Yes, that was me – aspiring Spiritual Goody Two Shoes. Just before I was about to receive my certification in Spiritual Goody Two Shoes, I had the sudden realization that I have a dark side. Well, let’s be clear it wasn’t a sudden realization so much as a willingness to take a look in my own spiritual closets and acknowledge there was in fact a monster in there. I’d closed that door on my monsters many a time. I denied it and privately lived in shame.
Perhaps it’s the toughest door to open and yet, ironically requires an innocence of us. An innocence of mind to open that door and be willing to look at whatever is in there. Rummaging through my spiritual closets, illuminated a new meaning for the term “mercy and goodness”, taken from the 23rd Psalm. It required of me a readiness to show myself that mercy and goodness even as I revealed my darker sides. Now that I’ve opened that door, I’ve discovered I’m not unlike anything or anyone else, this Universe consists of shades of light and dark and I am not exempt from that.
I also learned there is a softness, a leaning into life when I cease to resist this dark side. My world becomes a more welcoming one. No more running from what’s behind that closet door. The monster can come in bed with me now, we’ll read each other bed time stories. We’ll talk, we’ll have our giggles and tears. We’ll hug and sleep next to each other and in the morning we’ll step out into the full light of day and walk with an open hearted transparency about us because suddenly our world is a friendlier one and all the demons are no more.
beautiful