I was drifting off to sleep when Legion came and whispered in my ear that I was done with the Hatman. Well, “officially”. I was also told that he would still be interfering, but we kinda already knew that with this group. Shadow Woman is still active.
Frankly, it was a little anticlimactic and a trick, but that could’ve been partly the wine.
I wanted to reflect a little on why I think this is, this door opened that doesn’t close. It can be thought of in a few lights and your particular point of view DOES matter here. Since I believe in the possibilities of both, it doesn’t seem implausible either way being correctly.
The purist view, if I recall correctly from my interactions a few years ago, is that these are aspects of ourselves that we’re calling and this is both their strength and weakness. Since it’s a part of you, you can’t exactly be rid of it. While this version is the most direct with why integration is important, it is for ALL versions, it is most clearly said here. And I reject this being the only version of what’s going for several reasons. Later for those.
The second view is the completely external frame of reference for this. One is ALL and ALL is One sort of philosophies aside, this posits that these are external entities that one is calling, however one chooses to do that. This was my original experience, but I quickly realized that there were those areas inside of me that corresponded to their descriptions – but weren’t the same as being “Me”. I’ve had more experiences more like this than the first. The reason the door is hard to close here is because, just like any other entity one calls deliberately, you become better at it and, in a generic sense, resonate more like it. It’s an over-generalization, but the concept serves that well enough.
The third is the most likely – that both are true and neither fully. Some of the evidence for this is when you start to see shadows spin off of people and become sentient and self-aware. You’ll also notice this when one of the named shadows that clearly ISN’T part of you, external to you, and not part of the person they’re acting on becomes clear. My Ranziel anchoring scenario was like this many years ago. It also becomes evident when the shadows are felt externally and very far away and you can feel they have no connection to you as part of “You”. This is evident when I spoke of the Shadow Gate and how the gate servitor would feed to keep it open. There were shadows all over Honolulu and none of them were mine.
Some may pull out some theories about everything being connected and whatnot. I’m a Taoist. I get it. If you’re that certain of you particular theory that we’re all part of You (them speaking and thinking), then feel free to put your money where your mouth is and pay my taxes for me. Doesn’t matter that much, does it?
Seriously, I think focusing mostly on those ONE theories aren’t terribly helpful. Most of the Taoist stuff can also come with cultivation that’s more than just the watered down breathing exercises at the YMCA. Thinking and postulating alone doesn’t seem to cultivate much of anything but the mind. It also detracts from the (arguable) reasons we’re here – all of which have to do with actions/acting while these parts of our Self are together. We could go down the rabbit hole of purification to reabsorb into the ALL (which would then unpurify some parts of us as we got spit back out to maintain balance) or stopping along the way to be living pretend gods of our own personal trailer parks along the highway. Etc…
None of those are really helpful when if comes to doing the actual work of the Shadownomicon. And if work doesn’t need done, then we’re all equally filthy and clean, light and dark, in equal measure. Since that isn’t anyone I know, there’s more work to do. And that work involves opening doors.
So, pick one or both and get to it instead of thinking about it all the time without getting the actual work done. Or is that one of your shadow issues?
