Loving our Shadows

I notice today how easy it is to love my beauty and how challenging to embrace my darkness. Sometimes I behave badly. I make choices that hurt myself and others and then the consequences of those choices leave me with myself, my character defects, my shadows and my darkness. I am grateful that I learn to share these dark places with others that love me and with a Higher Power. Humility is the great outcome of surrendering all of who we are and allowing ourselves to be loved when we feel we deserve it the least.

Learning to love the most hidden and shameful parts of ourselves requires great courage.

Wisdom of Mary Magdalene

“Yes, this is true. We are able to love you, to see you, to know you in ways you are unable to see and know yourself. This is the great gift that we offer and the gift that you resist most.

Learning to love yourself and the places hidden deep within, of which there is the most fear and shame, is the greatest challenge of the spiritual life. It requires great courage. It requires admitting those parts are there. It requires clearing off the cobwebs and digging them out of the cellar and attic and exposing those parts to light.

In the light, there is remembrance, there is pain, there is self-loathing and there is self-hatred. There are tightly wound memories of the painful loss, anger, fear and shame we carry within.

Coming to us means coming to light, and coming to light means peeling off the ways we have kept hidden. It requires loving a part of ourselves we have wanted to forget. It means honoring a part of ourselves we want to keep in the dark.

The courage, willingness and commitment you have to come to us will be rewarded. Bringing to light all the places of hidden pain and woundedness will reap great and lasting rewards.

Your courage will reap freedom. Your willingness will reap great compassion and your commitment to serve will bring healing to the masses.

We love you. Trust your darkness to our light.”