The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
Re-Post: Integrating Our Shadows- Episode 4 in the series “Christian Shadow Work”
What if the shadow we cast isn't something to eliminate but part of the medicine for what ails the soul?
In this conversation from our series, “Christian Shadow Work,” Patrick and Jonah further explore how Christ relates to our darkness. This involves nothing like condemnation but rather a creative and radical process of integration that leads towards healing.
Drawing from the biblical image of the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness (Numbers 21:8-9), they reveal how the very thing that has poisoned us can, when rightfully integrated, become part of the medicine that heals us. This spiritual principle illuminates again why "there is no condemnation in Christ" (Romans 8:1). Our shadows are included in the divine plan, integrated by God into the path that leads us into spiritual maturation. They are something possessing enough power and personal relevance to bring us to the threshold where grace can enter. Fighting this integration, rejecting the shadows we cast, actually rejects this wisdom-permeated divine path.
Going beyond just the ideas, this conversation unfolds a practical pathway for shadow integration. It begins with the courage to behold our darkness honestly; the step of taking responsibility by saying "yes, this is me"; exploring what our shadow is trying to teach us; and finally, allowing our weakness to become an altar at which we can pray for divine assistance.
After exploring individual examples from their own lives, Jonah and Patrick focus on what they experience emanating from Christ in these experiences, emphasizing how he doesn't approach our shadow with a corrective spirit saying "you should be different," but with a transformative invitation to "become new through this darkness."
Our very specific life-journey, with all its unique shadow elements, isn't a failure to meet some general ideal but a holy alchemical process guided by the highest spiritual forces in the universe. When approached this way, our shadow becomes not our enemy, but the very doorway through which our deepest healing unfolds.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
Hello everyone. This is Patrick Kennedy from the Light in Everything. We're going to be heading into the summer up here in the Northern Hemisphere and, after a very big and full year of work and an incredible path through the letter of Ephesians, together and Jonah and I just want to send you a warm greeting and let you know that we are going to be reposting episodes from our five years of podcasts that we think will be enjoyed by you all over these weeks until we pick our work back up again in September or the end of August. If you'd like to find out more of what's happening at the Seminary of the Christian Community in North America, be sure to check out our website at christiancommunityseminaryca or go over to our Patreon site at patreoncom. Forward slash cc seminary to become a part of an incredible community of support of listeners who interact and engage with the podcast.
Speaker 2:Okay, enjoy © transcript Emily Beynon.
Speaker 3:Good afternoon Patrick.
Speaker 1:I know A little different. A little different, it's not the morning.
Speaker 3:It's also quite warm in Ontario.
Speaker 1:It's hot. We've got construction vehicles beeping in the background.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I'm excited for another episode in this theme yeah, me too. The theme of what do we do with the shadow? How do we integrate? What does Christian healing the shadow look like? Yeah, and so welcome everyone to another episode of the Light in Everything, where we strive together in conversation to know Him, know Christ, to know him.
Speaker 1:Know Christ. Yeah, we, you know. We have our version of a little Tibetan sound bowl that we use to open up our Jonah's laughing.
Speaker 2:But he's trying to hold it back. Why are you laughing at me? That was great, it was very surprising.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to keep you on your toes, yeah, but seriously like a bell we want to ring, absolutely A sound we want to set into the space of our conversation, and that is taken from the gospel, according to John, in his eighth chapter, in verse 12. In his eighth chapter, in verse 12. Again, jesus spoke to them saying I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but, will have the light of life. I love that bell.
Speaker 3:Beautiful sound. Yeah. So, patrick, I think what's really stayed with me, if we just look back at the last conversation, what's really stayed with me and lived in me since then was this picture again, this strong picture that there's no in in christ, there's no condemnation. And again, just to put that before our souls and put it in contrast with what so many of us have has known for so long about the institution of christianity, yeah, yes, that it is actually precisely a condemnation path where you get the right thing and you condemn others. A beacon of condemnation, right. But the more we really have discovered what lives in the gospel for real, the more we've started to see, discover and especially with Paul directly, there is no condemnation in Christ. And we worked, I found it so beautiful, or at least let me put it this way I was moved again by our work to discover, well, why, right, why is it not condemned? Yeah, back in the day, just because it's nicer.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly, it's not like oh, it's okay, you're okay, I'm okay, sorry.
Speaker 1:It must be the afternoon. It must be the afternoon. It must be the afternoon, it must be the afternoon.
Speaker 3:But it's not like in antiquity when you had to really cut off the bad stuff and cut yourself out from the sinners. But why? And I think what rose to the top last time was this usefulness of sin, usefulness of shadow in two ways. One that shadow, double darkness sin, if we work with it properly, helps us to mature. Simple as that.
Speaker 1:Right Such a beautiful, clear fact.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then the other one was. The other thought there was that it's useful because it helps us bring us to our limits, so that we have the opportunity to receive grace.
