“I’m being followed by a moonshadow… moonshadow, moonshadow.”  Oh, Cat Stevens, how well you know my predicament these days.

Saturn recently moved into Scorpio, which means for the next 2-3 years, most of us will be face to face with our shadow personality.  Yay!  Lucky us.  What’s a shadow personality?  Well, you know that person you hate “because of this and that and the other”?  “Those people” who embody the horribly awful qualities that you would NEVER admit to having yourself —  like anger, jealousy, greed, hate, gluttony, competitiveness, narcism, arrogance… you get the point.  All that “bad” stuff.

Well, sorry folks, but the truth is that you wouldn’t be able to recognize those “horrible” dark qualities in others if they weren’t already inside YOU.  We all have those aspects tucked away, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to rear their ugly heads.

That’s what’s been happening to me.  Thank you, Saturn in Scorpio.  And since it’s time for all of us to face our shadow, you may also recognize unpleasant feelings coming up for yourself.

Spirit decided to hit me with his/her best shot recently — with a large kick in the butt of shadow shit.  Shadow shit?  I like that!  During a recent visit to the Hawaiian Island of Kauai — yes, that serene, beautiful, peaceful place we all love, I got a huge taste of it.  My shadow showed up in such an undeniable way, I had no choice but to face it.  Have you ever tried to run from your shadow?  Hmmm…. doesn’t work, does it?  There’s a good reason for the saying “Afraid of his own shadow” because it is downright scary.

Luckily, I was visiting Kauai with people who know and love me and were very forgiving when I found that all of my issues were coming up.  I found myself angry, upset, judgmental, impatient, unloving, stubborn, negative, entitled, insecure, abandoned, argumentative ALL AT THE SAME TIME.  And boy, are those feelings painful.

Then I got to thinking.   Okay, Spirit, why are you having me feel all of these emotions all at once?  And why NOW?  I’m in Hawaii, my place of healing…. Oh.  Yeah, my place of healing.

Before I went to Hawaii, I set an intention to release all that was holding me back.  Old patterns, irrational beliefs, anything that was standing in the way of me being my true loving authentic self.  Of course, I also asked to do this with grace.  That’s probably why I was so blessed to be in Hawaii with people who love me unconditionally.  Thank you for that, Spirit.

But as I reflected more on what was happening “to me” or more like “for me” — as far as all the negative emotions were concerned, I had an “aha moment.”  At some point in my life I had judged someone else for “being” the way that I was feeling — angry, negative, stubborn, impatient, etc.  It was as if I was already in Life Review and Spirit was having me feel all the feelings I had judged others for.  And I got it.  I couldn’t have seen those aspects in other people if I didn’t have them within mySELF, so Spirit showed me that I indeed am not perfect.  Ha!  Well, I AM — but not in the way I thought I was… Hahaha!  In short, I was facing my SHADOW.

Once I recognized this, I made a decision.  Instead of running from it (or trying to run from it), I’d face it straight on.  I’d be gentle with mySELF and send LOVE to those “negative” and “dark” parts of mySELF.  Because they are just a part of me as the “positive” and “light” parts of mySELF.  As my wise professors at The University of Santa Monica, Ron and Mary Hulnick say, “Healing is the application of love to the places inside that hurt.”  And boy did experiencing my shadow hurt.  Ouchamunga!!

So I allowed myself to FEEL the emotions, be IN IT for a while and then (in true Spirit form) my friends and I were “led” to a beautiful Hindu Temple in Kapa’a.  “You HAVE to check the Hindu Temple out,” an angel in the form of a perfect stranger told us.  At the entrance to the monastery was a sign that read, “Write down anything you want to release on the paper provided and burn in the fire pit.” (Or something much more eloquent than that.  You get the point.)  Oh, Spirit!  You even led me to a fire pit to burn my issues!  Love it.  So I wrote down all my shadow issues and burned them, releasing them into the nothingness from which they came.  “Thank you for serving me and teaching me what I needed to learn.  I release you with love back into the nothingness from which you came.”

Of course, after that, I was healed, right?  Ha!  Wrong.  I wish it were that easy.  Stuff kept coming up BIG TIME.  But I let mySELF have the feelings.  I honored them as a part of me and kept putting one foot in front of the other.  After all, how bad could it be?  If I was gonna experience the SHADOW SHIT, at least I was blessed enough to do it in Kauai, right?

This experience with my shadow taught me to be more compassionate to those that I may “see” as negative, angry, spiteful, or whatever other dark aspect we see in them because the truth is, those qualities are very painful.  So instead of judging them as “wrong” I will from now on send them love and light for a higher vibrational emotion.  Because, by God — it just FEELS better to be happy.

I wanted to end my Kauai trip on a high note — a note of hope, peace, and new beginnings.  I heard that for Saturn in Scorpio, it’s good Feng Shui to write down all your wishes on a red balloon and release it into the sky.  So we all bought red balloons, wrote our wishes on them and released them at the beach.  It was so wonderful to watch them loft up into the sky — three balloons above the Kauai mountains, all the way up to Heaven where there is a little wish man just waiting to take our orders.  I sure hope I get my new mini iPad!!!  Fingers crossed… 🙂

By the way, as I was writing this blog, the song Moonshadow came on the radio.  No kidding!

With LOVE, for the highest good…

xo, Christy Jacobs