We are all shadowed by shame. We don’t always know it.
Shame makes us tell stories to ourselves that we’re not troubled so we don’t have to face our shame; but, however subconscious, we are ashamed of ourselves and often apologize for our existence.
We strive to “be somebody” to achieve, and to be the most ideal person imaginable, because we hope to do so would release us from the shame we have of ourselves.
We doubt we are worthy of Love. We doubt our worth, questioning if we are “enough”
Our shame makes us our own enemy. We defeat ourselves in advance.
We manifest our fear of not being enough into a self-fulfilling prophesy. We feel insecure about our validity, doubtful about our place in people’s lives.
Otherwise we overachieve to compensate but the tremendous energy expended in achieving doesn’t help the heart unless the work is inspired.
While people who have suffered challenging childhoods or abuse often have a more intense struggle around shame, it is a natural consequence of the human conditioning of us all.
We come into this world Innocent and ignorant of Life. All powerful beings (parents) orient us to this strange world. Without them we would be helpless and lost. These (hopefully) beneficent Beings guide us to what they believe we should think and know about the world. They exert a will for us to aspire to their values and guidance about the world.
To meet their expectations, seeking Love and Acceptance, we conceive of the most ideal self we could be, and begin judging ourselves about how we don’t meet our idealized criteria.
Shame is born from the friction between who we think we are and who we think we should be.
Both these misunderstandings need to be transmuted for the sake of wholeness and for healing to occur.
You are not who you think you are, and who you think you “should be” is a mirage.
For those whose parents were all too human and troubled, forms of abuse or neglect create wounds in our relationship with ourselves that are more intense. We feel that we are damaged. We might on a childish level have even thought we brought the abuse on ourselves.
The hidden blessing is that those who have suffered abuse to some degree are also the ones most likely to be aware of their wounds and seek healing and evolution to ease the painful situation.
“Normal People” are those who are simply living from their conditioned mindset without question. It is a numbed awareness and a state of general Dis-ease. The person sleeps through life until an intense event pushes them to seek their Spirit, or else they learn lessons slowly through experience after experience.
One approach people take in healing is to attempt to heal each wound and issue from childhood and the past. It’s a beautiful process to ever explore and clear ourselves, and our emotional, psychic space. It’s a part of life, like brushing our teeth, or getting some exercise, to clear our emotional wounds as they arise.
The events of life bring our lessons. Our events and lessons are reflections of things that are unresolved in us. That ongoing healing is always on our path.
But to really release shame, one of the most powerful things you could do for yourself, you need a new relationship with your very Being.
You don’t “Have” a Soul. You “Are” a Soul.
Your essence is pure Love and Divine Light.
This is the imperishable “I” which will never leave you. This Divine Self of yours never has any reason to be ashamed. It shines of it’s own Light and is priceless and perfect.
You will in time find your way back to “Being” that Divine Soul that you are. This is the evolution and journey of Souls through life.
The person you think you are is a collection of self-referential thoughts, beliefs, and memories. This person is born when our constant stream of thought about “self” acquires a life of its own. This self-image can acquire a “sort-of life” of its own, as our thoughts are congealed forms of the pure consciousness that is our true nature.
This thought energy has the energy of life itself, so as we focus our energy around the idea of ourselves, that idea takes on Life and begins to think itself to be our real identity. It constantly refers to its history, its reactions to the world, and how people treat it. Go through this paragraph slowly again. Try to understand and feel it.
This Person in our head is really a collection of thoughts that has hijacked our awareness and declared itself real.
But this person isn’t ultimately real. As a collection of Self-thoughts glued together by repetition, this person is always threatened, and is never “enough.” There is always some shame in it because it is an impostor, claiming to be us. It can be rejected by parents, lovers, and by our own idealized concept.
The birth of the false self comes from the incessant self talk from childhood concerning how to be, what the world wants, and our efforts to be better than we were. We naturally aren’t perfect so shame arises from our awareness of inadequacy. We project this fear onto our idea of God who demands perfection or calls it sin.
The way out is to realize your True Being. When you abide in yourself as the Star of Divine light that you are, shame has no place in that light.
Inhabit yourself as Being, not as a stream of thoughts.
You are Love itself. You are the Essence in Awareness.
Nobody can deny your right of existence. You are an imperishable Star.
Nothing that has ever happened to you tarnishes the Essential Spirit of your True Nature.
