Tag: shadow self

Posted in Inspiration, Storytelling, The Truth of our Being, transformation

Your Story

Posted on by Amenet Drago

We all have a story. Some of us were born to live it and then to tell it. Some of us may never choose to share. But it’s there.

For some, it’s an anchor, defining us. Perhaps, limiting us, and yet, should we expand beyond it, it becomes a testament to our growth, our healing and fulfilment.

Don’t be your story, don’t get stuck there.

By telling your story, whether publicly or privately, you can free the energy, then move forward anew.

It has played a part in creating you, and yet, your truth is so far beyond it to make it irrelevant.

Allow your truth to find you and then look back at your unique journey and story with a knowing smile.

Knowing that’s not you anymore, knowing your story no longer defines you. Knowing how far you’ve come.

Posted in shadow self, spiritual skills and techniques

Darkness, My Friend

Posted on by Amenet Drago

The point about darkness is to claim it, then you are safe.

Darkness is not something to fear or run away from but to embrace. We can only do that safely when we have claimed and owned our power. It doesn’t matter whether the darkness is coming from inside ourselves, from somebody else or from the invisible realms, same applies.

Darkness is only a threat when we are not standing in our power, when we leave ourselves open or give our power away. Know how to do that, to stand in your power, to create your boundaries, to protect yourself and call back what power you lose. You do that with heartfelt intent, with your true voice, with your directed willpower and focused emotion. You do that from the centre of your power.

If we give our power away to darkness, we are giving ourselves away. If we stand in our power with darkness all around us, we are safe to experience the secrets and magical gifts that darkness has for us.

This is a part of who we are, we are both light and dark and we are not in balance until we have learnt to claim our power and walk through the dark night.

Posted in Inspiration, Personal Story

I Celebrate You and I Celebrate Me

Posted on by Amenet Drago

I am in my centre, my truth and my truth is love.  Let love flow from my heart, from every cell and pore of my body and being.  Let love be my song, let my words speak only of love, let my eyes see only love and may all that I touch be imbued with love. 

I have been talking about my truth which is a part of my personal journey towards myself, towards my centre, my truth.  I feel that this journey is a spiral, in the sense that we keep coming back to it at higher levels.  Even when we feel we know ourselves, have found ourselves, connected to ourselves, that we are in our centre, our truth, there is still going to come an opportunity in the future for a greater level of clarity and completeness to unfold.  A greater depth, a greater truth to be touched. 

I am at the beginning of my journey, relatively speaking, I’ve spent most of my life in a major state of disassociation with myself. So, for me at the moment, it’s an incredible experience to feel so much more connected with myself, to sense myself when I’m standing at my centre, and I feel so blessed, I feel like celebrating.

I am celebrating myself and as I say that, the first thought that pops into my awareness from my persona is the shame or wrongness of celebrating oneself, the guilt, the selfishness of celebrating oneself.  But it isn’t wrong, shameful or guilty, it isn’t selfish.  It is, in fact, self love.  I do it not at the expense of anyone else, I do it in such an all-encompassing way as to be inclusive of everyone, as if to say, “I am here and I am celebrating myself.  Why don’t you celebrate yourself?  Why not?  Let’s all celebrate ourselves, let’s all love ourselves to the extent that we are in celebration of who we are, what we are, what our truth is and where we are in our lives, where we are in our truth.” 

So, perhaps I might inspire you to do the same. And in celebrating myself, I celebrate and own all my incredible achievements and qualities, I accept all the compliments that have ever been given me, I don’t dismiss or diminish them. I acknowledge that many of my gifts have arisen as strategies for my coping with wounds and traumas.

For example, as a little girl I spent a huge amount of time reading books.  At every opportunity, I was to be found with a book.  I lived in my imagination, either in the imaginative world of a story book, or daydreaming in my personal creation of story, where everything was beautiful and perfect, where I could be special and loved.  And the consequence is that through my saturation into the written word I became skilled at writing, which has become one of my gifts and is my preferred medium for communicating.   

