Hunting My Own Shadow - A Story Of Transformation

This is the story of a dark night of the soul, of traversing the depths of despair, and of rebirth. It is the story of transformation from a shadow version of myself into my embodied fullness. It is the story of reintegration with my body after years of trauma, and or letting go of old wounds and identities that no longer serve me. It is a story of reframing my inner world, from victim hood into strength. It is a story of how I am now hunting my own shadow.

Transcript

So I want to tell you a story of a dark night of the soul that really stretched for a year.

A story of reintegration,

Of past trauma,

Of reconnecting with my body,

Of stepping into my power,

And well,

Hunting my shadow.

So the backstory is I've had a traumatic past.

Neglect,

Abuse,

Left home early,

16.

And ever since then,

Really early on,

As long as I can remember,

I feel like I've been running,

Sprinting,

Just in fight or flight.

Sometimes I was aware of this,

Other times I wasn't.

I've had multiple interactions with doctors and psychiatrists and medications and psychologists and other interventions to limited effect.

When I was younger,

Medication saved my life,

But it made me very numb and you know,

Didn't really make life worth living.

So I stopped it.

And I was sort of surviving for quite some time and working as a teacher,

Changing into martial arts instructor into disability support worker,

All the while building up an online sort of profile of writings and courses and coachings and other things.

Slowly,

Slowly building up with some success,

But you know,

Lurking behind it all was latent mental illness,

Poverty mindsets,

A lack of a sense of self and identity.

I've been diagnosed with a variety of different mental illnesses,

From anxiety and depression to ASD and ADHD to BPD to anticipatory anxiety to dissociative identity disorder.

Basically,

I call it the trauma sampler.

What I think is going on is complex trauma revealing itself in multiple different ways,

Combining with a lack of integration with the body,

Combining with perpetual anxiety and subpar direction from my family.

Everything's intertwined,

Of course.

And obviously there's my own responses to all of the events,

Which will be impacting things as well.

So it's a circular and connected thing.

That's the backstory.

This year has been the worst year of my life.

To say that I'm lucky to survive it is not an understatement.

I'm lucky to be here.

It's,

You know,

Multiple things have happened.

I lost my job,

Stable job,

Well-paying job of five years,

Nothing to do with my fault,

Just a funding change and a lifestyle change on the people I was working with caused that job to end.

I saw the signs coming,

But it was still quite abrupt.

And that end,

Not only was an end to the income,

But also the people I was working with,

The client,

As well as the family,

As well as the other workers.

So that hurt.

Combined with the house I was living in being sold and then repurchased by someone else.

And then the rent skyrocketing,

Combining with a passing of a friend at his own hand,

Combining with the extra and increased levels of panic attacks and anxiety symptoms and other things arising,

Combined with moving house,

You know,

The list goes on.

Lots and lots and lots of life stresses here.

I was seeing a doctor for quite some time and a psychologist.

The psychologist was helping,

But a session a month or every two months doesn't do enough.

And the doctor recommended that I try some medication.

I resisted it at first,

But after a full blown panic attack,

He highlighted to me that like,

Now's the time.

I'm like,

Okay,

Let's try it.

I tried medication over this time and it made it worse.

It put me into a state that is so obscenely low that,

You know,

I've sort of can't even quite pull myself back into that state to describe it,

Other than to realize that the opposite of light isn't darkness,

It's nothingness.

You know,

To feel depression felt like a luxury.

That's what this medication did to me.

I tried three different medications and they all did the same thing.

Like I said,

I was lucky to survive.

Interspersed in this time was me going through a self-directed transformational process,

Connecting with people that are doing what I'm doing online and in my personal life.

And I went to a seminar of a person who's a speaking coach,

A meditation instructor,

And has a tendency to unlock people's souls,

Unlock people's,

You know,

Hidden sort of things and release them.

I went to his event and I had this urge,

This intuition to get up on stage and share my story.

