Hello All! <3
As always, I encourage you to discern any considerations I offer against your own inner knowing. We are each on our own journey of self-discovery and what resonates with one soul may not for another.
This week I wanted to share a meditation experience of mine from a few years ago which I found particularity helpful. Not easy. Not fun. But helpful in understanding myself better. Helpful from the standpoint of personal growth and self-discovery. In unveiling and confronting my fears. And those have truly become the hallmarks of beneficial experience for me because I don’t want to live in fear. I want to grow. To live in awareness. In courage.
Whether you meditate on a regular basis or not, it’s okay this is applicable. What I am about to explain I feel is fairly intuitive. If you are open to it, your psyche and higher aspects will take over for an individual experience which will surely be different than what I experienced. But nonetheless, I am confident will hold the same capacity for unravelling some of your unconscious fears and beliefs. The hidden aspects of our “self” which are commonly referred to in the psychological and spiritual communities as our “shadow”.
Meditating on our “shadow” may feel contraindicative to focusing on the good in life. A key component in many spiritual and mindfulness communities actually centers on cultivating positivity and gratitude by willfully focusing in that direction. The belief being that positive begets more positive and that gratitude is the best elixir for most of our wounds. While I don’t completely disagree with this, through my own experiences, I have come to realize that there is more to it. Much of what drives many of our intentions and related choices in life lies in our psyche. It lies beneath what feels as fuzzy as a positive thought. To summarize the work of Carl Jung, renowned psychologist, until the shadows of our subconscious are brought forth into our awareness, those hidden beliefs steer our lives beyond us knowing they are doing just that. Leaving us to feel at the mercy of our experiences as opposed to in co-creation with them.
My experience with moving more consciously into my shadow came after a few years of not even knowing the idea of my “shadow” even existed. After a few years of embracing unrelenting positivity as the best course of action in this life, something else was nudging. All that positivity paved the way to feeling that there was more to shaping my life perspective…there was more underneath the surface asking to be known.
As I sat down to meditate one day, I set the intention for the unknown to begin to reveal itself. To come forward in a manner that would help me acknowledge and understand its presence in my life in a manner in which I had not allowed until this point.
I closed my eyes, took some deep breaths and felt myself slipping into the quieter space of mind that had become familiar in my meditations. Shortly after a ballroom appeared. I was witnessing it from a first person perspective. I was alone in this very large room. But only for a short time….
Somebody walked in. Not a person I was particularly expecting to see. Nor honestly would want to. I felt uncomfortable. But I stayed present with what was unfolding in my mind’s eye and my emotions. Then another person entered. And another. Each representing some level of emotional discomfort in me. Some aspect of unresolved emotion or emotions which were now rising to the surface. Magnified as each new person entered my psyche in the form of this ballroom. And me in my “aloneness” facing each of them as they entered.
In this meditation, some of these people spoke to me. Some did not. Some glared. Some talked with each other and pointed at me. Some pointed and laughed at me. I stayed present. I allowed it to unfold.
I faced it.
Within my meditation, my psyche, I allowed my fears and judgments (in the form of what I believed to be the worst of what these other individuals thought of me) to surface.
It was uncomfortable.
It was painful.
And..it was interesting. As the observer, it was interesting to see how this unfolded. To witness my emotions as they arose. And it was interesting to observe and feel what happened as a result of me allowing that space.
This meditation lasted maybe 30-45 minutes. As I chose to end it…I also chose to leave it open. I opened my eyes, but left my intention and a piece of my awareness in that ballroom. What started as a daily meditation, turned into a “walking meditation.” For the next 2 weeks I let that scrip run. It was in the back of my mind all day, every day. I dreamed about it at night. I continued to face it. All the people walking in the room. How they looked at me and the comments they made to me, and each other.
I left the script open until I realized….there was no one else that could possibly enter that ballroom. Anyone I think I had ever known in my life was there.
The sting I originally felt began to subside. People began to speak to me. I began to speak with them. Sometimes they laughed, or I did…or we did together. The significance…and emotional release of this experience in my psyche? Began to settle in. It was my first very conscious experience with “shadow work”. I had pulled the light of my awareness into the hidden aspects of “me”. It was not an easy 2 weeks. But at the end? It was liberating.
I realized how I was holding fears about judgments and perceptions about myself that were just under the surface of my daily awareness. About really…everything. That there was no way that the “cringe” response I felt in the ethers of my awareness wasn’t affecting how I was moving about in the “reality” this world. It helped me understand that the only way to unravel my angsty feelings and emotions was to face them. To accept how pervasive that angst can become. To learn to relax in the presence of all of it.
I was gifted with an understanding of how much of this just plays out between me and me. And how much of it can be “worked out” between me and me. Whatever someone else ever thinks of me isn’t significant. It’s what I think about what they think of me that matters.
Life unfolds somewhere between the light and the shadow. What I see and what I don’t. I exist somewhere in between. I am confident you do as well. How about I meet you there?
1ove <3
Tiffany
If you would like to connect for a one-on-one session as you navigate your journey of self-discovery, I would consider it my privilege and look forward to hearing from you.
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