SCDC - June - Light & Shadow

June is the month of Solstice, marking Summer in the Northern Hemisphere and Winter in the Southern Hemisphere. To honor both the longest day and the longest night of the year, this month's SoulCollage® theme is Light & Shadow.  Let us explore these qualities in our SoulCollage® practice this month, reflecting on the many ways we experience elements of light and shadow.

Light & Shadow

Light is a powerful cultural, psychological and spiritual symbol,representing - to name just a few concepts - consciousness and insight, clarity and understanding, goodness and hope, guidance and intuition, truth and enlightenment.  Light almost always represents positive, healthy attributes and the things about ourselves and others we prefer to see.

Shadow symbolism, on the other hand, indicates the darker side of our being and our world.  Seena Frost writes in Chapter 9 of  SoulCollage: An Intuitive Collage Process for Individuals and Groups, "all Neters, including archetypes, can be good and add to our health, or they may be shadowed by some intrinsic flaw which comes to the surface and contributes to our non-health."  She refers to the ostensibly negative side of our neters as our shadow side, which in Jungian psychology, represents the aspects of ourselves with which we are uncomfortable.  According to Jung, "Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."  

Reflect

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. - Marianne Williamson

In order to let our own light shine forth, it is important to bring our shadows out from their hiding places  so we can engage them, learn from them, understand them and finally, grow stronger. 

Process

Following are just a few ideas to help you get started.  As always, this is an individual process that has no rules.  

Spend a few minutes meditating on your intention to allow your intuition to guide you.  Tell your Inner Censor to be still as you begin the important work of discovering your Light and Shadow Neters.

• To ponder: How do you interpret light and shadow?  Do these qualities express the duality of the self, the contest between good and evil or opposite elements necessary for balance? How do you welcome light, and what form does it take for you?  How does your awareness of the shadow Neters in your being allow you to grow? 

• You may want to start by looking at the cards you already have and meditate on their duality.  Perhaps you may want to create new cards that represent the individual light and shadow aspects of the original card.

• Journal your thoughts about light and shadow in your life and then search for new images that express either light or shadow. 

• Read your shadow cards for greater understanding.  Using the "I-Am-One Who" method to speak through your cards, ask the following questions:
  

Who are you?
What do you have to give me?
What do you want or need from me?
Is there anything else you have to tell me?

Share

• Are there any images or cards you would like to share?
• What did you discover in this weeks process? 

When you're ready to share, post your static link in the comments section so we can visit your blog and see what you've created.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear,our presence automatically liberates others. -  Marianne Williamson

Have a beautiful and creative week!

Namaste,