Speaker 1:Say that again. It's so good.
Speaker 3:So the weaknesses, the shadows in us are useful because you could say they bring us to our knees. In a way, we discover gosh. I keep trying to be loving, again and again and again. In fact, I would say with all my might I am trying to love my wife and my children.
Speaker 1:I can really honestly say that, like I am trying, your whole will is in that direction.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and my congregation and my colleagues, yes, really, for real. I'm trying really hard and I have been for a long time and I keep failing. And the usefulness of that is, on the one hand, it's helping me mature, it's helping me grow, but it's also helping me pray At the altar of my weakness. Lord, help me, help me receive your love, help me to receive something I don't yet have. So those would be. Those are also just directly out of my own experience of the usefulness of sin yeah, I love this word term usefulness too.
Speaker 1:Like really thinking about that, like like you're looking around the garage oh, what's this good for? You? Know, that's a wrench that can do this. You know, find a little pile of sin there you go.
Speaker 3:Just throw in the trashic world. Who are shaping destiny?
Speaker 1:are looking at these darknesses and asking how can these be woven into the fabric of these ultimate intentions of goodness? That's a beautiful way to think about it.
Speaker 3:That's also a grace that they're doing that, that there's such wisdom and such love working in and through the Lord of Karma, or Christ, as the one who is bearing our destiny into our being. That is something, thankfully, I'm not in charge of, nor could I. I'm not directing that out of my own high consciousness.
Speaker 1:But growing in relationship to it.
Speaker 3:Growing in relationship to it and devoted to it, and therefore devoted in its usefulness, in its spirit of usefulness, to what we could call shadow or sin. So to me that was really the beautiful fruit that seemed to grow from last time, last time. But what arose in me today to ask you so that we can dive kind of more deeply into this, is okay. If it's so, it's useful.
Speaker 3:So, it's something that helps us mature, something that can help us find grace, real grace. But how? What is the integration process? We also had some of our listeners ask that. On our latest one, it was a wonderful image. She spoke about a suitcase with pies in them shout out mary graham and you know.
Speaker 3:So what do we do with this suitcase? We don't want to let this, the pies rot. We want to like take them out and eat them. But essentially it's a question around how do we not just do away with it, deny it?
Speaker 1:but integrate it Right and not also just continue to damage the universe through it, right? We're not trying to say like, yeah, okay, you have a shadow, you know, make friends with it as you injure yourself and others through the darknesses that come from it. That can't be the way, right. What is the way?
Speaker 3:Exactly Right. So I mean there this more detailed question of integration. Of course transformation is in there too, but I like integration at this point. Digestion, yeah, how would you. Where would your heart go with that question?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe this is where for me, the term useful would become actually in relationship to my shadow. I'm actually starting to experience something I would call medicine, healing, not just the maturation of my self, but the healing Beautiful, and so maybe we start to look at that let's do that how the integration is related to that. It's an. It's for me very much the way in which in john, when he tries again and again to reveal the deep spiritual secrets involved with the cross and the resurrection, in chapter 3, he refers back to this strange story from the book of Numbers in the Torah, where the people who are on the way in the desert are suddenly afflicted with serpents who are biting them and poisoning them and they're dying.
Speaker 1:And Moses goes to God and prays fervently to God. How can they be saved and healed? And he's instructed to create a metal bronze snake. So the source of the poison, that being, you're going to put that being on a pole on a wooden tree. Stump, tree, tree tree. What do you call the middle part, the stump? It's the whole thing is called a trunk, thank you. You put that bronze snake on that tree trunk and you're going to lift it up so that everyone can see it. Lift it up so that everyone can see it. And then he says have the people, look at the bronze snake, and when they look at it they will be healed. So that's the story in the book of Numbers, and Jesus says just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so too will I, or the Son of man, be lifted up. So that cross on that hill is the staff of mercury. It is a healing medicine for the poison of the snake.
Speaker 1:So that's really just a deep orientation towards why all of what is connected with you could say the darkest shadows that are at work in his passion Lies. Mocking Betrayals are at work. In his passion lies mocking betrayals, denials, politicking, scheming, power grabbing, false accusations, fake trials, mob violence. Accusations, fake trials, mob violence, torture and abuse. It just keeps going thicker and thicker.
Speaker 1:The use of the state power to execute an innocent human and the release of a criminal at his expense. This is all very familiar territory to what we know goes on in the world. He's having this all happen within the amount of like two days, three days, and actually then his very death itself, a torture death, publicly, with humiliation. Here's the king of the Jews nailed to this wooden cross Rebelliation. Here's the king of the Jews Nailed to this wooden cross. So all of that darkness, in John's gospel he says Father, now the hour has come to reveal your glory. In the middle of all of that shadow and darkness, I'm going to reveal glory and it is going to contain inside this medicine for every human who looks towards it. So the very thing I am to look at, which has a lot of darkness in it, supposedly has the medicine for my darkness in it.
