The Secret of the Shadow (21 page)

E x p o s i n g Y o u r S e c r e t Exposing our secrets makes us feel vulnerable, because they’ve been hidden for so long. But only when we are willing to be in our vulnerability will we be blessed with the gift of our own light.

Sydney sat on the floor of my office, crying. Between sobs she recalled incident after incident from her childhood that left her feeling unlovable, insignificant, disappointed, and left out. There was the time her mother forgot to pick her up from camp and she was the last child there after all the counselors had gone home.

There was the time she was left all alone on her birthday. There was the time nobody showed up at her school play and no one told her how cute she looked in her black witch’s costume and match-ing ballet slippers. Being the youngest child in her family, Sydney always had the feeling her opinions didn’t matter, and she struggled to be noticed by her parents, who disappointed her more times than she could count. “What did you make their behavior mean about you?” I asked Sydney. More tears came and Sydney answered,

“That they don’t care about me. That I don’t mean anything to them. That I’m nothing.
That I don’t matter.”
This was Sydney’s story.

Although Sydney is grown up now, with a successful career as a movie producer, inside she is still overwhelmed with the feelings of a five-year-old that remind her that she doesn’t matter. Despite 201

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w all her success and achievements, she is still hungry to be acknowledged. In her career and in her personal life, she strives to be giving and caring, hoping that she will matter enough to the people around her to be worthy of their attention. She is thoughtful and understanding, tries to be a good listener, and is generous with her time and money. Yet, far from the image she projects in the outer world, when Sydney lies in bed at night, she still feels like her life doesn’t matter.

When I asked Sydney what the gift of not mattering was, she at first looked at me like I was crazy. “There’s no gift in feeling like I don’t matter,” she said. “What has the feeling of not mattering driven you to do or become?” I asked her. Suddenly Sydney began to see how her whole story and every accomplishment in her life had been driven by the core shadow belief that she doesn’t matter. It was that belief that had given Sydney her unique specialty—showing others that they matter—and had driven her to create extraordinary things in the world. Sydney always strives to make movies that she thinks will really matter to her audience. She knows how to bring people together and make them feel important, thus inspiring their best work. Because her life taught her firsthand what it feels like not to matter, she now knows what does matter. Sydney realized that all those painful incidents from her childhood had given her a master’s degree in not mattering—which is exactly what has made her unique in her industry. Once Sydney processed the pain that surrounded her shadow belief that she doesn’t matter, she could acknowledge her unique specialty and the contribution it makes in the world.

Sydney could see how deeply committed she had been to her story and how she had used it her entire life to deprive herself of 202

T h e s e c r e t o f t h e s h a d o w the joy of her accomplishments. But now, having uncovered her unique specialty, Sydney felt worthy of her joy and her gifts. I then suggested to Sydney that her story was just a cover-up for the priceless treasure she held. I had Sydney close her eyes, and then I asked her, “What is the secret your story has been hiding?” We sat in silence for several minutes, and then I watched a big smile come across her face as she whispered, “I make a huge difference in the world. I really matter.” With clarity and strength Sydney acknowledged that her words were true—that indeed the work she was doing was changing lives. After exposing her secret, Sydney knew she could never go back to living inside the lie of her story again. Standing in the presence of her precious gift, Sydney watched her “I don’t matter” story crumble before her eyes. For the first time in her life and her career, she could feel the abundant joy that comes from knowing she makes a profound difference and impact in the world.

Exposing your secret blows your entire story. You might feel that revealing your secret and giving your gifts to the world is an overwhelming responsibility. But this is just another story.

Expressing your light is not a responsibility; it’s a sacred honor. It takes nothing more than being who you really are, your authentic self. It takes no effort, no making, no struggle. You just have to allow yourself to show up—without your story. If you have never let your light shine bright before, this will most likely feel scary, because as humans we like to hold on to what we know. Standing in the presence of our freedom and our expansiveness can be terrifying, and many of us will unconsciously say, “Give me back my story so I will again know who I am.”

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T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w S t e p p i n g i n t o t h e S t o r m We have to embrace our vulnerability in order to allow our secret to emerge. We need to take baby steps and learn how to trust. We must learn how to surrender, not to what
we
desire but to what the Universe is showing us. We must trust that if we set out into unknown waters we will be taken to the shore. Imagine what it would be like to stand on a beach and watch a huge gray thunder-cloud moving toward you, gusty winds howling and huge waves crashing up against the shore. Feeling exhilarated, you imagine how exciting it would be to set sail into the storm, feeling the power of nature and the mystery of the unknown. But a minute later you get scared and your thoughts turn to the safe and predictable choice of finding somewhere to stay covered until the storm blows over. But what if you knew that if you sailed into the storm, armed with all the right gear, on the other side of the rain and winds you would arrive safely on an island filled with great treasures and sparkling jewels? Would you take that journey?

Would you trust those who have made their way there before you to give you the support and guidance necessary to find your pot of gold? I ask you to imagine this scenario because exposing the lie of your story and revealing the secret of your shadow can look as dark and scary as sailing into a turbulent storm.

This was true for Laura, a forty-six-year-old woman who has been in a bad marriage filled with pain, abuse, and emotional iso-lation for more than fifteen years. Everybody who knows Laura is all too familiar with her story: that her marriage is killing her spirit and that her husband doesn’t give her the love and attention she 204

T h e s e c r e t o f t h e s h a d o w deserves. Laura uncovered the shadow belief that held her story together, which echoed the words her father had spoken to her when she was just twelve years old:
You’ll never be anything without
a man.
Laura had been living that story for the past fifteen years of her life, as though she were a character in a play. When I asked her what secret that story concealed, she said with a smile, “That I am a powerful, independent woman who would be happier living on my own.” For a moment Laura stood tall and strong and had a powerful glow coming from her eyes. But within minutes she began to minimize the power of the words she had just spoken and slid back into her familiar story. In the end, Laura was too afraid to let go of the drama she knew so well and opted instead to keep her secret hidden behind the veil of her story.

