Caroline Myss February 2013
I recently recorded another audio series and as always, I was blessed with having a wonderful group of people who volunteered their time to serve as a live audience for me. Inevitably we end up having the most interesting conversations in between recordings, as studio audiences are small, the space is tight, and a type of co-creative dialogue goes on, as I rely upon their feedback and questions in the creation of the text for these CD series.
This particular series was the audio set based on my recent book, ARCHETYPES: Who Are You? Part of exploring the subject of archetypes includes discussing the nature of the shadow aspects of an archetype. The shadow, just for the sake of bringing everyone on board, is considered the unknown part of your unconscious that acts out from the “shadow” or the darkest part of yourself.
How often, for example, have you said or done something that hurt a person and when asked to explain your behavior, you answered, “I don’t know why I said that.” There are many active shadow aspects in each of us. They provide the fodder for our struggles with right and wrong, good and evil, forgiveness and vengeance. These are the ingredients of human life.
The conversation about the shadow somehow led to the subject of kindness with one person suggesting that, “Really, in spite of all that shadow stuff, aren’t people just basically good and kind?”
I turned to the audience and said, “Well, who wants to respond to that?” I could feel my producer in the control room cringing, as I began turning the break between recordings into the beginning of a mini workshop. It was too late for her to jump in and plead, “Oh please, don’t start anything interesting now, okay?” It was just too late. The ship, as they say, had sailed.
Most of the audience agreed that people were basically kind and this one fact of life was enough to eclipse the reality that each of us has a shadow side that is the root of much of our pain. And it certainly is the source of why we cease to recognize what is truly extraordinary in the world and blind ourselves to what has become extraordinary in the “shadowlands” of our society.
I said that if kindness came so naturally to all of us, why do we require books instructing us on how to be kind? Why are doctors conducting studies to discover if kindness has an influence on health and healing illnesses? Why does a single act of kindness performed by one individual make headlines in the news? Only unusual occurrences make the news.
Why do we need books instructing us on what acts of kindness are and encouraging us to “pass it on?” The truth is that acts of kindness are still extraordinary, but not the right kind of extraordinary. Kindness stands out not because it’s ordinary but because it is not. We should never even have to read a book on kindness, much less admire one act of kindness. These should be as ordinary as breathing. They should each go unnoticed. That we notice them at all speaks about how rare they are and how desperately they are needed.