Good and Wicked

Since I've been doing this "shadow work" all sorts of strange things have been happening to me. 

Vivid dreams.  Waking up from one such dream Saturday morning--a dream which ended with the thought, "Everything's true!" --waking up fully conscious and awake and feeling as though I was surrounded in white light, within and without.  The light would begin to fade, but then when I would focus back on the thought "Everything's true!" and apply that to some person or event or circumstance: the light would return.  A deep sense that everything was "just perfect the way it was" -- including me.  It seemed to be with me on and off the remainder of that day.  Now when I write about it, it doesn't seem real or powerful anymore.

Driving around for several days and noticing everytime I accelerated or slowed down that something would roll forward or backward in the side pocket of the passenger door of my car.  Not doing anything about it for several days, just noticing the sound, being a little annoyed about it but not annoyed enough to reach over and find out what it was or to secure it.  Then one day on the way to work, I heard the noise one more time and I looked over toward the noise and noticed that it was being caused by a loose CD in the side pocket.  I couldn't tell which CD it was because it the label of the CD was facing away from me.  I then reached over to grab it and looked at it and it was the soundtrack to the musical play, "Wicked". 

While I love this musical and have seen it on stage multiple times, I don't think I ever heard the words so vividly as I did that morning when I decided to forgo my usual recitation of various "stuff" on my way to work and to listen to this CD one more time.  Within moments, I realized that this musical captured or synthesized all the shadow work I had done to date and brought it to a new level or depth.  I was fixated on the musical the entire commute to Sacramento and before I knew it I was at work.  Every word and lyric resonated with me and what has been going on in the last several weeks.

Wicked, if you don't know, is the prequel to the Wizard of Oz: where the Wizard of Oz begins, the story of Wicked begins and ends.   

The Wizard of Oz begins with the tornado dumping (albeit in a dream...) Dorothy and her house on to and killing the so-called Wicked Witch of the West.  Dorothy is then welcomed to Oz by the so-called Good Witch of the North, Glenda) and pointed down the Yellow Brick Road toward Oz and the so-called Wonderful Wizard. 

Wicked begins with that same tragic ending to this supposed wicked witch, Elfaba, and the same seemingly kind act of the goodly Glenda....  As all the munchkins were celebrating the death of the Wicked Witch, one of them asked the Good Witch Glenda, "Didn't you know her?".  Didn't Glenda know the Wicked Witch? 

Glenda then becomes the storyteller and rewinds back in time to when Elfaba and Glenda (then Galinda) met as roommates in college.  Without going into the story more, let me just say that when I listened to the musical again the other morning, I was transfixed by the "ultimate truth" of this fanciful story and how it enlightened my own journey seeking "to become" good.  For years, seeing that "good" as something exterior, to be learned and/or faked.  Good being a state which others determined and defined.  Good being out of my reach.  Leaving me isolated and alone.

I listened to the CD multiple times in the last week and I can only say that I've come to understand this as a perfect metaphor for my own journey to this point, that I am Good, that I am Wicked...that I am "me" and that I am Unlimited.  I must admit though, that much of the week was spent yelling "Liar!" to much of what Glenda and others were saying about what it means to be "good" or "wicked".   They never listened, not even once.  But, gradually, I have begun to listen...

Take care!

Mike L.