Meditation For Integrating Anger And Shame In Your Shadow

My name is Jay Chodagam and we will embark on a journey for bringing our anger and our shame out of our shadow.

I ask that you sit comfortably alert yet relaxed.

Taking in some deep comfortable breaths.

And with each passing breath I want to see your belly rising and collapsing not your chest.

Our shadow is a place within each of us that contains what we don't know,

Don't like or deny about ourselves.

Calling it our shadow is fitting because of the lack of illumination.

What it's storing is being kept in the dark to whatever degree.

Wherever we go,

Our shadow goes with us.

Whether we are aware of it or not.

Our shadow holds our unattended and not yet illuminated conditioning.

All the programmed ways we act,

Think,

Feel and choose without even knowing why.

It also contains all that we've disowned,

Pushed aside and otherwise rejected in ourselves.

It's whatever it is about us that we insist that that's not me.

Whatever in us that we're out of touch with or just keeping out of sight.

This is likely the root of our unresolved wounding that we're trying to deny.

There's a few emotions that are particularly embedded in our shadow,

Tucked away,

Hidden.

And anger can be a part of that.

We house it there in the deep recesses as something we deem to be dangerous or otherwise worth avoiding.

Or sometimes even denying that we even have it.

And there could be many things that lead to our anger being housed in our shadow,

Whether partially or wholly.

Some of these reasons could be when expressing anger in your childhood was dangerous.

If showing anger could further inflame an already abusive parent or a sibling,

We learned for purpose of pure survival to suppress it,

To show no signs of it.

When expressing anger in our childhood meant a loss of love or affection,

Given how important love and affection were to our childhood,

We learn not to show our anger.

Or it could be because we attached the belief that anger is negative.

It's a negative emotion.

Or because we confused anger with aggression.

Anger doesn't attack,

But aggression does.

Or we could have convinced ourselves that anger and love cannot coexist.

It's true that most of the time they don't coexist.

But there can be times in which there's heart anger,

Anger in which there's a genuine interest in and care for this other person,

An exchange that can mutually serve the well-being of both.

It's uncommon,

But it does exist.

It's a kind of love,

However fierce or fiery in its expression.

Anger could be housed in our shadow because any expression of anger may have threatened our relationship.

If we were with a partner who,

Because of past negative experiences with unhealthy anger,

Pulls away from us when we show any anger,

We may try to keep all our anger in our shadow.

When our anger isn't in our shadow,

Unrepressed and very much alive,

We can't yet say that we have handled it.

It may be aggressive,

Blaming,

Pushy,

Shaming,

And devoid of caring.

What we may need to do is identify the qualities and phenomena that may be obscured or pushed into our shadow by what we are doing with our out-front anger.

And these elements,

These qualities could include vulnerability.

When you're transparent,

Undefended and open.

Vulnerability can get pushed into our shadow when anger arises.

Our hurt,

Sadness and grief can become hidden,

Denied,

Buried,

Camouflaged or reduced to only superficial considerations by which we're expressing or holding our anger.

Because anger is often,

Not always,

But often a difference mechanism against feeling or showing our hurt.

It could be fear when we let our anger capture or fill up the foreground,

Possessing us with its fiery intensity.

Our fear may seem non-existent.

This is different than having our fear transform into anger.

When we ache for something,

Whether it's love,

Attention,

Affection,

Or something else,

And react to the absence or perceived absence of it with such anger that we appear to be only angry.

When in anger,

We act as if we are not aching or yearning,

Perhaps because we're feeling shame.

Shame about admitting the presence of these states or qualities in us.

We further estrange ourselves from that which we are longing for.

Then our vulnerability and softness gets pushed deep into our shadow.

This doesn't mean we ought to never get angry about the lack of what we're longing for.

Rather,

We should allow our anger to deepen the rawness of our longing rather than distract us from it.

And shame is perhaps the most uncomfortable emotion.

