It is time for you to accept your shadow. What is the shadow but something to wrestle with, like Jacob did, in the early morning? Your shadow is a part of you that you hold apart. Frequently I think of the opening of The Making of Americans: Stein’s “father” who calls out to the young man, his son, who is dragging him through the orchard: “Stop! Stop! I did not drag my father beyond this point!” Was it the man’s shadow which caused him to pull his father after him or merely learned habit? A shadow is something like a hunger. It is more than habit. A shadow operates on you from a place of unknowing. It cannot be interrogated directly. But you can come to understand it, and in the morning it gives you a new name that represents your trial. Do not hold your shadow as something apart, because it is as fundamental as what is seen.
