THE SHADOW LIFE

In the shadow life, we live in denial and we act by addiction. We

pursue callings that take us
nowhere and permit ourselves to be controlled by compulsions that we
cannot understand (or are not
aware of ) and whose outcomes serve only to keep us caged,
unconscious and going nowhere.
The shadow life is the life of the amateur. In the shadow life we
pursue false objects and act
upon inverted ambitions.
The shadow life, the life of the amateur and the addict, is not benign.
The longer we cleave to this life, the farther we drift from our true
purpose, and the harder it
becomes for us to rally the courage to get back.

ADDICTED TO LOVE
Ihave a friend who’s addicted to love. (I can relate to this addiction
myself.) I’ve known her my
whole life, and it’s absolutely excruciating to listen to the chronicle of
her romances. She migrates
from one passionate, all-consuming affair to the next. She is in agony
throughout the affair, and the
affair always ends in agony. It will not surprise you, I’m sure, when I
report that this woman is one of
the most gifted, talented people I’ve ever met. She’s a piano prodigy.
Her photographs win prizes.
And she’s a near-world-class athlete; she has swum the Maui-Big
Island open-ocean crossing half a
dozen times.
Over the years, my friend has developed a philosophy—you could
almost call it a religion—
about pursuing the sublime through love. This philosophy is so
complex and so convincing that she
can not only persuade herself of its reality, but you or me too if we sit
still long enough to listen to
her. She is mesmerizing. At the same time, the experience is bone-
numbingly tedious, watching her
transit from one great love to the next, with each drama playing out to
exactly the same cadence, and
each one culminating in exactly the same dead end.
My friend knows this is Resistance. We’ve talked about it a hundred
times. She’s running away
from her gifts and she knows it. But the habit is too strong. She has
become identified with it. It’s who
she is.