21: Seeing the Shadow
WITH DEPTH CREATIVITY
To Be More or Less
Depression is a corrosion of confidence. The question when healing depression really is: Do I want to be more? Yet, it is difficult to aspire to more when we are in a depression. Depression takes us into the past that is still unfelt and energetically not yet completed. Yet, when we enter the psyche's shadow to tend to it, something starts to move again. Blockages are cleared, and a way forward is made.
Depression, in my personal experience, is a necessary descent into the shadow to see it, correct it, clear it and complete it. Some people believe there are certain limits they cannot go beyond, but I believe it is possible to go a little deeper during each depression (shadow healing cycle) through simple, spontaneous art and writing exercises to see and accept something neglected that still needs attention.
There comes a point on your creative path where you simply cannot progress unless you recognize that you have a shadow and that it is up to you to clear it. Societal and relational forces that have wounded your creativity will keep you blocked until you examine their influence on you.
It is challenging to go higher into more creative inspiration because it often brings up the opposite, contrasting shadow to clear. Many creators I meet do not advance beyond a certain point because it unconsciously evokes fear of an inner or outer shadow attack. This prevents creative growth beyond a certain point.
The only way to consistently manifest a higher creative consciousness is to free yourself from the unconscious influence of the shadow, and you cannot do this without meeting emotional discomfort within. You cannot grow higher towards creative inspiration until you can clear blockages that seek to limit the self.
True Creativity
Unknowingly, you might be existing in a mediocre range of your creativity with no variance into the highs or lows of your human existence. We stay in the mediocre middle of our creativity to belong and not threaten conventional thinking.
It is impossible to be human and not be wounded. Most of us get wounded in our creative nature very young, and so we actually fear the bright light of our creativity. If you are a creator and yet feel blocked, you might have unconsciously decided to limit or shut off your creative power because you were attacked or ridiculed for your authentic creative expression.
The true creative choice is to be more, rather than fall back into old patterns of limitation. The patterns of the past will endlessly repeat until we intercept them and bring them into the light, because the way we once viewed life no longer fits. So to heal a depression, we need to let go of the old and accept the new.
Do you remember what caused you to shut down your light, your authentic self-expression, your dreams, your creativity? Do you want to set your creativity free? Are you willing to express your inner truth just a little bit more each day? True creativity is simply being willing to bring something fresh and surprising into your world bit by bit. This daily encounter with the new through spontaneous creativity is so life-affirming!
In this LIVE Studio class from my year-long expressive art and writing course, The Art of Healing Depression, we explore a fresh take on depression and why it is necessary to clear the shadow so your light can shine brighter.
21: Intuitive Painting
Creative energy can be huge at times. When I unleashed my spontaneous creativity 30 years ago, I went beyond the ridicule I had faced for my creative abilities, such as my high school art teacher telling me she thought I had no artistic talent.
Clearly, she touched a shadow belief in me that my creativity had to be expressed to some high, aesthetically pleasing standard, which shut down my creative passion for a time. When I painted this shamanic breakthrough painting, so many years ago, I reclaimed my dream of being spontaneously creative without rigid expectations of it looking “right”.
I love supporting creatives who feel blocked or stuck in some way. My year-long expressive art and writing course, “The Art of Healing Depression,” is opening for enrolment very soon! I hope you will join me!
21: Shadow - Control
Wherever you find the 21st Shadow, you will find someone either too weak to control anything at all or someone with a deep-seated need to control everything in their environment.
Repressive (Introverted) Nature: Submissive
All repressive natures are based upon the denial of personal power. Through the 21st Shadow, this shows up as submission. These people let others remain in control without asserting their own authority.
Added to this, the repressive nature tends to defer control to life itself, thereby not assuming responsibility for the direction in which it takes them. These people would rather not participate much in life. They often masquerade as laid-back. However, the reality is that such people are hiding from their true responsibility of embodying personal power.
Reactive (Extroverted) Nature: Controlling
The other side of the 21st Shadow is the acute need for control. These are the people we sometimes label as control freaks. Their anger is so tightly coiled that they cannot allow any part of their environment to escape their control.
As the repressed nature is loose, so the reactive nature is tight. These people cannot handle change unless they have instigated it. If others transgress the confines of their deeply controlled lives, all their pent-up tension and anger are likely to be detonated.
21: Gift - Authority
Authority is a phenomenon within the auric field that takes place between one individual and another, or between an individual and a group. True authority unites rather than controls.
Some of the deepest relationships are formed between one person in a position of authority and another in a seemingly submissive role. However, if both parties in such relationships are equally in service to each other, then their relationship transcends the social stereotype of dominance and submission. For such relationships to work, both parties must be equally in service to each other.
21: Spiritual State - Valour
At the Gift level, authority inspires loyalty. At the spiritual level, Valour invokes Communion. Communion is about merging your individual being into a higher collective being, and this is precisely what happens through the frequency of Valour.
Valour need not even act — it is a vibration of such intensity that it makes the hearts of others weep. It is the recognition of true nobility in another and the realization that the other is your own mirror.
No matter who you are or what kind of life you lead, at certain points in your life, you are given the opportunity to act with Valour.
This short Shadow Contemplation is from my studies of The Gene Keys by Richard Rudd. See the book for a more in-depth contemplation.