The Secret of the Shadow (2 page)

Since I couldn’t bear to listen to Jessica whine for one more moment, I tuned her out and turned all my attention onto myself.

As Jessica’s voice faded into the background, I began to hear my own internal dialog: “Nobody loves me. I can’t do this. I’ll never be happy. I’m too skinny and too ugly. My life doesn’t matter” and the 7

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w ever familiar, “No one cares about me.” As I was sitting there it struck me that, like Jessica, I too was repeating the same internal dialogue over and over, reciting a version of my life I had heard a million times before. I was shocked to discover that my story line wasn’t that much different from Jessica’s; she was just speaking hers aloud. As I sat there listening to myself, I heard the theme of my story, chanted like a mantra in my mind: “Poor me, poor me, poor me.” Then suddenly the lights went on and I realized, “Oh, my God, my life is just a story, too.”

Until that day, sitting in a treatment center in West Palm Beach, Florida, I had been asleep inside my story. I was letting my story run my life without my knowing it. Everything I did was consistent with and constricted by this story, and my actions were desperate attempts to make the prison of my story a little better, a little more palatable, a little more livable. I was always making some minor adjustment—a new boyfriend, a new job, a new haircut—in an attempt to bury my pain and hide the “evidence” of my inadequacy. I had so mistaken my story for reality that making all these changes was like rearranging the chairs on the deck of the
Titanic:
The ship was sinking while I, blinded to the reality of the situation, was busy trying to make it look good and feel better while it was going down.

It finally occurred to me that there must be more to me than the story I was telling myself. Just as I could see that Jessica, even while stuck in her story, was more than she thought she was, I realized that I too must be more than what my negative thoughts told me I was. And in that moment I surrendered to the fact that even though I had unknowingly spent years trying to fix my story, I 8

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couldn’t. True, it was a part of me, but certainly it wasn’t the whole me. Although I didn’t have a clue as to what was beyond my story, I set out that day on a journey to understand why I had created this story and what purpose it served.

I spent the next ten years of my life examining not only my own story but the stories of others. While on this journey I learned three very important things: First, we create our life stories in our attempt to become someone or something. Second, our stories hold the key to our unique purpose in life and to its fulfillment. And third, hidden in the shadow of our story is a very special secret; once this secret is unveiled, we will stand in awe of the magnificence of our own humanity.

T h e S t o r y, t h e T h e m e , a n d t h e S h a d o w Our stories have a purpose. Even though they set our limitations, they also help us define who we are so we don’t feel completely lost in the world. Living inside them is like being inside a clear capsule.

The thin transparent walls act like a shell that traps us inside. Even though we have the ability to gaze outside and view the world around us, we stay safely trapped inside, comfortable with the familiar terrain, bound by an inner knowing that no matter what we do, think, or say, we can go no further. Our stories separate us and draw clear boundaries between ourselves, others, and the world. They limit our capabilities and shut down our possibilities.

Our stories keep us apart even while we are begging to belong and fit in. They drain our vital energy, leaving us feeling tired, 9

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w depleted, and hopeless. The predictability of our stories feeds our resignation and guarantees our fate. When we are living inside our stories, we engage in repetitive habits, abusive behaviors, and abra-sive internal dialogues.

Like all good stories, our personal dramas always have a theme, which repeats itself over and over throughout our lives. We can decipher our unique themes by listening carefully to the conclusions we have made about the events of our lives. These conclusions shape our existence and drive our personalities. Our conclusions become our
shadow beliefs,
the unconscious beliefs that control our thoughts, words, and behaviors. Our shadow beliefs establish our limits. They tell us how much love, happiness, and success we are or are not worthy of. They shape our thought processes and define our personal boundaries. Disguising themselves as the truth, our shadow beliefs rob us of self-expression and squelch our dreams. But what’s important to realize is that our shadow beliefs contain the very wisdom we need to transcend our current limitations and our discontent. They motivate us to compensate for our shortcomings and drive us to become the opposite of what we tell ourselves we are. Our shadow beliefs drive us to prove that we are worthy, that we are lovable, and that we are important. But, left unattended, these shadow beliefs turn on us, sabotaging the very things we most desire by letting their negative messages limit our lives.

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W h y Y o u “ N e e d ” Y o u r S t o r y We stay wrapped in our stories—securely placed inside our capsules—so we can hold on to the comfort of what we know and rest in the safe and familiar feelings of being at home. When life gets difficult and we begin to confront the pain of our own limitations or the disappointment of living below our self-imposed standards, at least we can count on one thing: the predictability of our stories.

Our stories give us something and someone to identify with. The worst feeling for a human being is to feel like a “nothing,” that our lives and our individual existences don’t matter. Most of us would much rather endure being an unlovable person than someone who is completely invisible. So, in a desperate attempt to give our lives meaning, we create and then repeat our stories; and as we cling to who we think we are, we perpetuate our dramas. Then, gradually and unwittingly, we actually become our dramas. We act out our stories and carry them around like badges of honor. We become invested in keeping our stories alive, and in the process we unknowingly become victims of the stories we created to protect our secret: We become victims of life.

When we recognize that we have identified ourselves with our stories and not with our broader, deeper, truer selves, our first impulse is to just get rid of the story. But because we have
become
our stories and have allowed them to dictate the scope and course of our lives, a scary question arises: If we aren’t our stories, who are we? Outside our stories, life feels scary and uncontrollable. It reeks of unpredictability and uncertainty. We fear that if we let go of our dramas, we will lose our identities and whatever place we hold in 11

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w the world. Who will protect us? Who will love us? To what will we belong? This is a devastating prospect for any human being.

