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How do you let go of it?
Posted July 12th, 2009 by tgovernale1
In Reference to:
Practice: The 3-2-1 Shadow Process"We can only truly let go of something that we have first owned. Healthy disidentification is only possible once we have re-owned, re-associated, and re-identified with the disowned parts of ourselves."
Okay, I now re-own, re-associate, and re-identify with an aspect of my shadow that I wasn't aware of previsouly...now what happens? I know there's an experiential part of this...just do it and see, but theoretically, why am I able to let go or move beyond the negative aspects of my shadow.
Let's face it, if I'm accusing my wife of being a @#!%? from time to time, on the surface, it's counter-intuitive to want to own those traits for myself; however, I understand the theory that once I own them I am now empowered to move beyond them.
So please tell me how that works, how do I move beyond the negative aspects of my shadow once I re-associate with them? Does it just disolve? Are those traits now revealed in me and through observation dissapate? What work is required beyond re-owning?
Tom
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Reowning is the Key I Believe
Posted July 12th, 2009 by Brendan LaChanceObviously, the point of shadow work is to reown repressed or subconscious aspects of ourselves. I think I understand how you want to reown the feelings and let them go again. In my experience, it has been best to focus on the reowning of the shadow quality more so then letting it go. The reason for this as I internally perceive it is that it takes more energy to keep shadow material repressed than it does to allow it into your awareness.
Using 3-2-1 process, my experience has been sometimes as you describe; the material becomes reowned and then is natrually dissolved or let go of. But in about just as many cases, once I have reowned the shadow material, the feeling itself doesn't simply disappear or dissolve but remains in my awareness. The benefit here is that when shadow material is no longer unconscious, it loses its power over me because I can see where it is influencing me moment to moment. So holding those feelings in awareness provides much more freedom than keeping them in the subconscious. I know you probably already know all of this but the reason I am saying it is because I think we should not be too quick to want to get rid of reowned shadow material. After all, the way we got "rid" of them in the first place was to disown them. In our haste to be free of shadow materials we might risk re-repressing them (haha) which quite frankly I experience quite a bit. I find in my shadow work, I am often bringing up the same or similar material time and time again. One thing though is that once material has been brought back up, subsequent work on that same material seems to be much easier. The more I drill into my own shadow, the harder it seems to be for the material I do shake loose to conceal itself. One thing that helps me is to reread my journaling from time to time just to do a check-up if you will.
That all being said, to try to give an answer to your question, yes I think once material is rewoned it often natrually dissolves, transforms, etc. Once I have reowned material I personally usually leave it at that and let the rest of the process continue intuitively but I know some people like to continue working with reowned materials by trying to put that energy towards something else. Seems that in an integral practice, shadow work and spiritual work can be very complimentary. Though I do think this is true of my experience, I don't formally combine shadow work with meditation, these are officially separate practices for me, though there is of course plenty of implicit connections. As such, I can't really say about the effectiveness of a formal practice aiming to transform reowned shadow material other then to say that it theoretically makes sense to me.
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The 6 Rules for Change
Posted July 13th, 2009 by Greg MayersTom:
What a great question? Earlier in my life I ran into the same kinds of problems you describe. Here's what I discovered for myself - what to do and how it works. I've called it the 6 Rules for Change. It may not work for everyone, but it worked for me over the years...
How to proceed carefully and effectively in changing oneself.
1. The first rule is, don’t do anything to effect change in yourself. The specific characteristic or trait or flaw that you want changed - don’t do anything about it. The first rule of change isn’t what you do, it’s what you don’t do. The first rule of change is: leave it alone! Don’t scratch the scab.
2. The second rule is: notice it. Notice the characteristic or trait or flaw or whatever it is you want changed. Because we dislike it, we’ve failed to notice it. We only peak at bits and pieces of it. But we haven’t really seen it, itself. We haven’t let it have its time upon the stage of our awareness where it can strut and fret to its hearts desire. So, rule two is notice it fully and completely. Unfortunately, as one of my professors told us long ago: the truth will make you free, but first it will make you miserable.
3. Rule three is to abandon all hope that it will ever be different. You must come to the resignation that this is the way you are going to be until you are ten minutes in the grave. You feel your body and muscles relax when you reach this resignation. Some interior tension that radiates through the body releases and we know we no longer have to attend to this task of changing it again.
4. Rule four is to truly love it for itself, for it is exactly what it should be. Take a metaphor. If it is a limp, then it is suppose to limp around. That’s what limps are and they can be loved for what they are. This means we must learn to not only accept it with noble resignation, but we must learn to truly cherish and delight in it as it is in itself. You will know when you’ve learned to love it when it gives you innocent pleasure.
5. If you have followed rules 1 through 4 carefully, then rule five is: it will change on its own in the way it needs to change, but not in the way you want it to change. However, a caveat here is essential. You cannot engage rules 1 through 4 so that rule 5 will happen. In other words, you can’t use rules 1 through 4 as a personal strategy to get what you really wanted all along, namely rule 5 - it changes. Such an attitude sabotages the whole process.
6. When you find the trait you’ve rejected and despise coming back into play, rule 6 is: pray for or do a metta practice for all those people on the earth who are experiencing the exact same thing as you are currently trapped in. You will soon find yourself in the community of the angry, or terrified, or depressed, etc. praying for their happiness and peace of mind, and by extension, your own too. This will help you get out of that awful “self cycle” trap that can become so tediously self absorptive. And it will help you side step the fatal narcissism of spiritual perfectionism.
--
Greg Mayers
Zen taught me everything I can do.
Christianity taught me everything I can't do.
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You just do
Posted July 12th, 2009 by ChadAvalonAjahn Chah made an anology about meditation and life, and the simplified version is that we become hasty in our grabing the fruit from the tree and we end up eating sour fruit. Patience is required to know when to harvest wisely. If you have a centering practice, such as meditation, this truth can be easily seen, if not it can still be seen in normal everyday life in the form of letting impulses pass. When we grab the for the fruit and blame the tree for not rippening the fruit fast enough, we have experienced the shadow.
If you were to percieve you wife as a hot head and became fearful every time she raised her voice, and were then to realize, through a practice like 3-2-1 shadow process, that what you feared is your own bioling anger and rage, then you can now own that anger. Assuming ownership, you now know that you were the one grabing the fearful fruit from the tree and it was not her anger that actually made you fearful (stupid angry tree). After a little bit of experiencing the anger as your own anger, you then have concious control of what to do with that anger. But again, we can grab too low from the tree and act impulsively out of that anger! However, it is no longer your environment that threatens you, it is only yourself and you are now aware of this. This anger can then, through spiritual practice, be transmuted into a different energy. Most likely in the case of anger, it becomes an integrity defending energy rather than an explosive uncontrolable force.
Hopefully this is helpful in a practical way, although I did not specifically address you request for the theoretical question.