personal demons

forest

Once upon a time there was a young man deeply in love. He and his love enjoyed each other’s company and spent hours on hours together creating fictional worlds and beautiful stories together with their friends.

The young man, naive and trusting, had a great faith in humanity and the goodness of people. He believed those around he and his love when they spoke of friendship and trusted them wholeheartedly, allowing them close and opening his heart to them on many occasions.

Then one day, out of the blue, a shadow figure appeared. Witness to things the boy and his love could not see, this figure shared what had been seen. Harsh words and plots hidden behind closed doors were revealed, and the true nature of those around him were put on display. The wicked witch and her crones exposed.

These others were not his friends at all, but instead aimed to split him from his love and steal his love away, expressing a desire to toss him aside as insignificant and as inconsequential as a wilted leaf in the dead of winter. His trust crushed, the young man felt a tear rip through his insides, and a wound was created deep within his soul.

He and his love moved on from these people, yet the wound remained. The young man buried it deeper and deeper, trying to find a way to make it smaller, make it less, and yet it remained… and remains.

That young man is me. Was me…. somewhere around eight or nine years ago.

And still the wound remains.

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I tell myself all the time that that witch was a jealous cunt, and that her and her friends just wanted to try and separate us because they were jealous of what we had… and STILL have. And yet, it’s like in the back of my mind there’s this -knowledge- that I’m irritating and insignificant to others. Like a gnat. Knowledge that isn’t true… but knowledge that my mind and heart refuses to allow logic to refute.

That whisper within my head uses words like piss-ant and insignificant and annoying and know-it-all and “special snowflake” (sarcasm).

I have tried for years to bury this whisper and smother it out, I’ve tried to pretend it doesn’t exist and ignore it… and yet it is there still. Insistent and persistent, it works its way back into my ear from the hole I bury it in. An insidious whisper, always there like the slow drip-drip of acid, keeping the wound just fresh enough to remain an open wound.

In our discussion on Monday night, you asked me to begin working on this shadow.

So I’m going to begin a weekly practice, and with it a weekly update post. Some weeks, I might have not much to say. Other weeks… maybe I’ll have a lot. But, each week I’ll go through the details of what I’m doing, and I’ll use this blog to keep myself accountable and on track as I work on this for a bit and see if maybe I can start the healing process.

I do not believe that this will be an easy process, or a quick one. I also don’t believe that the wound will be banished entirely, although perhaps it will begin to heal a bit… and maybe, possibly, start to scab over. The scar is sure to remain, but a scar is an empty echo… whereas the open wound that’s there now is much louder.

My first post, written here today, is an expression of my intentions. It is a cementing of my will to move forward with the process, the first step upon the path, and an acknowledgement of the whispering less-than aspect of the shadow within, an aspect that I have tried so hard to ignore for so long.

Let the work begin.

So this arrived in the mail yesterday…

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And the person I had with me had a pretty visceral reaction. As in, raised voice and “what the hell did you buy, why did you buy this”, etc. Poor guy nearly had an aneurysm, I’m pretty sure.

I’m not a Christian and I don’t believe in heaven or hell, an omnipotent god or evil devil.

What I do believe in is the inherent good and evil of people. No person is all good. No person is all bad. We all have a darker side, and that is what “Shadow Work” is about. And, Shadow Work is the reason that I purchased this deck (…and a couple of others I have in my collection. I’m looking at you, Secret Tarot of Dominic Murphy.)

“The shadow-self is where you keep your anger, your resentments, your self-loathing, your grudges. Some of us display our shadows for all to see: others keep them well-hidden, and appear unbearably and disgustingly cosmic to those who don’t.” – [Aeclectic Tarot Forums]

I had to explain this to him (once he calmed down) and I figured it might be something interesting for you as well.

The term “Shadow Work” refers to Carl Jung’s references in his work to the human nature’s “Shadow Self”. This is that side of us where our hidden (and sometimes not so hidden) issues lie. Our insecurities, our negativities, our morbidities, our toxicities. Our deep seated wounds. Our destructive tendencies.

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My mother calls Shadow Work the “Abattage des Démons” which translates into the “Slaughter of the Demons”. And that is why this deck was so intriguing for me. It’s not about evil creatures for me, but about a 69 card deck filled with all different aspects of the Shadow Self.

[Yes, 69 cards, instead of the standard 78-ish. Which means this isn’t really a tarot deck at all, nor does it carry the structure of the tarot. If what I heard is correct, the author did not want it titled with the word “tarot” but the publisher did it anyway.)

“The shadow self can be raw, dark and unbearably real and often remains as an unconscious aspect as we rather not look at why we do or say things irrationally or instinctively.” – [The Shadow Self and Tarot on Tarotpugs]

The deck is a way to explore those shadowy parts in the self, nudge at them and examine them. And perhaps, ultimately, while bringing them into the light to heal them, even if that healing is minuscule and takes countless rinse and repeats to see any real progress.

In my case, I do this most often by working with a dark deck on the first day to pull forth an issue that I need to work on, and then switching to a lighter deck the following day (or days) in order to seek a positive path that will assist me in healing what had been brought to the surface the day before.

Shadow Work is an important part of self development, and something that takes immense amounts of time, like chipping away at a wall by picking off one little granule of mortar at a time. Tools to help in these endeavors are always a good thing, and I see this deck as a tool to assist me on that path.

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