Curse of a Shadow Magnet II ~

When it comes to creating the ‘Sacred’ anything, masculine, feminine or mix of each, being able to embrace your pain is first and foremost on the list. Unless you can hold your suffering, you’ll always run from it. Seriously. And it will always chase you as a result. Endlessly. That’s the secret to embodying your Sacred, folks: To the amount you can hold your pain is the degree you’ll heal and be free of it. It takes a very special outlook on life and especially yourself, not to mention the Divine, to want to walk this razors edge.

To be committed to facing all your perceived darkness as a necessary element of your Spiritual practice is really a very basic aspect to Awakening. You really can’t become free again unless you recognize where you’ve been holding yourself prisoner or rather, hostage to your own suffering in life. No can do.

The first act of getting out of prison is realizing you’re in one. This is the power of a Shadow Magnet. They always show you where you’re still trapped, unable to clearly see your blind-side. You can always tell you're hitting it - your outer reactions that arise in conflict inevitably reflect the hidden places in yourself that still grind. And yet it’s so easy to point fingers, isn't it? claiming and blaming another for your shit.'You made me feel like ...' Really?

Why face-to-face it head on when you can project and save your own? After all, our egos are 100% invested in not looking too closely at the nonsense it perpetrates, all in the name of feeling secure and safe from fault. Especially your own. Here the Shadow plays center stage for many of us. As long as I don’t see it, it really must not exist. Yet oddly enough, our inability to see it makes it so real in us.

A Shadow Magnet, however, forces the issues up in your life. Now again, the world is full of those who act recklessly and disagreeably without consideration of our property or feelings. Here in NYC for instance, there’s a near never-ending flood of people you’d never let into your home. You just wouldn’t, not if you had any sense anyway. Judgments aside, it’s not a smart thing to do. You better believe, discernment is mandatory here in town.

And yet, personally speaking, we let the crazies of our own making, the repressed, ignored and denied wounded parts of our self, have free rein over us without thinking twice. Isn’t it all too normal, if not comfortable (not to mention, familiar) to keep making excuses for our own indiscretions, our own misbehaviors?

Now, I’m not taking about robbing liquor stores or running old ladies over, just for fun. The misbehaviors I’m referring to are the private lies we tell ourselves - about who we are and never will be, what we can and cannot do with our lives. These are the insidious, inner voices that have run us from our Shadowland, for about as long as we can remember. It’s the nay-sayers speaking through our Inner Critic, always having our ear, continuously saying what we’ve come to believe is true.

For me, my main lie or core wound was that I was unlovable … so, my belief systems in life were formed around creating situations that proved this, over and over again. I kept fulfilling my own self-prophecy without even noticing what I was doing. Thus, the term ‘Shadow’ brought to word by CG Jung, meaning: what we can’t, don’t and won’t see about and within ourselves. And the most amazingly absurd misbehavior of all is: we’re the ones putting the blinders up in the first place, clouding and blocking our own view. All to keep the illusion alive that we can’t see. Tricky business, isn't it?

A Shadow Magnet has learned to make peace with these parts of themselves, to re-reference and reassign these old and very close companions, giving them a new job to do. By turning to face the pursuing wraith instead of always running away, it melts and turns to mist, losing its rule over us. Like in a child’s nightmare, the power of direct innocent awareness, turned to face our Shadow, evaporates and illuminates the ghost, once and for all. I believe there’s a life lesson in here somewhere...

We’ve pivoted in the corners of our Shadows, choosing to bring light and sight in again. Here it all shifts from what I don’t see to what I easily can. Opening my Heartspace to the funky places I’ve always been secretly ashamed and anxious of, changes these parts of me to something lighter and more lovable. This one shift alone rewrites my old ego script to something new and vibrant, more alive and actualized. And this I can really feel glowing inside my cells. For me, this is the purpose of all this Awakening stuff - to embody my Sacred.

… to be continued …

PS I invite you to share these posts with anyone you feel would benefit and if you feel inspired, to write your feedback insights through the ‘Comment’ key on this blog. Also, please check out my work, Heart Tantra - The Attunement Session - on my web site heartantra.com. I offer in-person sessions here in the NYC area and absentee or long-distance work if you don't. Always Blessings On Your Way!