The Cave of our Shadow

Posted on February 5, 2008
Filed Under Awareness, Meditation, Spirituality, Consciousness |

Compelled by the hot, fetid atmosphere breathing was growing ever difficult. Concern for the rapid pace of my breath was driven backwards within my mind only by the complete absence of any visuals. Darkness surrounded me. I couldn’t remember entering this cave, just as I could not understand why it was so warm. Somewhere, slithering mercilessly along the walls, fear began its relentless approach.

I noticed now a glimmering flicker of light ahead, golden as fire - it played a different form of warmth upon my eyes. Yet closer, almost within reach now a presence lingered; dark, menacing…indifferent. Fear took a deeper grip, seeming to reach out from that presence; his shadowy claws - for it was certainly a He - dripping with an elemental terror.

That fear - not cold as some lay claim - entrenched into the pit of my stomach, and I paid close attention realizing that there was something I should be understanding here. The fear was within me, just as that shadowy presence was within me. Where then was this cave?

Questions…

Questions which caused the environment to disolve and the fear to recede. The cave collapsed into a spectacular nothingness and I awoke from the ‘dream’.

We carry fear within us on a constant basis, it makes up the fabric of who and what we are. Of course we don’t always recognize that fear as it is suppressed very deeply indeed. Yet it sub-consciously influences so much of what we do. Our actions are so often based upon what we want to avoid rather than what we want to achieve. Avoidance of loss, of hunger, of being at the bottom, of failure…and so on.

Many of these fears develop within our childhood, and we aren’t taught how to face them. This becomes something one has to choose to do at a later point in life; choose to face the fears, or flee them forever in denial.

There is an extreme beauty in this, because slowly we can learn to free ourselves from the things which attempt to tie us into the dark unknown. It is as though a pressure is released, and we float upwards and away - towards something bold and new. For me that is a large part of the sum for what it means to develop end evolve ourselves.