getting cozy with the not self

CULTIVATE AWARENESS

A big part of deconditioning is simply recognizing + bringing awareness. Shadow wants to keep us in the dark and our ego running the show. Not Self patterns may be intricately woven through conditioning. This can create deep set default settings. We begin the process of healing by simply acknowledging them. We find our way home to ourselves, we become more whole.

Begin by taking inventory. Shadow work is constantly evolving. We may have certain Shadows or elements of Not Self rearing their heads right now, but as cosmic weather shifts, as we shift, as we move through the world, our inner or outer landscape changes, this brings others to the forefront. We can start by getting really clear, in this moment, about what we do now know is not serving us and write them out; cultivating curiousity and peeling the onion. What are the settings, limiting beliefs, shadows or fears at their core. A lot of shadows are formed before the age of 7 when something happened that shamed us into disowning or stuffing that part of us down away from the light, but we can carry Shadow from all manner of experience, we can carry them in our DNA, which we explore in our Design. Our HD and astrology can be helpful places to see where low vibrations may arise. We can also carry conditioning from societal homogenization, from the people we encounter, the view imposed on us or that we adopt, and from those we grew up around, etc...

INVITING CONSCIOUSNESS

• What triggers fight, flight, or freeze in your body?

• When is sensation in your body triggered; your face flushes, you feel rising heat in the body, your heart rate increases, you get a stomach ache, you seek distraction, detach or numb out? What happened right before?

• What ancestral + cultural wounds might you be carrying with you?

• What is the dialogue in your head (or your harsh narrator) when you’re feeling your lowest?

• What part of you arises when you’re feeling threatened or insecure?

• What is your default reaction when faced with conflict?

• Where are you impulisve in your reactions?

• Where is there a victim or hero complex?

• When do you experience confusion?

• When do you shut down and contract? Where can you practice safely expanding instead?

• When do you react from a childlike place?

• What irritates you about others? Many times these qualities are our own shadows to reflect on.

• See if you recognize any of the Shadow characteristics in your defined centers or from the Fear modules inside The Collective and your defined GATES through The Meeting Ground (if you’re a member). Our Moon, Chiron, Saturn, Nodes + Lilith can also be great places to begin, to notice the parts we turn away from but which can actually carry and express great power.

• Visit the prompts in Open Centers to explore conditioning that may live there.

• Explore the charts of your parents (and siblings). Do they have any centers defined that you have open? How may this have conditioned you growing up? Is it still influencing you?

• What were the expectations from society that you took on as truth?

Once we acknowledge it, we can begin to release it, integrate it, own it, transform it and in effect take our power back. We recognize that we all have access to the spectrum of feelings. With Shadows we see that we can all be evil under the right circumstances; maybe to protect someone we love. We can call feel ignorant. We can all be loud and obnoxious (one of my shadows, I recognize it because it irritates me in others). The entirety of the human experience exists within each of us. When we acknowledge it we own what part of it is true; under what circumstances we could/would embody that trait.

We can bring these qualities and archetypes through the prompts and practices to release, to integrate, to accept. And we can ask ourself what are the hidden gifts within. There is always that contrast to what we’re experiencing. Everything exists in its high and low vibration. There is a lot of talk about the state of the world right now and how dark it seems (especially with how inundated we are with news from all around the world); there is also an incredible amount of light, awareness, and consciousness rising up. To the degree we experience one, we will experience the other. As above, so below. We often fear our light more than our darkness. And therefore we stuff the parts of us that can shine the brightest into the shadows of our existence to continue to play small. This is something to consider when deep diving in - what parts exist because you are afraid of truly standing in your power? Of shining your light?

Use the tools to bring greater awareness and ultimate wholeness. It’s when we leave these qualities to run amok in the unconscious; ignoring, shoving them to the side, judging them, becoming solid with ones that are not ours, that they wreak havoc. When we bring them into our consciousness, we get to see the the exquisitely beautiful mess that they are. We begin to release the low vibrations, the Not Self and to see that often our darkest shadows are tied to our most beautiful gifts.

When we are willing to step into the uncomfortableness of exploring our Not Self we access the whole of our truth. We can see what we are not by seeing what we truly are (our definition) or we can unpack it the other direction, recognizing the pieces that are not us to chisel away toward our true authentic selves. We can reframe Shadows by recognizing their offerings and their medicine. We get to really know ourselves. No part of us goes unseen. This is well being. This is how we truly love ourselves.

A.M. PRACTICE

You can also begin this process by doing a Fear Dump. Get up every morning and write out your fears + worries: are you afraid someone will see you a certain way, are you afraid of being an imposter, are you afraid of feeling judged for xyz, of being perceived as weak, ignorant, selfish etc.. When you write out your fears, dig deeper to the underlying feeling if it’s not immediately present. Often times we find our shadows living here.

Notice

We can step into our Shadow frequencies out of fear. There is growth happening, evolution, creation in our life and we get uncomfortable in this place of change. I heard someone once compare it to a hermit crab shedding our too small home, and while we’re in this process of searching and finding our new, bigger, but unfamiliar container, we can get freaked out. We feel vulnerable, unsure and unsafe. We are not trusting, open, to the infinite possibilities. If we don’t acknowledge our feelings, act out of fear, or stuff it down then we are stopping the forward movement of co-creation and alignment with our higher self. We are continuing to feed the low vibe frequency of shadow and we will stay in survival rather than thriving.

BRING YOUR SHADOWs THROUGH

JOURNAL PROMPTS

1. What am I experiencing? What am I most fearful will be true or that others will see in me?

2. What story do I have around this feeling?

3. What does this story have to do with me? Say about me?

4. Is it true? Is there a part of it that could be true? What’s the worst that can happen if it is?

5. If yes, can I change it and/or reframe it? How does this trait/behavior also equal positive, helpful qualities when not operating from its low vibe expression. What gift does it offer you? How does it help you in your life?

6. What would I prefer to experience? Can both things exist at the same time? The law of duality says that they do. Love cannot exist without hate. Light without dark.

7. How could I re-write my story for the future me?

8. Could it be possible this version of me already exists? What action, thought or belief can I embody to bring myself closer to this new integrated reality?