Are you aware of radical inclusion in your life?
It’s been a long time since I was in the presence of a raven, but a couple days ago, as my sister and I completed a refreshing bike ride, we witnessed a huge black raven and a crow communicating back and forth with one another. The raven would vocalize and the crow would respond, and this went on back and forth for a time. They had very different vocal sounds. I’m not surprised that I was drawn to observe these black birds this week because my blog is about embracing the light and shadow aspects within you and I. One aspect of radical inclusion is looking at those elements of yourself that you would rather avoid. I refer to this as the dark or shadow side of your personality.
Your Shadow Side
This might include feelings or symptoms such as sadness, anger, resentment, regret, unhappiness, lingering grief, bitterness, anxiety, depression, or fears. It’s believed that black birds connect with those who are willing to explore both the light and dark aspects of life. The raven is thought to assist you in bringing forth dark aspects of your personality into the light for creative purposes. The raven assists you with change and transition. It asks you to be open to what lies beyond the rational conscious mind, the unexplored 90% of the mind referred to as the unconscious. My work beckons me to explore the depths of darkness and the mysteries held within the unconscious mind. We are meant to understand both the conscious and unconscious aspects of our mind, and it’s time we explored how?
Most humans are usually open to embracing the good aspects of their personality. I’m asking you to delve into the darkness that is within you too. Allow yourself to shift beyond the limits of your ego and your conscious rational mind. Within each one of us is the propensity for both good and evil. If you have spent any time studying history, or have taken some introspective time to go within, you will understand the universal truth in this statement. If we believe otherwise, we tend to get caught up in self-righteous behaviours and rigid thought patterns.
Embracing the Whole
Radical inclusion challenges you to recognize, acknowledge, value, and embrace the good and evil that dwells within you. Most of us tend to have a preference for the good end of the spectrum and we continually work to keep the dark that is within us under wrap. However, we cannot fully understand the full expansiveness of our good possibilities if we don’t explore the shadow side of who we are at the core. This same principle pertains to our relationships with everyone around us. Accepting the whole personality of the other without attempting to change them is our main challenge in any relationship. We can only change ourselves. It is up to others to change themselves. When we are in relationship, we naturally tend to do and say things to sway the other to change to our way of thinking and being and that’s why clashes occur. We feel safe when we are around others who think and act like us. That’s why relationships are such a conundrum and also why they are central to spiritual development and growth.
Good and Evil
Radical inclusion and systemic constellation work challenges you to develop a new perception of evil. It wants you to place yourself firmly on the whole spectrum of good and evil, not just within the good aspect. In systemic constellations work we quickly realize that both the victim (generally assumed to be the good or innocent aspect) and the perpetrator (generally assumed to be the evil aspect) are energetically involved in the resolution of outstanding emotional trauma. Systemic constellations challenge these assumptions and turn them upside down.
War as Part of the Whole
It’s not random that systemic family constellation work was developed in the aftermath of World War II. As a young man, Bert Hellinger witnessed the Hitler Youth showing a lack of love and respect for their own parents and grandparents. Filled with zealotry for the Third Reich, it was a common occurrence for youth to turn their family members into the authorities for crimes committed against the state. Years later, Hellinger’s work amongst the Zulu of Africa educated him to the love, loyalty, and respect of the greater transgenerational family system that included the members who were alive and those who had passed to the other side. There was inherent respect for the parents and grandparents. This was a very different dynamic then he experienced in Germany during the war. Family Constellations evolved out of numerous other psychotherapy methods. Individuals directly involved in the war and the Holocaust, and the following generations of descendants, were energetically and emotionally living out the unresolved emotional wounds and trauma of their parents and grandparents. The need for healing that embraced the victim and the perpetrator in an equitable manner gradually gained acceptance in the 1990s.
Most people cringe when they think about the atrocities of World War II. It’s not a topic that tends to come up in everyday conversations. This past March I visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and in May I went to Dachau, Germany. Buried amongst the atrocities I contemplated the good that came out of the war.
World War II created many opportunities to explore both the good, the light aspect of our personalities, and the evil, the dark or shadow side of our personalities. During the war, many people struggled to find their inner goodness once they were caught up in the pit of evil created by Nazi Germany. This dynamic spread to people all over the world.
My studies have shown that throughout the world the vast majority of people believe in some divine presence impacting their lives. In the past couple of decades, people have wondered how their God, the divine, could allow such horrific behaviours to occur. It’s because the divine embraces good and evil equally that these events occurred. It’s part of the human journey to explore whatever one chooses to explore, be it good or evil or any other duality.
Embracing Good and Evil
Radical inclusion is expanding to accept that any concept of the divine holds both good and evil. To use an example, I suggest the concept of God and the usual counterpart, Satan or the Devil, is one and the same entity. They are not separate entities, but One. By embracing the shadow side of the divine we are able to fully embrace the shadow side of ourselves. A decade ago I took a course in Post-Holocaust Theology and one assignment was looking for signs of divine presence in the Holocaust. It was looking beyond the obvious suffering in search of the beauty of the human spirit that was evident but rarely mentioned. We searched for the face of the divine in the faces of the victims and perpetrators of the Holocaust. It was seen in the depth of love shown by those in the concentration camps, as the stronger assisted the weaker. This beauty was found in the hearts of those who helped the sick and dying and calmed the fears of those around them. There was beauty in the soul of the guard that went out of his or her way to lighten the suffering of others. There was divine grace within the community members that saved the lives of others by hiding them or helping them, or their children, to escape death. This was an exploration of the good within the Holocaust.