Shame occupies our shadow when we're caught up in unhealthy anger,

Meaning anger that has become aggression.

When we feel shame arising in us,

We commonly allow it to mutate very quickly into aggression.

So much so that it appears that we are not feeling any shame but only aggression.

The fiery intensity at the heart of anger asks not for smothering or mere discharge,

But for a wakeful embrace that doesn't require any dilution of the passion,

Nor any flight from empathy,

Nor any muting of the essential voice in the flames.

So now let us look at ways in which we can gently become present,

Giving space for this anger and or shame,

Which could be two faces of the same coin,

To emerge from the crevices and let it see the light of day so that it may be healed,

It may be tended to.

So how do you become present with these hidden emotions in our shadow?

There are five steps to help us stabilize and deepen our capacity to become present.

First,

Practice sensing and observing what's occurring right now,

Right here.

When you feel you're being taken over by some emotion that you think is not you,

Ask yourself what's happening right now,

Right here.

Do so both outwardly and inwardly,

Giving what's happening your whole-hearted attention.

And when you practice meditation or mindfulness every day,

It becomes a part of your muscle memory to go into that state of observing.

And when you're practicing this,

If you feel distracted,

Note it and note what is pulling you,

What's taking your mind away from being here now.

Register your emotional state and the leanings of your mind and bring yourself back to the arrival and the departure of your breath.

This will help you to settle into the sense of relaxed,

Undivided attentiveness.

The second step to becoming present is to be self-transparent.

Enter and openly acknowledge your actual condition,

Inner and outer,

However uncomfortable or unflattering this may be.

The way to make this more doable includes not treating your pain as an enemy or a problem,

But befriending your discomfort and resistance,

Not letting your inner critic have its way with you and ceasing to distract yourself from your suffering,

No longer smothering your feeling of hopelessness.

Here you don't evaluate how you're doing with such labor,

But give your whole-hearted attention to them with both curiosity and courage.

Just be transparent to yourself.

And the third step of this practice is don't flee from your hurt.

Don't try to eradicate your hurt.

Don't treat hurt as a problem,

Inconvenience or an anomaly.

Don't belittle it.

Rather give it compassionate room in which to breathe and find itself fully alive,

Allowing it to express.

There's healing in expression.

Step number four,

Get more embodied and grounded and down to earth.

To be present doesn't mean abiding with supposed awareness that you're above your pain or your difficulties.

It means really being with what is.

Being present isn't an altered state.

It's our natural condition,

Nothing special.

And when we settle into it,

There's a sense of being at home.

The fifth step of becoming more present is to cultivate internal stillness.

Spend some time each day sensing the space between your thoughts,

Feeling the space between the end of your exhalation and the very beginning of the next inhalation.

And can you let these spaces widen,

Expand and open into stillness?

Bring your busyness,

Your inner turmoil and fuss into such stillness bit by bit without any pressure to alter them.

Real stillness doesn't require a cessation of movement or thought but rather a relocation of attention to the presence of being,

The feeling of being.

You don't have to be motionless to be present.

In fact,

You don't have to be anything in particular.

All you need is to consciously be.

Be regardless of what's happening.

Now bring your palms to your heart center and prayer position.

And acknowledge your state of presence in this moment right here,

Right now.

And then imagine from the center of your heart where there is a diamond that shines.

Send a beam of light out through your being,

Visualizing the earth in front of you and all of its creatures.

Our fellow beings.

And let this light of compassion emerge from your heart as a healing energy that shines upon all beings on this planet earth,

Our home in this physical world.

And may they feel safe.

May they feel held and supported.

And they may be comfortable letting those shadows that have been controlling them subconsciously emerge out such that they may find their peace.

And as you bring your awareness back into your heart center,

Feel into this ionosphere that we've activated and ask yourself,

How do I feel right now?

And if you could summarize how you feel right now in one word,

What would that be?

I invite you to share that one word in the comments so we may all know how you're feeling right now.