Setting the Shadows Free
Allow the shadows to emerge.
Allow those dark emotional secrets
to slip through the tiny opening
your willingness is creating.
Let them creep and crawl,
twist and maneuver,
their ghostly way
through that tiny space,
pulling themselves
from the trunk you held them in,
its cover now musty with age,
its rusty lock now too fragile to secure
what you once wanted hidden.
Allow these shadow entities
that fear had so desperately
squished, shoved
and locked
into the steamer trunk
of the forbidden
to be released.
Forbid them, no more.
Even though your hand still trembles,
and your heart beats loudly in your ears,
lift the lid slowly
with your desire for healing.
Free the hidden darkness
one shadow at a time.
Allow these phantoms
to expand and growl loudly
as they fill themselves with the air
of their emancipation.
Though fear may forcefully ask you to,
don't quiver in their wake,
don't step back,
don't push them down again into
the depths of that container.
Hold your own
as they stretch before your eyes,
feel what was so denied
and watch
as each menacing shadow
blows through you
like a puff of formless smoke
and then is gone.
This is not the hidden shadows' liberation,
but your own.
With every ghost you set free,
you are freer.
Surrender to
and let go of
the darkness
you hold inside.
© Dale-Lyn (Pen) January, 2022
Hmmm! My first poem of 2022. It came out in thirty minutes ... good or bad or neutral...it is what it is and was meant to be, coming from the deeper place, I suppose. Something tells me it is supposed to be here on this page.
Recently, I have been absorbed by this idea of "emotional emancipation" and the needed letting go of all those suppressed, repressed emotions in order to heal and be free. So many "forbidden" emotional energies we have stuffed inside us, as human beings trying to cope in this busy world. As long as those energies are inside us, as long as we resist them because we see them as "wrong" or "bad" or too painful and as long as most of our life effort goes toward attempting to resist them and prevent them from coming up, getting poked or triggered...we will never be truly free...We will suffer!
Now entwined with that "emotional emancipation" is the confrontation of the Shadow Self...that dark side of humanity we so want to deny. Jung's notion of the shadow Self has been on my mind too and I can see how anything about us that keeps us or others from realizing the perfect image we want to create...gets stuffed inside that "forbidden" trunk.
Surrendering and letting go...is the way to go. ( Note: of course we may need help to face and let go of these stuffed memories and emotions...especially if there has been trauma...build a support network, professional or otherwise, first!)
All is well!One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
Carl Jung https://academyofideas.com/2015/12/carl-jung-and-the-shadow-the-hidden-power-of-our-dark-side/
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