What is your shadow?

According to psychologist Carl Jung we tend to project our shadow onto other people. Ever heard the saying that whatever bothers you the most of other people are your own unrecognised flaws? Our subconscious tries to bring these shadows to our attention through showing them in someone else. This can be friends or family or even fictional characters. It can even be in the form of people in your dreams. The shadow can also just be something that you repress, something that you hide from others and yourself.

It is natural for us to want to just see the good in ourselves, and it is difficult to admit to experiencing things like guilt and shame, anger, insecurity and lust, depression and anxiety. All of these things are seen by society as bad and we tend to distance ourselves from feeling and experiencing these things.

The more we try to silence our shadow side, the more it presses to be heard. It will consistently show up in other people and in your dreams. It wants to be acknowledged and integrated so that it can heal, and you can live a more authentic life.

                        “To become conscious of [the shadow] involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real”- Carl Jung.

Once you start to do some introspection and chasing your shadow, or self-analysis as Jung calls it, your shadow will become more apparent. Honest investigation will show you parts of yourself that might be difficult to see, never mind accept. It is the parts that you have always been taught to reject, that aren’t good enough, that are not acceptable and worthy. From this stem self-rejection, and in extreme cases even self-hate.

Chasing your shadow.

To know yourself and fully accept yourself you need to dig deep into who you are, all the wonderful parts of you, but also all the nasty bits. Facing your shadow side, chasing your shadow, even just accepting that you have these qualities is difficult. You need to acknowledge parts of yourself that you have always tried to hide. The work is hard and long, one does not merely integrate one’s shadow in a day. It is a continuous cycle of growth, of facing bits, acknowledging and accepting them, healing and moving forward. Only to start the cycle again, digging more, digging deeper, healing more fully.

The goal of all of this is to be able to see yourself as a whole, but more than that, to be able to love and accept yourself as a whole, with all your good and bad parts.

You can, of course live your life without exploring your shadow side. This, however, will keep you in a state of unconsciousness as that is where the shadow resides. While ignoring your shadow you will also be ignoring your unconscious mind end everything in it that needs to heal.

We tend to avoid it because it is difficult and because it is painful. Few things are as soul shaking as taking a deep, hard look at yourself and realising that you are and have done things that are not ok. That sometimes, you are the toxic person in someone’s life. It takes strength and courage to stand, unwavering and face those truths about yourself.

Many people choose not to do it. They prefer to live in an unconscious space. For some people that path works, it is familiar, and it is comfortable. Facing your shadow is not. It is quite the opposite in fact. At least at first. It is sore and uncomfortable and daunting. But in the process, you will grow, and you will heal and the promise at the end is a self that is whole and complete. A person who know who they are and have seen the best and the worst in themselves and fully love and accepts the entirety of who they are.

How to face and heal your shadow.

How does one start to integrate your shadow? First you need to start by paying attention. Practice mindfulness and start to pay attention to the little things that might usually go unnoticed. You want to start making the unconscious conscious.

Through paying attention, you will start to learn what triggers you, what situations or which people elicits a certain, undesired, response from you. You will start to notice aspects of other people that you dislike. In these situations (or during a quite time afterwards) you can sit and explore the feelings that arose in you. Ask what triggered you and why you feel so strongly about it. Think back to other times in your life when you felt the same, is there a common thread that you can explore?

Our unconscious mind often speaks to us through messages in our dreams. My keeping a dream journal you will start to recognise whether there are patters that need to be explored.

The aim of shadow work is not to sit in a miserable heap, lamenting on what an awful person you are, although there might be moments of doing that. It is about self-discovery and self-acceptance.

It is thus important that shadow work should be done in a gentle and caring setting with focus and intention. A good practice is to keep affirming to yourself “I love myself when… (insert shadow aspect here)”. By becoming aware of your shadow side, it no longer holds any power over you. Rather, you become more empowered as a human being capable of experiencing the full spectrum of being alive, the good and the bad. And that is the way you lead an authentic life.