Speaker 3:So it's kind of like a new version of what Moses did. And so we are to gaze at the cross of Christ. Gaze at the cross of Christ.
Speaker 1:And that then somehow gives us this medicine for our sickness, brings us into healing. And let's look back at again these imaginations in the desert story. So there's a poisonous bite from a snake that is slithering along and biting the ankle.
Speaker 1:Biting the ankle, the heel what's the antidote? Turns out, the antidote involves the snake. It's already like the first surprise, yeah, but it's doing something with the snake in such a way that it's integrated into the story of healing Again. I'm just trying to boil down this deep imagination that is revealed to us that which poisoned you to death when used in a certain way, lifted, can become that which heals you of its bite, and that is one of the basic secrets of medicine. Also, with other plants, things that are toxic or potentially even poisonous, when a healer takes it in their hands and prepares it in the right way and gives it to someone who's suffering the affliction, that can actually be the thing that plays its role to lead them into flourishing and vitality and life and healing. So the medicine that we are given includes that which is containing the poison.
Speaker 3:Which sounds like homeopathy.
Speaker 1:This is like a deep spiritual law for healing.
Speaker 3:It's related so how does that then relate to like? What would you say? Is that then we have to come into a particular beholding and witnessing of our sickness? That sounds like, like, like almost like a first step.
Speaker 1:Right, so the first, so yeah. So I feel it feels to me like so key these imaginations, because they contain so much in them, and then now we can say, okay, well, what would that look like? But just to see and say my shadow isn't here simply to be suffered, my shadow isn't here simply because it's useful, which we've established it is.
Speaker 3:Or simply as a maturing agent.
Speaker 1:It is actually a part of the spiritual healing of my humanity. Beautiful when, when Brought, when handled in the right way.
Speaker 3:So, like it's, even like you're saying, what I hear you saying is it's part of the medicine that heals humanity myself, humanity and the whole thing. Yes, that's pretty radical, pretty cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for me it's just so orienting. And so why is it orienting? What that can start in me is the first process of integration, which is to say yes to my shadow. Yeah, just stop running from it, stop trying to avoid it. Yeah, stop hating it, denying it, pulling all kinds of other methods of not wanting to be connected to it. Yeah, kinds of other methods of not wanting to be connected to it. Yeah, and know that there is a wisdom at work in the universe which has connected me to it, for for deep and profound, not just useful but medicinal reasons, that shifts something in my whole. All of my organs start to shift, and not stop trying to protect myself from it or deny it, but to try to open. Well, what? How can I receive what you have to bring me? How can I be actually in a loving relationship, a receiving relationship to what you can give me?
Speaker 3:So for me that's just like that ground zero beginning well that that to me, says two things, if I kind of listen with a with an ear to this question of integration. It says, first of all, we need to come into a beholding, a kind of awareness, a positive relationship with this sickness symbolized in the serpent. I need to first see it.
Speaker 1:See it, and that is I don't know how it is for you, but I would say this for me is high-level, profound work to find the inner strength to look at what I have caused or limits to my love or ways in which I have hurt the humans or the earth or animals whom I have wanted to love. Yeah, it's a feeling of I won't be able to bear the sight and that is a little moment of like. Oh, there's an eye in me, there's an identity in me that doesn't want these things to be true, Just wanting you know that he'll hear no evil, see no evil. Yeah, Speak no evil.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:People usually mean that about things that are happening in the world, and I'm trying to live in ignorance. That's one practice. There's the practice, though, that we do in relationship to ourselves Like ah, la, la, la, la, la, no, I didn't do it. I didn't do that, sure yeah, didn't do it. I didn't do that, sure yeah. And so there's something that happens in me. When I notice, and I find the strength to see the thing and it takes a while I have to say so well, yeah, jump in, jump in that's interesting.
Speaker 3:Two things come up for me when you said it takes a while. So just to clarify when we're, when we're looking at this lawfulness or this practice of integration or healing, as you also called it, first beholding and then starting to work with it, learning from it in a particular way. But it takes a while to even see it Just to really right.
Speaker 1:Let's say, you get a glimpse, or like a whiff you're like oh, oh, oh, no no no, no, no, no, no no no, no, no, no, no, no no no, no, no, no, no, no no no, no, no, like there's, it's like immediately comes up and no, no, I don't want it to be true. Immediately, this, this, this power rises up in me, trying to find a way to look at it that will reveal to me. No, it wasn't, it't me. Actually, it was this other thing.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, all the maneuvers of the self, the maneuvers of the self, the twists of the self, until this, the twist.
Speaker 1:The snake, the twister. The snake is like. You got me by the tail and I am wriggling Right.
Speaker 3:Until the twister is put on a pole. Hold a pole, hold still and hold still, put in bronze.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, right, yeah, stop moving. That's a clear reflection, and I'm over and against it and I can actually behold it.
