Shadow Dancing

Come join the dance


Here you will find the partner that has all the qualities you are looking for
Immediately, like magnets, you are drawn to each other
The lights go dim and the music begins
You sway to the music, you are twirled and whirled
As you hold each other close on the dance floor
Your bodies melt into one another
His scent, you breathe in as if it is life itself
You feel alive, elated.

You admire your partner’s charisma
His confidence and how he takes the lead
His talented footwork sweeps you off your feet
His sweet words fall gently on to your heart
So perfect, all of this, you want to hold on to it
You attach yourself to him to make it more real-like.

You put your treasure under lock and key to keep it safe
As if you were guarding your life
And you give him the key
Your dance partner, now the holder of the treasure you have found
You close your eyes, hypnotized by the music
You feel yourself floating away … floating into him
Attached as if one on the dance floor.

Then the music stops and the lights turn on
You begin to awaken from your trance-like state
You’re confused and feel lost
Things start looking different, feeling different
It appears empty, but you see shadows … like ghosts almost
It feels scary and dark, even in the light
What kind of dance was that?

It felt so good and now it feels so bad
You beg the music man to play another song
But nothing happens
It’s become very quiet except the noise in your head
Still spinning from the dance of your life
But now it sounds distorted
You beg the music man again, to play music like he did before
But only more distortion.

And where is your treasure? Where is your treasure?!
You no longer have access to it because you gave the key away
You look for the key in your partner but you can’t find it anymore
He’s the one that has it after all.

You continue to look to him for the key to your treasure
You try to hold on to him, pull him in close again … dance again
You need the treasure that he has
It is your life-line
You want answers
From him … from the music man … from anyone.

But no answers come from anyone or anyplace
Out there
Beaten, exhausted and ready to give up the fight
In your surrender, you begin to look for the key to your treasure
In a place you were certain it would never be found
Inside. Yourself.

It’s no longer so loud
You begin to hear the music again, but it’s not as distorted
There is clarity
Although fearful that you may be hypnotized again and fall
You remain somewhat doubtful, slowly
Step by step you move alone on the dance floor
The shadows begin to disappear one by one
Soon you realize that the gifts you thought belonged to another
Were really yours all along.



The shadow dance is now over.

A Tempting Poison?

We feel resentment toward others ONLY because we are not happy with ourselves and our own lives.

The Temptation of Resentment:

•  Resentment allows us to be self-righteous
• Resentment allows us to make another wrong and us right, them bad, us good
• Resentment allows the ego to rule and the masks to stay on
• Resentment allows our deep painful emotions to stay hidden in the dark
• Resentment allows us to abdicate responsibility for our choices
• Resentment allows us to blame others for our unhappiness
• Resentment allows us to not deal with our own stuff
• Resentment serves as a defense mechanism to keep our own monsters at bay
• Resentment gives us an excuse to stay with the status quo and not risk change
• Resentment allows us to stay safe and comfortable

The Poison of Resentment:

• Resentment serves as a barrier to feel our real feelings
• Resentment makes us hard, rigid and bitter
• Resentment keeps us stuck in the pain we say we want to get away from
• Resentment takes away our power
• Resentment keeps us victims
• Resentment closes us off...to others and ourselves
• Resentment serves as a distraction to keep us disconnected from ourselves
• Resentment keeps us connected to that which has wounded us
• Resentment blocks us from knowing our real selves
• Resentment blocks us from healing the real pain 

 Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to get sick.

 

 

 

Where to point to?

Why do we view something that didn’t work out as we wanted as bad? A relationship fails. We get unfairly fired from a job. A friendship ends.

Why do we have to find someone to blame? Why do we feel we need to hate, be mad at or blame someone or something? Or if we are more ‘spiritually evolved’ and realize that we are part of the equation, that our beliefs and patterns helped co-create a situation, we still may hate, get mad at and blame, but this time ourselves.

Someone must be responsible! Someone must be punished, we think. We need to know. We need an answer. We need to point a finger at something, someone.

I would say many do not even realize they are blaming or resenting, but even being angry with ourselves is a form of blame, resentment and harsh judgment.

Why can’t we view these ‘failures’ as a learning experience or just an experience? An opportunity to grow? An opportunity to see deeper parts of ourselves? Why do they have to be ugly, wrong, stupid or bad?

One theory. That is what we were taught when we were children and/or perceived with the mind of a child. When we did something ‘wrong’, or something they didn’t like, or we failed at something, we were made to feel (or felt through our own perception of their reactions), that we are bad, stupid, ugly, not worthy, etc. And who wants to feel that?

So we need someone/something to blame for this experience or these feelings. And if no one else can tell you as a child that it is okay to make a mistake and that it doesn’t mean you are bad, dumb, unworthy, inferior, or if they can’t admit they were actually wrong,  you carry the burden of blame and shame yourself. A huge and complex burden for little shoulders to carry.

