How honest will you be with yourself? I’m not asking you to be honest with me, or with anyone else for that matter. Although there is great value in sharing your heart and soul with another human. But I’m asking how honest you will be with yourself? Would you rather walk around numbed out to the truth of your pain, your disappointment, your hopelessness, your vulnerability? You do understand that this is part of the human condition, right? That it is not particular to you, or a character flaw, but part of just being alive as a human on the Earth.
A journal is a great way to share with yourself. And if you don’t like writing then open your email on your phone and hit the little microphone button and start talking. When you finish send it to yourself, or not, but at least you’ve heard your own honest words fall on your own ears. I do this a lot.
How honest are you willing to be with yourself? How deep are you willing to go to hit the motherlode of anger, hurt, resentment, and all the other stuff that gets buried? How far are you willing to go to be alive? This is not a rhetorical question. This is about living a conscious life, this is about allowing your energy to flow. And once you decide that you’re willing to allow your energy to flow then there’s no telling where life and the universe may take you.
On the other hand, if you’re not willing, if you’d rather keep things in the dark with cobwebs all over them, then that’s your choice, but then it would be best to stop complaining about what life is not giving you because you’re blocking the flow of the energy just as sure as the Hoover Dam blocks the flow of water. Just own the deal you’ve cut with yourself. All that stuff that gets buried underground has a way of weighing us down tremendously and it’s very hard to move in any direction when we are weighed down. That’s the deal.
I had a journaling session like this this morning with myself and uncovered a deep vein of anger about some things… which is even more raw because I am grieving for my father too. But there it is, and what I recognize there about myself is my tendency to stash away the hurt and cover it with resentment and bitterness. That is poison for me and so writing or talking to uncover this is very good medicine for me. It allows me to be face-to-face with the shadow side of me that I hide away and would rather not confront or own or claim or deal with. This is the part of me that is small-minded and petty and vengeful and mean, and keeping that secret, keeping that stashed away and dammed up hurts me …I’m the only one it hurts. And it hurts me bad. It hurts me by stopping me from doing the things that I say I want to do and doesn’t even allow me to be aware that I’m stopping myself this way. And that’s just one of the ways it hurts me.
So when you hear me talk about Shadow it’s not just, “Oh, you know the things that other people do remind me of things I don’t like about myself…blah blah blah.” No, it’s about actually diving into what we imagine is that cesspool of putrid stuff that’s been buried for so long that it’s really messy and makes us want to back away, but that once we shine the light on it, once we open the door and let the air in and let the sunshine illuminate the room, we see that it’s not putrid or messy or toxic…. It’s simply the very lonely, small frightened parts of ourselves, tender vulnerable tiny little parts of ourselves that don’t know what to do to survive in life.
And so we get to come in as the adult, and in a sense be the hero of the day, and rescue that little part of self and bring her out into the sunshine and say to her, “It’s okay, it’s okay, you talk to me about it then you don’t have to carry all that junk around… all that anger and all that hurt, talk to me about it sweetie, and then it won’t hurt so bad.”
For this to really be of value it needs to be an ongoing process; it’s about establishing a relationship with those parts of ourselves so that we can keep our energy flowing so that we can allow life to carry us along the stream to whatever’s waiting for us next, whatever dream can come true next. It’s about being in a loving committed relationship with our selves. That’s the bottom line. No loving, committed relationship can survive without attention, communication, sharing, respect, honoring, forgiving, compassion, understanding. That’s what’s called for.
So back to the first question, how honest will you be with yourself?
And if you know that you need company to travel this path, so you don’t feel alone and scared, until you get stronger and more familiar with all of this, let me know and I will hold your hand as you reach for the hand of your little scared one.
I love you.
As always, I hope you SPARKLE!
Janice Masters, The Shaman Mama
Photo Credit: “Crystals, Minerals, Gemstones, Fossils, Rocks’ on Facebook.
I love that you say that the human experience is not particular to anyone of us. I used to think I was bad until consciousness began to wake up in me. Now, even though I am often shocked, I am able to look deeply without judgement. And like it reminds me in The Untethered Soul, I am not my body, thoughts and emotions, I’m the one who is aware of them.
I love that too Rosalyn, the thought that we are all wired the same and hurt and love and enJOY the same. And being able to hold ourselves in our vulnerable state with no judgement is a deep blessing, isn’t it? Yes, you wise one, we are the observer. Thank you so much for commenting. xxoo Jan
You’re welcome!