Find out how you can increase your self-love and chase your shadow side, and heal it through Remembering Your Worth.

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This got me thinking though, with these dreams so real and me being so lucidly aware of myself and this reality within the dream state, that perhaps life here is just a dream. What if this life that is seemingly so ‘real’ is just someone else’s dream, another me or another form of me? Another part of me who is having a dream of this reality. And if so, who? Or what?

Then I remembered someone posing the question to me once: are you the dream or the dreamer? Once you realise that you are the dream and the dreamer you can take control, and if this life is, in fact, a dream, who’s in the driver’s seat? Can I be lucid in my experience of this dream and take control, direct it? Like a movie, become the star performer and the director!

Seems to me that this also has to do with the existence of Soul and our participation and interaction with this spiritual and all-knowing aspect of ourselves. The soul that is ‘dreaming’ of this reality and this existence and actively directing the experience. If we can ‘wake up’ and become lucidly aware of Soul and the higher aspect of ourselves providing this platform and this existence and experience for us, we can take control, we can become aware of ourselves as both the dream and the dreamer and start to direct the experiences we want to have.

As the dreamer experiencing the dream, I wanted to know ‘who am I’ and asked this in meditation which initially led to the article being written. At that time, I’d just had my purse stolen and apart from the total inconvenience it raised some interesting questions for me. I was asked to produce my identity-book one afternoon shortly after without thinking I replied to the person asking for it ‘Oh! I have no I.D!’ Only a few minutes later did I stop and think to myself ‘what an odd thing to say’ Naturally I was thinking of the ID book when I said it, however, what hit home a few minutes later was the more spiritual and personal implication of the statement.

Who am I? Answering that question is like trying to find and hold onto the soap in a bubble bath! Every time you think you have it, it jumps out of your hands, seemingly unwilling to be found and held onto. How hard can it be in the confined space of a bath can it be to find and hold onto the soap? How hard indeed can it be within the limits of our world as we know it, be to find and hold onto a sense of Identity and ‘I am?’

Perhaps the whole point is that the ‘I am’ is not meant, to be defined. For those who know me, you will know I love dictionary definitions, I must have everything clearly defined, crystal clear and understood! When I give a talk, it inevitably involves a dictionary definition somewhere or another. So, the ‘I am’ is giving me some trouble.

In hand reading terms, we look at the water finger, for those of you who don’t know what that means it’s the index finger. On my hand reading workshops, I call that the finger of ‘I am’. In that context, I mean it is the finger of ‘My relationship with myself’ ‘My Self-perception’ and the finger that governs ‘How I relate to my world’. Until today, I’d not really thought about how significant these statements are.

It does strike me though to get to grips with ‘I am’ that this has very much to do with a few other biggie questions such as ‘why am I here?’ and ‘what am I meant to be doing?’ Over the years on my travels around the country to give workshops and see clients I have been asked these two questions by almost every single person who has come to see me and by most people who have attended my workshops. The penny only dropped today though when I realised that those questions are only answered when we come to an understanding and realisation of the ‘I am’ the rest such as ‘What is my purpose?’ becomes known naturally.

Perhaps to come to an understanding of ‘I am’ we need to understand life itself. Dr Lyall Watson, in his book Dark Nature, takes this view of life:

‘Our world hums with creative energy, glorying in improbable assemblies of unlikely chemicals. Anarchy is loose in the land and against all the odds, is order. The ocean heaves and turns, rain falls, the land rises, winds blow and life blossoms – all because something keeps our environment stable despite vagaries sun and time. It looks astonishingly well organised, more like an artefact than an accident. Which may be exactly what it is, an ecosystem created and maintained by life for its own ends.’

If, as Lyall Watson suggests Life is an ecosystem created and established for its own purposes than what this suggests to me is a physicality is an organised event. Something created me and gave me along with every other living thing, including the very planet itself lives in a very complex and perfectly balanced way! This tells me unquestionably and without a doubt that I have a life for a purpose, and I believe that only soul could have created this.

