All great seers, Rishis, Kahunas, Spiritual Teachers, Medicine Women and Men know you must first descend to rise. Many spiritual seekers spend all their efforts and energies trying to truncate and evade the shadow side in themselves and others, as if to bury their heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist. I have the most respect for those face down in the arena and not unwilling to dance with their shadow side, to learn to love it and forgive it and hone compassion. For then, we are whole and holy. Then we can genuinely say “This too shall be loved” and we live it.

Black Spruce gave me a powerful message, as I sat in stillness, recently. All shadows are just there, child-like, lesser evolved seekers of love. All impetus for any creation, thought, action, feeling or deed is ultimately motivated by love and our desire to return to love, our Origin, our Union. Forgiveness work, using Hyssop in conjunction with any of the blackish essential oils, like Black Pine or Black Spruce, a worthwhile endeavor indeed, will illuminate the humanity of all of our less than stellar moments or those of others. Our great challenge and the BIG call right now in these times, is to forgive ourselves first. To find that tiny little shadow (or in some cases huge and obnoxious) shadow aspect of ourselves that mirrors something external we judge or detest or that causes us pain. When we do find it (thank you Black Spruce) our job is only to love it. Then, somehow, it dissipates into quantum micro-particles of light and diffuses like the fog and mist of a “socked in” morning near the ocean. The breeze somehow conspires with the HA, or water (like in HA-WAI -I) to wash us clean and return us to our purified state, free from illusion. Go ahead and walk through the valley of your own shadows with this in your heart. Do it for me. Do it for us. We need you whole.