actually more on Shadow

Hi all

Our next meeting is Thursday at 7pm (for 7:15 start) at the Quaker Centre. Last time we agreed to look further at the Shadow, and how we explore, transform, engage with it. We ended up talking a bit more about spirituality and some other issues, so this is really worth revisiting I think.

Questions to think about before hand would be:

• How have you found Shadow coming up unexpectedly, but in such a way that you recognised that it was Shadow?
  
• What do you think helped you get to the point where you were recognising Shadow arising?
  
• What practices would you recommend to work with someone else who wants help exploring Shadow issues?
  
• How would you teach someone a practice for exploring Shadow by themselves?
  

An exercise for the evening, that you might want to practice during the day if you get the chance to be with other people, is how you can be aware of your shadow arising and engage with that with the other people, without losing the thread of what else is going on, and without blame/etc. A few of us went to the Big Mind workshop on Saturday, and something along these lines was facilitated very well by Phil who was running it.

The Wikipedia article on Defence Mechanisms, and the different levels of these that they've been categorised into is worth a read.

In terms of the Integral Altitudes, Spiral Dynamic levels, etc different forms of shadow also come up for the different places we're at. There is some audio commentary by different people at the Integral Life site, related to chapter 6 of Integral Spirituality, which deals with the Shadow:

I also saw that there is an article at iEvolve on the Teal Shadow which is a nice one to read about, and another one on the 3-2-1 process.

Stephen (L.), do you have some nice diagrams in your Integral Diagram collection that have to do with Shadow that you can easily lay your hands on? (I recommend you have a look at the collection, if you haven't had the pleasure of browsing through it!)

See you Thursday,

Ralf

PS The Big Mind workshop on Saturday was excellent, and I look forward to sharing my experiences with you on that too if anyone's interested. R