Evolution

Today, with the book out after all these years, an actual copy sitting here on my desk, the caveman slinks back into his lair and I evolve a little bit. Stand up a little bit straighter, look ahead a little bit farther. Plus, the sun has finally come out. It's so hard to be cheerful when your whole month of April feels like a set from Blade Runner.



Fifteen years of thought in such a slim volume. Amazing. I've heard that the shortest books carry the biggest messages, and it's true that I couldn't do without The Left Hand of Darkness or the poetry of Mary Oliver, but I couldn't do without Anna Karenina, either. Hhmmm... does size really matter? An age-old question.

Things change. Archetypes come and go. Shadows form and dissolve within me.

The trick is to develop a little compassion for each one. As soon as I look right at Bob's drawing of the caveman, notice how beautiful he is in his own way, he throws down his club and starts to stand up straighter.

As soon as I admit what I'm doing, I can begin to cut it out.

Ignoring my caveman does not work as well as acknowledging his existence.

K

The Caveman

A friend who can't believe I'd rather stay home and spread compost or re-read Joseph Campbell than go shopping or out for coffee called yesterday and asked, "Have you exploded into a ball of light yet?"

And I said, "No. Just the opposite. Today I am totally in shadow."



Teetering right on the brink of publishing a book about the human shadow--the web site up, the book at the printer and ready to be shipped out to the distributor, the marketing started--I find myself completely whelmed, over and under, inside and out, by awareness of my own shadow. Absolutely covered in murk.

Friends and neighbors look at me and see a middle-aged Beauty--the kind, pleasant, responsible, pillar of the community--but when I look in the mirror this week I see the caveman. Primitive. Carping, impatient, negative, mean. Swinging a club of words under its breath as it lurches from side to side down a narrow, rocky path. A clear danger to anyone it meets.

Who is this guy? What is all this negativity I carry within me? Where does it come from? What does it want?

One thing's for sure: it belongs to me. It's definitely mine.

If I sit still long enough to let reality enter the picture, it becomes very clear that every negative thing I think or say about others appears in my own conduct, or has at one time or another.

That the caveman swings his club at his own shadow.
K