...Episode 4 of the "What's Arising Podcast"

Wars are arising everywhere. The war for land, resources, or to exist. There is the war against drugs, crime, disease, poverty, CO2, and misinformation. These outer wars are all symptoms of the greater unconscious war we are waging against parts of the self, a persistent inner war which cannot be resolved "out there" until we surrender the inner war and integrate the shadow. Here there is peace. 

In this podcast, I reference two opposing forces as portrayed by Rudolf Steiner(Ahriman & Lucifer) and in the Sci-Fi TV series, Babylon 5. (The Shadows & Vorlons).

Who are you? What do you want? What is the middle way?

Interested in stopping your inner shadow war?

Learn about Shadow Integration: https://www.wisdomways.net/shadowintegration/

Transcript

Welcome to this episode of What’s Arising?

I am calling this episode The Shadow War, or perhaps The Shadow Wars.

Before we begin, I invite you, as in the last podcast, to take a moment to get connected. Become present and still. Follow the waves of my bowl as I ring it three times.

With the first ring, connect with yourself.

With the second, connect with others, with humanity, and with what is happening in the collective.

With the third, connect with all that is — the Earth, the sky, the universe, spirit, and life itself.

[Music / Singing Bowl]

In the last podcast, what was arising within me was the energy of the defender and protector — the part that feels unsafe in the world and goes into overdrive to keep us safe.

When we dip into the past, into the wound, and into emotional trauma, the defender often appears. It was given the job of protecting us from future unsafe events.

But this defender was really only meant to respond in the present.

When the defender is on overdrive, it does not allow us to completely surrender to what is happening in the moment. It does not allow us to surrender to our wounds, let them go, and release the stories.

The defender and the warrior can begin working together to keep us in the drama.

At the time of this podcast, we are very much in the worry of wars spreading. We have the Israel-Hamas war arising, and many other wars continuing around the world.

As human beings, we seem to like our wars.

There are wars over land, space, ideology, religion, identity, power, and territory. We see this in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, and many other places.

But we also have many other wars:

The war on drugs.
The war on poverty.
The war on disease.
The war on CO2.
The war on terror.
The war against whatever we believe is threatening us.

We are constantly at war.

Many of these wars are superficial because they are wars against symptoms. We are warring against projections outside ourselves.

Beneath these outer wars is a deeper war within each of us.

This is the war against shadow.

That is why I call these the shadow wars.

Shadow is the separation from self. It includes the parts of ourselves we do not like, the parts we suppress, and the parts we project out into the world.

All of us do this in some form. We project through anger, blaming, shaming, judgment, and emotional charge.

There is usually an underlying wound, trauma, or inner conflict in us that is related to the outer war we are reacting to.

When we look at war from whatever side we are on, whether it is the Israel-Hamas war or another conflict, we may notice blame and shame moving outward. If we truly examine what we cannot stand about “them,” and what gets us upset, we may find a separation within ourselves.

There is usually something in us that is causing the upset.

If we go into that wound, if we let go of the defender and the warrior that are going outward to battle the world, we can find tremendous gifts.

If we surrender the war, let it go, feel it, and allow the fire to burn within ourselves rather than against someone else, something magical happens.

The lead is turned into gold.

This is the deeper shadow work that humanity is being invited into.

It asks us to let go of stories that have been built up for generations, perhaps for thousands of years.

It is there that we will find peace — not by choosing sides.

As soon as we choose a side from emotional charge, we are still in the war.

Charge is an indicator of a wound within us. Whatever side we are on, whatever we hate out there in the world, is probably connected to something we cannot stand within ourselves.

This week, I have been reflecting on an old television series I started watching in the 2000s called Babylon 5. The series originally aired between 1994 and 1998, with five seasons.

Babylon 5 was farsighted in many ways. Like many science fiction shows and novels, such as Orwell’s 1984, it held up a mirror to what is happening in our world.

In the series, there had been a great war among different races before the story begins. After the exhaustion of war, a space station called Babylon 5 was created in deep space. It was meant to be a place where different races could come together in relationship, negotiation, and diplomacy — something like the United Nations.

There was even a council within Babylon 5, echoing the United Nations after World War II.

But as the series unfolds, there is also a corporate takeover of government and media, which feels very relevant today. Large corporations influence governments and shape the narrative. Instead of CNN or Fox, the series has ISN, the Interstellar Network, with beautiful hosts telling people the version of reality they are meant to hear.

From season two to season four, the series reveals the emergence of the impending Shadow War.

The Shadows are arising again.

The Shadows are coming back.

In the mythology of the show, there had been a great war in the past between the Shadows and the Vorlons. These were two ancient races, and we might also see them as archetypes.

The Shadows were considered dark, bad, and ugly. They looked demonic. Their ideology was that they were helping the younger races grow and evolve through competition, chaos, and conflict.

In their view, the more war, the better. Conflict would make the younger races strong. Strength would come through suffering and war.

That was the path to greatness.

On the other side were the Vorlons. They were also manipulative, but they appeared good. In the show, they had genetically influenced the younger races to perceive them as beautiful, angelic beings.