And at the end of the event,

There was a prize given out,

You know,

Sort of pulled out of the hat to see who could go to a three-day immersive seminar.

I didn't win that,

But the person who won it came up to me afterward and said,

You need to go to this.

Like,

Take my ticket that I just won and go.

So upon that person's recommendation and my partner's pushing,

I went.

Then that sort of started to unlock them some things.

This is all happening interlinked,

So it's like the light and the darker interweaving in a braid here.

During that event,

I recognized that I have lots of issues around money,

A poverty mindset stemming back to my father.

He was very poor,

And if it wasn't for the wonderful welfare system we have in Australia,

He would have been on the street homeless.

I'm talking not enough money for food,

Hoarding mindset.

Yeah,

Lots of things like this.

Like,

A memory of mine was,

I remember when I first got my car,

I didn't feel comfortable parking undercover because,

Quote,

Someone like me doesn't deserve that.

It's for the rich people.

Like I said,

I moved out of home at 16,

And I lived off charity and government handouts and part-time income to get me through high school and then university.

I was running all the time,

So I had a lot of blocks around mindset,

Around money,

Around worth,

Around myself.

So I signed up for his sales course.

It's an embodied sales course,

So it's sort of like part technique and objection handling and packaging and branding instruction,

All of that sort of stuff,

And part spiritual awakening.

It's unlike any,

You know,

Quote,

Unquote,

Normal sales training.

Then at the end of that,

He suggested that if we want,

We could come back again,

Do the process again,

Because it might help to integrate at a discount,

Extreme discount.

I'm like,

Yeah,

Let's do this.

I know that I'll need it.

That's what I've just come back from.

Just now as a recording,

I flew back home for my second sales seminar.

After the first one,

I lost the job basically when I came back.

I had to move,

And life really started to take a bad turn.

So I wasn't able to really implement the strategies,

The ideas that were taught to me.

Life got too complex,

And I couldn't handle it.

It's like here,

You know,

Here's all of this stress,

And to turn and face my own darkness and inner self-worth issues.

If you want to coach someone,

You have to have a certain sense of self,

A certain sense of self-worth,

Know who and what you are and what you can offer.

And I simply didn't.

But having moved into a new house,

A house that I won't have to move out of,

That's affordable rent and other things settling my life,

I finally felt a little bit of peace.

Like I said,

I went back to this event,

And I went back with the goal,

Not of learning how to sell,

But of uncovering these blocks inside me.

And boy,

Did that happen.

I recognized a few things.

The first thing is I'm happy and comfortable being on a sales call with someone,

Selling myself,

Quote unquote,

If they've approached me.

And it's the same energy if there was an attraction,

Partners,

You know,

I'm more than happy and comfortable if someone approaches me and makes it clear that they want to,

You know,

Go on a date,

That sort of thing.

I'm happy to say,

Yes,

From a place of confidence,

Like you've approached me,

You found something in me,

Let's make this work.

But I recognized that in terms of my coaching,

In terms of my work,

In terms of my dating,

In terms of basically every aspect of my life,

I've never been assertive and proactive.

Why?

Let's delve into this why,

You know.

So through this three-day event,

We're learning sales and sort of,

You know,

Interspersed with tantric meditation.

It's incredible.

He helped me to sort of,

You know,

Go deep and I'm sort of actively pursuing this,

Going deep,

Going deep,

Going deep.

I'm like,

Okay,

There's self-worth issues here,

There's self-awareness issues here.

It's like,

Who am I?

Who am I to offer this?

What am I?

What am I offering?

What skill sets do I have?

So we talk down this path.

You know,

I write poetry.

I know that space well.

I've written books that have sold,

You know,

Tens of thousands of copies.

I've done a bunch of courses online in a variety of different mediums.

I've got this capacity when I'm working with people to help them see the shadow,

Help them heal themselves,

Give them strategies to cope and survive,

Meditation,

Self-improvement,

All of these things.

