What an extraordinary week it has been.
As I’ve moved through my days this week, I have been guided to look with open eyes towards aspects of myself that I have not wanted to believe. My eyes were shielded by my reluctance to own parts of myself that did not fit what I was ready to believe about this person called Licia. But this is changing utterly, and quickly.
The things we cannot hold in our consciousness about ourselves, whether we might perceive them as positive or negative, fall in the realm of
unconsciousness, or “the shadow”. The term “darkness” when used in this way literally means what we cannot see with our conscious mind…when we can see and own something, it is “in the light”. When we cannot see something with our conscious mind, it is held in the subconscious, the vast realm of knowing that seems to me like a great treasure vault. Full of untold riches, the darkness that is our “unknown” or “shadow” is just as much a part of who we are as what we see about ourselves…yet it is unclaimed, and can therefore drive us in subconscious ways in an effort to be known.
My experience this week has been to feel and see the ways in which I do not believe that I am supported, the ways in which I denigrate myself as “nothing special”, and the ways in which I do not believe in meanness by others. Not seeing these things has supported a limited view of myself. And all three of these lies I’ve been telling myself came full force into my consciousness in ways I could not ignore them this week.
I discovered that acknowledging these things as a possibility (rather than negating them) was the first step in bringing these aspects of my psyche into my conscious mind. Acknowledgement is something of a magic bullet, in my experience. How often the mere act of acknowledging something or someone has utterly freed the bound energy that formerly contained and trapped it!
The next courageous step is the active choice to embrace what is there. However ugly, however beautiful, however unbelievable in that moment….the act of embracing means that we are in our Source-like state of complete acceptance of what IS. We then wrap our “arms” around the thing we could not previously own, and claim it as ours, without judgment or blame. The embrace then melts the resistance to owning what we could not own and transforms it into light, or the SEEN in consciousness. This is how the shadow is alchemically changed into the light.
What astonishing things our psyches do to protect our fragile constructs, our ideas about ourselves, others, and the universe we live in. It is important to say here that this protection is needed for our survival…until we bump up against the boundary that the limiting belief has created. What kept us safe is now preventing us from growing and becoming who we were meant to become.
So my suggestion to you, dear reader, is to be alert to the voice of your subconscious…the quiet whispers from the dark corners of your psyche hold the key to your actualized, free life.
Contact me if I can help you integrate your shadow into your Light.
