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By Rebeca Eigen
There are no accidents.
We’ve all said these words at one time or another in our lives, and I wonder how much we really believe them. When something occurs in the outer world as an ill-fated event, do we stop to understand the meaning or do we continue to play the victim and let life go on as usual?
Studying Carl Jung for many years and being especially fond of his autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, I came to understand that the unconscious is always striving for wholeness and consciousness. It’s almost an irreverence and disrespect to the Universe when we ignore the feedback that it is giving us. As the Taoists say, when one lacks a sense of awe, there will be disaster.
Jung often said that the unconscious will work with you if you will work with it. If you choose to ignore it, then it will find a symbolic way to get your attention. Notice the events and relationship situations that you experience, and recognize their importance even to the minutest detail.
Glenn Perry, one of my favorite teachers, once said to me, “Who you’re with is where you’re at.” I never forgot this. Like is constantly attracting like. Usually there is an unconscious collusion between both parties from the very beginning and a dance that is destined to play itself out as situations and events will repeat.
Most of us attract people who are our opposites, which automatically creates problems. Opposites need each other to complete what is incomplete in themselves. And there it will be over and over, and we will experience firsthand that there are no accidents. We have created this “other” as an opportunity to learn to see our darker side, our “Shadow.”
You will know you are headed to healthier relationships when you begin to reflect on just what this opposite is doing in your life and what the Universe wants from you. And don’t be afraid of the term “darker side.” I know it sounds sinister and foreboding but “dark” just describes what is hidden from view or awareness. As we strive toward wholeness, we will be mysteriously drawn to only those people from whom we will learn about ourselves.
Opposites are not just about marriage partners; we all have relationships. Even if we are not married or in a significant relationship with the opposite sex or same sex, we will be experiencing relationships, and these, too, will act as messengers.
Let me give you an example. A woman came to me for a consultation (I will call her Mary), and she had a pattern of attracting men who were always somehow involved with someone else. They were either married, involved with another woman, or not really available. Mary would enter the relationship thinking this time it would be different, but as usual there was always this other woman in their lives.
And here is the repetitive clue: this “other woman” was usually someone who was rather sick in her outlook on life, alcoholic, escapist, or unable to differentiate and take any responsibility for her own behavior. As time passed Mary would see that her lover was addicted to this woman, regardless of how she treated him or behaved toward others. And finally she recognized that this was a pattern for herself to attract this same situation over and over.
Through honest introspection, Mary began to recognize a familiar theme. She had tried over and over again to get her mother to leave her alcoholic, abusive father. Her mother would not protect herself and more than that, she refused to acknowledge there was even a problem by pretending it didn’t exist. Every time some big fight would occur, it would all be swept under the rug. This was very frustrating to Mary watching all of this because she could clearly see even as a young child that this situation was unhealthy for her mother. But try as she might to get her mother to leave, she could not.
So Mary grew up with a distorted sense of her own worth because she could not get the love of a parent who could not give something away that she didn’t have for herself. We can love others only when we love ourselves. And the sins of the father, so to speak, get passed on to the children. Looking for love in all the wrong places, Mary continued a pattern that began long ago, a time she didn’t even remember because she was too young then to understand.
It always looks like an ill-fated event that brings it all to a head, but it’s a time bomb waiting to go off, as the situation has been there in the relationship from the very beginning. The unconscious is truly loving us to see who we really are. Even our dreams will warn us, but often we refuse to see until it hurts too much not to see, and that is when we do grow, and we do change. That is when the ball starts rolling in our favor, and it is always, as they say, the darkest before the dawn. Dawn is the time of illumination, the time of real love. Love of others and love of self go hand in hand.
The opposites occurring in this situation are actually only unconscious aspects of the Self. Each person in the triangle is the same. They cannot value themselves enough, but only because they don’t understand the pattern. Once the pattern and the truth emerge, each person has choices to make.
Make it a goal to be “real” with others who are willing to be “real” with you. Look at what is going on with yourself that is not chance anymore when it happens more than twice. The resulting awareness will be well worth the effort, and the synchronistic events will be clearly explaining what is next if we want to evolve. Because, as the saying goes, there are no accidents!
Photo credit: Wesley Eller
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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Rebeca Eigen, an astrologer for 25+ years and author of The Shadow Dance & the Astrological 7th House Workbook, specializes in relationships. Using your time, date, and place of birth, she uses the astrological birth chart to evoke the symbolic and help you become more aware of your total Self. Her study of the Shadow using Astrological tools has given her an invaluable awareness of the unconscious and the role it plays in the relationships that we attract into our lives. For more information, visit her Web site: www.shadowdance.com.
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