Speaker 3:That's pretty interesting.
Speaker 1:And that's what the cross is. The cross reveals to us the snake in us. This is what you do to your God when he comes to you. I'm just here, revealing the snake inside that's active in humanity.
Speaker 3:So that's very interesting because often, sometimes, if you look up numbers I think it's number six you often see pictures of Moses with a cross type staff and the snake cast in bronze on that cross. So that's very interesting, but this takes a while. What also came into my heart and it's interesting that we just celebrated Whitson Right Because and you were in Boston, I was in Vancouver and we worked a bit with the Epistle and what struck me this time was the whole thing is about healing, right, but at the very end it says that the Father's Spirit, the World Physician, sent World. The Father's Spirit, the world physician, sent World physician. Amazing right Sent by Christ into us is going to heal what proves sick. And I realized, Patrick, that this proves is actually quite important.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:Precisely because of what you just said. Right, it takes a while, yeah. I mean, I know you've had and I've had, and I'm sure most of our listeners could relate. How many times have we thought something was good? Yeah, but it took time to see that the thing we thought was good proved Turns out to be.
Speaker 1:Ie proves.
Speaker 3:Not so good yeah yeah totally, or something that started out to be a difficulty we thought this is terrible proved to be something we needed. Yeah, perhaps Awesome. So to me it's very interesting that, in the divine grace of the Holy Spirit that was brought down in our liturgy, that it now says healing. This true, integrative healing, takes time and it's a proving process. It doesn't just, it's not just immediate, but we have to unveil, and because of this one in us that does not want to, it's just, I don't want to be that.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to twist and twist awesome. Yeah, so there's like a testing force in the spirit to show it's something's nature, and that testing process takes time. Like testing in the sense of not submitting you to a multiple choice test, but like, like you know, consumer Reports tests things you know they're trying to find out. Is this sturdy, will this hold? Can you walk upon this and build your house upon it? Walk upon this and build your house upon it? Yeah, totally no, and that's why it's so interesting, isn't it In our service, that some of our listeners who are unfamiliar with it but who've been writing wondering whether they might be able to get to know it. It's very, very special, but it really is not a digital reality. It's something that takes place in a sanctuary created in time and space in a community, and in that sanctuary, those who are participating are invited over the course of the worship service to bring this medicinal force to themselves. Seven times over in the course of the service, with three inscribed crosses in the place of the third eye, in the place near our speech area chin and mouth speech organ and in the sternum area near the heart. And a revolution took place at the birth of our movement, where this old formula and Christendom of in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit Now has become their activity. This came up in Boston, but I didn't get to this third part, which suddenly is clear to me after listening to you. So we describe the activity that is connected with the father, ground of all reality, this being be in us, and we pray for the activity of Christ, the son of the father. What's his activity? To create in us, he is the creator word. Create in us, he is the creator word. And then, as we get to the heart area and we pray, spirit, god, the Spirit, enlighten us. Well, if you are praying for light, things might be revealed, might prove themselves to be not what you thought they were.
Speaker 1:Oh, interesting, absolutely right. This is if you're going to invite, when people ask for enlightenment. If you think that's only dawning wonders of beauty, then you don't know how it works. Right, it's like the light when it's really clear and shining, when the clouds. Part of what you then will see are the shadows. Right, thanks to the light. It's a gift of the light. Once again, clearly, within the wisdom of spirit, spirit is saying my work with you will include showing you shadows. There's no reason to be discouraged. Actually it's. Hey, I must be near the light.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right, if they're true. If they're true. Yeah, and not exaggerated or kind of distorted Right. That's really good. So part of the grace because now I'm thinking about the Whitson Epistle, right, the Whitson Liturgy that we just celebrated, because it says Christ sends into our souls, it's a grace, it's a gift the Father grounds spirit who heals.
Speaker 1:Who heals. He's a world physician. It's a gift. It's bringing healing. It's bringing healing, it's bringing healing.
Speaker 3:But there's two aspects, or one of the aspects of this grace is that it reveals something I need to stand before and reckon with this untransformed part of me, right, this, this untransformed part of me, and then what I hear you saying is we need to take it up, receive the invitation to go its journey gradually, that it can reveal what it's trying to help us with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that that the beginning. Another very simple way of saying it is if this is the world physician, the beginning work of the physician is good. Diagnostic. If you can't see what's going on, you can't name the malady and where exactly the issue is, then you go reaching for medicines that don't work. So a lot of, for example, we know in pastoral work is we got to try to get to naming, yeah, the exact issue in nature of this shadow, to really get in there and see transformation.