I see now that I had my head in books because my life was so difficult, it was escapism and I chose to pour myself into my art because I was desperate to be liked and appreciated and it was a way I could achieve a sense of admiration. 

I think it’s true for many of us that in adversity our gifts come to the fore, they become our gifts because they work for us as a way of coping with our wounds and traumas.  It may be the reason a person becomes a comedian, a musician, a magician, a naturalist or astronaut; to feel popular, impress a parent, escape from reality. 

That’s very much the interplay of the dark and the light, the shadows and sunshine that are our lives.  We celebrate ourselves today with everything that we are, with the dark that we are and the light that we are.  With the pains, problems and difficulties that we bear and the blessings, gifts and abundance that enrich us.  So much of it all is simply a matter of perspective, simply a question of how we choose to look at ourselves and our lives.  Let’s celebrate.  There’s always something to celebrate within ourselves.  Celebrate us, our life, being alive and all that we hold in our hearts, all our gifts and talents, all our strengths and all of the challenges that bring us to places of growth and learning.  I celebrate you and I celebrate me.   

Posted in inner child, shadow self, spiritual skills and techniques

Loving Your Shadow Self

Posted on by Amenet Drago

Are you aware of your shadow self? We all have one. S/he is the one that comes out when we are triggered by one of those situations that always triggers us. When we feel attacked or judged or criticised or misunderstood by that key person. All of a sudden, we are on auto-pilot. There’s no longer any of that slow, careful thought process, only the pin-point accuracy of absolute knowing that we need to attack back or defend forcefully – NOW!

The key person is always a person that really matters to us, it’s only within their power to take us to this hot place, if it was anybody else we wouldn’t give a damn. But when it’s them, our fundamental self is being threatened. They have to love us, protect us, be good to us. If they attack us or make us feel small, where does that leave us? We are doomed, all our fears are realised.

And there it is. We are in one of those horrifying situations again with one we love dearly, maybe one we love/hate, because we can love and hate a person at the same time.

The shadow self shouts, screams, wails, flails. The shadow self self-destructs, self-sabotages. The shadow self is the wound being expressed, the trauma of that delicate, tiny, innocent, bewildered, perfect inner child that was subject to such shocking attacks and judgement and criticism and misunderstandings themselves, when little more than a toddler.

Do you know your shadow self? Do you know of whom I speak? Do you recognise this part of you? What do you think of her or him? Are you disgusted? Do you love or hate your shadow self?

When s/he comes out, she is in opposition with the one that triggered her. Is that your dear and loving partner? Who is that for you? Maybe a bosom friend, a parent? A daughter or son? And what that does is, more often than not, trigger their shadow self. Now we have two people, usually loving and caring, suddenly at each other’s throats, flinging words like weapons, attempting to throw a killer blow right into the heart of the enemy. You know those times, right? There are more and more of those situations happening these days because we are all bringing everything to the surface. Suddenly you are facing the dark side of your loved one, the one that you cannot reason with, anymore than they can reason with you, at such a time as this.

So much damage.  So much hurt.  So hard.  You cannot accept each other at this time.  You hate each other at this time and later, you feel shame and hate yourself, hate your dark side, your shadow self. 

You need your loved one to love all of you, you need your loved one to love even your shadow self, but they won’t be able to until they love their own. And you won’t be able to love theirs until you love yours.

Can you do it? Can you see your shadow self in all her darkness and love her? Can you accept her fully? Embrace her? She just wants to be loved, like the rest of you. To be wanted. Can you look into the face of your beloved one’s shadow self and love them?

Next time you find yourself in one of these toxic situations where you are not being your best, remember that it is your wound talking, the wound of a little child that should have been loved, so innocent and undeserving of the trauma they received.  How can you not love that part of you?  They did nothing wrong, it wasn’t fair that they were hurt so deeply, so young.  Please love this part of you.  Please see the hurt child in your partner, your loved one.  Please find a way to find each other, to hold each other, to heal each other together, even at the worst of times, even when the wound is triggered.  You are both so deserving.  It was never about you.  It’s time to change our fear into love, together. 

