Shame: Coming Home to Your Self
Once we've both identified our areas of shame and brought enough self-compassion to those areas to actually be able to look at them, we can use them to guide us home to our Unique Selves.
It works this way -- whatever we find about ourselves to be too painful to tolerate, we move out of our conscious awareness into shadow. We don't tell others about this part of ourselves, and we often lose our ability to tell ourselves about it. Frankly, we'd rather forget it ever happened, and will do that if we can.
Yet, these chapters in our lives are just as much a part of who we are as are our triumphs. In fact, each component of ourselves that we move into shadow, including the chapters in our lives about which we carry shame, carries information about our deepest yearnings, our deepest loves. So, in the process of becoming wholly our Unique Selves, to live fully in our lives, these fragments of ourselves that our shame has induced us to toss into the basement hold a key to that process.
There are many ways to this place. Sometimes, simply the radical loving of someone in our lives -- a partner, a teacher, a friend -- can provide the container in which we can be held while we turn to face our shame. What is required of this loving Other is a radical willingness to see us in our entirety and hold an unconditional love for us regardless of the content of our chapter of shame.
Not all of us are so blessed to have such a person in our lives.
In the absence of such radical love from another, or even in addition to such love, we can create that field of loving acceptance for ourselves. Some use prayer, others use chant. In this practice, we use our imagination, rooted in a deep Self-knowledge, to create that field:
- In a closed-eye meditation, ask to speak to a voice within you called Boundless Heart. Then, imagine speaking as Boundless Heart. Feel into the voice, perhaps by describing your attributes, your function, your gifts. Feel into this vast love, trust, and acceptance.
- Once you have attained this expanded sense of Self, imagine yourself holding the smaller self that feels shame. Feel the safety, security, in your smaller self in the holding by Boundless Heart. Feel the unconditional love in which Boundless Heart holds you, your shame, the pain associated with your shame.
- From the perspective of Boundless Heart, you are now free to explore the shame, inquire into its hidden yearnings, find out the lessons and gifts this shame brings. From this vast perspective, which is unaffected by the content of the shame, you can learn what it has to teach you about your Unique Self.
With practice, a gentle curiosity begins to replace the revulsion that once was intertwined with shame. That curiosity will then be an invaluable, personal guide to Unique Self.
[The photograph of the author's land is by the author.]
[The Unique Self enlightenment teaching originates with Dr. Marc Gafni. It appears originally in his 2001 book Soul Prints. It appears in numerous recordings of his Oral teachings found on iEvolve.org and marcgafni.com. It then appears in a scholarly journal edited by Marc Gafni, JITP 6:1 Suny Press, 2010, and in Marc Gafni, Radical Kabbalah, Unique Self and Non Dual Humanism, The Teaching of Mordechai Lainer of Izbica, {forthcoming 2012 Integral Publishers} and in its most complete form in the classic text of Unique Self, Marc Gafni Your Unique Self, The Democratization of Enlightenment {Forthcoming 2012 Integral Publishers}.]
Submitted by Tom Goddard on January 2, 2012.