Speaker 1:There's good general prayers that we can do, but like, what is that? What is it exactly that's going on in here? Yeah, so diagnostic takes light, so light, which at first is just hard. It's like when someone says, well, we've just done the scans, you have cancer. That's a, that's a light event, meaning it was already there before it was said you had cancer before you heard you had cancer, right, yeah, and you were living along and you didn't know. When you hear you have it, that's just a revelation of what is thanks to the light. It's, it's it's a gift because now things are going to start relative to what's actually going on in you, right, so it's the beginning of healing, beginning of healing.
Speaker 3:So Christian integration definitely involves beholding with the light the weakness, the shadow, the darkness, and then taking it up as a helpful guide in this gradual unfolding of healing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, finding, yeah, so. So what happens to me, jonah, is immediately, I find, when I find the strength to so. So we were talking about it takes time. How does it? Why does it take time? First, I'm trying, I'm fighting reality, yeah Right, denial, some version of denial, but I'm. First, I'm trying, I'm fighting reality, yeah Right, denial, some version of denial, but I'm committed to the light. So I keep going back to it.
Speaker 1:Patrick, be honest with yourself. Really, look what's the truth of this situation. Be honest. What do you see? What do you see? Stop squirming, and if I stay with it, I I'll usually start. I'll see a little bit like, oh, shoot, oh, I think something's definitely going on here, but maybe the next day it I, my mind keeps going back to it. Yeah, it's like the spirit is leading me back. We're not done. Yeah, there's some things I want you to see still, and I've had things. I don't know how it is for you, but I've been brought back to the same action, the same event, same behaviors, like 10 years later. Oh, yeah, like now you're ready to see even more. Yeah, yeah, and this, for me, is all what will happen to us after we die. So another way of saying when the spirit is breaking into our life, it is showing us what you see on the other side of death. That means the introduction of spirit into your life means dying right, it's again very exact.
Speaker 1:So the medicine involves death. You got to step outside yourself enough and be able to stand truthfully before yourself and I feel, after going through that, a better person healed already, like the healing's already started. Person healed already like the healings already started before I've been, before I've even integrated all the things that it has to offer me, just having been able to bear to bear the sight.
Speaker 3:Of the sight, it has its own healing power.
Speaker 1:Yeah I'm healed of lies about that I carry about myself. Yeah, I'm healed of false senses of like I'm okay, I'm a pretty great, pretty great guy, pretty great guy, and I feel this like I'm being molded by, by the mystery of humility. We've talked about that before. But like I, I'm, my eye myself is like ingesting the truth of my shadow through the sight of it, saying I to what I have done. That is darkness in it and that, like it's like, enriches my, the soil of myself. It's. I'm still trying to find the language, but it's like an. Already the healing has started just in the looking.
Speaker 3:But I love that, because what I hear also is another step that I don't know that we've put a name to, except you just did. I want to emphasize it it's I acknowledge that is me, acknowledge that is me. In other words, I take responsibility for the truth of my being. There's something extremely empowering and healing just in that Saying yes, I take that up, I did that, that's me, I did that. And that's also, I would say, related to this Christian picture that when Christ says take up your cross and follow me, take responsibility for that in you which is wanting to be serpent on the cross.
Speaker 2:That has death in it.
Speaker 1:That has death in it, that has death in it yeah. That has poison in it.
Speaker 3:And that itself also has some of this healing, liberating from lies. The truth will set you, you will liberate you, it just immediately.
Speaker 1:Even if I haven't figured out the lessons right of this particular yeah, wounding, I've done already. Like my next encounter with people, I'm like I'm like a different person, isn't that? Yeah, I think you've shifted in me. I'm just gentler. Gentleness increases, humility increases. I'm listening a little better. I'm like tenderized in a beautiful way. Um, I don't assume I know the answer right away. Like, suddenly, all these tendencies of the snake in me are dampened.
Speaker 3:It's very powerful I like your word the substance of humility and that itself is healing medicine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this, the layer of truthfulness, self-truthfulness, is the beginning of the medicine, beginning of the healing process, because it's in the true diagnostic. But then, as we talked about that thing, then we'll have also very particular messages, right? So I can start to ask a question what was active in me, yeah, that would have led me to act like that, speak like that, be like that? What are its? Where does that live in me? What are its? How can I understand this fruit, yeah, of myself?
Speaker 1:yeah which is a shadow fruit, a fruit of my, of the shadow, the thing that blocks light in me. Yeah, so that's for me, then, like a next step that usually comes in Trying to track the work of the snake in me, and it's in this unique expression, and maybe we need some examples because it starts to get pretty abstract.
Speaker 3:It's pretty abstract, yeah, so beholding taking responsibility and now which has some medicine? Pretty abstract, yeah, yeah, so beholding taking responsibility and now which has some medicine in it? Yeah, and now exploring. Okay, what is this trying to teach me? Yeah, that would be good to get it.
