With Halloween approaching I fondly remember as a kid, and even now as an adult, why it is one of my favorite times of the year. Of course, getting to put on a fun costume, trick-or-treating with friends, and eating lots of candy certainly makes Halloween a great time. However, it wasn't until I took a college class in ancient cultures and religions when I discovered the true significance and sacred origin of Halloween. It may come as a pleasant surprise to learn that the original sacred tradition of Halloween can actually offer valuable and important lessons as you embark upon your quest toward health, wholeness and integration.
Trick-or-treating, playing pranks, scaring one another, and dressing up in costume are some of the things that we generally associate with the festive spirit of Halloween. For many of us Halloween is the one day of the year when we can enjoy becoming our alter ego, disguising ourselves behind an anonymous mask, and perhaps even letting the trickster in us all to come out of hiding without fear of being judged. It may be surprising to learn that the original sacred and holy traditions of Halloween offer valuable and important lessons for us as we embark upon our quest toward health, wholeness and integration. Halloween can actually be a wonderful opportunity for us to expand on our healing and spiritual journey, to embrace a greater sense of self-awareness, and to put our personal spiritual beliefs into actual practice in the world. You might be saying to yourself, “What does Halloween have anything to do with healing and spirituality?” To answer this question and to see how this is possible, let us briefly explore the origin and original spiritual significance of Halloween.
The word Halloween is actually an abbreviation for Hallow Even(ing), the night of the year when both the dark and light energies on the planet are considered to be the most hallow. You might wonder how can there be anything sacred about the dark. The best way to answer this is to look at the English word hallow itself. The word hallow refers to that which is sacred and revered, being etymologically related to the words holy, heal, and whole. While the Winter Solstice is technically considered to be the longest night of the year, many cultures and spiritual traditions of the world recognize that this time of the year is the energetically or "spiritually" darkest night of the year. It is during this time of year, when the planet and each of us has the capacity and the means to experience true wholeness, holiness, and healing of both our own light and dark.
Many indigenous traditions and ancient cultures of the world have viewed this time of the year when the thin veil that separates the darkness and light of the world, as well as the dark and light within the human psyche, disappears. The origin of Halloween goes back to pre-Christian Celtic Europe when the last day of October known as Samhain, an Old Irish word that roughly translates as “summer’s end,” was the day that marked the beginning of the pre-Christian New Year. At this crucial point of the year the light of summer ends and the darkness of winter begins. The pre-Christian religion believed that on this day of the year the barrier between the world of the living and the realm of the departed becomes the most transparent.
Interestingly, one finds this concept shared by the Mexican holiday known as the Day of the Dead, a festival that perhaps is a remnant of the earlier Aztec culture. The Day of the Dead is celebrated each first day of November and commemorates the ancestors that have crossed the veil to the darkness of the other world. With the arrival of Christianity into Europe and later into the New World, the Christian religion recognized the relevance of this time of the year and commemorated these indigenous traditions by creating All Saints Day and All Souls Day to honor the various departed saints and beloved souls in our lives.
For many of us Halloween is the only time of the year when society gives us permission to let the hidden and perhaps repressed parts of our individual and collective consciousness come out and be seen in public without fear or shame. These parts of our self, sometimes referred to in psychotherapy as the shadow, the alter ego, the lower self, or the disowned soul, are merely aspects of our greater whole that are not fully integrated. Many of us earnestly guard or actively invest energy concealing these parts of our self from the outside world out of fear that they will be exposed, judged, or ridiculed. During this one day of Halloween, our society provides the safe and culturally sanctioned space for the underbelly of society as well as the darkness within us to have a healthy opportunity to be brought from occlusion into openness, from exclusion into inclusion, from fear of being judged to being accepted. In fact, I believe the reason why Halloween is such a popular holiday is that it is the only time of the year when society gives us permission to let our hidden shadow and disowned darkness be seen and come out of its cave where we may have forced it to hide for the other days of the year.
What exactly is our shadow or this disowned darkness? Simply stated our shadow and our dark are whatever we are unconscious of or have repressed, denied, or avoided in our life. This notion of a repressed shadow manifests both on an individual and collective level. For some our shadow can appear on a personal level as repressed anger, violence, fear, shame, judgment, contempt, or repulsion to others or even to ourselves. On a global or collective level, these same emotions can appear as racism, religious fundamentalism, slavery, misogyny, homophobia, warfare, fear of change, etc.
