| | Recent (and some less-than-recent) events in my life have led me to some pretty intense work on Self. There has been a "stripping away" of sorts, and I had an epiphany about myself about a week ago that tilted my world in a new way. One thing led to another, and I came upon a book I had purchased for myself several years ago, but never read. It was mentioned in another book I was reading, and after I read the title (The Dark Side of the Light Chasers) I could not shake it from my mind. So, finally last Saturday, I went to my bookshelf and found it. I am only on the second exercise (about three chapters in) but my world-view is really changing. Not to mention my self-view. That's now pretty much on its head!
The idea (as far as I've gotten) behind the book is that we, as humans, are holographic by nature. That is to say that each of us contains all the parts of the Whole. The author, Debbie Ford, likens it to the holographic image on our credit cards. She says that if you cut that up into small pieces, each piece will retain the full image of the whole. I haven't tried this experiment yet, but you can be sure I will. (If it's photograph-able, I'll post my results as well. But that's for later. Back to the premise....)
So, as holographic beings, we humans contain all the attributes of all other humans somewhere inside of us. This means that, everything we are capable of seeing or experiencing in another person, is also a part of ourselves. If it is a thing we do not like, then it is just probably very well-hidden in ourselves.
Another illustration she used was to picture yourself as a big mansion or castle. When we were children, we went from room to room in this huge place of Self and explored with abandon. Each "room" held its own treasures, and we were eager to see what we could find. Then, little by little, other people - Mother, Father, Pastor, Teacher, Sister, Brother, Friend, etc. - began telling us that some of those rooms were inappropriate or wrong, and we were encouraged (or even sometimes forced) to close the doors on those rooms. If we felt enough shame (or fear, or hurt, etc.) about the contents of that aspect of ourselves, we not only closed the door, but we locked it and threw away the key. Over the years, we have denied huge parts of ourselves, and if we're using the mansion illustration, it could be said that most of us are left with two or three functioning rooms. Most of the rest we either heartily deny or do our best to ignore.
The trouble with these locked rooms (well, one of the troubles, anyway) is that we spend an enormous amount of time and energy trying to hide them from anyone who might catch a glimpse of them - including ourselves. The irony is, that most people close to us (if asked to be candid) could list off the aspects of our shadow self without hesitation!
Right now, I am at the stage where I am trying to identify those things that are my Shadow. From what I can tell so far, these are aspects that I feel some kind of negative emotion about - anything from mild annoyance to full-blown angry denial. Ms. Ford says that our Shadow aspects are often those that we see in other people as annoying or worse. I already believe - no, I know - that we are all reflections of one another, so this was a relatively easy concept for me to assimilate. Well, it was relatively easy until I started looking at some of the specific people who irritate me! It hasn't been very easy for me to swallow that pill so far, but even as it is uncomfortable to consider that I have dishonest, manipulative, dismissive, arrogant, mean, and even cruel aspects to my personality, I have also found that it feels... True.
So, I thought I'd share some of this journey here. As much as I dare to, anyway. I have some friends with whom I've discussed this, and it was a very interesting conversation to say the least. If you have thoughts, I'd love to hear about them.
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| | Posted 8/28/2009 3:55 PM - 19 Views - 2 eProps - 2 comments
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