(Photo courtesy of Huff Post)        

altered states of consciousness, hypnopompic, hypnagogic
Posted in Inspiration, Personal Story

Diving For The Light

Posted on by Amenet Drago

Like many others, I’ve had the kind of life where I lived in darkness a lot of the time.  A difficult childhood that felt lonely and full of fear.  An adulthood marked by dysfunction, trauma and wounding; from my childhood, the family legacy of generational abuse and probably trauma from past lives as well.  Such a lot to process and this is a part of the reason I didn’t have children, I knew deep down I needed to clear myself of all these burdens and their disruptive patterns so that I didn’t pass them on anymore and it took way longer than my child-bearing years to do it.  For the most part, I did good.  And I learnt how to dive for the light.

We usually say ‘reach for the light’, don’t we?  Reach for the stars.  Diving for the light is different, diving for the light means going down into the dark to get to the light.

Imagine you are treading water in a deep mountain lake in the middle of a moonless night.  The only way you have any sense of where you are is because the bottom half of your body is in water and the top part is in air.  Now, imagine taking a great, deep breath and diving down. 

There was a day when I nearly watched my husband drown. He was in the sea and there were others on the beach and in the sea. The tide was coming in and there was a sand bar. The sand bar made the waves bigger and rougher, they looked playful but what was not visible was the rip tide under the surface. My husband and a young girl became caught in the rip tide, they were desperately trying to swim to shore, touch their feet on the bottom, but as much as they tried, they didn’t move an inch. I watched and saw them both get tired. I screamed to him to grab the girl and swim out to sea, to break away from the rip tide, not fight against it, but he couldn’t hear me above the sound of the waves and the noise of people playing all around. Nobody else seemed to notice them, so I screamed louder at everybody around me, I screamed out and pointed that my husband and the girl were drowning, because they were. They were both rescued but not before they each accepted that their life was going to end there and then, they had nothing left to fight with. It hadn’t occurred to my husband to swim out to sea, it seemed completely contrary to common sense, he continued striving for the shore and was going to die trying to reach it.

Sometimes, we have to do the opposite to what our instinct says in order to find what we need to survive.  And that’s what it means to dive for the light.  We dive into the darkness because that is where light is born.  It means being able to accept the darkness, being able to love the darkness.  It means we don’t get upset with the hard days of pain or sadness, we embrace them.  We don’t feel like victims but like survivors.  We don’t feed our story of trauma but allow it to unfold.  We don’t hide our wounds but celebrate them. We don’t stay in the dark, because we know how to find the light in it.   

Posted in Inspiration, Personal Story

Going Through The Darkness

Posted on by Amenet Drago

How bad can it get, the dark side?  How bad has it got for me?  How bad has it got for you?  How wounded are we?  How damaged do we feel? 

I and several others I know, to varying degrees, have been through the dark night of the soul.  That dark night might last years, which is a long time to believe you are losing it, that you have finally flipped and no longer have a grip in normality or sanity.  Days of lethargy, anxiety and dread, nights of despair, deep depression and profound aloneness.  Losing the ability to perceive truth from illusion, to know your own mind, to trust your instincts.  Losing perspective and one’s inner compass.  Losing stability, balance and grounding.  Losing hope, faith and love.  Arriving in a dark hole where the only thought you have is the deep desire to not live another day.  You wonder if it’s time to see a psychiatrist and take the drugs, if you haven’t already, you cleanse your home and all your possessions for fear you’ve been cursed.  And you pray, oh, how you pray, not realising your prayers were always being answered, even though, no, because nothing changed.  Yeah, it got bad enough. 

When I felt like that, day after day, I felt like a failure.  I believed I was worthless and that nobody could possibly love me.  But then, I couldn’t love myself.  I was supposed to be strong, to be spiritually evolved (huh) and I was supposed to be better than that (yeah, I know).  That’s in the past, but not that long ago and I write about it now because, if you are or ever have felt like this, I want you to know you are not the only one and it’s a lot more common than you would believe. 

