The Secret of the Shadow (20 page)

Learn to recognize clearly when you have stepped back inside your
story.
To do this, make a list of ten thoughts, feelings, habits, and behaviors you engage in when you are living inside your story.

Then make a list of ten thoughts, feelings, habits, and behaviors 188

l i v i n g o u t s i d e y o u r s t o r y you engage in when you are living outside your story. What do you have access to when you step outside your story? Finally, make a list of ten ways you can raise your consciousness and step back into your highest self once you recognize that you’ve slipped back into your story. I asked Helen, a participant in one of my coaching programs, to share her lists.

I n s i d e M y S t o r y . . .

I overeat.

I drink beer.

I gossip.

I compare myself to others.

I withhold the truth from others and allow resentments to build.

I withhold sex from my husband.

I enroll others in what a victim of life I am.

I criticize and judge myself for everything I do.

I blame my kids for my lack of joy.

I lay around, whining and complaining.

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T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w O u t s i d e M y S t o r y . . .

I decline to gossip.

I relate to people as their highest possibility.

I do yoga.

I express myself freely.

I communicate my feelings and resolve my upsets.

I am grateful for the blessings in my life.

I drink alcohol very rarely, and only one glass at a time.

I am energetic and helpful.

I set a tone of positive energy for my entire household.

I enjoy food, but do not use it as an escape from feeling my emotions.

T h i n g s I C o u l d D o t o S t e p O u t o f M y S t o r y

Meditate—for at least fifteen minutes.

Go for a brisk walk.

Garden. Beautify my environment.

Get down on the floor and play with my kids.

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l i v i n g o u t s i d e y o u r s t o r y Read an inspirational book.

Journal until I reach some deeper understanding.

Call someone whose opinion of me I value.

Give to someone else.

Do yoga.

Feel gratitude for the many blessings in my life.

Use the following quiz to support yourself in staying out of your
story.
You can tell by the way you feel about yourself and others, by how clearly you see things, and by how you are interpreting your life’s events whether you are living inside or outside your personal drama.

Decide whether each of the following statements is true or false.

I feel like my needs aren’t being met.

I don’t have enough time.

I don’t have enough money.

I’m trying, but I just don’t get it.

Other people are the cause of my problems.

I find myself thinking, “If only I had more . . .”

I’ve had the same internal dialogue for more than two weeks.

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T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w I believe I don’t have a story.

I am engaged in more than one behavior that I know makes me feel bad about myself.

I’ve called at least one other person this week to enroll them in my pity party.

If you answered “true” to more than four of these statements, you are deeply steeped inside your story. Do not move on without making a commitment to step outside your story. It’s important to monitor ourselves and bring conscious awareness to our everyday lives. It’s a sad day when we wake up one morning and realize we’ve been in our story for the past two weeks, two months, or two years. By asking ourselves on a daily basis, “Am I in or out?” we bring the light of our awareness to what has previously been hidden in the shadows.

If you are one of those diehards who find it difficult to let go of your
limited self, I recommend that you stand in front of a mirror and repeat
your “poor me” story to yourself word for word, until you are so sick of it
that you can’t bear to repeat it one more time.
You’ll know that you have succeeded in this exercise if you feel sick to your stomach.

However, if you’re still not cured, I recommend that you go to a coffee shop and share your story with five strangers. All you have to do is start walking up to people who are sitting alone and say, “I have a great story. Would you like to hear it?” Eventually you’ll find someone who is happy to oblige. Then launch into your sad tale, and really get into it. Tell them why and how things have turned out for you the way they have. Show them how nicely a good drama goes 192

l i v i n g o u t s i d e y o u r s t o r y with a latte and a baguette. If you still feel attached to the drama of your story, go back to the coffee shop and ask five strangers to tell you their stories. By that time you should be very, very clear that what we’re talking about here is a story, that it’s only a story and nothing but a story.

If none of the previous exercises has worked, you can always try a
good old-fashioned death ceremony
. Pretend that you have passed on and someone you love is going to stand up at your funeral and pay tribute to the life you lived inside your story. Write the eulogy that person will give at your funeral. After you read it, ask yourself, “Is this what I am committed to being remembered as?” I asked my girlfriend Colleen to write her eulogy. Here is what she wrote.

Colleen was a very bright girl with a lot of potential. Even though she had a rough start in the beginning of her life, she forged ahead, determined to make something of herself. For some unknown reason she always attracted the wrong jobs, worked for the wrong people, and she certainly never got paid what she was worth. Always there was someone who was preventing her from letting her light shine. If only she had had a break. If only she had had different parents or a better education. If only her talents had been discovered. But instead Colleen kept waiting for that one day when she would be ready to make her mark on the world. But as we sit here today we can see that Colleen never did get that opportunity. Let’s all join together in prayer and say, “Poor Colleen!” May she and her story rest in peace.

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T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w After you write the eulogy of your story, share it with some friends, have a little ceremony, get some flowers and some food, and lay it to rest.

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At every moment you’ve got to be willing to step outside your story. You must be willing to sacrifice who you know yourself to be for who you can become. You must be willing to give up the smallness of your story for the vastness of your true essence. Every moment you have a choice.