I'm a teacher by trade.

I'm studying to be a master of counseling.

I've got lots of skills.

And when people sit with me,

There's this energetic transfer where they start to heal too.

One of the facilitators of the event,

She said to me,

And it made sense at the time,

She's like,

You're a pit of darkness,

Not in an insulting way,

But in a,

Like I receive and it flows through me when people are around me.

They trust that I can hold space for them.

You know,

I get messages daily online of people saying,

You know,

Based on what I'm putting out there on social and other places that they just trust me.

And yet when they say that to me,

My inner reaction is like,

Why?

Why would you trust me?

Why?

Like,

There is no me to trust.

It's,

You know,

This disembodied,

This dysregulated,

This unintegrated self.

But we're looking at that.

I'm like,

Okay.

She gave me the idea of,

You know,

Who should I offer my services to?

When I initially started my online writing,

I wanted to put stuff out there that could help someone like me,

You know,

A struggling teen with no money who is desperate to survive as they can.

That's great.

And I've done that.

I've put out so much stuff for that person for free,

But unfortunately that person can't afford,

Can't afford the coaching,

Right?

They can't,

You know,

Can't make a living off that person.

So we flipped what I'm doing.

Those offerings become top of funnel.

They become,

You know,

Proof of what I'm doing.

They become,

You know,

Free resources.

It's sort of rebranding into me helping spiritual entrepreneurs,

Six to seven figure coaches,

These people that are doing well,

But nonetheless are facing inner darkness because it's the thing we all face in a darkness.

And I can sit and hold space for these people and match them at their level.

So that was a good rebrand,

But it wasn't enough.

It wasn't enough.

I was talking with a fellow student there and she suggested an analogy because I'm like,

Okay,

Underneath the self-worth,

Underneath the self acceptance in this sort of space is a lack of a sense of a solid self,

Disparate parts,

Dissociative identity issues.

You know,

There's parts of you that through trauma come up to the surface,

You know,

And you might embody these different parts of you,

But they're not the whole of you.

So back to like me approaching a potential partner,

Approaching someone that might want to work with me.

How can I reach out when I don't know who is the one that is reaching out?

But if you reach out to me,

It's like you've seen something.

And it's a shame because,

You know,

If I was to connect with people that resonate with my message,

I could help them,

But I didn't feel comfortable,

But that's coming.

Anyway,

She gave me this analogy of rather than embodying a different sense of parts,

The person that's choosing the you is like a CEO of a boardroom.

Another person gave the analogy of like a king in a king's court.

The CEO,

The king operates on a consultative style of leadership.

It's like,

Hey,

What do you think?

Childhood protective part.

Hey,

What do you think?

Adventurous part.

Hey,

What do you think?

Confident part.

Hey,

What do you think?

You know,

All these different parts of me,

Let's get a global understanding of what the collective feels and the CEO,

The king,

Whatever,

That central executive part of you makes the decision.

And that's the one that sort of chooses how and what to show to the world.

And when the world comes back and maybe I reach out,

Maybe I ask someone out,

Maybe whatever,

And there's a bit of rejection,

Fine.

That CEO's job is to coddle and to help and to sit and have space with,

Hug the part of me that feels that rejection.

I'm like,

That's a solid approach.

So now with that idea,

I can be like,

Hey,

Would you like to work with me?

The CEO is reaching out.

That's another piece.

But the final piece,

And this is the most integrative piece of all,

Was me working through these ancestral blocks.

A lot of what the facilitator suggests was a ancestral work.

The facilitator's name is Miroslav,

And if you reach out,

I'll send you his details.

But basically,

I ended up working with him one-on-one for maybe 30 minutes,

Maybe an hour.

Could have been five minutes.

I don't know.

Time stopped.

And it was this visualization,

This sound-based,

Sound-needle practice of rum coming up from my base all the way out through my crown.

It was me sharing and expressing and going into myself.