Owning Your Shadow Side
On the other end of the spectrum, most of the world’s citizenry experienced their own inner evil as one nation after nation refused to allow the shiploads of victims fleeing the Nazis to land on their shorelines. The victims were only human beings seeking refugee status and safety from their perpetrators, but they were alienated because of propaganda. The world’s citizenry had bought into the propaganda and became cold, withdrawn, fearful, and unwelcoming to these struggling crowds of people. Not only was Nazi Germany the perpetrator and fearful other, but the victims, the Jewish people and other minorities who were being exterminated, were also set up as the fearful other and seen as a threat to the wellbeing of society. People fell victim to their own fears and they let their egos run amuck. The ego likes the status quo and people resisted any change that might disrupt their own lives.
During the war, many people of the world turned a blind eye to the extreme discriminatory and inhumane practices that were going on in Nazi Europe, they turned a deaf ear to the pleas for help from the victims, and by omission and rejection they effectively collaborated with the perpetrators. They joined Nazi Germany as perpetrators exploring their own inner capacity for evil.
In reality, Nazi Germany mirrored the general spiritual unwellness in the world at that time. It drew attention to the evil living within each one of us. Rather than openly acknowledging that we all have this potential, individuals made great efforts to avoid looking at themselves. On the conscious level, both the victims and the perpetrators emotionally buried all remnants of the war and the extent of the atrocities went hidden for decades. Their descendants had no idea why their parents were the way they were. Radical inclusion was nowhere to be found and the evil aspect within all of us was silenced.
War Can Bring Positive Change
Stepping away from individual behaviours and looking systemically at the big picture, human beings were unconsciously spiritually shifting and transitioning along the spectrum of good and evil. They had unconsciously sifted through the evil of the war and knew innately that the world was about to change in a big way. At the unconscious level, people recognized their unkind and frequently nasty ways of being. They recognized their need to have power to compensate for their inner fears of the other. The period following World War II was a defining moment in the spiritual advancement of humanity. By unconsciously embracing the inner evil along with the good, people were finally ready to look at their own shadow side, their own prejudices, their own desires to dominate and colonize other peoples, and the inequity built into the very foundations and institutions governing each nation.
The world was turned upside down by the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and the gay rights movement, and people began to understand their own capacity for evil. Awareness allowed people to shift away from their past prejudices and to become more spiritually open. The rigid dogma of institutional religions and self-righteous behaviours were challenged.
People were forced to consider how they might understand or experience the good aspect of the divine without first exploring the shadow side of the divine (de-evil or Devil). Many people turned away completely from their own spiritual development, embracing an extreme form of secularism. Those open to spiritual learning realized that good and evil are both found within the divine entity, only they are manifested at different times as needed for the spiritual development and growth of humanity. The good and evil of the divine is mirrored back to the individual as good and evil within oneself. The exploration of religion and belief systems is a huge part of spiritual development and growth and to shun or avoid this aspect of any healing journey because it may seem corruptive in some way is to limit your spiritual growth.
Along with the great social movements in the latter half of the 20th Century, governments, made up of evolving human beings, were continuing to be challenged by other evolving human beings to address their blatantly discriminatory voting systems, laws, and legislation. The concept that indigenous peoples were somehow inferior or primitive was challenged and it’s still being challenged today. There was pressure to be more receptive to the needs of others, to be more tolerant of difference, and to stop alienating others who were perhaps part of marginalized economic, social, or political groups. It was no longer acceptable to discriminate against others based on ethnicity, gender, race, religion, language, different ability, sexual orientation, or differences of opinions or ideas.
Charters of rights and freedoms were developed by many nations. The inclusion of minority groups became “politically” the right thing to do and governments began the huge process of changing their discriminatory legislation. Since World War II, huge inroads have been made toward inclusion, and yet we still have a long way to go to achieve radical inclusion. “Political correctness” became the popular buzzword and many in society kicked back against these social considerations, believing they had gone too far.
Victim and Perpetrator
I’m suggesting that these social considerations didn’t go far enough. Radical inclusion demands that you engage with those you do not like, those you want to shun, and those you fear. Radical inclusion demands that you treat the victim and the perpetrator equally, realizing that they are the product of their greater familial and societal systems. Radical inclusion asks you to hold both the victim and the perpetrator in your heart.
This spiritual evolutionary process continues as new generations challenge old rigid belief systems. It’s a natural process for clashes to occur between the generations or else we wouldn’t evolve as humans. As well, we cannot have a world entirely defined as good and peaceful for it would become a meaningless conceptualization. To appreciate good and peace one has to also experience evil, conflict, and discontent. To eliminate evil is to destroy humanity, because evil is within each one of us. To destroy evil is to end the existence of human beings on planet Earth.
Good and Evil Coexist to Create the Whole
The raven and crow wanted me to communicate about the dark and light aspects of humanity. We spiritually grow when we understand that good and evil must coexist together for the existence of humanity. Spiritual growth and creation comes when we no longer look at the other in judgement. We realize that the human soul has an element of evil that cannot be exterminated. The evil is there to give meaning to the good. The evil is there for our spiritual development and growth. It’s in taking the time to observe the evil within us that we expand and understand the big systemic picture of our existence. Radical inclusion requires us to look at the light and shadow aspects of our deep inner self.
Are you presently embracing radical inclusion in your own life? Is there some action step you could take to engage more fully with the shadow side of your personality?
