Reading my Facebook feed of friends, I have seen everything from those purging their friends' list of anyone who supported Trump to members of the LGBTQIA community raging to Bernie supporters complaining that he could have won to sweetly spiritual folks assurances that Trump is still a child of the Light to immigrants afraid they will be targeted to spiritual teachers chiding that they told us to deal with the Shadow to middle-roaders waiting and seeing what comes next to international vagabonds and citizens verbalizing their shaking heads to those who can only post the letters WTF. I could go on, but I'm sure you get the picture and have experienced something similar.
Pondering all of this, talking with friends, listening to the silence of others, a myth surfaces within me: Pandora's Box. Here's my new-and-improvised version:
Little by little over the past several years, the US has become a nation with cavernous reaches separating people. It has defined and redefined the haves and have-nots ~ from the Occupy Movement to the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge takeover to those who can afford health care and those who cannot to those who have a roof over their heads and those who do not to the college-educated and those who are not, the list goes on and touches into every area of our lives. The outside world for each person shifts and changes as they pass among the varied haves or have-nots. The lines are fluid, the passages permeable.
Enter into this scene a Presidential election cycle. Two major candidates emerge. In terms of curriculum vitae, one is highly qualified in the political arena; the other is a self-proclaimed outsider with money. Each has their defenders and each has their detractors. In terms of the myth, they are both flawed. And their battle rages like the proverbial tug-of-war, back and forth many times.
Now the time for the election arrives. Even before the ballot count begins, the candidate with the political qualifications is presumed to be in the winners circle. As the count progresses, however, the rogue candidate emerges the victor. What was not figured into the polls and posturing were the dark things emerging from Pandora's Election Box ~ all of the recent history of people feeling ignored, unheard, unsupported ~ rising like smoky Shadow. This is true for every single voter. The darkness within each of us rose up ~ for some, it came from ignorance of the bigger picture; for others, it came from fear of losing even more.
What else arrives within Pandora's Election Box is Hope. In the beginning, Hope is a small and frail thing compared to the overwhelm of the Shadow. That's where we stand right now, looking at the tiny Tinkerbell light of Hope flitting around and needing to do our strongest Shadow work ever.
What is your darkest fear coming out of this election? What is your greatest hope? What dark part of you has surfaced with the results of the election? How are you going to heal? Are you willing to do the work necessary to heal?