That the two are intertwined and separate at the same time also tells me that I created my physical life in spirit and soul to experience and, that I’m living out this reality in the physical world that literally is of my mind’s creation. Therefore, I have a purpose, I have a reason to be here and to be a part of the greater ecosystem of this thing we call life. Therefore ‘I am’ as simple as that.

Somehow, I baulk at the idea that life for me is defined regarding an ID number, employee number, bank account number, bond account number, car registration number, credit card number, etc., etc., etc. How about I am a banker, secretary, CEO of a huge corporation! Is that all? Really? Is that who you are? I don’t think so. We are so quick to define ourselves in so much different and limiting ways. Losing my purse was a gift. I’ve not yet missed it, and I’m surprisingly reluctant to rush out and replace all the pieces of plastic and paper that filled it up. For the first time, I have realised how much of my own ‘I am’ statement was bound up in what all those things represented regarding the way I viewed myself.

It is a difficult thing to think of oneself as simply ‘I am’ we invariably want to complete that statement or qualify it in some way, put a tag or a label onto the end of it and give it definition and understanding. To simply be is one of the hardest things to achieve as a human being.

So then to get back to the dictionary! What exactly is the purpose? Well, The Concise Oxford defines it as ‘The reason for which something is done or for which something exists’. Aha, so there must be a reason I exist then, as I understand it in the context of what is my purpose? And if I exist for a purpose or a reason and I have life, then what indeed is life for? Seems to me that life is about creation and recreation in continuous and never-ending cycles, and as it is in nature, so it is with us as humans, we are in an endless cycle of creation and recreation as part of the life system.

‘Who am I’. I decided to meditate on this question, and this is how the dialogue went:

The soul who am I?

You are the spirit and the servant, the helper and the master creator. You are the source of your own creation.

Then why are you, Soul?

I am you, I am the source, and you are me. You are the soul. You are the physical incarnate of my intent. Your meaning and power lie in the intent of your existence and your participation in the creation of that plan.

When the birth was intended, and you became physical, I was always a part of you as the observer as you are me; I observed your experiences. When you asked I re-integrated with your material, I am you. You are my intention.

So then, who am I? I’m still confused!

You are the creator of ‘I am’ at every point and turn of your existence. Nothing happens without your intent when this intent is unconscious, it merely translates as your experiences. Yet nothing happens that you have not intended to create. You make your experiences, it’s like a prism with many facets you shine and reflect and project many colours and, in this way, the ‘I am’ takes many forms, yet you are still the whole prism. You simply are, you exist to be.

How do I define ‘I am’ and Purpose?

You merely exist, as a soul, I created you the physical. There is no purpose, just experience, which you may allow as much or as little of in your own choosing. There is no agenda to the ‘I am’ it is but to be to create an experience and to live and understand that experience. The ‘I am’ is only the tool of the creator to enable to build and have the experience.

What then of Purpose? Everyone keeps talking about and asking about use? Everyone wants to know – what is my goal?

The purpose is always to bring purpose, to whatever you are doing.

Until you actively create, the purpose is irrelevant. It is merely experience. Most people live life by being carried along on the circumstance and experiences of those events, and no experience is wrong.

The purpose is merely when you start to direct the skills yourself. Therefore no purpose can be pre-ordained it is chosen only when you awaken to your soulful self and realise you are the creator of those experiences. As you create so, you have a purpose.

It is not in the belief that you have been made physical (born) for a particular purpose; it is in the ability of the physical to create the goal by conscious effort and conscious connection to the soul source. When you direct the energy of the source with will and intent, you create a goal.

You are physical to experience first; when you learn to create, you have a purpose.

What then of choosing to be an individual person at soul level before becoming physical, and what of choosing and making soul agreements? Surely that pre-sets my purpose and ‘I am’?

