Identification of the Shadow. How do you know that the shadow has risen? What shape does it take on? What behaviors and cycles are present when it surfaces? When the Leviathan surfaces, it is very subtle; 'hey is that a Lumber jack, yeah, over there!' and there it goes. If you read this far, most likely you have been living with a disgruntle shadow for some time. Either yours or some one else's. Well this page is about identification!
Have you ever found yourself engaging or being dragged into some futile argument that you are emotionally lashed about, to only come out the other side and have no clue what it was about? Are you trying not to initiate any more or looking for the back door when none exists? What do you do? Start at the beginning! Face it bravely, it is going to be a bumpy ride. Do not fear it by not having any desire for outcome, just do. Just be. But do!
The first thing I notice when I start having a problem is that I am tired. If I disturb my natural biorhythm cycle of waking and sleep, I tend to get very impulsive about my emotional out bursts. Lucky for others around me they usually directed internally in the silence of my own head. Sure, they can now be some internal prejudice of an external event or person. But once I get some sleep in my regular or newly accustomed pattern, I can reflect on those thoughts and discern which ones were valid and which was not. Also when stress is hitting me and the melancholy that follows boredom bring my mind to boredom and silence, do the worries attack and create stressors. Stress is good, it brings on change. Too much or inadequate misplaced stress will become stressors which are dangerous. Luckily for me, I only see the shades of my shadow act up.
Yes at times, I have picked a needless argument because I was emotional raw. But I can acknowledge when that happens and do things not to be brought to that point again. Also when the stressors mount, I used to, very subtlety, adapt to a situation over a long period of time and loose my original self to conform to some ones wishes to avoid confrontations. I even in these situations believed it was me who had a problem. Within the isolated world of me and my girlfriend, it was I who had to change. I was only half right.
" So if you meet me, have some courtesy, have some sympathy, and some taste. Use all your well-learned politesse or I'll lay your soul to waste ?"
Sympany for the Devil; Rolling Stones
From a very young age, I knew myself. I was rampage by the sneers of my peers and had rocks pelted at me from across the street from first grade up to junior year in high school. I am a Black Belt champion in the art of Kosho Surindo Kenpo, six foot and two hundred pounds man who always retrained that size over most people though out my school days; champion I say because I never have to prove myself! I am well endowed mentally and physically , with a bit of a pot belly. I come from two healthy happy well off parents who have much love for me, by brother, themselves, and the cat! I had a Grandmother who thought I was the center of the universe without ever spoiling me! I always made friends easily, but choosing them was hard when I was younger. I did not know it then, but what all that sneers and jeers from those peers of mine where only desperate attempts for self esteem and confidence to fill the voids within. But I did know I loved myself and had strong definitions of my faults and strengths. I never found it appropriate to make any one hurt as much as they hurt me, which makes you in school an easy target for so many emotionally hurting children. I was later to find out that there was few healthy families in my town. For one reason or another there was many parents that suffered from rape, incest, drug addiction, alcoholism, divorce; before and after their children were born. It also was the first generation of the latch key kids. But through it all, I knew myself and did not wish to return the pain to any!
But at the same time, I did not date much in those years, so when the first woman wanted to spend two whole days and nights with me; I wanted to marry her. I have this same problem with cars and jobs. I take what is first offered because I think there will be no other choice; either it is all I can afford or all that will accept me. Granted, when you see some one has a good heart, you forgive some or many short giving. This just tends to be harder to deal with in emotional relationships. Like that car, it might have an engine that will last until Joe Walsh is elected president, but the frame and the tires and the brakes are always needing repairs. Good hearts, poor foundations. Problems always will exist until the roots are fixed and the soil is fine.
So with one girlfriend I would dread full moons. She would be in full cycle and be ready to lash out at me about how unhappy she was with her life and how she had her car repossessed and she was poor. Naturally I took it to be my fault because we were engaged and I was not making enough money to buy a second car or give her financial security. We would also take walks and sure enough she would stop talking out of the blue and begin a long silent walk home. This I believed to be my fault as well, I must of said something to have her shut down like that. Very few walks did not happen this way at night. She would gear herself high up for my birthday or holiday, just to crash and tell me how disgusted she was at me for always being in Bed. Never mind that I was always out before I knew her. The only reason I was in bed allot was because I was waiting for her to want to do something, and she never did. She would just lay in bed next to me and stare at the tube. When she left me two months before the wedding, I spent the next six months wondering what I did wrong.
My next girlfriend was my sage that I turned to for consulting that taught me their was nothing wrong with me. She just ran away because I was to healthy. But within the first week of dating her, I slipped with my tongue not ever knowing exactly what I said to make her so mad. That I went out and spent a hundred dollars on Xing Xing teapots, her being an avid tea drinker. The next day when I gave them to her as a surprise, I found no recollection on her part she was mad at me. As I began to spend the next months with her, I was finding that we were getting into many emotionally charged discussion leading into an argument. Some of these quieted down once she stopped drinking, but they never went away. I would be left the next day wondering what the argument was about? So like the first girlfriend, I took all these arguments internally thinking it was something I was doing. Thinking if I only knew what I was doing wrong I could change it! Over time I heard the same things being said about me in these discussions. I was being told I was passive aggressive, controlling, inflexible, a prejudice white middle class suburban male, could not take criticism, lacked compromise, could not communicate, and not validate her emotions. More I tried to see these things in me the more what she told me in the beginning of our relationship rung true. Some times you are just to healthy for some one and the faults do not lie within you. She was half right!
.