As is often the case, we sabotage our dreams in the attempt to fit back into the confines of our stories. This is a choice that each of us has to make. We must ask ourselves, “Am I willing to go through some discomfort in order to experience the magnificence of my light, or would I rather stay in the comfort of what I know?”

We are the only ones who can tell ourselves it’s safe to be in the world without the comfort of our stories. We are the only ones who can make it safe to expose our precious gifts.

D i s c o v e r i n g Y o u r T r u e E s s e n c e Our stories are the imprint of our existence. They are the unique mark that we leave in this world. When I met Matt he was thirty-two years old, attending his twenty-seventh self-help seminar, and 205

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w suffering from low self-esteem and feelings of unworthiness. He stood six feet tall, with long blond hair that hung in his face. My first thought about Matt was,
What is he hiding?
I took my hand, pushed his hair out of his face, and asked him what I could do for him. He immediately began telling me his past. He grew up fatherless in a small town and always felt defective because he didn’t have a “real” family. Never having much money, he learned early in life how to do without. When Matt was seven years old his mother got into a relationship, which took some of her attention away from him. It was then, Matt told me, that his real problems began. Matt went on for about an hour about how he had gotten into trouble with the law and how by the age of fourteen he was living on the street, hustling to survive. When he was finally faced with a life-threatening case of hepatitis, Matt decided he’d better clean up his act. He began working and saving money, committed to making something of his life.

In his twenties Matt went into the real-estate business, eventually doing well enough that he could buy small houses of his own, fix them up, and sell them for a profit. By the time he was twenty-five he owned over one hundred properties, and by the age of twenty-eight he had finally made it in the big world. With a million dollars in the bank, he began doing bigger projects, and by the time he was thirty-two he had met all his financial goals. But still he suffered. The illusion that having more money or property would bring him happiness was gone, and now he sat before me wondering what to do next. Despite his success, he still found himself engaging in self-sabotaging behaviors, hanging out in places where he didn’t want to be, and he couldn’t find fulfillment in his 206

T h e s e c r e t o f t h e s h a d o w personal relationships. Even though he had made it in the material world, inside Matt still felt there was something wrong with him.

Matt was lost, wondering where to go and what to do to find the peace he was looking for.

When Matt was finished telling me his tale, I took his hand, looked him in the eye, and told him that the first thing he should do was get a haircut. It was obvious he didn’t want anyone to really see him. His hair helped to hide the secret that lay beneath his story that deep down there was something wrong with him. I asked Matt when he was going to stop taking courses and begin teaching them. Matt cocked his head, wrinkled his brow, and looked at me like I was crazy. That was the end of our first meeting.

For the next couple of years I coached Matt on and off. I was taken aback by how bright, sensitive, and intuitive he was. He seemed to have boundless love for all of humanity except himself.

Matt constantly tortured himself with his noisy internal dialogue, which screamed, “You’re no good, you’re defective, and your life doesn’t make a difference.” Matt would begin most of our sessions by telling me about all the awful things he was up to. He told me that living on the streets at such a young age had made him feel unclean. He had seen too much and done too much, which led him to think about himself as sleazy, damaged, and worthless. Matt’s focus was always on what didn’t work about himself rather than what did. Little by little I was able to help Matt peel away all the stories that concealed his true essence.

It was obvious to me that Matt was a deeply spiritual man with a great gift to give the world. When I believed he was finally ready to see this about himself, I asked him, “What is the secret that your 207

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w story conceals?” Matt looked confused. “I wouldn’t even begin to know myself without my story,” he answered. I sensed that Matt was afraid of looking deeper, so I shared with him the secret my early life story had been concealing. I told him that when I was young and in the clothing business I hung out with a fast crowd whose mantra was “Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll.” I wanted people to think I was tough and that I knew it all. All I showed in the outer world was my desire for money and status. I spent years trying to hide my sensitivity and my longing for something more. It just didn’t seem cool. When I had finally outworn that story I had the sense that I would find peace in a spiritual life. As I grew, I uncovered my deep desire to know God. In the beginning I was embarrassed and ashamed, because being a woman of God certainly didn’t fit my image. I didn’t want people to know that I was driven to my knees in prayer and that I longed to be an instrument of the Divine. I shared with Matt that the story of my life hid the secret of who I really was. It concealed the truth: that I am a woman of God and I love it.

I could see by the look in Matt’s eyes that he understood what I was asking of him. I asked him to take a deep breath and close his eyes, and again I asked the question: “What secret is your story hiding?” With his eyes still closed, Matt blurted out, “The secret that my story is hiding is that I am an innocent and pure expression of spirit.” He then opened his eyes and we both sat silent for a long moment, amazed at what had just been revealed. I could see from the clarity in his eyes that he had just connected with his Divine truth. With tears rolling down his checks Matt told me how inside his story he had always seen himself as rotten, sleazy, and dam-208

T h e s e c r e t o f t h e s h a d o w aged—the exact opposite of what he had just heard himself say. In the presence of his purity, Matt was able to see that he could contribute his specialty and give back to the world by teaching what he had learned. Before that moment, Matt had always discounted his wisdom and knowledge, choosing to be a follower and not a leader. But in the presence of his light, Matt was able to see his specialty: teaching teenage boys who are lost and alone how to bring forth their special gifts into the world. Matt had uncovered something very real and very holy. He had revealed the secret hidden in the shadow of his story.