As a soul, I made you physical. For you to be physical on earth, a pre-existing set of circumstances needed to exist for you to be born into and of the physical mind and body to understand. A linear and chronological set of events required to be in place for physicality to happen, these circumstances allow for physical birth into a family, country, etc. to take place. In other words, these conditions give you a framework to be physical within.

Those circumstances you chose as a soul, but without the pre-set intent of living out those events, in other words, that life. The longer it takes to reconnect with the soulful experience and to experience yourself as the soul source and creator, the longer you live with those circumstances. Some people live out these conditions to the conclusion, never reintegrating mind while in the physical, that is not wrong, it is merely experienced, and when they die, they still reintegrate fully into the soul with those experiences. The soul is not the experiences, only the observer of the experiences.

The minute you became physical (at conception), as your soul and as you are me, I am with you communicating with you all the time, when you become consciously aware of yourself as soul and a light being, the ‘I am’ simply is.

When this awareness happens, you start to direct and create from the source of your being this is when you in the physical will say it ‘feels’ right, ah! This must be my purpose.

It is when you allow yourself to be connected and guided by me as your soul within the realm of physicality, that what you do seems ‘right’ and that it has a purpose. When you listen to the guidance from the voice within, when you simply be! As you are, with no attempt to change, you begin to direct your purpose.

It is in the guided experience of physicality by your own creation that you direct the energy of the source into purpose.

Therefore, the purpose only happens when you start to create it, and use is not static. By consciously changing your circumstances and experiences by listening to the guidance of the soul, the ‘life’ that you choose is still in the creative process. This means that purpose is ever-changing as it is guided by spirit and created by you in the physical. The mind and the physical integrate and work as one director of creation and purpose.

When you say ‘I’ you alert your soul and the source energy that you are about to create. The ‘I’ is a statement of intent. The ‘I am’ creates the reality as you express it when you attach an additional plan to the ‘I am’. For instance, ‘I am happy’ would create the reality of happiness, in your own direction.

Your life is your playground, and it is yours to choose, set up and intend the experiences you wish to have. The language you want and how you state this intent using ‘I am’ is powerful and literal, your language therefore and how you express your intent is important in the creative process of directing the experiences you will have.

Life and soul do go together, and in the essence of creation, we first must learn just to be. I – used by a speaker to refer to himself/herself. Am – first person singular of the present being.

Your soul created the life you lead, and you are your soul and therefore, the creator. In answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ You simply are to be. ‘I am’ is your instrument to use for the creation of your reality, you may define that in any way you wish it’s limitless and entirely up to you to choose your encounters and experiences of life. As always, the choice lies with you. Shifting, changing and creating realities is in your hands when you listen to your soulful self and allow yourself to be guided this is indeed a powerful way to manifest your purpose, by your own choice and direction.

From now may you bring into your life persuasive intent to create with vivid colour imagination and the energy of the creativity of your source. Do not limit yourself to any statement of ‘I am’ which does not support your growth, glorying in and valuing yourself for simply being in existence, for having life, and may you feel the joy of the pure experience.

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I mean, surely this is a natural state of being. In fact, it is a natural state of being. It is the default position that our bodies, minds and souls want to get back to. It is a moment or more where every bit of you can just relax and be. With no judgement, no second-guessing, no ‘what if’s’. It is fully just present and paying deep attention to what is happening in that one particular fraction of time.

Moments of mindfulness offer us a space to just breathe. Away from the race of life, away from thoughts speeding through our minds at light-year speed. While this is a moment of rest, it is not a moment of inaction (although it could also be that). Studies on mindfulness have shown that being focussed and present makes you more efficient – multi tasking actually gets less done.

Being mindful means you pay full attention. You take in everything that is present in that moment. You really notice the details that sometimes get lost in the madness of a moment. Like the colour of the eyes of the person that you are talking to. Or the feeling of the wind on the back of your neck. It not only helps you to do things more thoroughly, it also creates a space where you get to soak up the essence of life. Moment by moment.

