Gay and Straight are the Same Thing: Emotions that Hide True Feelings

When I was getting sober I had a tough hard-nosed sponsor who we referred to as "tougher then nails." He would call on me to share at meetings but when he did he would say, "I call on Albert if he hasn't had a drink or a drug." He also said a lot of other hard-to-take things as well. One of his unwritten rules was never to be late for a meeting. "You were never late to take that first drink," he crowed. Now here in the holy land that I call Neverland there are people who are so thin-skinned that they bristle when you say that people ought to be on time for meetings. Someone said to me recently, "Why would you let someone else's behavior disturb you?" I told her what my sponsor said to me in the good ole days in Long Beach, California. In the work that I do in the Sedona Intensive, one's Shadow, the nature of the other invisible and hidden part of ourselves but a huge factor in our identity--the spirit of the man within a woman and the feminine within a man--is the linchpin of healing clients who come here for help. Oftentimes I say that gay and straight are the same thing, illusions that hide true feelings. Mental and emotional and spiritual well being comes from integrating the nature of the Shadow with who the world knows us to be. I also say that ignoring one's Shadow is why a relationship with another person turns to dust. You cannot have a relationship with someone else until you have one with yourself. And you can't have one with yourself because you don't know who you are. Enter the Shadow, the resolver of that dilemma. I'll go out on Shirley MacLaine's limb to declare that all the meanness in the world is wrapped around the ignored and closeted Shadow. Om. Tat. Sat. Om.