The Shadow Pre Meditation Talk

Learn why Shadow work is so vital to your Joy and growth. Your shadow is an inner repository of all sensations and experiences you have disowned. Your shadow is a part of you, and it longs to be embraced and belong – like a naughty child trying to get your attention! Your shadow is not trying to hurt you. It is an unbalanced energy-seeking balance. Harmony is the key that unlocks the door to your highest potential. Listening to this allows a more profound experience of The Cave meditation.

Transcript

Welcome to Join the Dots podcast,

The podcast that explores the motivations of our actions and why we react the way we do.

Brought to you by soul coach Denise Javi from Inward Revolution.

In a safe inclusive space full of meaningful discussions for reflection and transformation.

As you listen,

Feel uplifted,

More clever and more clear about decision-making.

Let's go within.

It's such a huge time.

It's magical and it's wonderful but it is bringing up all of this stuff that needs to come to the surface so that we can let go of it.

So that we can let go of any toxicity that is within us that's holding us back from who we are.

So today we're going to do a meditation that I call the cave which is working with our shadow.

I don't tend to tell people that I'm doing shadow work because they freak out a bit.

However we want to embrace our shadow so that we can know who we truly are.

So what is the shadow?

The shadow part of ourselves.

The shadow is the part of ourselves that is in shadow.

So you know it's like when you see your shadow when you're walking down the street and you know the Sun is behind you and you see your shadow in front of you.

It's that part of you that's slightly hidden.

Things are in the shadow.

We put them into a place within us.

It's like compartmentalizing them so that we don't have to feel them.

So these are the things that we have experienced in life that we haven't known how to process.

That we haven't known what to do with.

And whether that be dreams and desires or whether that be things that have hurt us.

All of these things end up being sort of just pushed down into the shadow because we haven't known what to do with it.

You know for instance you know as a child I can remember saying that I wanted to be an astronaut as most kids do.

And later on in life people have sort of told me well I'm a space cadet anyway.

But there is that part of me as a child that I really wanted to go in go to the stars.

And of course because I was female and because I was born in the 60s and growing up I was always told not to be so stupid.

I can remember my father saying oh don't be so stupid girls don't do those things.

So often we have dreams and desires that we really want that the people around us might quash or we can't see how they're possible.

We can't see how we could possibly do that in our life.

I call that our golden shadow because they're our things that we truly want to do.

That's what we want to mine down into our shadow and find those things that we had such passion for.

That doesn't mean that we're going to you know for me it doesn't mean I'm going to become an astronaut but what it does mean is that I take back that passion that I had for something in my life and I allow that passion to come up again and to trigger the things in my life now that are really passionate.

And it gives me permission gives my inner self permission to move forward with the passions that I have now.

Because anything that is repressed within us is going to it's like it it builds a wall up around the passions that we have now and we sabotage ourselves and we find reasons why we can't do things and consequently we tend to say well I'd really like to do that but I don't know how it's going to happen so as soon as we introduce doubt we're going to put obstacles on our path to the things that we really want.

So we want to mine inside of our self to find all those childhood passions that we shove down there so that it gives us permission to move forward with the things that we love now.

And there may still be some things deep down inside of us that we truly wanted to experience in life that we've not given ourselves permission to because some been either told us it was silly or stupid or that it couldn't possibly happen.

So that's our golden shadow.

The other part of our shadow is the the aspects of our self or the experiences and situations that we've had in life that we have not known how to process we've experienced emotions we've experienced situations and we just don't know what to do with it.

Meaning that it may have been such a painful situation that we haven't known how to how to feel it how to actually just be in that so it's it was easier as a survival mechanism for us to split ourselves off from that and when we split ourselves off from that of course it had to go somewhere and we've pushed it down into ourselves.

And you know we often hear people around us very well-meaning people that might say you know just just get on with it you know just keep moving forward in life it's you're not that danger is over now or that awful situation you went through is over now just keep moving forward you know just get on with it.

But of course the problem with that is that we've still got all of that pain inside of us we've still got all of that stuff inside of us we might be moving on in life because life is always changing and life is always moving but we carry it with us all the time.

Now what tends to happen because a lot of this is really painful a lot of these things are painful things that we've experienced in our life and the survival mechanism of us the ego or the the fear aspect of us the inner critic the inner judge whenever we feel any of these things coming up to heal or to just you know every now and again if they get a chance they sort of just say we're here and we could just go oh no we'll push it back down again and I've been very good at doing that with food I've used food as a way to keep things down as well as overthinking and lots of keeping myself busy in my life.

