Book Excerpts
Introduction
The Fertile Darkness
The Naked Heart
First Impressions
Faces in the Mirror
Dismantling Negative Patterns
Shakti
Union
Sexual Communion
The Essence

Articles
- The Secret of the Sexual Dance

Interviews
- Healthy You - 10/28/2009

The world is no more than the Beloved’s single face;
In the desire of the One to know its own beauty,
we exist...
Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom
and madness.
-Ghalib

When we choose particular people as our partners, our psychological patterns tend to fit like a lock and key. However, this interlocking fit isn’t always so obvious. For example, a man whose girlfriend has an unacknowledged fear of intimacy can find himself spontaneously wanting to pull back from her, without knowing that he is mirroring her unconscious pattern.  Or a woman whose husband is judgmental of her volatile emotions may feel as if she’s on an emotional roller-coaster in his presence, to the point of getting so irritated with him that she wants to scream. In fact, her unconscious is picking up on the chaotic emotions inside him, which he keeps in check but wants to set free.  Or a man with a fear of abandonment will be attracted to a woman with a pattern of abandoning her partners.  He feels like the victim until he begins to investigate his own shadow and his own unconscious pattern—and how well they fit with hers.

The shadow refers to all the different parts of us that we judge as bad, unacceptable, immoral, distasteful.  Much of it originates in childhood. Facing our shadow can be upsetting at times, but in doing so we bring both depth and lightness to our hearts.  Paradoxically, once we face our shadow, we realize we are not our shadow.  When we know that we are not fundamentally our shadow, we no longer blame others for mirroring those dark aspects of ourselves.  The shadow is a hindrance only when it goes unacknowledged. 

We Are Each Other’s Shadow  

We worked with a woman once, whom we’ll call Penny, who was dealing with an alcoholic partner, whom we’ll call Frank.  As Frank was not ready to begin his healing, Penny came in for a session with Faye each week alone.  Initially Penny had a great deal of anger and blame to discharge.  The focus was almost entirely on the painful effects of Frank’s unconscious, negative behavior.  “He should change!  If only he would stop drinking!”  Over time, Penny began to soften as she realized that Frank was suffering at least as much as she was—and that her own behaviors were contributing to their distress.

As Penny began to focus on herself and to explore the roots of her own suffering, she turned inward—the first crucial step in healing. Gradually, Penny realized that she shared some common ground with Frank.  They each had a frightened child inside.  They each often denied their pain.  And they both too often blamed the world and other people for their problems. But whereas Penny’s conditioning led to a compulsion toward work, Frank’s resulted in alcohol abuse.  Penny and Frank were each reflecting suppressed facets of the other.  What they couldn’t face within themselves got projected outward.
                                    Every part of our personality that we do not love
                                    will become hostile to us.
                                                  -Robert Bly, A Little Book on The Shadow

Such insight had profound, life-changing consequences in the way Penny began relating to her husband.  She became receptive to an understanding of his pain.  At odd moments, when her thoughts were stilled, she began to see a basic goodness flickering behind Frank’s often clouded eyes. For brief moments, her thoughts didn’t argue with what was, allowing her to feel compassion rise up spontaneously.  His pain became hers. His predicament became hers as well.  As Penny began to feel that the two of them were interconnected, not separate, the walls of her defenses started to crack, and the light of understanding streamed in.