February 2023 A Valentine for the Shadow

"The Shadow is the greatest teacher for how to come to the light."

—Ram Dass

Dear Shadow,

You are the often-unconscious parts of us that we have repressed, hidden, and disavowed, and we are learning to love you and let you love us, despite our resistance. 

Thank you for compelling us to keep turning over the boulders that lay deep within the forests of our psyches. You show us how curiosity is a meaningful and mindful first step toward compassion. 

As we progress on our journeys of personal growth, spiritual development, evolution, and transformation (whatever name or form that may take), it’s tempting to think of you as what we’re working through. But you, Shadow, in whatever way you may appear — be it shame, blame, self-deception, compulsion, self-betrayal, or manipulation, to name but a few of your many shapes and forms — you are not a force to be feared or ignored, an unwanted passenger to be banished, or a subject to master. You are the teacher. Integrating you does not erase you. In fact, you reveal to us how, as our inner landscapes become increasingly rich, subtle, and detailed, you do, too.

Thank you for relentlessly interrupting our evasive maneuvers — our attempts to bypass you on our way to some outcome, conclusion, or destination. Thank you for always redirecting us back to the root, even as we aim for enlightenment. You invite us to “be patient,” as Rainer Maria Rilke writes, “toward all that is unsolved” in our hearts. 

Thank you for keeping us engaged in the mysteries of human experience! Simply by making your presence known, bursting like blooms through the cracks in the concrete of our ego identities, you remind us that the limited scope of our self-awareness can’t possibly perceive all there is yet still to know.

Those of us who endeavor to heal, care or hold space for others through the magic and misery of life inevitably discover that we must also hold space for you. As we learn to recognize you, we learn to recognize how you shape-shift to show up in all of our relationships and relational dynamics.

We are learning to love you and let you love us, despite our resistance. 

We want to sit with you, invite you in, and witness you. The dark night of the soul is not without its own romantic drama, but we’re invested in exploring how to encounter you differently. We want to make time for you in small ways every day, so we can learn to lean into you. We want to tend that underground garden beneath the existing structures of our sustaining, perceived, and limiting beliefs and coax forth whatever wants to arise from our infinite intelligence, knowing it will not be what we expect. 

We wish to approach you in the spirit of open, non-judgmental presence, to be with you fully, and get comfortable with all of the discomfort that accompanies you. We aren’t always successful, but after all, as Erich Fromm says, “love is a practice.” 

And we are learning to love you and let you love us, despite our resistance. 

I don’t love you as if you were a rose of salt, topaz,   

or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:   

I love you as one loves certain obscure things,   

secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom but carries   

the light of those flowers, hidden, within itself,   

and thanks to your love the tight aroma that arose   

from the earth lives dimly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,   

I love you directly without problems or pride:

I love you like this because I don’t know any other way to love,

except in this form in which I am not nor are you,   

so close that your hand upon my chest is mine,   

so close that your eyes close with my dreams.

— Pablo Neruda, One Hundred Love Sonnets: XVII

As we attune to what might be unfolding for us this month, may we vow to love the unintegrated, denigrated, hidden, and surprising parts of ourselves. May we set a place, or create the space, to love ourselves just as we are right now. In doing so, we also nourish our capacity for a deeper and more authentic, electric connection to the world around us. 

Warm regards,

The Synthesis Institute Team