This month in our Deep Parts Wisdom circle online we dived into what we keep in the shadows, our exiled emotions ….(if our other protective parts let us!)
We explored some of our exiled emotions by creating a Truth Mandala, (one of Joanna Macy’s important grief rituals in the Work that Reconnects / Deep Ecology) please read more about the truth mandala here: https://workthatreconnects.org/resources/truth-mandala/
Rituals have been used across cultures to give humans the ability to process and understand strong emotions and what it is to be fully alive, fully human. Francis Weller in the Wild Edge of Sorrow describes how most cultures had rituals 4x a month to provide a space to process grief, joy, fear and celebration and he describes how those of us who live in industrial growth culture are impoverishes when these rituals are forgotten. Many of the people I work with find a way to bring back ritual to help them to process their strong emotions, especially grief.
To begin the Truth Mandala we mindfully gathered rocks, leaves and sticks from nature (with the intention to release these back to nature after the ritual). And we used the rocks to represent our fear, leaves to represent our sadness, sticks to represent anger, and an empty bowl to represent our emptiness, (numbness, confusion) as we placed these in a nature mandala.
It was so fascinating to hear each person’s process exploring their relationship to anger / fear and sadness…and how these sometimes strong emotions relate to each other.
We then reflected deeply at the ‘two sides of a coin’ gifts of each of those emotions…. We explored the Soul Quality of the West; that of the Wandering Dreamer in Wild Mind by Bill Plotkin, the archetype of the one that befriends the dark, loves dreams and deep imagination, that is deeply connected to Soul, and is like Persephone – finding the gifts in the dark….
The sorrow spoken over the dead leaves was in equal measure love. In hearing fear, we also heard the trust and courage it takes to speak it. And when we heard anger, we heard passion for justice. And we saw how the empty bowl makes space for the new.’ https://workthatreconnects.org/resources/truth-mandala/
There was much reflection on how we judge certain emotions as wanted / unwanted, as beautiful vs ugly, and there were lots of insights about the gifts of emotions…
There is of course so much more we can store in the shadows: including qualities such as joy, silliness, loudness, confidence, seriousness, play etc if we were given the message as a child that these qualities were undesirable – and we can also project our shadows onto others with sacred envy or blaming and shaming others for having the quality that is buried within ourselves. There is an enormous amount of resources on shadow….and we’re just touching in on shadow with the Truth Mandala.
Personal Reflection on a Truth Mandala Process
“This morning I could feel the resistance from my parts, not wanting to acknowledge what is buried…. As often happens when we make a nature mandala it has a life of its own….I was drawn to this pool of water with a gentle current running through it to represent the pool of not knowing… and it felt right that there were so many rocks- the rocks to represent so much fear in my life! The leaves of sadness were fresh and connected by branches after strong winds blew them down last night….& the sticks of rage….I struggled to access my anger…they seemed to sink into the unknown, giving me the insight of how much I know fear and sadness but suppress anger…. It was so powerful to ponder these exiled emotions and their relationship to each other as my feet paddled in the cold water….and so powerful to ponder:
The depth of my fear, so much fear is also the depth of the courage and trust,
The depth of my sadness is the depth of my love and care
The depth of my anger is the depth of my capacity to seek justice, truth, fairness…
As I dismantled the mandala I realised I need my anger, the strength of it to speak my fierce loving humble bold truth!! This is the healing power of the West – to see the gifts of what we store in the shadows- and the healing power of ritual…so grateful…”