Speaker 1:Simple, simple one. Concrete example, Simple one it's not so hot, you know, not so intimate, but but familiar probably was is another high school story. I mean I never had to work that hard at school to get by, I just had. Naturally I got it. You know, like it was easy stories I got, I never really had to do the reading, I could kind of fake it. Yeah, you know, tests it was easy stories I got.
Speaker 2:I never really had to do the reading.
Speaker 1:I could kind of fake it. Yeah, you know tests, I could somehow write the good answers Like I. Just never, I, never, really. I didn't read a book all the way from beginning to end, I think, until I graduated from college, my, my, my wife and partner being really annoyed with me in college Cause I would be fully participating in the conversations in the class like an authority on the subject of the text we'd been reading and she knew I hadn't read the whole thing, but it wasn't that I was saying wrong things. That would make it, would make it even worse for her, like you know. So I had this lazy skipping through things approach, self-amplification, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then I got into junior year with our english teacher and we had some writing to do and I did the writing and it was on some topic I don't remember it was and I wrote it and I submitted it and I and she gave it back and it had like I don't know, like b minus or something. See, it was like low grade and I was like hey, what? And like I, another thing came in and I did that and I was like really suddenly like insecure. I don't understand. I've never not gotten good marks on these things.
Speaker 1:So I went to talk to her and she just said it's sloppy thinking, there's no order or coherence and you're just not even working hard. And I was like, oh my God, she knows, she found out. How did she know? Oh man, and I remember like it it totally called out my ambition then to to do better in her eyes and see if I could get better at this. You know, I felt like she was kind of right and I remember like kind of trying, you know, trying on the next one and it was like B.
Speaker 1:I was like what'd I do? Like I don't understand, like I was actually trying on that. I should have gotten an A in my mind, right, right. And at first my first reaction to her was very much, you're wrong, I'm right, yeah, because I'm this protection of my, what I think about myself, that's I'm going to hold to, you're the one. But I could tell she was clean, she had no agenda, she was just truthful. So I was meeting his gaze in an interesting way through her. Shout out, mrs Eklund.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 1:For me it was almost like my first really good teacher, because she wasn't comparing anything to other students, she was really just looking. What is this work relative to Patrick? And I can tell he's like in barely beginning to even push into his capacity and she was naming it and calling it out and saying it truthfully and it was really calling it out in me.
Speaker 3:But it was also very, very humbling to then try and not be able to Because you weren't trying before, so now to try put yourself out there like that.
Speaker 1:So then I felt, and I got to know a new feeling yeah, that was helplessness. I want to do better. Yeah, I've tried my best and it's not bringing about the change I'm hoping to see in my, in my ability to write. And so then I found myself really learning, asking her to show me, asking for help, how do I do it, listening differently in class, and an opening happened in myself to receive the guidance to grow A high schooler's prayer.
Speaker 3:It was a high schooler's prayer process, prayer activity, meaning, as you know, opening to something that you don't have, I don't have and basically, with your way of being asking for the help from another, being besides you, and it wasn't general, it was real, specific.
Speaker 1:It was this I noticed the issue was I had sloppy thinking, I was disorganized, I wasn't putting in effort and I didn't know how to form good sentences, good paragraphs, make a coherent essay. I didn't know how. And this person could lead me into that and I was asking for their unique help with that unique named issue. And then, being in this relationship of listening and learning from my guide Beautiful, yeah, there's like no question too so much of the gifts that I've received in my life, or from that learning.
Speaker 3:Well, see to me that that that opens up another really important element of this integrating yeah. So we have simply standing before, yeah, witnessing the snake yeah, and then taking responsibility for it, saying this is mine, and then starting to work with it yeah, what are you? What is this exactly? And then perhaps coming to a place of powerlessness, or helplessness, as you described, and asking for help from an other being greater than you, literally, definitely.
Speaker 1:The teacher was greater than you. I see in this one are the capacities I hope to develop.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and then all of a sudden it's not just a kind of self-knowledge do-it-yourself task, no, even though of course the beholding and the revealing of the snake also is a kind of grace from the light Yep, of grace from the light, yep. But you kind of enter into a different. Your weakness, what you're trying to learn from, becomes a kind of place from which you pray, from which you ask for something greater than yourself to come in. And to me, when I describe that place, then the weakness itself becomes an altar, that's a place from which we pray, asking for our power to come in and change something.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful. If I hadn't had the confrontation with the truth of my own weakness there that is the experience of light that revealed my weakness If I hadn't found the strength to say yes, that's true, and take ownership of that truth those two first steps but just been kept from having to ever see it, I would have remained exactly as I was. And so again. And then this then running into, and I don't know how to be different. I can't change it. Yeah, I want to change it, I have a will to change it, but I can't change it. And then, in my will level, i'm'm noticing I need from somewhere else the thing that's missing, the actual elements that aren't in me, yeah, and that leads then to a better version of me than was there before that whole process started, and that's all thanks to my weakness and the light's relationship to it.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And of course, the integration, those three senses.
