September 2024 | The Shadow part 1

Suffering can be the foundation of awakening, if we make our own integrity, what is most important to us. When we live from and with integrity, we touch, and inspire. When we witness or experience another with integrity, we are also touched and inspired. However, when you are inspired by someone else’s life and claim that you want something similar, in your own way, you might also want to ask yourself if you’re ready to walk the entire path that the journey requires .

We typically see people’s successes, but most people we are inspired by have spent the majority of their life swimming upstream and walking through repeated fires…..so we never truly see or know the whole truth of what they went through to get there.

(Another reason to avoid  glamorizing people’s lives). 

Before embarking on this new journey, I might first ask yourself….

Am I willing to start at point A and develop the self cultivation, discipline, patience, humility, spaciousness and persistence to get to point B or C? 

Am I willing to sacrifice the short term pleasures and immediate gratification for long term satisfaction and fulfillment?

Am I willing to get uncomfortable and “up against it” every single day to face my fears, and take action anyway?

Am I willing to dive deep within myself to explore what is sincere and genuine in my purpose, to know the WHY behind what I am doing, and understand what is about contribution and not about flash? 

AND maybe most importantly, am I willing to look at my own shadow? 

This brings me to the shadow. What is our shadow? How do we recognize it, and track it? We may have different words for it but we are speaking of the same thing. It cannot be all “light and love” all the time. I believe that’s what they call “spiritual bypassing” these days. To really understand ourselves we have to be willing to look at the shadow, and not just look, but get to know it.

My fellow awakeners, the shadow is the part of you that is like your dark twin—the narcissistic , bad, even evil part of you that got stuffed away or ignored, or even encouraged by your upbringing and conditioning. It’s your most unsocialized, uncivilized, primal desires —biting and taking without asking. The shadow, denied or fed, will run parts of you with unconscious force, until you can meet it as a friend, working together.

I say this now because we are in a time of shadow, struggle, tempering and suffering, and because looking deeply is what it will take. We must work in ourselves if we intend to work in the world. So how do we give the shadow a seat at the table? How do we become a person with a well integrated transformed shadow? (More coming in part 2.)

For now, pay attention with an open awareness, to the people who make you most angry or uncomfortable, pay attention to your resentments, holding it with a soft attention and awareness. Don’t try to understand it, or identify it outright. Drift in the half land, the in between, the grey, and be aware of it, and ask yourself, what is the person or situation trying to teach me? 

We are in extraordinary times right now and if you choose this path, this is what is being asked of us. We have two choices in life. We can remain the same or we can choose to evolve.  And we die either way, because we are either dying to our highest self by staying the same, or we are dying to our old self and choosing a new timeline, a new path for ourselves, and the highest most aligned version of ourselves.

May your life be filled with what you dream about, and may your heart and soul grow more beautiful by the day. 

I look forward to connecting soon ❤️

Love for the journey,
Anisha