The unconscious fear that drives our stories is that if we surrender our identities, slow down, and go inside, we will be devoured by the emptiness. Our resistance to being nothing, to having nothing, and to being a nobody is at the very core of our human struggle.

Our fear of nonexistence is so deep that most of us settle for a repackaged version of the self we know rather than wake up inside the unknown.

I spent most of my life struggling to be a “somebody,” to have a purpose and a life of meaning. Yet over the years my spiritual search has taught me that in order for me to be free to be the special, unique woman that I am, I must embrace both the vastness of my Divinity and the insignificance of my humanity. I must embrace the fact that I am everything and nothing.

My rabbi, Moshe Levin, once told me a story that comes from the Talmud. A person is asked to write on a piece of paper the words
I am nothing but dust and ashes
and to place that piece of paper in his pocket and meditate upon it. He is then asked to write on another piece of paper the words
The entire Universe was created
just for me
and to place it in his other pocket. As the seeker meditates on both realities at the same time, he realizes that both are true.

If we look at life from the largest perspective, we see that we are merely specks. Until we embrace our absolute nothingness and our own insignificance, we will forever be chasing the experience of being somebody. But once we surrender to the fact that we are
everything and nothing—
once we embrace both the story and 12

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beyond, the shadow and the light—we become whole, integrated human beings. We open ourselves up to a world beyond that which we know. We can then have the grand experience of seeing that we belong to and are a vital piece of the entire Universe. We will be able to marvel in the realization that the entire Universe was created just for us. Then we will grasp the enormity of our true essence.

I know that for some of you this may be a difficult concept, and you may not feel ready for it or comfortable with it yet. But I promise you that if you allow yourself to open up to this idea and explore it, a new possibility will arise. When you embrace both your wins and your losses, your frailties and your strengths, your vastness and your nothingness, you will feel safe enough to allow your Divine secret to emerge. Only by returning to the state of wholeness will you feel worthy and deserving of expressing the highest truth about yourself.

T h e F a l s e S e l f

Our stories are like old friends. Even if they talk too much, at least we know what we are getting—an alternative that feels less threatening than connecting with a group of strangers. Most of us repeatedly choose the comfort of what we know, staying inside our limited realities, just so we don’t have to face the terror of that which we don’t know. But brewing beneath the surface is a deep discontent about the
false self
that we have created and the story that goes along with it. This is where the struggle begins. This 13

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w discontent is always pushing us, whispering in our ears, “There has to be more than this.”

In order to embrace the enormity of who we truly are and make the journey beyond our limited stories to find our true selves again, we first must face the ultimate truth and often the most painful reality: that we were never really separate from the Divine. We are a piece in a Divine puzzle. We may look separate, we may act separate, and most of us will go to our graves believing that we are separate, but our individuality is nothing but an illusion. It’s a painful distraction that keeps us trapped in an endless chase for something more, better, or different than what we already have. And it’s a futile chase, because it’s based on the incorrect conclusion that we are somehow “flawed.” In our separateness we struggle to create bigger and better versions of ourselves, trying desperately to fix what we believe is broken. We abandon our naturally Divine selves and frantically try to ground ourselves in our own unique identities. We forsake our Divine selves for our self-image. But that self-image—the identity we are chasing—is not who we are; it’s the false self we’ve created to define ourselves. Our false self is the main character in our stories, and we mistakenly believe ourselves to be that person. It is our persona, the image we create to give ourselves a distinct identity.

And our stories are our desperate attempts to make sense of our existence, to define what cannot be defined. Our stories are where our false selves reside. Our false selves are the heroes and the victims and the stars of our stories. They keep our stories intact and pacify us with a false sense of predictability and security.

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S e p a r at i n g f r o m t h e D i v i n e The moment we identify with our false selves, the moment we believe ourselves to be our stories, we fall out of the hands of the Divine and enter into the small illusion of “me,” separate and alone. Then the game begins—the game of “Look at Me, I Am Separate from You.” We engage in this charade because it allows us to hold on to the illusion that we are really separate and individual beings. Even if we intellectually understand by this point on our spiritual journey that we are all one, we continue, on an unconscious level, to fight for the separate life we are familiar with and to avoid the experience of oneness. We believe that if we face the ultimate truth—if we face our oneness—then that uniqueness we cling to will die. But facing that truth is our task, because living inside our stories and in the illusion of separateness is not really living. It’s an endless game of wanting—fearing and wanting. It’s a game you cannot win. It’s a game of “If Only”:
“If only
I were rich, famous, healthy, smarter, wiser, faster, shrewder, or younger, I would be able to win this game and find the happiness I deserve.”

“If only
I knew more people, had a better job, or had my own business, I would have what I need and be happy.”
“When
I get my new house, new car, new girlfriend, or some new clothes, I will feel so good.”
“If only
I were appreciated, respected, loved, or seen, I would fulfill my deepest desires.” Or maybe your game is about getting rid of something.
“If only
I weren’t so selfish, fat, lazy, angry, bitter, tired, or broke.”
“If only
my children, husband, or mother would stop acting out.” Or, the big ones: “When I finally arrive at my perfect body weight or find my life purpose, I will be content.”

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T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w This is an unwinnable game. It is a trap, an endless maze with no way out.

We work day and night trying to manipulate, strategize, and figure out ways to win the “If Only” game. But the game lives inside our stories. It was developed to keep us occupied and busy and give us a reference point for our individual identities. But if we are willing to look, we will see that the game is nothing more than a decoy, hiding what is real, covering up our true essence. To end this struggle we must see that much of what we believe about ourselves is a story. For most of us, it is a disempowering tale. We created our stories in order to give ourselves an identity and protect the sacredness of our true essence. And we will need our stories and the secret they hold to lead us back into the presence of our Divinity and to unfold the purpose of our lives.