I'm trying to say the words of the poetry of the experience that I can't quite say,

But I'm pointing a finger to the moon of an awakening inside of me.

I realized that I'm living in my third eye space,

In my brain space.

We can go woo-woo on this,

Or we can go,

I don't know,

More physical.

I'm living in my head.

People that have had trauma have been living in this space of your head,

Disembodied head on a body that you don't quite connect to.

Miroslav's partner,

Victoria,

She's got this energetic cutting.

She's like a sword that chops off the dead weight so that the seed inside you,

The flower inside you,

Can blossom and bloom.

With both of their promptings and in this space with Miroslav,

I was able to process some blocks and sit into my belly space.

I've got chills saying that.

It's like my belly has returned to me.

I feel a sense of peace and calm and resonance and solidity that I've not felt since I was six.

It's like I've got my body back.

I've got myself back.

It's like inside me,

There's a white pearl of solid,

Grounded energy that I can just sit with.

My heart opened up more and my mind definitely opened up,

But it's like I've got a body.

Again,

And that alone was worth the admission price.

So if we're looking at this Dark Night of the Soul sort of situation,

This Dark Night of the Soul of going into the depths of despair,

Almost ending it,

And coming to this place of reintegration and rediscovery of my body has been incredible.

If we put this back to the coaching perspective,

It's like I have a place to reach out from now.

On the way back from the airport,

I called my brother and he was in a bad state.

I shared with him this experience that I'm sharing with you now.

He dumped upon me lots of issues,

But it wasn't really dumping upon.

I accepted it.

I embraced it.

I felt it flowing through me,

But not moving me.

This place in my belly that is unlocked feels like a solid place of me-ness,

A place that I can be,

That my brother,

My partner,

My clients,

Anyone,

Everyone cannot shake me from.

That is a place to sit with.

I feel powerful just saying this.

As that moment settled,

I was in tears.

Things were unlocking.

It was beautiful.

This poem came,

May my tears become the mortar.

May these tears become the mortar that heals my soul.

May these tears become the mortar that heals my soul.

It was like the tears were flowing and my belly was expanding.

It was just.

.

.

So now we're turning into this hunting of the shadow.

I realized I'd been approaching my work with clients,

My work online from a passive perspective.

This idea of embodying a shadow hunter rather than the more delicate,

Like,

Let's shine light on our shadow.

It's like,

No,

Let's hunt the shadow.

There's a resonance there.

There's a power there.

There's a strength there.

There's an assertiveness.

It's like Victoria said.

It's like you've been living and identifying in this trauma space.

Step through it.

You're beyond that.

You can hunt the shadow.

I've got chills once again saying that because it's so true.

I can sit in this space.

When darkness.

.

.

Even during that event,

After that event,

In that moment,

That night,

Thoughts came up,

Anxieties,

Ruminations,

Issues,

Annoyances with the fellow participants.

Rather than turning and running from it,

What would a shadow hunter do?

I sat and I turned and I looked.

I asked myself,

What's underneath that?

What's underneath that?

What's underneath that?

Just unpicking that proactively.

Let's look and face the darkness and process it.

Then the extension upon that is,

Let's help other people face that darkness.

Let's help other people process that,

Which is why the people that I want to work with in this space have to have a certain level of resonance,

Aptitude,

Self-understanding,

Willingness to go there.

Given what I'll be giving them,

The capacity to pay what that process is worth because for me to hold that space for someone requires a lot of my energy,

A lot of my time.

I realized rather than wanting to work with everyone,

I want to work with a very,

Very,

Very select few of people,

One person at a time over a three-month period,

That level of exclusivity,

Depth.

I'll experiment and play with the offerings and maybe there'll be some one-on-one sessions and all of these sort of things available.

Maybe I'll do poetry workshops,

I don't know.

But in terms of what I really want,

I want one person to go deep with,

To travel this darkness and hold that space for them to do that work,

To be there for them,

To be available for them with messaging after our sessions and before our sessions and this sort of stuff.