This is then instilled in your belief system and becomes the patterns by which you behave by and the way of seeing things and experiencing things in life.

So, how do we learn to really just experience things, especially things that don’t seem to work out in our favour, or as we wanted, or the experiences that hurt us? And how do we also not make them mean something about ourselves? 

How do we accept those experiences without needing to cast blame or make someone wrong or bad and deserving of punishment for their actions?

 Theories? Ponderings?

Taking the Stairs

You walk into a dark stairwell and the door slams shut behind you. You panic! You stand there with no way out; frozen to the spot…numb. It’s pitch black, you can’t see anything. You can’t hear anything, except the loud fearful thoughts in your head. “What do I do now? Where am I? Where am I going? I am lost. I am scared. How did I get here? I can’t do this. Why did this happen to me? Who is going to rescue me?” And after screaming and fighting and denying that it is really happening, you realize no one is coming to save you.

So you finally start moving forward and up the stairs. The stairs are steep, some are very unstable and you feel like you could fall through them at any time and back down to the bottom. And sometimes you do trip and fall on them, especially when you start going too fast and try to miss some steps in order to get to the top sooner.

You still can’t see where that is though, you still don’t know where you are going and your thoughts get louder and your imagination more wild with images of creatures that could come out and hurt you at any time. So loud are the voices in your head and so vivid the images, that they have now become your reality…they are real. You panic more from this false reality you have created with your thoughts and imagination.

The stairs seem to go on forever. You have become so weak and you resign yourself to believing that you are stuck here forever in this dark, scary stairwell, with no way out. So much energy wasted on your fear-filled, delusional thoughts. You are so caught up in your own delusions and fears, in fact, that you can’t hear the laughter that is coming from the top of the stairs.

Finally as you sit down, exhausted from all your fighting and denying of what is, your mind starts to quiet down and you begin to hear faint voices, perhaps familiar voices of friends, coming from above you. You find some hope and you get back up and start climbing the stairs again. Yes, you continue to meet more fears along the way, but you keep going towards the voices above you. It feels like an eternity, and then you finally reach your destination.

A door is opened. There is a party going on with people you know.

They toast you – the Guest of Honour! Still shaken and confused by your journey, you walk up to a friend and she puts her arms around you and smiles. She knows what you know – the way to the light isn’t easy.

Then, you are given gifts: Clarity. Truth. Authenticity.



Something I read: You have been given a gift of seeing clearly while others around you may not. Allow others their reality, even if it differs from yours. If they are in denial, this is a time to honor that.

Allowing others their process is the best gift you can give someone.

How does your garden grow?

Feeding our negative emotions.

They feed off our thoughts. Our negative emotions want to be fed. Why? Because there is an unfed, an unnourished pain inside of us and the only way we know how to fill it is through feeding it the same garbage that gave it life in the first place. My pain gets fed a healthy dose of negative thinking, unworthiness, self-pity, powerlessness, and victimhood. Others may feed their pain anger, violence, blame, arrogance or whatever satiates it. (Oh, and that’s not to mention the alcohol, drugs or actual food some also use to feed these negative emotions. Just as an addict, we become addicted to our negative emotions.)


Although not easy to admit or even recognize, we do get some sort of pleasure out of continuing self-defeating behaviours because on an intellectual level we know that it is not good for us. Yet, perhaps we just don’t know any other way to relieve our negative emotions and we just feed them the same diet that others have fed it in the past … or how we perceived it to be through a comprehension level of a young child. And we need to feed it. It’s hungry for something, the unresolved pain is just like a hunger pain that needs to be satiated, a hole that needs to be filled.

However when we feed it, we keep it alive, not only alive, but if  this becomes our steady diet, we help it grow and it becomes an identity of its own. And then we identify with it. It is us, we think. But it is not! It’s a false self image. An IMAGE. Not real. We keep giving power to it by feeding it and then identifying with it. Giving power to an image – an imaginary monster. If we stop feeding it, it will die. Oh death is scary, isn’t it? So it will cling and fight back with all its might, just as a wounded animal might. It’s called survival instinct.

It is not only the diet of negative thinking and beliefs that fuel these negative emotions, eventually our experiences will feed it too, making the beliefs even truer and that much more powerful. It’s just another form of like attracting like. Our pain is seeking out the same, thus creating experiences that feed it and re-creating experiences very similar to the ones that created those painful emotions.

For me those experiences seem to reinforce that I am inferior, not as good as others, untalented, powerless, will be rejected...

