The Secret of the Shadow (7 page)

Nobody likes you. No,
really,
they don’t like you.” Or “You’re never going to amount to anything. Really, you’re just a loser.”

That’s how your Shadow Box sucks you in. Every time you buy in to your Shadow Box, you are buying in to your story.

To grasp the repetitive nature of your Shadow Box, you might try recording your internal dialogue for a month or so. Then you 57

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w can look back and say, “Oh, I’ve heard this conversation before!

Look, on February 4, 1999, I heard it, and on April 14, 1998, 1984, 1981 . . . I heard it forty-two times this year, sixty-four times the year before . . .” How many hours a day do you think you spend listening to that Shadow Box, analyzing it, bargaining with it? It’s like a maze. You think there are actually some cookies at the end of that tunnel. You think that if you listen to it long enough you’re going to get some reward. But this is the
big lie
. There are no cookies at the end of that tunnel, and you will not be rewarded if you listen to it long enough. However, your Shadow Box does act as an alarm. The alarm’s recording is saying, “This is a recording. You are living inside the story called ‘You.’ If you wish to turn this alarm off you must take the giant step outside your story. Once you are outside, this recording will automatically shut off. Thank you for listening, and have a beautiful day.”

Long after the hotel’s fire alarm had been disabled we sat laughing at our Shadow Boxes, which had now been taken out of the shadow of our consciousness and spread out like a giant buffet of inner dialogues to be viewed by the entire group. Everyone could see how protective they felt about their Shadow Boxes, as if exposing their negative chatter constituted some sort of grand betrayal. Most people could see that they held their inner dialogue as unique and special. No one dared admit how similar the messages of their Shadow Boxes were to those of the people sitting around them. Most of us, if not all, had spent a good portion of our lives trying to quiet our Shadow Boxes, and as far as we could tell, all of us had failed. We had tried pacifying them, bargaining with them, and manipulating them. Some had tried suppressing and 58

e x p l o r i n g t h e g r e at a n d m y s t e r i o u s s t o r y o f y o u drugging them—anything to shut them up so that we could finally be free to enjoy our lives, so that we could step outside the never-ending, predictable stories of ourselves.

Chances are you have spent years striving to alter, rework, correct, adjust, and fix your story, unaware that you have any other choice. My goal is to offer you another choice, one that rests on the understanding that you are not your stories—any of them. I want you to see that although you have many stories, many shadow beliefs, and an overly talkative Shadow Box, all of these come bearing great gifts—gifts intended to propel you outside your story and into the greatest expression of yourself. All of them are there for you to learn from and then to use to deliver your unique contribution to the world. I promise you that the life you are striving for lies beyond what you know and far beyond the limitations of your story.

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T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w H e a l i n g A c t i o n S t e p s 1. Write the story of your life in all its dramatic detail. Give special emphasis to what didn’t work out and to what could have, should have, or would have been better. Allow yourself the freedom to be completely candid about your failures, losses, disappointments, and regrets as well as your hopes, desires, and dreams.

Give voice to the thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that live inside your story.

2. Read through your personal drama and see if you can begin to distinguish a particular theme. Is there an underlying pattern that has replayed itself over and over throughout the events of your life? Do you frequently wind up feeling left out, abandoned, betrayed, disrespected, unseen, or taken advantage of? What is the distinctive flavor of your “poor me” story?

3. To unconceal the shadow beliefs that drive your personal drama, make a list of the conclusions you have formed from your life’s events and the meanings you have assigned to those events.

Read over the personal story you wrote for the first step listed here, and as you reflect on each significant event of your life, ask yourself, “What did I make that mean about me?” It may help you to look over the list of shadow beliefs presented earlier in this chapter. See if you can distinguish your top three shadow beliefs. This will help you to uncover the theme of your story.

4. Dedicate some pages in your journal to writing down the repetitive internal dialogue that is broadcast from your Shadow Box. Notice without judgment the conversation of your story.

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Contemplation

=

“The deeper truth

is that I have a story

but I am not my story.”

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= Chapter 4 <

Why You Hold On

to Your Story

Our fear of change, our fear of stepping into new realities, is so deep that we desperately cling to the world we know. We often mistake familiarity for safety. The perceived comfort we derive from what is familiar keeps us living in the illusion of our stories. But the question we should ponder is, Are we really safe inside our stories? Instead of risking change, we hold on for dear life and resist the uncertainty of the unknown. I once read a story about a woman swimming across a lake with a rock in her hand.

As this woman neared the center of the lake, she started to sink from the weight of the stone. “Drop the rock,” shouted some people who were watching from the shore. But the woman kept swimming, now disappearing for moments at a time under the water.

“Drop the rock!” the onlookers hollered louder. The woman had reached the middle of the lake and was now sinking as much as 63

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w she was swimming. Once more the people urged, “Drop the rock!” And as the woman disappeared from sight for the last time, they heard her say, “I can’t. It’s mine.”

Most of us have spent too much time resisting our dramas rather than looking for the wisdom in each of our unwanted aspects, beliefs, and circumstances. Resistance locks us inside the emotional pain of a situation. It traps us in the reality that we most want to change.

Resistance comes from wishing or wanting our present circumstances to be different. Even the slightest desire for things to change can create massive amounts of internal resistance. Whether we are resisting our entire story or just a small piece of it, resistance causes us internal imbalance. It acts like glue, attaching us to the very feelings and beliefs we most want to shake free from. Even though it might seem backward, the first thing we need to do in order to heal is to accept all that we have been resisting. For the last seven years, in over fifty different cities, I have repeated these words:
What you resist persists.
If you take the meaning of this phrase to heart, you will have the power to make permanent, healthy changes in all areas of your life.

