In this dark time of the year, for many years now, I've found myself turning inward.  My energy level drops and my enthusiasm for things goes kind of numb. Some have suggested that it's Seasonal Affect Disorder and I did purchase a "Happy Lite" for my office that I've used to even out the effect of this time of year.  Still, getting up in the dark, driving to work in the dark, and getting home in the dark after being inside all day makes me want to withdraw inside myself and I begin to think this is why many animals simply hibernate during this period of the year. 

However, this year seems to be different.  Since May, I have found myself on what I've been calling an "internal walkabout."  The Indigenous Australians' ritual of walkabout is a rite of passage that brings one closer to the land.  One literally sings the legends of the tribe, which are in turn a map of the homeland. Sung in the right order and followed, a tribal member could make his or her way from spot to spot across the landscape and return home safely---having found the proper waterholes and foraging or hunting grounds, avoided the places of danger, visited the sacred sites and retraced the pathways laid down by the Great Rainbow Serpents in the Dreamtime.  In my own way, I have been "singing" myself--visiting the sources of my creativity, but also treading on those places of fear, self-doubt and negativity in myself that I'd rather not face.  It has been and continues to be a long, deep process with ecstatic highs and heart-wrenching lows.  These lows are the shadow stuff that I begin to understand I need to embrace to truly be whole, to understand the trek through my internal landscape so I may "return home safely."

I say this year is diffferent because I find the Shadow mirrored in my daily life.  Not only must I do the work internally, but it would seem Spirit has decided to have a little fun and confront me externally with situations that call on me 1) to deal with them and 2) to reflect on how the situation demonstrates some aspect of myself that I really don't want to own.  What I begin to understand is that my judgments about situations or people are in fact my ego pushing my shadow away, not wishing to recognize and acknowledge it.  We all have learned at some point in our lives to suppress certain urges or traits. These are things that we were told as children were inappropriate ("You're to big to be sitting on Momma's lap"), that got us laughed at at school ("He's wearing plaids and stripes"), or caused us embarrassment ("Look! He just fell up the stairs). Our egos constructed the perfect persona that conformed to societal standards. And when, in some future encounter with another person, we are confronted by those traits we have disowned, we recoil and respond,  " I would never be that cruel, that arrogant, that fearful, that disrespectful," etc., etc., etc.  

When, as Debbie Ford suggests in her book The Dark Side of the Light Chasers, I ask myself, "Is there any situation where I have been or could be like that?", I find that there are myriad situations where I could react or have reacted in the manner of the person now before me pushing every button I have.  And when I take the next step and ask, "And how did that serve me at the time?" (kind of a variation on Dr. Phil's "And how's that working for you?"), I begin to see that those aspects did and do surface in times where my egoic persona was on the brink of failure.  The task then becomes embracing those negative aspects as an integral part of my wholeness.   I am no where near there yet; still, I understand that Spirit's Mirror could just be a sign of forward movement. 

These are hard times for everyone; no one has really been insulated from the changes that seem to be at work around us.  We humans want to take control, to make it right, to make it fit again with our perfect personae. It seems to me that for each of us, in each our own way, Spirit is mirroring our shadows.  We do not have and cannot take control, but must face what is put before us.  I believe we are being called to change with the rest of the World.  In making that transition, we must face what we fear, what we loathe, what we secretly desire, and what we feel we are not worthy of.   We must understand these things, that they are a part of us and must be welcomed home no matter how painful that reunion may be.  As the Universe moves from this cycle to the next, we are  being called to wholeness so we can live in the New World in a new way. 

Maybe a little of both?