And it does end, however bad, crazy, difficult it gets, it’s okay.  Don’t fight, just let it flow and be with it.  Hold space for it, as crazy as that may sound.  If you can, it will be over sooner and you will learn and heal faster.  I was slow on the uptake, I was a fighter, I made a lot of fuss and indulged in my suffering like a fool.  I always did take the long road.  I know better now, at least, I’ll find out the next time it comes around.  At the time, everything went out the window.  The darkness obscured it all.  I got involved you see, engaged with pity, fed my story and indulged my victim self.  I listened to my inner judge and fought like a wild animal when I should have lain down with it like a lamb, sat with it, invited it in, loved it as the teacher it was.

Now, I look back over that time and can see the lessons, I see the landscape I walked through and how I was finally unburdened by my journey through darkness.  Now I know every moment was a gift, truly. I called for it, I asked for the fast-track to my spiritual evolution and got it.  Now, I can say I love myself and finally, I no longer give myself away. Now, I will meet you in a space called love and share my light, my energy, but it won’t deplete me because I am whole and there is nothing I need that I can’t find inside of me.                          

Posted in Inspiration

Darkness and Light: Embracing our Whole Selves

Posted on by Amenet Drago

Light and darkness has been surfacing a lot lately and I started pondering, what do we mean by light and darkness?  What is it?  As I asked the question, the answer came.  It’s time to take a deeper look. 

I perceive myself and you as a light-being, a soul made of light. The light that we are is an extension from the source. Let’s imagine that the light from the source, of which we are made, is white light. As we live our lives and experience ourselves and the world, we manifest and create our reality. Sometimes, what we create is vibrating in harmony with the source, let’s call that pink light. We also create experiences, energies and expressions that are limitations, boundaries, blockages. Not negative, they simply do not harmonise with the source. The dark side is anything that creates separation from the source, our wounds, our sense of separateness, not accepting our truth, all created by ourselves. Let’s call this blue light. Darkness and light, the blue and pink light, are both made from the source but have been created by us because we have free will to use the source and manifest our own creations.

We are inclined to shun our dark side when we would do better to accept and explore it, welcome it. Through acceptance, what is dark transforms to light. It is a teacher, we are learning who we are, unfolding our truth and the dark energies we create are showing us the way. If we ignore the dark side of ourselves and simply try to bathe in our light, we are shunning a big part of who we are and if we do that, we become unbalanced.

We exist in two worlds, the physical and energetic, and we exist with two kinds of energy, the dark and the light.  When we focus on the light, we expand, we experience the limitless quality of our existence, connect with our divine nature and this is enlightening, but that is not all we are.  By exploring our limitations and blockages we can be guided by the energy, accept our physical nature and recognise that working with the dark is what reveals the light. 

When we go into our darkness, we bring our light to it. Let’s not be afraid of our dark side, let’s embrace it, it is a valid and important part of who we are. Whether we created our darkness or someone else did, let’s accept it and hold space for our darkness to heal and integrate. By recognising and accepting our darkness, we are healing ourselves.

Posted in Inspiration, Personal Story

Transforming the Burdens of your Shadow Self

Posted on by Amenet Drago

I feel a compulsion to talk about our shadow self, it feels important at this time, not only for me but for all of us.  Our shadow self isn’t our evil twin, the one who holds our negative and nasty side, we are not talking about a dark and dangerous version of ourselves.  When I talk to people about journeying to meet their shadow self, some are scared or wary.  They shouldn’t be.  Our shadow selves are in pain, they need our love and support.  They’ve been holding all the stuff we could not face whilst living our day to day life and it’s time to take some of those burdens away and transform the energy into unconditional love. 

Our shadow self exists to hold all the things we have done that we don’t feel good about, in this life and other lives.  All those transgressions, things we’re not proud of, whether actions, thoughts or feelings.  Our shadow self is also holding all the hurt and damage that others have given us, things we could not manage whilst trying to live in this world.  Maybe we were bullied, criticised, abused, traumatised.  Do you ever think, “If I look back at my life and the things I’ve been through, it’s surprising I’m as sane and healed as I am”?  Well, that’s down to your shadow self.

