The energetic tides are powerfully in your favor today…
…to bring your shadow and your light into greater partnership.
When night and day are present in equal measure, so, too, is your access to your inner night and day.
A big piece of integration is realizing that our shadow is our shadow because we’ve turned our back on it.
These qualities have been rejected, and that rejection means we’re no longer in conscious relationship to them.
This is key. It doesn’t mean they’ve gone away–far from it.
Growing up, anger wasn’t allowed in my family.
Does this mean people weren’t angry?
Hell no. Anger was a pervasive, smothering force, particularly in my grandparents’ house.
But because no one was consciously in relationship to their anger, it leaked out, passively or explosively.
Everyone was powerless in the face of their anger, because anything else would require acknowledging that they had it in the first place…
…which, in turn, would require breaking the family rule of, “Anger isn’t allowed!”
Thus, anger existed primarily in the shadow where it wreaked far greater havoc than had it been allowed into the light.
Does allowing shadow qualities mean we let them do whatever they want?
Nope. It means that we consciously relate to them.
For starters, we acknowledge that we have them (like everybody does), and then we do the work of getting to know them.
For instance, what does our anger need? What is it telling us? What skills might we need to learn in order to express it constructively?
That last one’s a biggie.
Many of our shadow qualities molder away in the darkness, yanking our life around like invisible puppet strings…
…because we were never taught–and continued not to learn–how to express them in healthy ways.
Anger can be a great motivator for setting healthy boundaries.
It can remind us of the reason(s) we need to set them in the first place, when perhaps our inner people pleaser would rather skip it and suffer in silence.
The point is, your shadow is your shadow not because it’s terrible and destructive.
It’s your shadow because it has been rejected, and this rejection is what feels terrible and causes destruction.
So for the Autumn Equinox, use this simple, potent tarot spread…
…to bring your light and shadow into greater relationship.
The more you do this work, the effects on your life will be nothing short of astounding.
Here’s the tarot spread:
Take a few moments to settle, focus on your breathing, and drop in.
Shuffle the cards as many times as feels right, cut the deck into three piles, then reassemble them into one stack.
Draw your three cards and place them as shown above.
The prompts below are simply suggestions. Above all, let your intuition guide you.
Shadow qualities seeking expression
What within you has not been allowed conscious expression?
How would it like to be expressed? Is there a particular form it would like to take, such as a creative project, a conversation, a new hobby?
Does it have any messages for you right now?
Light qualities seeking expression
What within you has been constrained in its expression, perhaps forced to be “perfect” or mimic someone else’s version of success?
How would it like to be expressed instead? And what does it need from you in order for this expression to take place?
Does it have any messages for you right now?
How to integrate the two
Our greatest magic and personal power comes from the blending of our light and shadow.
No one else has quite the same blend as we do, thus it’s our work in this lifetime to discover what our unique expression looks like and then…express it!
How do the shadow and light qualities from the previous two cards want to work together? Is there something they want to create or do?
What messages do they have for you right now?
Autumn Equinox blessings!
