A lot of words and emotions are stirring through all of us right now. There is anger, fear, combativeness and there is also a deep sadness and despair for many. We are in a time of struggle and upheaval. Our world, in many ways, appears to be falling apart. Yet, it is always darkest before the dawn, and here we are, collectively, standing on the brink of the dawn.

Before the light can break through, we must individually and collectively face the darkness. We must peer into those shadowed depths and face what can only be described as fear, head-on. The shadow-self cannot be ignored, because turning away from it is a form of denial of the self that seeks to be healed and loved the most. The shadow self is a reminder of our humanity. It is not wholly to be seen as our failures, but our lessons in Life. The full breadth of the spectrum exists within all of us. What sparks the fear, can also spark the light.

“I am human, therefore, I am imperfect.” A statement of acceptance and not denial.

“I am sorry for what I have done, but I have learned from this.” An affirmation of growth.

“You are not different from me. You are my mirror for what also exists inside of me.” A statement of profound truth.

“I love you and I accept you.” To say this, but also to know it completely is the path to unity of the individual and the whole. We cannot truly love ourselves and others until we accept and love, unconditionally, all aspects of that self.

There is the still pervasive belief that there is an “other” that is disconnected to the self. This allows us to defer blame and culpability on another, giving us a false sense that it is the other that needs to be healed or changed in order for justice to be achieved. It is not justice, though, that needs to be achieved, it is a balance.

Until we peer into, examine, and ultimately love all the shadows tucked into the crevices of self, how can we truly heal and move into that state of peace and unity? To examine the “you,” we must also examine the “I,” knowing that they are, in essence, one and the same.

The impulse to harm, or even to kill, exists in you, as it does in me. As does the ability to love and everything in between. The full spectrum of the self cannot be denied when the “body” seeks to be healed. Polarity exists to bring us back to the true center.

The body dances with energy that some call the dark and the light. Others call yin and yang, or the Ida and Pingala. Some call these two energies the masculine and the feminine energies. Here is the thing with naming and defining, we can get caught up in semantics.

Right now, people are posting “black-outs” on their profile pictures as a call for awareness of violence towards women. Yet, there is also the violence that occurs towards men, and to all forms of living beings, including the planet Earth we all share as our home.

The polarizing energies that dance inside of our bodies are actually unifying energies. they swirl like DNA around our spine, joining at their nodes into a central channel that carries the unified energy up and down our spine, and horizontally out to the cells of our body that join into tissues and organs. A healthy, harmonized body has an equal balance of both energies. A dis-eased body has an over-abundance of one, and an underabundance of another. Sometimes there is more Ida in one place, sometimes there is more Pingala. More masculine in the heart (which can result in heart-disease), let’s say and more feminine in the thyroid (which can result in hypothyroid disease). The body knows how essential balance is.

We are not simply man or woman. We are not simply “black” or “white.” We are not simply “you” versus “me.” To heal one half, we must heal the other. To find the light, we must also embrace the darkness within. One teaches us about the other. The balance of the whole is the balance of the individual.