Satsujinken – This is the Japanese phrase that translates to “The Life-Giving Sword.” But when you hear that, does anyone else feel like it doesn’t quite make sense? Like there is something that doesn’t quite compute.

That is because the statement foreshadows that there is something hidden, and this is only part of the truth. It took our Sensei a long time to get someone to write out the full statement for us.

The scroll I photographed above is painted by my friend Josh Ross, Sensei.

The full scroll says (Left image) The Killing Sword is (Right Image) The Life-Giving Sword. This is SO important to the way I look at the world. But I realize that even hearing: The Killing Sword is The Life-Giving sword is not always immediately clear. Let me give you the more poetic translation to allow you to grasp what the means.

The Sword that cuts down evil is the Life-Giving Sword.

This idea that we need to shed the heavier parts, or the parts we don’t like to highlight the brighter side of things is a trend I find to be incredibly destructive and it NEEDS TO STOP.

The is a trend in Neo-pagan and modern spiritual communities that highlights Love and Light as the solution to all our problems. There are many very powerful and skilled practitioners that have moved to this paradigm and I fear that because it is so enticing, it can be incredibly insideous.

My training and experience only shows me the dangers of ignore and shunning the parts that people are struggling with.

I have seen EFT sessions where people ignore the heavy or hard parts and only state the positive parts. I have seen places where someone start sharing the depth of their struggles, and the practitioner stops them to ask them to phrase it in a more positive way. I could go on for a long time with the ways I have seen this cause trouble.

When we work to actively limit the shadows, we amplify the message that it is not safe to share, and that those messages should remain hidden. No matter the intention, the mind is really good at finding reasons to hide things that are hard to deal with. And if you have amplified the message to hide something heavy, then it is harder to bring out later.

Dodging the parts we don’t like amplifies the problem, and amplifies peoples pain.

I would invite you to honestly think about what it means when people say Toxic Positivity. This is where the phrase comes from.

When you are looking at a situation and your tendency is to push away the heavy part, ask yourself why it scares you so much. Think about how incomplete the phrase “The Life-Giving Sword” is. Try to limit your hesitation in looking at the heavier part. Feel free to reach out if you need help.