One Foot in the Eternal, One Foot in the Human

Integrating our gifts, shadows and spiritual nature

In the article "The Roots of Individuality," I described the relationship between soul, psyche, mind and individuality through the image of a tree.

The deepest roots represented the universal and collective dimensions of existence. The trunk represented the mind, which connects the deeper psyche with sensory experience. The branches and leaves represented our increasingly specific human individuality.

This individuality is not separate from the deeper roots. It is their visible expression.

However, the qualities that make us unique do not always develop freely.

Some are rejected, suppressed or distorted. This is where our gifts can become shadows.

When a gift becomes a shadow

Sometimes the qualities that are strongest in us are experienced as excessive by the people around us.

A child may be told that they are:

• too sensitive

• too loud

• too independent

Because the quality creates friction, the child may learn to suppress it. But suppression does not remove the underlying quality. It removes it from conscious participation.

The quality becomes part of the shadow.

Shadow work is therefore not only about confronting characteristics we dislike. It can also involve recovering gifts that were rejected because they appeared inconvenient, overwhelming or socially unacceptable.

Julia Cameron uses the term shadow artist to describe a person who possesses a strong creative impulse but does not allow themselves to create.

The artistic energy does not disappear. It may continue indirectly through frustration, envy, criticism or fascination with the creativity of other people. The same principle can apply to other qualities.

Suppressed sensitivity may become chronic defensiveness.

Suppressed intensity may become agitation.

A suppressed need for freedom may become rebellion without direction.

This does not mean that every unexpressed quality directly causes psychological or physical illness. That would be too simplistic. However, prolonged suppression can create inner conflict, stress and disconnection. Something alive within the person has been denied an appropriate place.

The task is not to let every impulse act without boundaries. It is to discover the mature form of the underlying quality.

The goal is neither suppression nor uncontrolled expression. The goal is integration.

The spaciousness of the mind

The mind is not a fixed object. It is more like a space whose capacity can expand or contract.

We describe someone as narrow-minded when their inner space has become restricted. There is little room for ambiguity, difference, curiosity or new experience. When that space contracts further, thinking can become increasingly rigid.

By contrast, expressions such as broadening your horizon or expanding an idea suggest an increase in inner space.

Perhaps this is one reason many people are moved by wide landscapes, mountains, oceans and open skies. External spaciousness may resonate with an inner knowledge of spaciousness. Looking into the distance can remind us that our natural condition may be larger than the mental structures in which we have become confined.

Our thoughts, identities and beliefs exist within awareness. Awareness itself can described as the sky - containing clouds and weather. as a space enabling them to appear and disappear but never being affected by them. it's a boundless space, attentively alive and yet calmer than deep dreamless sleep.

The world as a spectrum

As a tree grows outward, it divides into increasingly specific branches and leaves.

Experience unfolds in a similar way through contrasts, polarities and spectra:

• light and darkness

• pleasure and pain

• closeness and distance

Two people may occupy neighbouring positions on a spectrum, like two leaves growing from the same branch. Others may appear to be opposites, like branches extending in entirely different directions.

But like leaves on a tree, one is not better than the other. They are complementary expressions of a larger whole.

Imagine the soul is deeply curious about this whole spectrum. It would not divide experience into good and bad in exactly the same way that the human personality does.

That deeper part in us can therefore sometimes appear as fierce or reckless, a freedom that can scare us, a love so inclusive and unconditional dead on a human level, we might experience it as losing control because it moves us towards complete surrender.

Human life, however, takes place through a vulnerable body. The body can be injured. It experiences pleasure, discomfort or physical limitation. It naturally approaches what appears beneficial and avoids what appears dangerous. it seeks pleasure, and it tries to avoid pain.

This two movements in us create one of the central tensions of being human.

Something in us is radically open to experience. Another part must protect a limited organism living in a physical and social world. Both are Legit, but they need to find a subtle way of dancing and coexisting with each other.