Even though I continually teach people to embrace all that they are, most people insist on hating or disliking some aspect of their lives. It doesn’t matter which part of their lives it shows up in—their bodies, their relationships, their parents, or their finances—resistance and healing do not go together. So if you choose to resist anything in your life—if you hate it, judge it, dislike it—you have guaranteed that the issue will persist.

Resistance denies us inner tranquillity and the happy ending we so desire. It is the reason we stay the same. Resistance to going beyond and moving through our issues is the cause of our repeti-64

w h y y o u h o l d o n t o y o u r s t o r y tive behaviors. Resistance to
what is
sucks our vital energy and blocks the natural flow of our evolution.

T h e C o s t o f R e s i s t a n c e
Our resistance is triggered whenever we make ourselves, others, or the
world wrong.
The internal belief that sets up our resistance says, “It shouldn’t be like this.” We then spend all our energy trying to change the reality of our circumstances. When I lecture, I love asking people, “How many of you have spent more than one thousand hours of your life trying to change the people around you, the events of your past, or some quality about yourself that you don’t like—whether it’s your fear, your selfishness, your fat, or your bank account?” Everyone, and I mean everyone, raises their hands. Most of us believe that if we resist the unwanted conditions of our lives long enough or hard enough, they will go away. One thing I can promise you with absolute certainty is that resisting
what is
will never make it go away. It might drive you deeper into denial and deeper into your story, but it won’t change what happened to you when you were three, it won’t help you lose twenty pounds, and it won’t make you like your ex-husband.

In my studies of karate, my teacher taught me that sometimes the best way out of a compromising situation is to let go. For example, if an attacker grabs my arm, instead of tightening up and pulling away I need to step toward my opponent and relax my arm completely. Pulling away from my attacker triggers a natural response in him to hold on tighter. So in order for me to get away 65

T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w from my attacker I must first surrender to his grip. When I let go and relax, my opponent’s grip will naturally loosen, giving me the opportunity to break free from his hold. Our initial response is always to resist any perceived threat. Yet it’s only when we breathe deep, relax, and lean into the experience that we stand strong and gain access to all our power and strength.

In order to transcend our suffering, we must go against our instinct
to hold on and instead surrender to the path of letting go.
Anything we want to change, anything we’re afraid of, anything that we are angry about or refuse to accept will keep us glued to the past and attached to our stories and the shadow beliefs that drive them.

Surrendering to
what is
requires us to soften our hearts, let go of the expectations that come out of our stories, and accept whatever life presents us. Surrendering to all the ingredients that have made up our lives invites us to listen with innocent ears to the deeper message of our pain rather than being stopped by the familiar conclusions voiced by our Shadow Boxes. Only when we admit that we are clinging to the comfort of our stories will we be able to soften our resistance and gain the wisdom of our life’s experiences.

Only by making a new decision to use our stories to love ourselves rather than to beat ourselves up will we ever be free to use them in the way they were designed to be used. I promise you that if you let go, if you resign as General Manager of the Universe and as the star of your drama, your life will get easier and you will be able to hear the deeper calling of your soul.

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w h y y o u h o l d o n t o y o u r s t o r y N o b o d y ’ s C o m i n g

There is no better time to begin the process of seeing your story for what it is, with all its limitations and its promises, than right now.

There is no one who can do this for you. Nobody is coming to save you. For me, the tides changed when I came to this unsettling realization. For years I kept trying to make my life better. I worked hard to change the circumstances of my life, but I always seemed to fall short of my desired results. Then one day, sitting on the bathroom floor of my apartment and feeling sorry for myself, a light went on and I had a profound and life-changing realization: No one was coming. I could continue to suffer, to work hard and try to make my story nice and fun filled and easy like I dreamed of, or I could get off the floor, grow up, and face the fact that no one was coming to save me. In a moment of grace I realized that I had waited my entire life for my mother, my father, or the man of my dreams to come pick me up and tell me I was perfect, that my life was perfect, that I could have anything I wanted, and to promise me that from now on we would have a fairy-tale existence.

Unknowingly most of us are waiting for someone or something to rescue us. But I am here to tell you, no one is coming—not your mother, not your father, not a prince on a white horse.

Though most of us think that if we wait long enough someone will step in and save us, the very sad truth is that nobody can travel our path for us. If we are brave enough to give up the hope that anyone is coming to save us, we will take an important step toward taking responsibility for our lives and our happiness.

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T h e S e c r e t o f t h e S h a d o w S t e p p i n g i n t o H o p e l e s s n e s s Most of us spend a lot of time fooling ourselves into believing the good old “One day soon I will catch up with my dreams” story and enrolling ourselves in the hope that our lives will get better. Even though we need hope in times of great distress, it is important that we distinguish between authentic hope and wishful thinking.

Often we trick ourselves into believing we are getting somewhere when really we are getting nowhere. Hope, positive thinking, and pleasant fantasies can easily turn into denial. Several years ago I was involved in a very stressful relationship with a boyfriend. I had spent years hoping it would get better. My hope prevented me from taking responsibility for my own feelings and dealing with the problems at hand. Instead of spending my time looking at my options and learning the lessons that were being presented to me, I spent hour upon hour daydreaming—wishing and hoping that one day, miraculously, everything would be okay. Instead of dealing with reality and going into the pain of recognizing that I’d had yet another failed relationship, I sank into denial—or, if you prefer acronyms, DENIAL (Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying). My perceived hope had put blinders on my eyes and plugs in my ears, which served only to delay the inevitable. Reality is often painful.

The great paradox and irony of it all is that if we are willing to give up the hope that we can change, fix, or transform our stories, if we are willing to let go and feel the hopelessness of no longer knowing who we are, we will find hope again.