There are endless ways in which our dark makes itself known. Our shadow surfaces only in the hope that it can be healed. Our hidden shadow speaks to us all the time, but the more we ignore its pleas to be witnessed, the more it grows and surfaces when we least expect it. If you are not aware of what your dark might be, just simply ask your family, friends, and loved ones for they will easily identify it for you. Why it is easy for others to indentify our shadow rests in the notion that whatever aspects of our dark that we have disowned and unidentified, we project onto those around us!
Many of us have been taught and conditioned to believe that our individual dark and the disowned aspects of our consciousness need to be repressed and devalued as society has taught us to equate them as being evil and unhealthy. We need to truly understand that our shadowy dark side is nothing to be feared! It is not, as we are often led to believe, something that is unwholesome that needs to be shunned, repressed, or devalued. This is a common misconception that many people, including myself, bought into regarding the spiritual journey toward health and wholeness. While many of us wish to live from a place of expansion, abundance, and integrity in our light, many of us focus so much on experiencing the light that we completely ignore the dark that exists right alongside it.
I will share with you an opinion that is not often voiced in many circles–the more we actually proceed on our journey toward wholeness and focus only on expanding into our light, the denser, the more pained and more vocal our disowned dark becomes. Our inner dark is an aspect of our consciousness that we must be careful not to ignore. I have finally come to the realization for myself and also have expressed to my clients that the key to expanding on the sacred journey into light is to embrace and reintegrate the dark. As the famous psychologist Jung once asked, “Would you rather be whole or perfect?”
One thing I wish to clarify that the term “embrace the dark,” does not mean being unaccountable for our actions. We need to remember that we are the ones who created our dark, and each of us is responsible for owning it and ensuring that it is healthily expressed. By acknowledging our shadow, we do not in any way mean that we have to become subservient to it. By truly owning our dark, we ensure that it does not have the chance to be expressed as violence, rage, or in any way that is harmful to us, others, and to the planet.
You can perhaps think of it like this–the brighter our light, the more visible our shadow becomes. Just as on a bright and sunny day, we can see our physical shadow more easily as opposed to when the Sun is obscured, so too is the case with our personal darkness. The more we aspire to embrace our light, one thing that we also must do is to examine and embrace the dark aspects of our shadow. This idea is also true on a collective level. The more humanity awakens and continues on its journey toward a new consciousness of wholeness, the more we have to own up to all the shadow aspects in our world. It is my belief that as more light becomes manifest on the planet, the more visible our collective shadow will become. War, terrorism, racism, poverty and neglect of the environment–all of these ‘dark’ aspects of humanity will actually become more pronounced as more light emerges on the planet, until that point when humanity’s collective dark becomes fully reintegrated back into the light.
In fact, this reintegration of the dark with the light is currently happening all around us as we return to wholeness! This process parallels the same course that we as individuals encounter on our healing journey. Just as a person may have to recall and sometimes become present to a past trauma in order to heal, so too do we as a species have to witness and remember the collective trauma of the past several millennia. Again, our light serves nothing more than a beacon to illuminate our inner darkness. Just as a flashlight in a darkened room allows us to witness the things stored there, so too can our light empower us with the gift to witness and ultimately to face and embrace the darkened recesses of our inner being.
The philosophical and spiritual teachings of the ancient Indian traditions of Yoga that date back over 3,000 years state that Yoga is a word that translates as “union.” Yoga psychology aims at bringing into union all the disconnected aspects of our sacred self into a greater whole, which means embracing both our light and our dark! I have always said that there are no such things as negative emotions, as they are just energies disconnected from the greater whole of our being. As I’ve discussed in previous blog posts, the word “whole” is related to the word “heal.” In essence, all are disconnected emotions and thoughts that we label as being negative are really only “unhealed.” Even if you don’t practice Yoga, many of humanity’s great spiritual traditions and faiths teach that we need to explore these disowned and ignored areas of our emotional, mental, psychological, and spiritual terrain that we have not yet dared to enter. Allowing our shadow to be felt and witnessed from a “healthy” place allows the darkness within to become “whole.”