The first imbalance: becoming trapped in protection

When the protective body-mind dominates completely, the personality becomes organised around avoiding pain and securing pleasure. This is where the ego can harden (over time, this might manifest in actual muscle tension and hardening of the whole body area) and take over the steering wheel.

Limiting beliefs develop as defensive structures:

• I must remain in control

• I must not be rejected

• I must prove my worth

  
  

Originally, these beliefs may have functioned as strategies. They attempted to protect the person from uncertainty, shame, exclusion or pain.

Over time, however, the strategy stops feeling like a strategy.

It begins to feel like reality.

Eventually, the belief may be mistaken for the person’s deepest identity - what we believe ourselves to fundamentally be:

not simply “I learned to control,” but “I am someone who must always remain in control.”

We no longer notice that we are looking through a protective structure. We simply experience the world through it.

The second imbalance: escaping into transcendence

The opposite imbalance also exists.

A person can identify so strongly with awareness, spaciousness or the spiritual dimension that they become detached from their natural humanity.

They may attempt to become a kind of stone Buddha: unaffected, distant and removed from desire, conflict and vulnerability.

In doing so, they may lose contact with:

• their senses

• their personal needs

• their emotions

  
  

Spirituality then becomes another form of protection. This is sometimes called spiritual bypassing.

Instead of using control to escape uncertainty, the person uses transcendence to escape embodiment. They may claim that nothing matters because everything is consciousness, or that personal pain is merely an illusion.

Although such statements may contain a partial spiritual insight, they can also be used to avoid grief, responsibility, intimacy or unresolved conflict.

Both imbalances disconnect us from wholeness. and wholeness is our natural state of being.

One imprisons us within the human personality. The other tries to escape the human personality entirely.

Neither one nor two

Ram Dass often pointed toward the need to stand with one foot in the eternal and one foot in the world of form.

One foot rests in spaciousness, peace and the deeper qualities of the soul. The other rests in the body, personal desires and practical responsibility.

For me, this points toward a deeper meaning of non-duality. Non-duality is neither exclusive identification with the spacious soul nor complete identification with the individual human being.

It is the recognition that these dimensions are not ultimately separate.

We could say that they are one, but even this can be misleading. They are not one because they are not identical.

Spacious awareness is not the same experience as personal desire. Universal love is not the same expression as loving one particular person. The roots are not the same as the leaves.

They remain distinguishable, but they are not truly separable. One could say they are like two sides of a coin.

Each side has its own appearance and can be described independently. Yet neither side exists as a separate coin.

The eternal and the human are not merely connected like two independent objects joined together. Their relationship is more fundamental. Each is the other appearing in a different way. both disguising and revealing each other - a living Paradox.

The universal becomes particular without ceasing to be universal.

Beauty becomes a particular colour, melody or movement. Joy becomes a unique human expression. Love becomes the love of a particular person, animal or place. And yet they exist as inherent qualities that we already are, even without external resonance.

Fully inhabiting human life

Our individuality is not a mistake that must be dissolved. Nor is the spiritual dimension an abstract realm that requires us to leave our humanity behind.

The roots are not superior to the leaves. As much as the leaves need the roots groundedness in something stable, never changing, so much need the roots the nourishment of the leaves - their celebration of the ever-changing forms and flavors of life. The task is neither to transcend our individuality nor to become imprisoned within it. It's about allowing the deepest qualities of existence to move freely through the psyche, mind, body and particular circumstances of an actual human life.

To be rooted in what is universal while fully inhabiting what is individual.

To have one foot in the eternal and one foot in the human—not as two separate worlds and not as two identical realities, but as two expressions of one living whole.

Getting there without becoming lost in one realm or the other is anything but easy. It can be an exciting adventure, but there are many intersections at which we can lose our way.

That is why I would love to accompany you on your personal adventure—sometimes as a guide, sometimes as a friend who simply listens with compassion.

If you want to go deeper, explore my free mini-course. It offers hands-on practices for many of the traps discussed here and guides you toward a sense of wholeness that includes both the freedom of the soul and our beautifully messy humanness.

For personal support, you can book a free 45 min coaching and orientation call with me.