Speaker 3:So it's the weakness in relationship to grace, to the gift of also revealing it and also then helping with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And the altar is the place of integration, so to speak, the altar of this process Right.
Speaker 1:So, jonah, where in the world would there be any use for condemnation in that Exactly?
Speaker 3:It's like it's not even right it doesn't make any sense, because, because the last thing you want to do is get rid of that shadow, because then you don't have the opportunity to have your crossed, your learning, your grace, altar yeah, my gosh, I mean I feel like this is really important, because what we're just trying to tease out and describe here really is the christian process of integration and healing of of the darkness. I mean, it can be as simple as, for example, recently I was struggling with my littlest child, isla, because she has this interesting stubbornness that I couldn't figure out and I would always resort to just you will do it.
Speaker 1:now my will is bigger than now and I would get intense.
Speaker 3:My will is bigger than yours, I'm stronger than you and I'm going to force you to do my will, and of course, sometimes that's important. But it just became a pattern and over and over again, I started to get this sense, this light, that there's something to work through here, something isn't helpful here, also in my being. And so, long story short, I discovered this stubbornness. She's one of the most stubborn people I've ever met in my life and she doesn't care. The world could burn and she will sit on the couch and close her eyes and say no, it's impressive.
Speaker 3:It's impressive. I'm actually I, I'm in awe. Yeah. So coming up and seeing my own aggression and impatience and having to encounter that again and again, I came to the end taking responsibility for coming to the powerlessness kind of I don't know what to do with this Lord. So I turned to Christ Lord, help me. What? How can I meet this child? Not in this way and something that's actually going to be useful, because the only way I've discovered is overpower that's your move and you're getting the feedback.
Speaker 1:This isn't the only good move, for sure right and it's not.
Speaker 3:It's not. It's contaminated with shadow, my shadow, and so then making it an. It's contaminated with shadow, my shadow, and so then making it an altar. This aggression in me, this need to make it happen, and praying Lord, help me to see another way with this child. It came another way with this child. It came another way. A lit in my heart and consciousness literally after just a few times of praying that, and I started to see. Oh, in this, this insight, I started to understand my child more. It was like I opened a door to the light and I discovered two things.
Speaker 3:First, she always responds to number one connecting with her first, rather than telling her what to do first. How are you first? So that's one, and then make it collaborative. Let's do this together, as opposed to do this now and I'm going to force you. It sounds simple, but it was a, it was a total, it was a real revelation which combined a new understanding of my child and a, a blessing that felt healing to my own impatience and aggression, and now it feels different. I feel different, I feel new. Yeah, so that also, I think, just takes up those threads that you delineated Also in an example?
Speaker 1:Yeah, totally. But I think it's so powerful because in that case you came to the point where you had to say I'm blind, I actually can't understand where this is coming from in her. I can't see another way. I'm lame, I can't, I'm just stuck in this same pattern.
Speaker 3:I'm stuck, I mean, I'm actually trapped in the idol of power I'm stronger, I'm bigger.
Speaker 1:Trapped in the idol of power.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Right, Like I'm stronger, I'm bigger, I'm the dad and I make you yeah and again.
Speaker 1:Sometimes that's sometimes that's necessary, right, but we're getting in the car, yeah.
Speaker 3:But the reality is is that what was happening? Was that's not necessary? That kept being shown to me, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's so powerful, it's so humbling. Again, it's just, it's so yeah but then you said, as that then broke through, when you began to say I'm blind, I need light, I'm lame, show me the way. Yeah, and then you receive something I receive something I actually pray.
Speaker 3:So in the Wits and Epistles it's all about healing. Christ sends into our souls the spirit of the Father, the ground spirit that can't be received unless I open in a prayerful way. So the altar, praying from the altar, is a real integrative step, Because it needs to be. The healing medicine is a gift from God. Yeah, Period to be.
Speaker 1:The healing medicine is a gift from god. Yeah, period yeah. And that medicine includes this double-sided thing, right of the shadows, playing its part. It's playing its part. It stirred you to of what is in need of healing and growth and that is revealed through my light. And if you are open to my medicine, I can also give you something that can lead to its transformation. Beautiful you something that can lead to its transformation.
Speaker 3:Beautiful, yeah. So, in the light of the Spirit, beholding the snake saying yes, and that is me taking that up, working to prove itself, to find what is this trying to teach me itself, to find what is this trying to teach me, and then call it the the medicine of the newness. There's a medicine also of the recognition of the shadow, but the medicine of the new human that is trying to come in and trying to be clothed by it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you, jonah, for this. The question of integration how then, do we work with it? How does actually that becomes this precious thing, this treasure that is heavy and hard and cold at first, but in the way that we take it up and lead it into ourselves and towards and through prayer, as an opening to God's further work in our life, yeah, amen. Then you feel you are on the way with the divine and again I come out the other side with more compassion and understanding for my brothers and sisters, which is exactly what you described for your daughter.
