The Ultimate Shadow
Sunday morning meditations seem to be a breeding ground for revelation.
Last week it was The Universal Moment.
This week I realized that an ability has developed in me over the last year. I call this “Dropping to the Bottom”.
In any moment there are things that I habitually want to avoid. These can be pains, feelings…even thoughts. It is the mirror of relationship that brings these untapped bodily experiences into awareness. Being mirrored by my wife I’ve become more attuned to the ways that I resist or deny things in myself. I can choose to experience them or continue pretending like they don’t exist. I’ve come to realize that it’s easier in the long run to allow myself to feel these uncomfortable things.
There are benefits.
Resisting them leaves me feeling narrow, two dimensional, whereas allowing the pain opens into a bigness of being. If I allow my pain I become bigger than I thought I was. It’s like I hold myself suspended above an abyss, afraid of the unknown. Letting go into the forbidden feelings allows me to drop to the bottom of this abyss. Sometimes it’s a harrowing drop but usually I land on solid ground and walk away a lot less fearful.
Here’s the Ancient Enneagram Solution Chart
Usually with these charts, the triangle shows the triplicity.
The polarity is between wholeness and ego. Wholeness is the bigness of who we are and Ego the smallness. The harmonizing element is surrendering to unknown or what the ego doesn’t want to feel. This is the shadow.
What we meet in the process is our resistance within and our defensiveness to what is prodding us from without.
If we choose to surrender we become vulnerable and humble.
This is a sobering experience but it leads to a friendliness with ourselves and likewise with the world. The Tibetan Buddhists call this Maitri.
The experience of recognizing our shadow and allowing oneself to settle into the forbidden feelings induces an overall experience of dropping to the bottom. Eventually we get to where there is no more shadow, no more unknown self. We come face to face with the ultimate truth of our existence, the ultimate shadow, the absolute.
Here is a song that I wrote just for this blog post.
ULTIMATE SHADOW
Vulnerability
Leads to humility
Surrender ego to wholeness
That cannot be broken
Unmask defensiveness
Eat your resistance
I can be friendly with all that goes on in me
All that goes on in us is shadow
Suffering shadow
Just wants to be seen
Just want to be clean
Just wants to be
Drop to the bottom
We are nothing but atoms
The light of the world extends from the darkness
This absolute darkness
This absolute shadow
The ultimate shadow
TingZen 2021
One related thing I came across this week when researching is the following statement about wholeness.
Wholeness cannot be broken.
Wholeness is comprised of all the pieces of who I am. When I identify with one piece then from that perspective I can seem to be broken. But when I identify with my wholeness then all of the pieces add up to that wholeness which is dynamically complete, which is a completeness that is not static but continually growing. It’s only from the limited perspective of a part that who I am can seem incomplete or broken.
I’ve done a video of this. It’s in a Facebook Group called Welcome to the Shift Show.
If you would like to download the The Ultimate Shadow Chart go here.
I have composed a song about the The Ultimate Shadow. Click here watch the video.
