"The trash is beautiful"

My 3 year old daughter, Sofia, asked me to sit on the carpet of the living room. She said it in the demanding, loving way that most toddlers are known to do. I willingly obliged.

She then went over to the bookshelf and picked one of her favorite books: "P is for Potty". She pulled up a small chair in front of me and said "I'm the teacher". She then proceeded to open the book and turn it my way as she lifted the various flaps on each page.

She said she wanted to practice her english so she would look at me and say: "What it is this?"

I would respond, "It's a flower".

To which she would smile and reply "It's beautiful."

The page would turn and she would lift another flap and point to a baseball and say "Look at this!".

I would respond "It's beautiful."

The game continued, and as most parents reading this can attest, in moments like this my mind can often wonder to other things. By now I was getting into the rhythm of her questions and my rote, absent minded response: "It's beautiful".

She flipped the pages. The cadence continued.

My mind began to wonder to a thought-inspiring, provocative book that I have been reading called Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power by Carolyn Elliott . It was recommended to me by Yana, one of the coaches I have been working with around sacred sexuality and mindset. As you may recall from my other post , I have recently been exploring the role of sexuality when it comes to creativity and systemic change. This taboo topic has invited me to step into my individual and collective shadow.

For those new to the term shadow, it was coined by one of my favorite people in the world Carl Jung. Jung said that "Shadow is the unknown dark side of the personality". Another way to think about it is as Carolyn Elliott says in her intro: "Those hidden and shamed parts? That's your shadow"

The point is that these are the aspects of ourselves and our society that we have denied so much that we don't allow ourselves to identify to any aspect of those things. This tends to be an unconscious process. In other words, a process that we are not aware that we are doing.

Yet, we have hints about the kind of things that live in our unconscious. For these hints, we have "others" to thank. Whatever makes you say "You're disgusting! I would never do that" or "How can anyone be crazy/violent/sadistic/perverted enough to do that?" That's the sort of stuff that lives in our shadows. The sort of thing that we distance ourselves from and place on the "other" since it could not possibly be a part of us.

The thing about the shadow is that it has tremendous potential energy and power. Jung speaks of this in a quote that Carolyn Elliott cites frequently in her book:

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung

The energy and power of the shadow is the stuff of magic. Whether you believe in magic or not, it believes in you :)

What our shadow desires, it materializes. As Carolyn Elliott provokes us with one of her seven axioms "Having is evidence of wanting." If you find yourself in situations that you don't like like an abusive relationship, a job you don't like, not having enough money, etc, she invites us to consider that there is a part of us that deeply enjoys and gets pleasure from them. So from that perspective, our life is "perfect". Not in the Hollywood or what society deems perfect way, but in our perverse unique way.

Let that land for a moment. Let that shock go up and down your body. Notice any reactions you may find yourself having.You may find yourself thinking:

"What the hell Andres!? People don't choose to be in these awful situations? Not only as individuals but keep in mind the systemic elements at play! Seriously, wtf?!"

And I would say, inspired by my reading of the book, "Well what if? What if our inability to recognize that there is a part of ourselves that truly gets off in these situations reinforces the situation we say we don't want? What if your life is a manifestation of not what you consciously want but what you unconscious want? And furthermore, what if collectively, as humans, we get some perverse pleasure out of all of the societal injustices we claim to want to fix?"

For anyone who is familiar with psychoanalysis this may not be new. What I found new and deeply liberating was the permission to imagine what if there was a part of me that truly did get pleasure from not having enough money? What if there was a part of me that truly enjoyed not feeling good enough? What if in my own perverse way, my life, in it's present state, is actually blissfully perfect from the perspective of my shadow? This allowed me to reframe "acceptance" in a whole new way!

Performance and improv theater saved my life when I was teen . It set me on a path that has shaped every step in my journey. And here once, again, I felt how performance and my ability to imagine myself in these BDSM (safe for work link - Wikipedia) type of roles with different parts of myself tapped into a deep well of energy. Up until recently I wouldn't even dare say aloud to myself these things, let alone share with others in a public forum. I can already hear my mom's voice in my head saying "Hijo! What are you saying? That's so ridiculous? And even worse, why are you sharing this so publicly with the world?!"

So our ability to imagine ourselves in a perverse role from the safety of the stage can allow us to get close to a deeply powerful part of us that for far too long we have individually and collectively shunned off.

So there I was, sitting in the living room, my mind wondering into the nooks and crevices of part of my psyche I hadn't consciously wondered before, when all of a sudden, I found myself thoughtlessly muttering the words out loud: "The trash is beautiful".

My daughter was flipping a flap on the lower right hand corner of the page pointing to a trashcan. Under the flap was the trash. In this state of spontaneous meditation and synchronicity, I summarized for her and me a deep message I'm beginning to sense into.

I'm not sure if this is what Mary Oliver meant by "“I was saved by the beauty of the world ” , but this was the quote that immediately came to mind when I realized what I had said. As my daughter and I smiled at each other, I understood this quote at a whole new level.