize that the conflict is not really between, or about, external parties. Anyone involved in facilitating this process is a friend, provided our overreaching intent is to be healed. Nevertheless it is we ourselves who must do what seems impossible when the shadow is ravenously stalking – namely, not feed it.

“Not feeding it” means not allowing the shadow (which will feel like us) to embody whatever emotions (self-justification, self-vindication, blame, etc.) the situation seems to bring up and entitle us to. Nor can we simply numb out. Rather, we need to be consciously present with the intensity of the uncomfortable feelings that arise - while doing nothing to either express or expiate them.

If we can sit in this nerve-jangling state, giving all those wild and wounded emotions our fullest compassionate attention - while simultaneously denying them their usual destructive discharge routes - we will be performing a microcosmic salvific act. The energy that would have continued to feed our sense of disempowerment, as personified by the shadow, will be retained for consciousness and fuel our own awakening.

By surrendering to what had seemed like death – and not dying – we will experience a resurrection that institutes a new and true awareness of personal empowerment.

And what had seemed a hopeless crisis will transform into joyful celebration.