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l i v i n g o u t s i d e y o u r s t o r y H e a l i n g A c t i o n S t e p s 1. In order to distinguish when you are inside and outside of your story, make a list of the following: Ten feelings you have when you are in your story and ten feelings you have when you are out of your story Ten thoughts you think when you are in your story and ten thoughts you think when you are out of your story Ten behaviors you engage in when you are inside your story and ten behaviors you engage in when you are out of your story

Ten things you can do to get out of your story when you find that you have slipped back inside

2. Write a letter to your story, honoring it for everything it has taught you and acknowledging that your relationship to it will change as you decide to live outside of its limitations.

3. Create a ritual to say good-bye to your story in the way you have known it. Release it as a way of beating yourself up and keeping yourself small, and welcome it as a resource for fulfilling your purpose in life.

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Contemplation

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“Outside my story

I am an amazing contribution

to the world.”

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= Chapter 10 <

The Secret of

the Shadow

Hidden in the shadow of our stories is a great secret. This secret holds the key to unleashing our magnificence. Our secret is the keeper of abundant joy, unlimited possibility, and Divine bliss. Imagine being the guardian of the earth’s rarest and most treasured jewels. As their guardian you would go to any extent possible to protect them. As human beings we do the same thing. Deep inside we know that we are Godly, that we are holy, that we are Divine.

Our greatness, our magnificence, and our light are so valuable that we pile layer on top of layer to protect that which is ours to guard. Because we don’t feel safe to expose this part of ourselves, we continually create drama and chaos to hide that which we know should be protected. All of our drama, all of our pain, all of our discontent is hiding the secret of our light. When we have 197

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w finally grown tired of our stories, when they no longer provide us with any comfort, we are ready to uncover the precious gift that lies within each of us. When we feel we are worthy and can be trusted to take care of our light we will feel free to unleash the greatest power of all: the power of our true nature.

T h e H u m a n E x p e r i e n c e You and I are explorers, and the terrain we are traveling is our own human experience. If we had chosen to have a Godly experience, a Divine experience, or an otherworldly experience, we would not exist in a human form. But this is not the case. We chose a human experience. And this journey requires us to learn, to grow, to make sense of our very nature. The human experience calls on us to travel the path through the drama of our life stories, through all the false identities we have believed ourselves to be. It requires us to navigate through the realm of emotions in order to deeply understand the mechanism of what it means to be human.

Letting our secrets out allows us to become intimate with our most Divine selves, our spiritual essence. Revealing our secrets merges our humanity with our Divinity. By traveling the path through our stories, by understanding our humanness at the deepest level, we are blessed with the courage to move beyond our personas, to drop our acts, to step out of our stories and stand naked in the presence of our truest selves. Only then will we feel safe enough to stand in all our glory and declare, “This is who I am.”

For us to allow our secrets to reign, we must take a warrior’s 198

T h e s e c r e t o f t h e s h a d o w stance in this exploration of our lives. We must dig in, explore, and understand the terrain of our own humanness. For it is only when we truly know and understand ourselves, only when we’ve traveled the path through our past, that we can throw our arms in the air with the delight and enthusiasm of a child and declare, “I am holy! I am Divine! I am worthy of everything the Universe has to offer.” It is only when we’ve done this vital inner work that we will feel safe enough to let our secrets out for everyone to see.

Often, revealing our secrets leaves us feeling vulnerable and exposed, because we no longer know who we are. It can be terrify-ing to let go of our false selves, the facades that have been covering up our deeper truth, and expose the essence of our beings. When as children we exposed our lavish gifts, we often were shamed, ignored, or criticized, so as adults we have learned to hide the place in ourselves where we feel the most vulnerable.

But once we expose our secrets, we will see that our dramas and our justifications can no longer protect us. Our intellects can no longer serve us. The only path we can take is one of surrender-ing to the connection between ourselves and the Divine. Until we feel worthy, until we have sifted through our stories to learn the lessons they have to impart, until we have forgiven ourselves and others, and until we have come to terms with our human struggle, we will always put up some kind of block that keeps us from experiencing our Divinity.

Doing the work in this book has prepared you for the extraordinary journey of living your most Divine life. You are ready now to take the leap outside your story and invite your secret, your sacred light, out of hiding. The process you’ve gone through to 199

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w embrace and integrate your story has laid the foundation for you to live a life outside the limitations of your personal drama. If you have done the work outlined in this book, you have identified your story and have come to the profound understanding that you have a story but you are not your story. You have discovered that hidden within your story is a unique recipe, and that by embracing and integrating all aspects of yourself and your life you will find your true purpose. Once you have understood that everything that has happened to you has supported you in gaining the wisdom you need to deliver your unique gift to the world, you can heal your emotional wounds and traumas from the past. You can then begin the process of making peace with your story by looking at the ways you have violated yourself and others and by making the commitment to balance your internal karmic scales.

By cleaning up your past you are able to experience the sacredness of forgiveness, which opens the door to new levels of self-love and deservingness. You no longer feel the need to hide your light out of fear that someone will take it from you.

Grounded in the feeling of your own worthiness, you are now free to use all the wisdom you have gathered from your story to bring forth your special gifts to the world. Having found your unique specialty and seen how deeply worthy you are, you are ready to reveal the secret that lies hidden in the shadow of your story. You are ready to acknowledge the deeper truth of who you are. With your gift in hand, you are able to thank your story and appreciate all it has taught you, knowing that it was the very catalyst that opened you to a deeper understanding of what it means to be you. Having done the work, you feel worthy and ready to let 200

T h e s e c r e t o f t h e s h a d o w down your guard, to let go of your defenses and your persona, and to let your secret stand revealed.