So, how to change it? Find a new way to feed those emotions, I suspect. One that will nourish it, not just satiate it, validate it, make it right. And isn’t that why we keep feeding it? The negative thinking and beliefs validate those feelings, gives them a reason, an understanding. Likely exactly what was missing in the first place.

Maybe it’s like growing a beautiful garden. We need plant the right seeds, feed it the proper nutrients, tend to it daily, prune when needed, and provide it with enough light.

Then we can sit back and appreciate our creation and soak in the beauty of our own garden.

Deluded by delusion

I deluded myself into believing that, that relationship was okay with me. Deluded myself by thinking his behaviours would change because of his love for me, because of my support and understanding. Deluded myself by convincing myself that my thoughts and feelings could be wrong, rather than his, even though he had a lifetime of dysfunctional thinking and behaviours (just 5 years before and for more than half his life he was an active alcoholic, drug abuser and an associate of bikers (his Dad’s gang)).

But still I questioned MY thoughts and feelings. Maybe I am the one that doesn’t understand, doesn’t get it. Maybe his relationship with his ex and even his son isn’t dysfunctional and emotionally unhealthy like I think it is. He’s so convinced that it isn’t. So I keep deluding myself with self doubt, beliefs that it will change (and I did see some progressive healthy change…so maybe I wasn’t being delusional).

Then I deluded myself again after I let go of him. Deluded myself by thinking he must have changed because he has a new gf soon afterward. Deluded myself by thinking I must have been wrong about seeing his behaviours with the ex as codependent and unhealthy because this girl is STILL with him. I MUST BE WRONG.  Deluded myself into thinking that I just wasn’t good enough. I didn’t wait around long enough. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I can’t believe in my own wisdom and instincts.

Throughout the whole relationship I deluded myself. I was questioning my own thoughts and feelings. My own intuition. I tried to override them with excuses, ‘I am not the type to have a conventional relationship,” “he’s like this because he’s had a bad childhood so I will accept it,” “he will realize he needs to change once he sees that he can trust me,” “we are meant to be”…

But that was the fearful codependent girl speaking who believes she’s unworthy, who is very self-doubtful and who clings when she is afraid. Delusion to feed my own unhealthy emotions and wounds. Delusion to keep me from stepping into my power.

Delusion is just another defense mechanism – a very sly one because it is almost undetectable – that keeps us from facing our unwanted wounds, ‘flaws’ and the things that we believe are unacceptable about ourselves. It shields us from hidden aspects of ourselves that we don’t want to feel, such as unloveability or self-loathing. Things we believe we cannot face because we are afraid it will kill our SELF. We cannot live with it. Delusion can even be fear of facing your own strengths!

Although delusion isn’t inherently bad, it was put in place by us to keep us safe at some point because we believed we could not cope with certain feelings or stand up for ourselves, so we shoved the feelings (and maybe even the once upon a time confidence) down more and more as we replaced it with a self we thought was better. A self that kept us safer. A self that fit the role we were put into.

Delusion then became the iron shield that protected us from our greatest fears about ourselves – the ultimate protector. We shoved it all down into a dark cavernous place and labeled it bad, unacceptable, unsafe, unloveable and unlivable.

It’s the big bad monster under our bed that we need protection from. And as we learn, the monster is only a hurt and lonely creature that just needs a friend, and some love and understanding.

But as we held on to these fears,  false beliefs, and roles that seemed to keep us safe, delusion only came to serve as a very high and dense wall – hiding us from ourselves.  In the end we are only fooling ourselves. We are losing ourselves...our authentic selves and our true power.

Sifting through the sands of time

Sift: To separate and retain the course parts


To question closely

To distinguish as if separating with a sieve

To examine and sort carefully



That relationship brought out my weaknesses…my wounds.

It brought to surface my dormant wounds. The wounds and beliefs that were “secretly” driving my life. The puppet master controlling my thoughts and behaviours. Beliefs that I didn’t even know existed. Beliefs about myself – not good enough, not special enough, inferior… Ingrained and accepted…without even knowing.

Brought to the surface. His stuff pulled out my stuff. Energetically it magnetized and attached on to mine and pulled it up to the surface. What was this? What was going on? I thought it was him that had the emotional issues. Indeed he did, that is how it pulled up my dormant and similar ones. His, so strong and apparent (to me) that they had the strong pull of a magnet and pulled mine up from deep within.

My strong attachment to him was the attachment to my wounds. It was a match. I just didn’t know what it really was. I thought it was a deep connection to another, one of soul mates, one of … close to love. I guess it was a deep connection, because it was a strong attachment…to some dense wounds.

Brought my toxicity to the surface. Where they really needed to be. Where they really wanted to be so they can be seen. SEEN. Seen for what they really are. Old wounds. Not true. False beliefs.

Brought to the surface to be sifted through. Separating the useless stuff from the useable stuff.