Jungian Shadow Portraits

As I looked back over the series of paintings I completed since beginning my Jungian shadow work, I discovered something amazing. It appeared that I was predicting the future, because everything I painted, became a reality. Not in a literal sense - I mean, Pebbles did not bite anyone's finger off - but in a sense of what the painting revealed to me through symbols and metaphor.

Let me explain: My process in finding the subject matter for my paintings has been to use my gifts as a channeler, in a similar way to how I communicate with source and/or spirits of humans who have passed on. I see images in my mind's eye - symbols which the unconscious knows, but the conscious still has yet to become aware of. I allow these images to come forward without resistance, and I don't rush the process - I just let it come into focus over time. If the idea repeats itself in several iterations - like a puzzle, showing me more pieces, I know it wants me to paint it.

This is the first step in making the unconscious, conscious, and as I begin to paint, more is revealed. In some cases, it starts one way, and changes into something else that I wasn't expecting. By the time the painting is finished, and I sit quietly and study it, I realize I have been given a gift of incredible insight into myself and my shadows. Later on, I look back and see how this insight of bringing the unconscious to consciousness, has not in fact *predicted* the future, but rather, manifested a change that began so subtly, that I wasn't able to fully comprehend it until a while later. It transformed something in me.

While internal transformation looks subtle at first, the physical manifestation that accompanies it - which is what is revealed over time - can be quite powerful.

i can give a mriad of examples of how this has happened, but the one that really blew me away, - and the first one I noticed - was that I lost like 45 pounds. The way it happened was quite amazing too. I healed my body/gut, and balanced my hormones, and it just naturally brought me back to my normal. I'm a size 2, and weigh what I did in high school, and this wasn't something I even thought was possible. It just happened. I was more concerned with my health, and so I worked on that with the help of a wonderful naturopath. But prior to finding her, I had spend thousands searching for help, to no avail.

So you see, this began in the mind. Once I began making the unconscious, conscious through using my gifts as a painter to facilitate shadow work, the whole thing unfolded. When I think of Carl Jung's quote: "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate", I am blown away by how true that statement is. Everything begins in the mind, but it's the unconscious part of the mind, where we don't want to go, because that's where we've hidden away all of the parts we've rejected in ourselves, thinking that would make us loveable, more acceptable, worthy, etc. But all that does is create dissonance, as we are secretly hating parts of ourselves, and since we refuse to look at those parts, otentimes we project them onto other people, and/or draw in people with those qualities on display, or more likely, the mirror of those qualities. In essence, what is going on here, is the "self" - which is the true us - is actively showing us our shadows, and we think it's us being victimized, or having bad luck, or just life not working out...but have you ever asked yourself "why" you keep attracting in the same people with different faces?

That's why.