Being mindful and staying present is something that needs to be practiced. It is something that you need to remind yourself to come back to again and again. A good way to start practicing mindfulness is to invite small moments into your everyday life. Become fully present whenever you remember. Here are some tips to help you do that:

Pay attention to your breathing.

Your breathing tells you a lot about what is going on around you and within you. Long, deep breaths tell you that you are comfortable and relaxed. Short, quick, shallow breaths usually mean that there is something you need to pay closer attention. In these moments ask yourself what is going on, check in with your thoughts, feelings and emotions to identify exactly what is happening inside. Once you have identified this, then you can look at your surroundings and the situation to see what could have triggered this response. You might find that there is some healing work that needs to be done, or you might find that you are just really unfit and out of breath from climbing that hill! Either way, congratulations, you just spend a few moments being fully present.

Make a habit of bringing mindfulness to everyday tasks.

Start to develop the habit of being mindful during specific everyday tasks like taking a shower or doing the dishes. Pay attention to each and every spoon, knife, fork and plate. Notice the tiny scratches or dents. See the bubbles that the soap makes and notice the texture of the sponge in your hand. Fully immerse yourself in washing the dishes. As this becomes a habit you will naturally start to become present and notice more and more moments of being mindful during your day. The wonderful thing about practicing mindfulness is that the more you do it, the more spontaneously you will slip into those moments of peace.

Do yoga.

Yoga is a great tool to help you achieve mindfulness. Yoga means ‘yoke’ and aims at binding or connecting your mind, body and soul. Through practicing yoga, you aim to get all three of these elements in synchronisation. During practice you focus on your body and breath, lose your focus and your poses become less stable and you tend to be unable to go as deep as you might when you are focusing and breathing. By focusing completely, you are giving your mind the opportunity to experience what it feels like to be fully present, to focus on only the asana that you are in, with no distractions from outside, or from your own scattered thoughts. Yoga is the ultimate tool that leads you to be able to experience deep meditation and mindfulness.

Meditation.

A powerful way to crate mindfulness is through meditation. It helps you to cultivate that deep stillness where your mind and soul can rest. Meditation aims at quieting your mind and creating a space where you can just be. As you are, in that moment.

Like all forms of mindfulness, meditation is a continual practice and some days the quiet will come easier than others… and that is ok. As time goes by you will experience more moments of quiet and those moments will get deeper and deeper until you get to the space where you enter a semi-dreamlike state. Where time does not exist, and you feel like you are floating in a universal soup of energy. That…that beautiful moment is what meditation is about, or at least for me. I have created a few guided meditations here, they are great for beginners and more experienced meditators.

The ultimate goal of practicing mindfulness is to become fully present in each moment. It is to create a space where your mind is quiet and focused, and you are free to absorb everything that the moment brings you. Every moment of ecstasy and every moment of sorrow. Every ordinary moment… until you realise that there are no ordinary moments, only extraordinary moments waiting to be witnessed.

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The gold in life is within our ability to sense and feel what is around us so we may… better maneuver within certain circles, navigate within the grand scheme of where we are docked and use our energy with more wisdom.

**  A version of this article first appeared at www.empathevolution.com

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Law of attraction.

While there are a number of Universal Laws (also known as Spiritual Laws or Laws of Nature) that all influence the lives, situations and circumstances that we manifest in our lives, the Law of Attraction is the most well-known. Generally when people speak about the law of attraction they often include concepts of the other laws like the Laws of Vibration and Resonance – perhaps even without realising it.

The premise of the Law of Attraction is that your thoughts create your reality. Practitioners visualise their desires while infusing the visualisation with emotions, with the feelings of ‘already having it’ and with gratitude of receiving that which is asked for.

According to James Malins, the Wisdom Guide, “The law of attraction is an internal law that everything uses consciously and unconsciously. Once you start to become aware of your own creative ability you use desire, visualisation, emotion and action to bring your desires into the physical reality you live in”.

Magical energy work.