Now I've been doing this work for about 25 years so I've done lots of layers of healing but of course there's always it's not so much that there's deeper aspects to know but there's always more expansive things to understand about ourselves and it doesn't mean that the work doesn't get done because we can only understand ourselves from the perspective of where we are now and that's perfect and as we move through life and we learn more our consciousness expands it becomes easier to understand deeper aspects of ourself so it's not like it doesn't get done but because everything is perfect the way it is now and we have those aha moments but we can't know everything until we we can't know everything but we can know whatever it is that we need to know to help heal us wherever we are so that sounded a bit complicated anyway I'll come back to this basically one layer moves into another and another and another and they're like chains that make up this beautiful necklace of our life that one chain leads to another and another and another and we can't jump forward to this one right down the end because it won't make sense it's part of the process of unfolding and revealing the wonderment of ourselves to ourselves and so shadow work is very much about this work now something to remember the shadow is formed and it continues in secrecy because we've learned not to reveal our basic drives and desires now I know when when we start to do our inner work we start to be able to bring that out and so we're not quite so secret we're not quite so holding things back in ourself guilt and shame is formed once basic drives and desires were hidden so when we we become secret so something happens in our life we don't like it we become secret we push it down and then it starts to form this guilt and shame and then from that comes judgment so we're holding on to this guilt and shame about something within us and then we start to judge ourselves and judge things around us and then we start to blame things outside of ourselves now I'm not saying this is what anything that you have done but it's a pattern in people when when we judge things outside of ourselves when we judge other people it's because we judge ourselves and when we have really pushed things down and we don't want to look at them of course your body is saying come on we've got to come back into balance we can't live the life we want to live you can't live your potential until you are completely imbalanced which means you embrace all aspects of yourself and so if you're not willing to look at it it's going to project it outward so those things that we get very judgmental about those things that we blame outside of ourselves they're triggers of something that we're yet to love within ourselves it doesn't mean that it's anything bad it just means there's an unbalanced feeling or situation going on inside of us because that's all that an awful feeling is it is something that you're yet to come into balance with because you know in the end people are going to be whoever people are going to be and they're going to think whatever they think they're going to have their own truths and it's not up to us to get them to change to make us feel better because that's all been done to us and it doesn't make us feel very good because I'm sure somewhere along the line an adult or a peer or someone has asked you to be something different to who you are in order to make them feel good and of course we don't want to have to do that to anyone else or to the rest of the world and I know at this moment because there is a lot of shadow stuff coming up around the world collective shadow it has to come up to heal it's a good thing even though it looks like we're going through a lot of pain but for us to really step forward and be who we are and to feel free and to step humanity into a space of kindness to each other of kindness to the earth of kindness to animals of kindness to everybody and everything and every sentient being and every little thing we need to deal with our shadows and the world needs to deal with the collective shadow every country needs to deal with its own shadow and these things are coming up because we've been in a space of stillness plus we've got lots of retrograde planets and really all that means is it's like everything is just slowed down okay before we take the next step forward before we take the next leap forward we've got to deal with our stuff because we're running forward at a rate of knots but we're taking all this stuff with us and it's just creating more and more toxicity in our self and on the planet so it's time to just take stock to clean up to clean up our energy to clean up stuff that has been there for a long time within us and and of course the world as well now we're not worried so much about the world today or the macro today is about the micro it's about you because everything starts with us and as we get clearer with ourselves and as we clean up ourselves we grow within ourselves and then we inspire other people to do it and because of the people that you are you will inspire other people to start cleaning themselves up as well and they may ask you how you do it and whatever passion that you're giving out to the world will help people to connect back to who they are but don't get over responsible about that either because just be who you are be who you are because that will inspire others on such a wonderful level you know there's nothing better than sitting with a person who is in balance with themselves we may not be in balance with all aspects of our life but when you're sitting with someone who is centered with themselves and is calm you don't have to be anything different to who you are and there's a feeling of relief and a feeling of it's okay I can be who I am and that's what your artwork does Kiki that's what I wanted to say before I've sort of found some words for that so when people look at your art and it's like a lot of art when people look at up when we get past the head stuff of people trying to you know critique it review it it's it's felt in the heart and there's a lot of healing that happens and so just by being who we are really helps people to heal and that's something that we want to remember as well sometimes things look so big in the world and so overwhelming and at this moment of course a lot of us are going through you know where's the money coming from where are we going to how