This Spirit that you are is on an adventure, exploring and expanding itself through experience. Those experiences reflect the lessons that life brings us, but the witness of the whole drama, the True you, is always beyond the crashing surf of life.
We even repeat the patterns of our wounds over and over again in different forms until we heal to move past them. We have the same issues in relationship, in work and in self. Look for any repeating patterns in your life and you’ll see the reflections of your inner patterns.
It’s beyond human capacity to untie the endless knots we have created within ourselves. Fortunately, our true nature, our essential Being, is itself the power of Healing, Transformation, and Life itself.
When we abide in ourselves and sit with whatever feelings come up within us, the power of our Presence and Being resolves those wounds. We have only to open, listen with our hearts, and the wounds dissolve on their own like darkness released by Light. Our true nature is its own immune system.
Our thoughts are tools for our Soul to navigate life and this world. We inadvertently turn these powerful thoughts against ourselves and it is Shame. This is like an auto-immune response. We turn against ourselves needlessly.
Letting go of the habit of conjuring ourselves in our minds, we need to shift into inhabiting a state of Being, not State of habitual thinking.
This can be accelerated by meditation practices but the shift comes from finding, returning to, and staying present, at our center, as the inner witness of all.
Feel the presence of our own company; “Be here Now” is not a cliché. It is place of Being that reclaims our power and truth. It’s a muscle that’s a strain to use at first but eventually becomes our natural state.
Once you’ve made peace with your true center, it doesn’t feel good not to live there. In your True Nature there is constant well-being that doesn’t depend on entertaining events or positive circumstances to feel at Home.
The Path to that Peace can be a struggle. The made-up Self that you assumed was “you” will put up a fight for its survival and primacy. It gets uncomfortable as its nakedness begins to be uncovered. When you try to set down the obsession with your self-image, the made up self will cry “What about Me?” and find a thousand reasons to wrap you up in your story and your drama. If you find yourself, it loses its power as king and becomes a servant.
Don’t be fooled into thinking you won’t exist if you release the self-concept. Remember the peaceful state you feel as you arise from deep sleep but before you add your level of mental complexity to the day unfolding. You are still “There” in that peaceful state and this centered witness can prevail throughout the rest of your experience as well.
Don’t glaze your eyes over what seems to be ungraspable concepts. The True You is always present and illuminating your experience. You don’t gain that essence by thinking but obsessive thinking distracts us from inhabiting our peace.
As you abide in yourself, all the unhealed dark places within you arise to be felt and pass way, leaving you ever more whole each day.
When you find yourself able to “BE” yourself, nobody can deny your existence.
Your Real Being is never threatened. It revels in its inherent bliss and fullness.
It is imperishable and perfect.
Truth is actually the best imaginable news. You are Love itself and this Peace and Love is destined to be your existence more and more as you walk the path of existence.
There can be no shame touching the light of Life Itself that you are at Heart. It shines like a star, far beyond any questioning of its worth…priceless.
Set an intention to heal, to be truly yourself. Seek in your heart to know yourself beyond the circles of the mind. Our sincere intent activates transformation. Our inner power works through us when we authorize it to unleash us from our self-created bonds. It is a prayer with purpose that will not fail to live up to the integrity that you apply to it.
From there, be present, keep returning to center, be mindful. Keep going back to Being aware, Being present, until the muscle of Being there becomes strong and you taste the power and bliss that arises in it. You gradually shift from the state of swimming in your self-thoughts to abiding in the Peace of Your Self. It’s a patient undertaking to unlearn the habit of countless hours in our lives spent thinking about ourselves obsessively.
You are a Star, A Light of Imperishable Being.
There is no question that you will eventually return to the Peace, Love and fulfillment that is your own true nature. The question is if you are ready to make the conscious change to be free sooner than later.
This is the shift that forms the basis for Enlightenment. Meditation, therapy, and Self Help can help clear the obstacles but sooner or later you need to reclaim your own being and surrender the impostor self. We cling to this self-idea because we don’t yet feel the ecstasy and peace that is our true essence. As the peace dawns, it’s easier to unclench the fiercely held ego.
And Shame is just the disease the false self is infected with.
It’s not the Real You.
There is no real humility in maintaining your shame. Hating yourself is not good penance for failure to be Ideal. This wound arises when we enter a strange world as innocents it disappears when we realize ourselves as we really are.
May you be Free and Whole. May the Light of yourself shine within you such that you abide in the Peace of your own presence. May you transcend the distortion of Shame and glory in your own perfect Being.
