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"Awakening in the Darkness"
by Maniko
 When my son, Forest, was two and a half years alive, we were living on thirty-five acres near the North Fork of the Yuba River in Nevada County. That was thirty years ago, but what I learned that early summer day has stayed with me and deepened my understanding of the human fascination, fear and ultimately friendly embrace of our shadow selves.
My son came running up the hill with intensely fearful energy. Once he found his way to me, I held him and asked him, "What’s wrong?" He told me someone was following him. He was desperately frightened. I held him some more. After he calmed down, he left my embrace and walked away, pointing to the ground, suddenly puffing and getting rigid and frightened again! I looked to where he was pointing, and to my utter amazement, it was his own shadow that was terrifying him.
My heart flooded with love as I embraced him again and explained to him it is the light from the sun and the form of his own body that creates the shadow he is seeing, that it is his shadow. In fact, there is no one and nothing there at all. I showed him how everything and everyone, when light is present, casts a shadow, but if you actually go and sit in the shadow, you will see that a shadow does not actually exist. What exists is a human being, or a tree, or a building and the light that shines on these forms. We spent some time seeing and sitting in the shadows and looking at the relationship of the Sun’s light with the trees, a person, a building, a car and getting in touch with how this, the light and the form, creates a shadow in their image. Once he understood, he relaxed. ...this innocence of not knowing that created terror in him and his journey to seeing and understanding impeccably embodies the whole journey of transformation - a journey from unconsciousness to consciousness.
I have often reflected on this gift and teaching my beautiful son gave me. In my many years of extensive healing work and transformational work, I have found this simple reality of shadow and light is a perfect representation of the whole journey of transformation. My view of the commonly held belief that the shadow is a repository for the feelings, beliefs and/or assumptions that we have banished from our conscious awareness, which then forms in our imagination into almost a whole other creature, is that we are making mountains out of mole hills. It is just clusters of thoughts! When you actually look at the thoughts, there is really nothing there, just thoughts and thoughts and thoughts, terrifying us, clouding our intelligence! It is our fear, ignorance and projection that terrifies us. Exactly like the experience of my son. Realizing he could not get away from his own shadow, he projected that a dangerous “being was who was chasing him,” putting him in a state of desperation, trauma and helplessness. We too, in our ignorance and fear, project so much on to this innocent phenomenon, the shadow.
This is the job of meditation, to bring awareness to the isness of things. What actually exists is shades of light and dark. Meditation is bringing our awareness to the actual; what and who is actually here. We scare ourselves by believing and assuming our interpretations and projections are real. And with so much unconsciousness collectively, these projections take on a life of their own. Seen with awareness, there is nothing at all in the shadow, just as there is nothing at all in thoughts. What actually exists is empty space, form, light and matter. What actually exists is the earth we live upon, human beings and a plethora of life everywhere. As Buddha has so eloquently said: With our thoughts, we make the world.
In one of my songs "And Now" I have a lyric that says "Turn and face the beast..." For what I know through my deepest heart’s devotion is that the beast has shown itself again and again to be nothing other than my own ignorance–projected! What is most profound to me, is the discovery that, hidden in the shadow of my unconscious, is the exquisiteness of my true nature, a genuinely divine being, alive, filled with love, light, and empowered by the heart’s essence, an expression of the splendor of creation.
We keep this reality of our belovedness away from our awareness with far more vigilance than the thoughts of how screwed up we are. But if you really go and sit in meditation with your shadow, relax a little, be present and awake, you will find, just as my beloved young son did, there is really nothing there, only the light and a human being. When there is darkness, there is no shadow. When there is light, all forms cast a shadow. What actually exists is the light and the form of things.
Try this experiment for yourself, open your heart to silence, to seeing, to being awake and present. Give up, for just a moment, all your lofty ideas and beliefs and just experience a shadow. As our wise masters have always said, the outer sky and the inner sky are identical.
This is not to say that we don’t get tangled up in the world’s nightmares. We most certainly do! The media is filled with evidence. We all know how profoundly painful it is when we get caught in a nightmare with someone we love very much. But nightmares only exist when we are sleeping, either actually or metaphorically. Our responsibility is to awaken. The word Guru consists of two syllables, gu; meaning dispeller, ru; meaning darkness, dispeller of darkness. Another experiment I would like to offer you is to go and sit in the dark. Get as intimate with darkness as you are able. Feel its nature, let it gift you. And you will find that no matter how much effort you make, you cannot do anything with darkness directly. The only way to dispel the darkness is to turn on the light! Even a small candle will do. That is the source of my song, my dance and the silent heart-to-heart communion with all that is.
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