When we fully own our dark, we abide in a greater place of integrity with our highest potential self, the place within each of us we strive to manifest as our goal in life. The way that we awaken our highest potential self is to become “whole,” which is to become “healed.” It is through our individual and collective ability to reintegrate our shadow into the greater whole that we experience the true health of mind, body, heart and spirit of which many ancient spiritual traditions speak. By owning our shadow, we take responsibility for our actions, our thoughts, and our words. The more we become accountable for these hidden aspects of our consciousness, the more we begin to live from a place of freedom, health, and wellbeing.
Again, owning our dark and acting upon our dark are two different matters. Although I encourage us to acknowledge the hidden and scary aspects of our consciousness, I’m not advocating that we have to act upon those destructive thoughts and tendencies. The more we actually are able to own our shadow, the less harm it can do. The more we ignore our dark, the more it controls us making us act out in violence, hatred, and rage. I would actually go so far as to say that everyday is Halloween–for everyday is a sacred opportunity to let our dark come out and to be healthily acknowledged as it reunites into the light. When our light and dark can exist as a unified whole, so too do we live from a place of freedom, liberation, and union with our whole self.
On a related note, half way around the world in India nearly a billion people on Oct. 26th will honor the ancient Hindu tradition known as Diwali, the Festival of Lights. Diwali always falls on the new Moon between mid-October to mid-November, and like the Celtic holiday of Samhain and the early Halloween ritual, Diwali is again the time of the year considered to be the energetically darkest night for the planet. During Diwali around the world people celebrate the Hindu lunar New Year by lighting oil lamps, bursting fire crackers, and allowing the light of humanity to shine at its brightest. Like the ancient Celts, Aztecs, and other traditions of the world, the ancient Indians realized that it is in the darkness where we eventually can discover and reclaim our light.
I find it more than just a coincidence that Halloween, Samhain, the Day of the Dead, Diwali, and the Christian holidays all coincide at this time of the year. I believe that there is something inherently recognized at the heart of our human experience that is evidenced in many of our world cultures–during this time of the year humanity acknowledges those aspects of itself that are hidden and obscured from the light.
As many of us begin to celebrate Halloween and the other global festivals that honor the dark and light, please keep in mind that we all hold onto darkness, for it is part of what makes us human. To deny our individual darkness, is to deny our very humanity. I invite you to honor this sacred time of the year as you feel your dark wanting to be heard. Close your eyes, connect to your breath deep into your body, and listen to the words this disowned part of yourself is saying. For many of us this dark speaks to us in the language of emotions–rage, shame, frustration, contempt, disgust, irritation, impatience, sadness, etc. The key to “heal” the dark and bring into “wholeness” the vulnerable emotions that our shadow reveals is to recognize the thoughts and belief systems we have created that fuel these emotions. From a place of compassion and self-acceptance, surrender these self-limiting judgments and perceptions into the breath for it is through the breath that the dark can be at long last reunited with our light.
Our ancient religious traditions believed that during this time of the year we walk between the worlds of the living and the departed, the known and the unknown, the revealed and concealed, and between the light and the dark. Regardless of whether you choose to honor Halloween, Day of the Dead, Diwali, or All Souls Day this week, rejoice in knowing that this is a sacred opportunity for each of us to come to terms with our hidden inner darkness and with those aspects of our consciousness that have been ignored and neglected for far too long in our life.
Again whatever aspects of our hidden darkness that we choose not to own get projected not only onto others but also onto the planet! To the extent that we each are at war internally with our own dark and refuse to make peace with our unhealed demons and devils, the more we see this battle magnified on a larger scale in our neighborhoods, streets, homes, schools, and lands. By each of us setting our intention to take the personal responsibility to heal the pain of our disowned dark, we each in our own way allow the polarized dark and light of humanity to unite into a harmonious integrated greater whole. Each of us makes a difference! As Gandhi once famously said, “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” The path to healing the planet and humanity starts within each of us. We each have a vital and important role to play. We each need to be the change. Happy Halloween!
May you always be LIVING YOUR LIGHT® from a place of compassion, intention, and integration as you make whole both your dark and your light.
Dr. Jay Kumar
www.drjaykumar.com
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