I’d spent a lifetime running
seeking
needing
using
fearing
hoping
destroying
doing anything to fill the narrow, trembling void between
self and shame.
One day I stopped running, and my shame
she turned, and came to me.
She took me over and she held me down
in soft savage embrace,
when I finally caught my breath and
dared to look at her straight in
tender eyes, I saw more beauty and more
goodness and more
grace than I’d ever found
in years of wild flight.
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This is what it means in alchemy to “find the gold in the shadow.” To be able to look within at all of what is hidden, to see and to know the self in its fullness without fear, no matter what may come—that’s the moment when we first die, and when we are first born.
“We know that the mask of the unconscious is not rigid—it reflects the face we turn towards it. Hostility lends it a threatening aspect, friendliness softens its features.” —Carl Jung
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Don’t be afraid to change direction. It might be that you end up finding a friend in what you once feared.
