For me, meditation, yoga and music therapies were not a straight line pathway to bliss and serenity. I think that was something that really caught me off guard and led to the culmination of anxiety for me. I also think it's important for anyone embarking on this path to understand this too. There are demons to face. As real as they seem though, they are phantoms that will disappear in the light of love. Our greatest power, is the power to choose. The other important thing is that although these demons (fears, self-loathing, self judgement, anger, resentment, un-forgiveness) are largely self created. I know I created many of the demons I faced myself. In some of the heights of my anxiety I literally thought the devil was after me! Later, I started to notice, "Holy shit, this guy knows a lot about me, that I have never mentioned to anyone". It was only then that I started to understand and face my shadow. The Devil was ME!!
Here's an excerpt from "The Little book on the Human Shadow" that explains it well..
Just a personal note: There is nothing new under the sun. I am just attempting to present info. here that has helped me. I hope to present it in a clear way based on my experience with anxiety which was a spiritual, psychological and emotional awakening for me. In retrospect of this experience I have been reading as much as I could to come to a deeper and more grounded understanding of this seemingly mystical thing that happened to me (so that I could share it with you). I'm not a doctor or a scientist. Please know this is only my experience. Yours will obviously be different, but since my experience was so similar to others I've talked to, I am hoping this may be helpful or useful to you in some way. It's also a way that I hope to share my love with you. That is my purpose here.
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So what is the Shadow?
Carl Jung described the shadow as the part of us that we want to hide from the world. In short, it is our darkness. Our fears, desires and urges that are repressed in order to present the part of ourselves that we think the world, society and our family and friends want to see. Of course, this is all self determined and in my case I found that I was also robbing myself of the joy of being fully ME. The shadow is also largely contained in the subconscious. Many of these emotions and urges are things I didn't want to face about myself. When I started the path to awakening my mind and opened the cork of my subconscious all of these emotions and urges came rushing out like bats out of a cave. It was terrifying.
For me, this happened all at once. Like a cork being popped off of a champagne bottle, my subconscious was unleashed and all of these fears came to the forefront for me to face. At the time I had no idea what was going on. I had no knowledge of "the shadow", no knowledge of my subconscious and no knowledge of how this could affect me or my outlook on life. Even though this was extremely hard to face and terrifying at times this was like going to a Jedi bootcamp or attending virtual reality training session of "Learning about the Subconscious 101".
In retrospect, I understand more about the concept of "the shadow" via reading and talking with a counselor. Even though going through the fear was unpleasant I now realize it was the pathway to freedom and the only way to unlock the doors of the prison that I had created for myself. So what I wanted to do here was to give you some tools that I have read about to help you in facing this. The most important tool is awareness, and since you just read this...now your aware.
"We have nothing to fear, but fear itself" ---Franklin D. Roosevelt
Here's an excerpt from "The Little book on the Human Shadow" that explains it well..
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In the next post, I'll talk a little more about my confrontation with my shadow and some of the tools I discovered that helped me.
For sound downloads click here.