A Love Story About Monsters on Halloween
Many of us are scared.
None of us knows what to expect in the days to come, and most of us (regardless of political affiliation) believe that if the “wrong” Presidential candidate wins, hatred and/or tyranny will have prevailed. We anticipate violence and civil war.
Surely there are people whose unhealed traumas are surfacing, and they/we will act out in the weeks ahead. Because, as you know, hurt people hurt people. And none of us can shove our hurt and fear into our subconscious any longer. What we haven’t yet dealt with is demanding to be seen and reckoned with…otherwise it has been coming out (and will continue to come out) sideways, so to speak.
That’s why it’s time to heal the parts of ourselves that perceive reality through the lens of “The world is full of bullies, full of hate and violence, and there isn’t enough love for me to want to be on planet Earth.” And “the other side is bad.”
The truth is, the majority of us are loving, compassionate, good people. We’ve just become spiritually sick and we can no longer suppress it. There is a bright light in almost all of us. Kindwhile, that light is shining more brightly than it ever has and is exposing and provoking all of what lay hidden in our shadows. All of us are experiencing a collective purge.
When I was a child, I got stomach aches every single morning before going to school. Because anywhere beyond my bedroom felt dangerous. The nuns were cold. The kids were mean. As I grew into a teenager, I’d scream at my poor mom in rage, “Why did you give birth to me?! I don’t want to be here!”
When I got my driver’s license, I’d journey at top-speed through hills and valleys, caring not whether I crashed and died. I wanted off of this planet. I hated “the humans,” as I referred to people whose behaviors I loathed or whom I let intimidate me. It wasn’t until I became a therapist that I realized that hatred protected me from feeling compassion so deep it felt like heartbreak and twisted my gut into knots.
A few years ago, I started to re-remember what motivated my Soul to embody in this life, here and now. The words “Father, they know not what they do” started running through my awareness unbidden. The thoughts were not mine. I was being urged to forgive people for not being the way I thought they should be, acknowledge that I wasn’t unlike “them,” to make peace with my Soul’s decision to be a part of this Shift of Ages, to open my heart and let love in and out at its own divine will, and to perceive people at the soul level…which I now understand does actually stoke the fires of who they really are underneath of who they are not.
I get you who look around and wonder how we ended up in what feels like a hell full of goblins. But we are no different from the goblins. They are projections of what we all have disowned within ourselves. Where within ourselves do we feel like a monster? What part of ourselves are we ashamed of or hide for fear of being deemed unlovable and unworthy?
The truth is, we all have narcissistic, psychopathic, and sociopathic tendencies. There isn’t a soul on this planet who hasn’t played the role of perpetrator at one time or other and won’t do so again. We do it every single time we judge another person as wrong, bad, or less-than.
In order to feel less triggered and afraid of the “monsters,” can we look with unconditional compassion at the goblins within? Can we remember that we aren’t innately awful but that we adapted to circumstances early on that frightened or wounded us by creating monster-selves? The monsters aren’t who we are. They are parts of us that have lived in the darkness for so long, they’ve contorted into something ugly to get our attention during our dream states.
It’s time to love those monster-selves back out of the dark, to feel their hurt and usher them into wholeness. If you don’t know how to do this, ask me. Set the intention for it to happen, and you’ll be guided.
When we’re triggered by the social media post of a friend with whom we disagree, can we first notice what it’s evoking in us? Can we pause before responding and allow ourselves to feel the discord within? Can we breathe into and out of it wherever we feel it in our bodies and ask it what it fears and what it needs from us? Can we spend a little time with the feelings, holding them with compassion and love? We can alchemize our pain this way. And it will make it so much easier to listen deeply to each other. I mean REALLY LISTEN and understand each other’s motivations and points of view.
(Side note: I just watched one of the kindest souls on the face of this planet, someone to whom I’d entrust my life and my friendship, be attacked verbally and viciously online by longtime friends because his vote on Tuesday is not to vote. These friends of his were unable to take the time to understand his point of view because they were so triggered, upset, and in fear, and unable to courageously and vulnerably take responsibility for their emotions. They projected their monsters onto him and thus cut off someone whom I suspect would have given the shirt off of his back for them if ever they needed it without even being asked.)
You see, until we heal our spiritual sickness and integrate the parts of ourselves we are projecting onto others, we’ll continue to experience a world full of dark teachers. They’ll appear as tyrannical leaders, domestic terrorists, corrupt systems, or cruel neighbors, depending on our personal perspectives. They won’t go away until we’ve made peace with ourselves.
When at last we love every aspect of ourselves, we access the exquisite pain-pleasure of compassion for all living things–no matter who they are or what they do. This is how we achieve unity mindset and at-oneness with all living things and never, ever again feel alone or unloved. And this is how we will change the world. For as I sit in full presence with all of my clients’ self-perceived goblins and love them with all of my heart, they transform before my very eyes into the bright beings they were before they ever believed the lies that they are less than perfectly imperfect. We are all called now to see each other in this way, giving each other 110% permission to be EXACTLY as we are NO MATTER WHAT (which, by the way, doesn’t mean we don’t set healthy boundaries; we can still bless those who insist on intentionally hurting us and send them with unconditional love to be on their way).
On this Samhain, when the veil is thinnest and the light of the full moon illuminates what we’ve been trying to hide from ourselves, let’s ask our ancestors for guidance and support. Deep soul work is not for the faint of heart—and that’s why WE are here. Because we knew we could do this, NOW. We knew we could heal the trauma of our ancestors and purge the wounds from the human collective. The payoff, I promise, is well worth our efforts. And it’s getting closer. There is a dawn that will come that I’ve felt in my belly and seen in visions, and it takes my breath away. It’s so close, I feel I can almost touch it.
So together, let’s get through these birthing pains. We’ll soon enough find out just how stunningly beautiful and amazing we all are underneath of all of what we are not. The truth is, I already see it. I see YOU. 🧡