Today, I felt like crying and with that feeling came the thought of my shadow self, so I sat and called her, visualising her sitting back to back with me and asked her if she had any burdens she was ready to let go of.  She gave me an energy and I passed it through my entire being, not missing a molecule.  Then, I brought it in front of my face and confronted it fully.  I found that this energy was hatred and disgust for myself.  I was shocked, I had no idea that I held hatred and disgust for myself, she was holding it for me and I didn’t know.  But it was there, a part of who I am and she was carrying it, my beloved redeemer. When I thought about it later, I could see how this energy was the voice of significant others, one in particular, a voice I had let in and energised. Whether they had really felt those feelings towards me or I had assumed them, I knew I had let this energy in.  

So, I summoned the vortex of transformation and change, placed the energy inside the vortex and watched it twist and turn, doing somersaults until a heart came flying out, filled with love, which I brought into my heart chakra.  Each time I put something into that vortex, a different form of beauty and love emerges. 

I’ve got more business with my shadow self, I know she is holding a few things that I can relieve her of right now and I love her so much for all that she is, I am so grateful to her for all that she does, it’s down to me to take these burdens off her and transform them into love.           

Posted in Celtic festival, Full Moon, Goddess, Uncategorized

The Special Moons Of October

Posted on by Amenet Drago

If, like me, you’re a moon lover, you are in for a treat this month of October.  It’s one of those rare months when there are two full moons.

Tonight, Thursday 1st October is the first, it’s the unique Harvest Moon, the name given to the full moon nearest to Mabon or Autumn Equinox.  Then, on 31st October, we get a second full moon called the Hunter’s Moon.  This is also a blue moon, being the second full moon in the same month.  That this takes place on the night of Halloween, or more precisely the Celtic festival of Samhain, (pronounced ‘sow-en’ as in the female pig with ‘en’ on the end) is extra special.

The Harvest moon and Hunter’s moon are the two moons of the year that usually rise closer to sunset, meaning we get more moonlight and that’s why farmers and hunters use these nights to get their work done.

There is a dark or hidden face of the Goddess that sits on the Wheel of the Year. This face can present itself at any point of the year as it appears with the blue moon.  Usually, there are twelve moons within a solar year but since the sun and moon’s cycles do not coincide, sometimes there’s an extra moon in the year.  This occurs because a calendar month is longer than a lunar cycle, so if a full moon takes place very early in the month there can be a second full moon at the end of the same month.  The thirteenth full moon of the year, the second within the same month, is associated with the dark or hidden face of the Goddess.

At the time of the blue moon, we can really connect to our own hidden, dark or shadow self.  It is a mistake to associate this with negativity, we are all part of the world of duality, we do well to embrace both the dark and light from which we are made, the yin and yang, for without one, the other does not exist.  Embracing this part of ourselves and working with the Goddess in this mysterious and deep aspect is extremely valuable.  This is clearing work and we all have unneeded energies to clear. It can be difficult as, in her hidden face, she is likely to bring challenges, but hugely rewarding in the longer term.

Personally, I associate the hidden face of the Goddess at the blue moon with the divine feminine energy of Sheela Na Gig, she definitely has the Crone energy about her and I will write more about that in my next post.  However, depending upon which quarter of the year the extra moon falls, she can be Maiden, Bride, Mother or Crone and also bring qualities that are passive, teacher or challenger energy.  Whichever she is, she comes to reveal aspects of ourselves that we may consciously or unconsciously be trying to hide.

This October 31st, she is appearing in the season of the Crone, the Wise Woman Elder archetype of the Goddess energy, and at Samhain, no less!  This is kick-ass timing and we are the ones getting our ass kicked. What an incredible synchronicity and I am so excited!  Samhain is the festival of the ancestors, the time we especially acknowledge our lineage and all the wisdom and learning that has gone before us and been handed down. The veil between the worlds is at its thinnest on this night.  We are our ancestors, this is especially true if you consider past lives, we lived as them, in all probability.  And when you factor in the eternal ‘now’, because when you take the illusion of time away it’s all happening now, you could say we are living all those lives, past and future, right now, all at the same. I don’t know how that works either, but I do believe it.