Their ideology was different. They believed the younger races should evolve through obedience, control, and order. Not chaos, but order. Not competition, but obedience to higher guidance.

They positioned themselves almost as gods.

The Vorlons had one central question:

Who are you?

Find out who you are.

That question is familiar to me because, as a teenager, I had an inner voice that kept saying:

Find out who you are.
Find out who you really are.

It is an important question.

Who are you in spirit?

The Shadows had a different question:

What do you want?

Their question is more materialistic. Take what you want. Compete. Get what is yours. In that worldview, happiness and success come through power, war, achievement, and acquisition.

The Vorlon question is spiritual:

Who are you?

The Shadow question is material:

What do you want?

These are two very different ideologies.

It is easy to see why the Vorlons might appear good, especially from a religious perspective. In the Christian faith I grew up around, there was an ascending energy of obedience to God — getting out of this human experience of suffering and into heaven.

The Shadow perspective says, “There is only this life. Take what you want. Get everything you can. It does not matter if you hurt someone else.”

These two energies also remind me of Rudolf Steiner’s ideas of Ahrimanic and Luciferian energies.

Steiner described the Ahrimanic energy as materialism, individualism, technology, quantitative thinking, and the impulse toward control through the material realm. It is the energy of becoming like gods through technology.

The Luciferian energy, by contrast, is more spirit-permeated, qualitative, idealistic, unifying, imaginative, and collective. It can be beautiful, but it can also become ungrounded or disconnected from the realities of form.

These two energies seem very aligned with the Shadows and the Vorlons in Babylon 5.

Both sides are in conflict with each other.

In the series, both the Shadows and the Vorlons try to manipulate the younger races into their own worldview.

The Shadows, once pushed away, remained silent for a long time and built up their energy. Eventually they returned, and a great war emerged between what appeared to be good and bad.

But then the Vorlons also went into madness.

They believed they knew what was right. They decided to destroy anyone connected with the Shadows. Any race aligned with the Shadows would be eliminated.

They said, in effect, “Those people do not have the right to exist.”

So even the side of goodness became violent and destructive.

They said, “We are good. Those people are spreading hate. We will shut them down.”

And both sides contributed to the war.

There was no true goodness in that.

So what is good and beautiful?

What is the way beyond these polarities?

What is the middle way between the Ahrimanic and Luciferian energies, or between the Shadows and the Vorlons?

Steiner proposed that the middle way was Christ consciousness.

The Christ energy is the balance, the in-between, the middle path.

Not this or that, but the recognition that our existence as human beings is spirit in form. Form matters. Life in the material world is a beautiful experience. It is good to be alive in this duality, to feel, grow, learn, and evolve through the experience of life.

At the same time, we are also invited to listen to spirit while we are in human form.

Not materialism alone.

Not spiritual escape alone.

But both.

The balance.

The middle way.

The capacity to make a wise choice in the moment, in the context of what is unfolding.

What is the right thing to do now?

What is the balanced response?

What is the wise choice?

If we are in emotional charge, coming from a wound, trigger, or unintegrated shadow, we cannot make a truly responsive choice. We make a reactive choice.

We go to war against the other.

We try to shut them down.

“They are hateful, and I hate them.”

But then we are in the same polarity. We are in the same duality.

The Christ energy, as I understand it, is about nonduality. It is about letting go of the wounds, stories, good/bad, right/wrong, and reactive judgment so we can be present with what is and make wise choices from that place.

Who am I going to be in this?

If a warring energy arises in us — defending, resisting, attacking, or trying to control — then we can recognize it and do the inner work.

That is shadow work.

That is shadow integration.

It allows us to return to the center.

There is nothing wrong with the energies that arise. They are part of the human experience. They are part of our evolution toward peace, contentment, and freedom from drama.

We love the drama.

As human beings, we love the drama of life. We think it creates aliveness. And in some ways, it does. The emotional wave can make us feel alive even in suffering.

But it is not needed.

We can still the wave.

We can do this for others by doing the work within ourselves and stopping the war within ourselves.

Because we are one organism — all of humanity in connection with all that is — each time we withdraw from the war, each time we withdraw from the belief that things are unsafe, drop our defenses, forgive, and surrender, we quiet the wave.

We still the wave within ourselves and within our world.

Our individual world changes.

Our relationships change.

When we are not triggered, we can sit and listen. We can hear our inner voice.

We can find out who we are at our core.

We can answer the Vorlon question:

Who are you?

And we can also answer the Shadow question:

What do you want?

What do you really want?

What do you really need in this life to feel safe, whole, and alive?

Both questions are answered from the middle.

I hope this makes sense to you, or that it works within you in some way and offers some insight.

If you need assistance with surrender, forgiveness, finding that Christ energy in the middle, or working through stories of despair, anger, rage, sadness, fear, or whatever charge is arising in your relationship to life or another person, please reach out.

I will put links in the show notes.

You can book a discovery session with me, and I would be honoured to work with you to help still your wave.