March 09 Empowerment
Empowerment comes with awareness of our whole personality. Acknowledgement of our strengths and weaknesses, our blind spots and our shadow is what moves us into an empowered space.
Although much of our work focuses on the dark aspects of our personalities it is not at all useful to forget that we are actually beings of light. As the quote says, our greatest fear is not our darkness but our light. Our natural state is one of empowerment, our shadow conceals our greatness not our darkness.
Most of us try to hide the parts of ourselves we don't like. There are two main reasons we disown parts of ourselves.
Firstly we disown aspects of our personality that we were told while growing up where "bad" or "unacceptable". "Good children don't behave like that." Even as adults we continue to unquestioningly accept these judgements even though they no longer apply to us and maybe where just our parents "stuff" and where not valid even when we were children. A very common example of this is ANGER. Children are frequently told it is "bad" to be angry; this is usually the result of the parent being uncomfortable with their own anger.
Secondly we try to hide aspects of our personality we think will cause other people to judge us adversely.
We internalize both our parent's messages and those from society as a whole. If an external judgement is accepted when we are emotionally vulnerable it will lodge in our unconscious and be accepted as truth. Much of our work is directed at freeing us from our internal critic who constantly rehashes the judgements we have accepted from our past.
It takes enormous energy to keep these parts of ourselves hidden. It involves constant vigilance. We need to be on our guard every minute of every day to stop ourselves acting or speaking in some way we believe to be unacceptable. In our work you gain an experience of a very different reaction to the revelation of your hidden shadow side. When you find you no longer need to keep a part of yourself hidden it releases the energy you have been using to conceal it for positive creative uses. You become empowered.
We are reluctant to release these hidden aspects of ourselves because we fear losing control. Interestingly when we reveal these parts of ourselves it is not control we lose but choice we gain.
When we are aware of what is actually driving us we are able to choose how to respond rather that allowing our subconscious to react without conscious thought.
When we are authentic we act responsibly. Being authentic is being true to ourselves. Being consciously aware of why we act and react the way we do enable us to build trust in ourselves. As we become more aware we begin to relax and trust ourselves more which releases more energy, we become more empowered.
We need to trust that exposing our shadow will be in our best interests. It can seem scary to start with, but once you experience the feeling of freedom and release your life will be changed forever.