Dark shadows or golden daylight

Last summer, when I crashed and burned, my husband took charge of the girls for a couple of weeks while I just focused on myself. Yes, it was a blessing though I was such a mess, I didn’t realize it at the time. Then, it was survival.

One of the things I did to chillax – chill/relax as my girls call it – was watch episodes of my favorite childhood TV show: Dark Shadows. It was a later re-make, but one of the few things I did that required nothing of me. There were 12 episodes and the eight I watched slowly brought me back to some form of life. Ironic, since the main character is a vampire. I realized then that some things and even people in my life were energy suckers.

Last night, I rediscovered the last four episodes I had forgotten last summer and had a blast viewing #9 and 10.

Dark shadows – wasn’t my last blog entry about emerging from the shadows? The irony or synchronicity (whichever it is) is not lost on me.

What is it with me, vampires, old horror movies and Dark Shadows? I love the stuff. Maybe because it pays attention to those murky places … where I feel I have been lurking most of my recent life. It’s hard for me to emerge into the brightness of daylight sometimes when I’d rather be resting [in my coffin].

…
For several years, I did product development and corporate marketing at Batesville Casket Company. My mother told me I’d finally found the perfect job. It wasn’t, but I did enjoy aspects of the funeral industry.
…

And yet, I am also drawn to the light, to Spirit and finding my True Self. Much of that search has happened alone, in my studio with a pen and journal or piece of chalk and paper, wrestling with my interior and also God. I usually have no idea what is happening in the moment. But it’s often a trip of sorts into the murkiness, where things are seething – a kind of soup. When I journey there, I am not alone, the light (Spirit/God) accompanies me, prodding me to the encounter, shedding illumination and even occasional grace. Understanding can be ephemeral, very slow in arriving or ineffable. Assuredly a lot has been lost on me.

I do keep a record and that has been so powerful in claiming my authenticity. It verbalizes, makes it concrete and teaches me reality. And yet, I fear sharing this reality. Afraid some won’t “get” it, label me looney tunes, or suggest I’m not this or that, including Christian.

I have begun to share because I am called to do so more widely. I am learning that even though it does not speak to everyone, I am surely called here nevertheless. To this path. My path. Not someone’s else’s. Whether it be the dark shadows or golden daylight.


• What’s the deeper lesson of my idiosyncratic likes/interests – ones I may often discount?
• Where do I prefer to live: the light or dark?
• Where am I being called to live?
• How do I transition if it is from one to the other?
• What keeps me steady on my path, even if I feel misunderstood?



red-eyed demons,
gnashing teeth
all muddled
up

somewhere
between
imagination
and reality

interior
and exterior

do I deny
their existence
to feel
acceptance

or

follow
my guide

into
the internal
murkiness
toward
the eternal,

of
self discovery
Truth,
even grace?

Shadow play

Anybody else a little antsy about the economic picture?

I try not to be, but it is affecting our daily lives and I observe what it’s doing to others. I also see the positive impact of hunkering down, spending and wasting less, growing more of our own food, more quality time with family and friends, turning inside ... I think it makes me more grateful and less busy with the business of the world ... work, spend, work, spend, drain yourself dry ...

I appreciate honesty and wonder why it is that, out in the world, some go on as before. Life is change and I don’t know how we can ever go back to before, whatever that place is. It’s just occurred to me on a deep level (it always takes that bodily knowing for me to really understand) that things are not going back to how they were and if I don’t learn how to cope with change in a healthy way when it’s just money, how will I ever learn when it’s something much more important.

My shamanic counselor says it’s a fear of not surviving and located in the lowest chakra and feeling cut off from maternal and mother earth’s love. He’s always right even if it takes me weeks, months or years to figure that out. He talked about how it’s so easy to live up in the higher chakras in Lala Land, but it’s more interesting and messier in the underworld of the lower chakras.

And somehow that underworld has been pulling at me recently by renewing my interest in vampires and the dark side of things. I think it’s a call to play in the mud -- more deeply explore my shadow and wild side.

Anyone else ready for a mud pie?

• Where in the body chakrawise do I tend to live?
• Am I being called elsewhere?
• What/where haven’t I explored?
• How is my life changing?
• Am I adapting?

You can’t be whole
unless you give me
all of the parts of yourself
even the dark and diseased
parts

Silly for you to think
I only want the perfect
parts. You can’t be whole
or healed unless you give
me ALL of them