Really go deep,

Offering the practices that work for me,

The meditation,

The introspection,

The guidance,

The poetry,

The writing,

The habit building,

The exercise,

All of this stuff.

Go deep,

Go dark,

Go hard,

Hunt the shadow,

Multiple things unlocked.

After that awakening experience,

I felt like I needed to just scream,

This primal scream.

I was offered the space to do it,

Go outside and scream and people encouraged it.

I went outside and I couldn't quite bring myself to do it,

But then someone else did.

They screamed and I was like,

I can do this.

And it's funny because there's always levels to go.

I couldn't quite reach myself to do it,

But someone else screamed and then I was able to scream.

I went outside and screamed.

And in that moment of screaming,

I realized I'm like,

Huh,

This space of practices,

Of making my own practice of what does my body really need right now?

It needs to scream.

I give myself permission to do it.

And yes,

I needed someone else's help in that moment to do that guidance,

That leadership,

But hey,

That's what coaches are there for,

Right?

And I recognized there's a forest close to me.

I can go scream into that forest if I like.

Yeah,

There's a potential embarrassment,

But so what?

This is my life.

A shadow hunter doesn't reel back from embarrassment.

I walked along the beach and found stones.

I'm going to release a meditation called a pile of stones,

Pile of rocks rather.

The smell of a tree is a meditation.

The grass in the wind is a meditation because these meditations were popping up to me just spontaneously.

I was sitting watching grass.

I was smelling a tree.

I was picking up stones and like these ideas of attaining peace in the moment were coming resonant,

Flowing through me.

I'm going to give them over time to you all.

Projects,

Book projects are coming up.

I'm collating a book project.

The next book I'm creating is going to be a book called Poetry from the Dark Night of the Soul.

Poetry from the Dark Night of the Soul.

And the subtitle will be something along the lines of finding beauty from within the shadow.

And this book,

This poetry collection will be all of the poetry I've written over this Dark Night of the Soul over this year.

You'll see the descent into the darkness and the little ups and downs and the hopes and the crushing defeats and ending on the poetry that I wrote in this session over this three-day period.

Beautiful poetry came like that poem I just told you before.

So,

You'll be able to see and flow with me.

So,

If that's resonant to you,

Stay tuned.

It'll be releasing.

I've recorded most of it.

I'm going to edit it and release it.

And I've got an idea for a practice,

Other practices that I'm going to share and talk about.

The practice is this.

I invite you to do this only if you are willing to go deep,

Willing to go dark,

And you have support.

This isn't one to do casually.

Okay,

So be warned.

This is hunting the shadow.

It's called a whole pen's ink.

A whole pen's ink.

You get a pen.

You get a couple of books.

You take yourself into nature and you write,

You write,

And you write until that pen runs out of ink.

That's the practice.

And if you need further instruction on that practice,

Maybe you're not ready for it.

But to give a little bit of context,

You're doing an extended free writing.

You write whatever comes without judgment,

Without filter,

And you don't stop writing until the pen runs out of ink.

And I'm going to do that at some stage.

I will do that practice.

And depending on what comes up,

Perhaps I'll release it as a book.

The book will be called A Whole Pen's Ink.

But that's an act of really hunting the shadow,

Hey?

So now as we come back,

As I've come back to home,

It's this integration process of this inner feeling.

But I'm just recognizing the joy of silence,

Of sitting in my belly space.

I have a belly,

Man.

I have a belly.

It's like my body's returned.

Integration,

Healing,

Self-worth,

Reclamation,

Assertiveness.

Over that space,

A lot of the practitioners and the fellow students have this intertwined sexuality.

There's a lot of sort of energy flowing in that space as well.

And they were saying that there's this sort of dark feminine energy to what I'm evoking and what I'm bringing.

And I haven't really looked into the archetypes there,

But I'm feeling this energy of like,

Hey,

I know my worth now.