Speaker 1:Suddenly you're like oh I see you better, I can love you better. Exactly Beautiful, so it just feels like one of the most beautiful treasures we have actually. Yeah, To trust that to really faith in God would also be faith in the fact that our shadows have been included in the story.
Speaker 3:Amen, I don't know how else to say it. Yeah, and this is really interesting and maybe that's just a thought to close with, because, like you, I'm just so appreciative of this, getting clear on what integration is. But it is also interesting that Christ is called Jesus. Christ is called the Lamb of God, who takes upon himself the sin of the world by John as he comes to be baptized, and so that's an interesting thing to think about in light of this. Think about in light of this, in that Christ even himself is not wanting to be separate from our shadow.
Speaker 3:Yeah Right, he's, in a way, helping us, taking this up, bearing this with us and revealing it to us, giving us the courage to say, yes, this is mine, and bestowing his new garments on us when we open our hearts to his life. So it's not something we do. The reason why I bring that is it's actually in the Christian pictures. It's not something we do shadow work to to then have a relationship with Christ. We hear this a lot in our circles I've got to do this and this and this so that I can have a Christ experience. But actually this integrative work, radically, is deeply, deeply, fundamentally connected with how Christ wants to relate with us.
Speaker 1:Christ wants to relate with us. Yeah, the intimacy levels of life with Him through this door are so deep and wide. You know, jonah, I feel really called to just say I feel like these mysteries that we've been led into and that we treasure in our own life, I think that's been a massive part of, also, the transformation of the seminary.
Speaker 3:No question. I think our students and our priests that have been ordained through this seminary would attest to that.
Speaker 1:I know they would, because I think there's not only no condemnation in Christ, there's no corrective, no, there's no be different. I don't know how it's very hard to even describe. That's right because, like I watch, I just watch the accompaniment of the students and when you live this life you've just talked about and you see someone wrestling with their shadow, which you see because you're here every day praying and learning together. So we're going to see each of the shadows of the seminary. You're going to run into them. There's like such a, it's like a holy thing, yeah, and the whole approach around it has a holy trust. There's trust in it. No rush, no hurry. These things are going to work out, how they're going to work out and we're going to walk with it, with each other, and there's just this mood of there's a room and there's faith in everybody's shadow. Not, you should be xyz different. You need to get rid of these tendencies, xyz per se.
Speaker 3:It's a totally different and transformed way of relating to a person on the path yeah, I think that's really important and I, as you were speaking, it kind of became clear to me in a new way the difference between um a corrective and a Christian transformation. Like a corrective is like you shouldn't be that way, you should be this way. So cut that out and do this, as opposed to what we've been describing. Whatever you find yourself doing, whatever wound you're working out of, whatever shadow is revealing itself to you, stick with that in this way, with this process, because that will become your doorway, your altar, to a new self and a new relationship with God.
Speaker 1:We're like all right, we're in it now. This is the real stuff, not get rid of it. That's so different. It's just shocking, it's not?
Speaker 3:be different, it's become new through that darkness. Oh man, I mean this is huge to me, and so often is it not so? I mean this is huge to me, and so often is it not so. I mean I find it so often also in myself. But in our circles and in our work, Anywhere there's spiritual ideals, anywhere there's idealism, you find the corrective spirit. That's bad, this is good, yes, and it turns out the Holy Spirit is very different, very different.
Speaker 1:Bad, this is good, yes, and it turns out the holy spirit's very different, very different, and you know what it is for me too is the corrective spirit is relating to a general ideal.
Speaker 1:People have a general ideal in mind and they're comparing the person in front of them, who's not general at all. No, very, very specific, yeah, and it's like, well, these are the different ways. You're failing to be that general ideal rather than thinking Hmm, this very specific human, on their very specific journey, is in the middle of their own alchemy. Yeah, and it has been prepared and worked upon by the highest spirits of the universe and guided by Christ, and it is holy, and I am blessed to be able to accompany this human in their own transformation, and that's it, and that's it, that's it. I'm not even looking at that general ideal, because the living ideal it's right there Is in there the living ideal of the death and resurrection process in us, and that's really, then, a reorientation, a re devoting ourselves to what we could call the Lord of Destiny, meaning your life is where it's at.
Speaker 1:Where it's at.
Speaker 3:You don't got to look anywhere else. What's happening in your life, what's being revealed to you, is Christ speaking to you, is the Holy Spirit trying to break in, so to speak, to help you see, to help you take up, to help you go in an explorative transformation and receive a new self, a grace experience, amen, hallelujah, beautiful Patrick. Well, thank you. Singing a song in Babylon. Singing a song in Babylon. Singing a song in Babylon, weaving the wedding garment in Babylon. Thank you, man, thank you ¶¶ ©.
Speaker 2:Transcript Emily Beynon.