Dear Garnishelli,
I know I normally start my personal journal entries with Dear God, but since you were the one who asked me to reflect more on this, I am writing this one to you. God knows this is as much for me as it is for you, and who ever else reads this. See the truth is that the Ultimate Consciousness, really wants us to be our most vibrant and creative selves. We were each given the gift to express something unique and amazing, which will help raise the vibrational frequency in the world in some way. It is just that so few of us, myself included, consistently remember we have these powers. We forget to always embody the bright light within ourselves, our Golden Shadow.
Psychiatrist Carl Jung called our submerged creative potential the "Golden Shadow." Whenever we have intense admiration for others, we are actually seeing our Golden Shadow. The qualities we admire in others are the qualities we have not yet owned and embodied in our own lives. In other words, our Golden Shadow is our submerged greatness. It is our dismissed and unknown strengths. Most often they are hidden and disguised within our deepest emotional pain and hurt. Our Golden Shadow is the part of our souls which offer particular strength of love and healing. It comes from the spaces in our life where we have experienced the most pain and challenges in our lives.
So many of us have had people in their life who have tried to get us to hide our bright lights under a basket and keep it from shining, possibly because somebody did it to them. As psychologist Stephen Wolinsky once wrote in The Dark Side of our Inner Child,"Briefly stated, we feel threatened by another's aliveness and try to damp it down or destroy it as ours was dampened down or destroyed. "Do unto others as that was done unto you."
Each of us responds to situations differently. There are numerous examples of people who have used the challenges in their life to become helpers and healers. Others have chosen to internalize the pain in ways that are destructive. .
This morning, I am especially mindful that in each moment of my life I have the power to choose strength or weakness. I have the power to choose love or fear. I can use a situation to inspire me or to contribute to a state of depression.
I find it interesting that what inspired you to write me was my v-log on re-setting, which was inspired by having to learn to reset my wheelchair. Yesterday the battery on my wheelchair died and of course with it being a holiday weekend, the service department is closed until Monday. I have had to work with my wife to be creative about how I am going to do things the next several days. I have had moments where I sat and cried and started to make those weak choices, but then I put the brake on my emotions and focused on what I can do and how I can be independent this weekend or until they bring me a new battery. What I have learned is that each choice I make to develop a positive attitude about this challenging time is leading to another. Positive begets positive and negative begets negative.
This whole process has been a gift as it has helped me to see how far I have come in my own journey. I have begun to understand some of what makes me want to choose to not walk because it is painful and challenging. At the same time, it has also helped me to remember that I have the faith in my relationship with the Ultimate to create ways out of what appeared like no ways. I have come to see how this is a gift from the Ultimate as I work on rebuilding the muscles in my legs due to my increased use of my walker and to practice telling my leg to move since the nerves in my right leg no longer work.
Learning to embrace my Golden Shadow means I tap into the qualities within me which help me heal any life challenges. The affirmations I give myself this weekend are coming mostly from within, not externally. My wife, however, has been amazing and reminding me that if I were alone I would find ways to solve my problems.
I am grateful she is here to love and support me, but the reality is that what will get me through is me and the choices I make each moment. By embracing my golden shadow at this point in my journey, because I am yearning to shine my light brighter, I am being intentional about moving through the anxiety, fear, and pain. I am going back and looking at the choices I have made which have contributed to this situation being so challenging. To let my light shine at its brightest, I have to understand why I have not worked as hard at my walking as I could have and make this the first day of the new choices in my life. This golden shadow of mine, I am going to let it shine. <3