And if you want to work with me,

I'd love to work with you.

But I'm not going to accept everyone.

I'm going to choose my clients.

I'm going to be picky.

One of the sort of blocks that I unlocked was I recognized in my mind,

I was putting my energy out there as like,

Hey,

If you like what I'm doing,

Maybe I'll be able to help you potentially.

That was the sort of energy I'm putting out.

But that changed to,

I can help you.

We were to say some words to the group of like,

What's flowing?

What energy do we want to be in?

And a whole bunch of people said a few words or a lot of words and transformative.

But I literally just looked at every person in the room.

I said,

I,

And I looked at everyone,

Caught everyone's eye,

Can help you.

I can help you.

I can help you.

And that felt powerful to say,

Because looking at everyone in that room,

They were the sort of people that I wanted to work with.

These people that are moving to this space of awakening and nonetheless have demons that they need to go.

And these demons run dark because they've processed some of that surface level stuff that a lot of people haven't even looked at.

This isn't to say that I don't want to help everyone.

I do,

But that's why you have a different,

That's going into the sales practice now.

You have a variety of different offerings of different people,

But the people that I want to work with,

It's getting selective and refined.

And that's a good thing because I can still help that 16 year old version of me,

Because you know what that guy,

That kid,

That boy wouldn't have been able to go into the darkness that I'm offering him.

Wouldn't have trusted me.

That person couldn't trust.

Sorry for getting emotional here,

But it's,

It's,

It's been a journey and looking back at myself,

It's just going to give that person a hug.

Wasn't expecting to,

To cry here,

But got to lean into it,

Eh?

That person,

That part of me was running,

Was fearful,

Was afraid.

I want to make a poem out of this,

This feeling,

But it's like,

People would say like,

Let go,

Give back,

Give your pain to the universe,

To the energy,

To God,

Whatever.

And my pain was such,

My isolation was such that I thought that the universe couldn't handle my pain.

What hubris,

What shadow ego,

What,

What blindness,

What pain to not realize that,

You know,

I am a part of the universe that of course,

You know,

That it can help,

That I can let go.

Miroslav,

The facilitator said to me,

Like bring something that represents this block and we'll work with it.

And you know,

I bought it and I put it on,

There was an altar and I put my piece on there.

It was this little pendant,

Wooden pendant thing of my father's.

And I,

I put it on there and,

And I,

I didn't really touch it.

I sort of looked at it a little bit during,

And at the end we did a,

A fire ceremony.

And one of the,

One of the students there led a,

A cleansing ceremony and said something amazing.

Like at the end of these sessions,

You do a cleanse,

A release,

You,

You give to the fire and through the burning of the material,

The fire gives back,

It gives back warmth and light and beautiful smells.

And you know,

It's an exchange and we're invited to put what we wanted to onto that fire.

So I took that wooden pendant and I burnt it.

As I watched it burn,

I said goodbye to that part of me.

You burn away what,

What doesn't serve you.

I'm not saying goodbye to my father,

But I'm saying goodbye to the poverty mindset,

Goodbye to the trauma identity,

Goodbye to the,

The running,

The pain and receiving love and joy and warmth and a belly space.

I have my belly back.

I have my belly back.

So that's my year of transformation.

That's my dark night of the soul.

That's my reclamation.

That's the hunting of the shadow.

So I invite you on this journey.

I invite you to take a step to breathe,

To allow yourself to heal.

I invite you to start hunting your shadow.

Reviews

Wow, heart wrenching. My heart goes out to you. This was just I don’t know traumatic to listen to but at the same time and lightning. And just wow healing energy to surround you my friend. I’m very curious more about the writing till your pen runs out of ink idea. so many things crossed my mind. One that it would be an amazing journey, but two that my hand would stop before the pended just from aching from writing. Also, I fear I’d starve to death because I don’t think it would be something that could be completed in just a day. what a journey it would be. Healing love and light to you my friend so glad that you survived Namaste 🙏