Step Five
INTEGRATING SHADOW
You must integrate your shadow to step into your magnetism.
Now that you have a pretty decent list of rejected aspects of yourself, let’s begin integrating them. I implore you to continue adding to your list until the end of time. You can always refer back to it and take each aspect through these next few steps. But for the sake of time and depth, I ask you to choose one to three of your denied aspects of self that you find to be the hardest and most emotionally charged to you. For instance, mine are: “fraud,”"scarcity" and “controlling bitch.”
JOURNAL
Cognitive Awareness Integration. Journal in depth to each question for your aspect.
i. When have I been _____ (controlling) in the past?
ii. Am I being ______ (controlling) now?
iii.Ask others if they've ever experienced me being ____ (controlling) in the past?
LISTEN
Close your eyes & listen.
JOURNAL
i. When did you reject this aspect of self?
ii. Who did you pick it up from? Or who shamed you? Or who did you watch getting shamed?
iii. What judgments came up for you?
iv. Make a list of all the times you consciously remember being this aspect.
v. Just write freely. Write about any emotion surrounding it.
ACTION
(do NOT skip these)
MIRROR
i. Stand in front of the mirror, look yourself in the eye, and say the word out loud with “I am” before it until it loses its charge.
ii. If you are a very cerebral person like me, take yourself into meditation and picture yourself saying it in front of the mirror. This activates more emotional awareness and accuracy for me.
iii. Or, if you are lucky enough to have a buddy going through this workshop with you, hop on a call or FaceTime and mirror each other. Say the aspect is "failure" for you. Your partner would say, "you're such a failure" and then you would mirror by saying "I'm sure a failure." Continue this until the aspect loses its charge and it feels like saying, "the sky is blue." Again, you'll know you're working with the most activating aspect because you will have an intense emotional reaction to it (crying, massive anger, fear, mortified...).
Mirror Example
I process this with clients all the time. I'll know that we've finally hit the aspect because most of the time uncontrollable tears will well up. I'll bring up the person I know whose opinion matters the most to them, and I'll ask, “hat if that person said this or that about you.” I just did it the other day with one of my favorite clients and now friend. Her word was "pathetic," which was so shadowy because she's the least pathetic person I know.
I said, "Ugh, you're so pathetic," and hardly able to speak with sobs, she said, "I'm so pathetic." I said, "You're such a failure because you're so pathetic." Continuing to fight through the emotions she said, "I'm such a failure because I'm so pathetic." I said, "Ew, you're so disgustingly pathetic." By the fourth time or so, she started to ease up on the emotion and said, "Ew, I'm so disgustingly pathetic." By the end she was laughing to the point where it felt like she was saying, “The sky is blue.” It lost all of its charge. This is very important for killing the shadow and integrating. It must lose its emotional charge. We're all pathetic. We all inhabit that part of the human spectrum. For some, it's a core shame and fear. For others, it's as nonchalant as saying, "I am who I am."
With this particular amazing client, she has been manifesting a partner (and has been single) for quite some time. We uncovered during her session that her whole life she had been told, "You're always boy crazy. All you care about are boys and their attention, etc." This was coming from jealous peers because they were fearful that their partners would like her. She had never had trouble attracting partners until moving to her current big city. The night before she left, her stepmother (who was under the influence) told her, "All you care about are boys, and you are going to end up ruining your life and becoming nothing because of them." This was her stepmother's exact shadow projected onto this client.
This client is very ambitious and that comment was enough to be the last straw to shame this aspect right into her shadow. She very soon broke up with her then long distance partner, and she hasn't had a deep dating experience since. It's been years. She's gone to multiple energy workers and even had bio-feedback, where each have told her the same thing, "You don't subconsciously want a relationship. You're blocking it."
When we boiled down all the shame she had received from mostly jealous women about her "boy crazy behavior," words/essence/aspects like: "slut," "needy," and "attention seeker" didn't hit the bone. Once I asked her what her ex partner – the one she broke up with because she was scared of turning into a failure when she moved to this city – would say to her if he saw her right now? She said, "pathetic" and burst into tears.
This is her shadow, and "pathetic" has been what she has been subconsciously projecting to the world the last few years. She's been subconsciously dodging male attention because she doesn't want to end up being a pathetic loser. Male attention has caused her so much pain and rejection with other females since she wants to be loved by them and not a threat, so she has subconsciously hid from male attention. And now you can see how she's been BLOCKED from attracting in a relationship. You can "visualize" a partner and "think positive" until you're blue in the face (as spiritual bypassing traditional manifestation New Age jargon tells you to do) but nothing is going to show up when your beliefs (subconscious) are really projecting this BLOCK.
***I love you brave lady. Thank you for letting me use you as an example for everyone else to learn from.
*Adapted from Light Chasers
EXPANDERS TO KEEP YOU GOING
“Hi Lacy, thank you for such a great workshop. I’ve moved towards a greater sense of myself and recognized the root of my thought patterns in only one week of taking your course (I was seeing a life coach for two years and never found this type of clarity). I found “friending” my shadows one of the biggest ways to relieve anxiousness and feel more whole and confident in myself. I also realized all of the ways I’ve been tested the past year in relationships, which is one specific pattern of dating unavailable men. After having an ex boyfriend come back more than three times and continuing to try, I’ve finally moved forward and am waiting for someone who matches my self worth. Anyway, thank you again! Xo”