I think a lot about my thoughts. Each one tells me something about myself, as well as the reaction of my body. Why does a thought cause my body to contract? Or, another, my cells to levitate? I met my pain body last fall, the day after an energy healing session. She appeared to me as a hooded figure, shrouded in glistening black. She hovered in my shadows until she showed me her face. It was the face of nightmares, a mouthful of jagged teeth cut like vampires. Yet, I wasn’t afraid. Finally, she was coming out into the light.

We all have a shadow-self. That part of us that feeds off of our pain and fears, consuming them like forbidden candy. If we deny their existence, they grow glutenous; they take over our beings. If we grant them voice, we can learn and accept. We can give them light, and sometimes, we can let them go.

Last April, before I met my shadow-self, I read an article from Deepak Chopra featured on http://www.care2.com and formed this erasure poem from his words.

“Shadow Energies”
(an erasure poem adapted from an article by Deepak Chopra featured on www.care2.com)

The intensity of shadow
is a way of getting noticed

Hiding is not the same
as killing. Energies remain
even though you refuse to look
at their desire for life

To catch a child cry, then
a tantrum, it seems only reasonable
to see fear forced into repression

“I can do things that will make
you look at me.” The last
statement doesn’t alter truth

If you bring light into shadow
its distortions are healed