In the book Wicca: The Complete Craft, D.J. Conway defines magic as “the drawing down of energy from another realm and using that energy to create and shape a desired result. The Witch must create the result on the Inner Planes in order for it to follow universal laws and manifest on the physical plane”.

This does not only relate to practitioners of Wicca, but to all practitioners of witchcraft. Melanie Marquis, in her book A Witch’s World of Magic

instance, the belief that our conscious intentions and symbolic actions can sway the inner workings of the world around us”.

Quantum physics with special reference to wave function collapse.

Quantum physics might seem a bit intimidating at first but when you dig a bit deeper it offers amazing and interesting theories of understanding how the universe works. The field of quantum physics investigates the characteristics of the world around us right down to the subatomic level (or things we cannot see).

Quantum physicists have discovered that everything in the universe, everything that is seen and unseen, is all made up of energy – referred to by some as ‘light’. Some quantum physicists speak about wave forms of probabilities. These ‘probabilities’ have the potential of being any infinite amount of things that, could or will or may happen or not happen.

A bit confusing, huh? Bear with me… every ‘probability’ that ever existed, currently exist or will exist in the future is a wave form. As to date no one has figured out how these wave forms are made or where they come from, but they have proven that they exist.

Most of us know that everything is made up of molecules, which consists of atoms, what quantum physicists found is that these atoms are made up of sub-atomical particles which include photons, leptons, electrons, neutrons and quarks etc, which are made up of pure energy or light. This discovery stems from Albert Einstein’s discovery of E=MC². In short, it proved that everything is made up of pure energy or light.

Quantum physics has thus proven what Rumi said in the 13^th century: that “you are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop”. Basically we exist in this ocean of energy made up of the same energy as we are.

Through observation and research quantum physicists have proven that everything in the universe is vibrating frequency of energy (can you say Law of Attraction?) which then combines with energy of similar frequencies to create the physical world or our perceived reality. Thus everything around us are not solid things, but forms made up of pure, vibrating energy – all connected to each other.

What does all of this have to do with manifestation and magic? I’m getting there, I promise…and it is very interesting!

Around 1927 Neils Bohr collaborated with quantum physicists and theorist in what is called the Copenhagen Interpretation. The experiment found that sub-atomical particles are not only particles but exist and are made up of both wave forms and/or particles – but they could not exist in both forms simultaneously.

The Copenhagen Interpretation also found that energy is waves and when given attention, or observed, all wave forms collapse and particles, or matter, is formed. The person paying attention to, or observing, the particles determine whether they are (or turn into) waves or particles. If the observer expects to see the energy as waves s/he would, but then if s/he expects to see particles that is what would be observed.

To clarify that: sub-atomical particles take on form as matter based on the thoughts or believes that an observer has about them. Thus our thoughts literally create the material (and non-material) world around us as we turn wave forms of ‘probability’ (or something ‘spiritual’) into particles or bits of matter (‘reality’).

To dig a bit deeper, let’s speak about Quantum Entanglement. Scientists broke some sub-atomic particles in half (or separated them). When they did this they found that the pieces could communicate with each other. This communication happened instantly, no matter how far the ‘pieces’ were removed from each other. On a side note: Cleve Baxter proved this with DNA and found that DNA taken from an individual responded and reacted to the emotions of that person at the exact moment that s/he experienced the emotions, no matter how far they were apart.

This proved that energy does not need to travel. That it is all connected and messages and information can be sent instantly.

To sum up all the jargon: quantum physics has proven that your thoughts create they world around you- and that this can happen instantly. Because all sub-atomical particles exist in a form of ‘probability’ the only thing that influence what it turns into is the observer- you!

Energy work has been part of human cultures nearly since the beginning of man. Shamans, sages and holy-men have energy manipulation in one form or another for centuries- millennia even. Whether you call it manifestation, magic(k) or quantum physics, it seems that they are all the same and they all come to the same conclusion: that you are the creator of your universe.

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The awake Empath out there is quite aware of the word ENERGY.

** A version of this article first appeared at www.empathevolution.com

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