we're going to look after ourselves a lot of people have lost their jobs but you know things are shifting and changing and we'll all be we'll all be good we'll all be fine and it's giving us a space to bring in new ways to do things which is quite wonderful but before we do that we need to deal with the old stuff we need to deal with anything that is holding us back which is making us feel unconfident which is making us feel like we're not worthy which is making us feel like we need to be different to who we are in order to get on in the world to sell ourselves to whatever this is what the shadow is about really and it's nothing awful it's just really regaining things about ourselves again a little process that you can do at home before we just go into the meditation something you can do in the mornings or whenever you do any meditation practice if anything comes up for you in that day or that morning or that evening we want to be able to have a conversation with it so that we can understand why we're feeling this way and take some control back and the more you learn about yourself the more empowered you will feel so something you can do is you can if something comes up that makes you feel uncomfortable that you can feel is you know bubbling away inside of you you know imagine that it is a person in front of you and have a conversation maybe even you don't have to have a conversation you can just simply sit there with them and resonate and see what what you're feeling from that but allow yourself to look at it but allow yourself to for it to be there and we can call this facing your fears if you like but really this is just about saying I am willing to become all that I want to become I'm willing to embrace the aspects of myself that maybe I haven't liked so much or I haven't known what to do with and I am willing to thank the shadow for holding all of those things that I couldn't but now I'm going to take that back and allow myself to just become all of me everyone is here today because it's time to embrace all of those beautiful aspects of themselves so that's something that you can do if something does come up just imagine that it's sitting in front of you you can turn it into a person I find it's that for me it's easier to have a conversation with a person other than a concept but you can have a color or a symbol whatever it is that works for you and then just sit with it have a conversation or just feel whatever comes from it but it's incredibly empowering otherwise what tends to happen is we tend to just push it back down again so that's a nice little process to do so today when we go into our caves we're also going to ask our shadow what its name is which I know sounds a bit odd and you know my secret language of light cards first card is soul name so we go in and we ask our soul what its name is now the reason I do this and I like to name things is because again as I said before it's it's easier to have a conversation from a human point of view when we name something other than a concept because sometimes if our if we're not really centered our minds can say oh well you know that's nothing or that's just a silly feeling or that's just a silly color so when you name something it seems to become much more grounded into your psyche and it becomes easier to have that conversation so we're going to do that with our shadow today as well just to just as a quick instance when I've done this work my shadow name is Persephone which is quite interesting because she's a the goddess of the underworld but she helped me to understand many aspects of myself of abandonment of mother issues and wherever I am I can be in control of myself as well because eventually when Persephone if you don't know the story of Persephone Hades the god of the underworld kidnapped her he liked he really liked her and he kidnapped her and Demeter or Demeter how about a however you want to pronounce her mum's name went looking for her she was the she is the goddess of the hearth or of crops and she went looking for her daughter while she was looking for her of course all the crops and all the hearth all of those things died so Hades and and I've forgotten the other anyway Hades struck a deal with his name Zeus yes that because they came to an agreement that Persephone would be down in the underworld for six months and then she would come up to her mum for six months and of course she felt like she was being pulled and pushed between the two and she had to come to terms with the fact that she was going to be in the underworld and she was going to be above the world and she had to step into her power wherever she was so I'm paraphrasing and putting my own spin on that but but for me that's what I got that no matter where I am I can still be empowered and not to let whatever is going on around me make me feel like I'm less than because that's just what's going on around us you may get something else you may get a god goddess you may get a color you may get a symbol it'll be something that means something for you know like my soul name in the secret language of light cards my soul name is as star and that's a collective name for my higher self or my guides and it's more of a place that I meet them a bit like Shambhala I suppose but Shambhala is also another name for that where I meet them and whoever it is that I need to connect with come to me in that place so it is this is intensely personal it's not something you have to share but it will help you to understand your inner self and your shadow as well so today really what we want to do is liberate our shadows so that we feel free so that we feel a sense of freedom and ease within ourself because your shadow has been in darkness you know we want to shine light upon her and say hello and say it's okay and you know greeting your shadow will begin a process that that shakes loose and releases any suffering in you as well and your shadow name personalizes your darkness like what I was saying before taking away the fear of the unknown it just helps you just to become to breathe for me it was relief and breathe and it's like okay it's alright that I feel that it's okay it's okay so I think I've waffled enough we'll get on with the meditation thanks for listening Denise loves to share information that makes the unknown known until next time be kind curious and dream big

Reviews

I throughly enjoyed this pre meditation talk, thank you for sharing 🩵💚🩷