Vampires and Vultures

This is the second story I am writing about my personal experience in uncovering the shadow (see also ‘From Holy to Wholly’). I have some resistance to confessional writing because it’s just so ‘unprofessional’ and un-academic’ – but then again, those of you who have attended a Shadow Workshop with me will know that intelligence has been one of my masks, so in the interest of wholeness, and because the story contains lots of learning, here goes.

For some reason I arrived back from the DVD store last week with the film Twilight in hand. This is not my kind of movie, nor Garrick’s, so he looked at me a little strangely when the teenage vampire movie started to play. If you’ve watched Twilight then you know that it’s not big on plot, character development or anything actually, except smouldering teenage sexuality, or at least that’s what I saw. I found myself irrationally hooked on the sexy vampires, edgy music and dangerous intimacy. This would simply have been yet another reason for Garrick to spend his life teasing me had I not been doubled over with sobs by the end of the movie. And, no, this was not because it (really) was somewhat of a waste of a rare movie night.

The high school context of Twilight with its typical prejudices, emerging sexuality and youthful beauty managed to open up in me a host of adolescent pains mostly to do with not being pretty or sexy or cool enough. I know this isn’t unique, but it was very real to me at the time of experiencing it and I did not express a bit of it. Though I look back on that time in my life as being fraught with hurt, I never shared, talked about or processed it. My high-achieving and very religious personality simply didn’t allow me to be that vulnerable or ‘not ok’. And so I buried it and have carried it around ever since. The ways in which that repressed hurt have limited and sabotaged me are too numerous and, frankly, too boring to mention. Suffice to say, the story of not being beautiful or sexy has influenced every arena of my life and no amount of awareness, cleverness or peak spiritual experiences could do anything about it.

So why did Twilight magically unlock the door? Have the writers infused the script with cleverly disguised transformative powers? Sadly, no. The fact is that in engaging with shadow work so much over the last few months I have been giving regular permission to bring to the surface what I have stuffed away. To the extent that I am aching for exercise! (Believe me this is new). Why? Exercise, too, is another way to let go of what you have been carrying. Up till recently I haven’t actually wanted to see and feel the pain of what I buried so of course I had no desire to exercise. No amount of willpower or discipline would have dominated that resistance until I internally allowed it (this is what we work with on Embody). Unless there is real, unambiguous and regularly demonstrated permission for something, you will continue to sabotage your efforts in that arena. Everytime I walk now, I re-frame the activity as an opportunity to release more of what I no longer need and to become fully alive. With that, authentic, context I simply love moving.

The main point here is this: if you give permission for something (like I have done by researching and teaching about the shadow, exercising with the intent to uproot the shadow etc) then the mechanism for achieving it is (a) irrelevant and (b) it will find you! Like a silly little vampire movie winking at you from a shelf in a shop.

One way (and there are many) to give permission to see your shadow is to attend the Introductory and Advanced Shadow Workshops that I am running in November (see www.angeladeutschmann.com). Those of you working with the wonderful Bird Cards (I’m getting new stock in next week) can also use The Vulture consciousness to take this further. Here’s to vampires and vultures taking us to the next level of joy!

Tired of Transformation?

‘I’ve done so much work on myself, when does it end?’

‘I’ve done everything right, where are the rewards?’

‘Why is there always more growth to do?’

 You’re not alone if some of these thoughts have been playing on your mind recently. Many of my clients are voicing similar exasperation or exhaustion with their personal growth journey, especially after uncovering some of the very new and perplexing ‘shadow layers’. I see that there are two main underlying belief systems that are leading to these experiences of ‘enough already’:

1. Spirituality has been a system for getting what you want or
2. Spirituality has usurped your joy

Without using a very deep definition of joy, those two beliefs look contradictory. Here’s why they’re not, and why each of them will unquestionably lead you into frustration.

Spirituality is not a system for getting what you want

 I’ve noticed that most spiritual teachers, services and products sell themselves on the basis that ‘following my path will get you the stuff you want’. They don’t put it in those words exactly but they do claim that you will improve your wealth, relationships, health and success as well as attract to yourself all you desire if you train yourself in this way, think these kinds of thoughts, meditate for this number of hours, buy this bracelet etc. Hogwash. To be polite. Spirituality is not a path for getting what you (intellectually) want and avoiding what you don’t. It is an ever-deepening relationship with self / source that meanders and astonishes and challenges and evolves and opens and softens you. If you have been ‘working on yourself’ just to become successful, give up smoking, get thin or make more money then you have been duped. Some of those things may happen, sure, and of course you are welcome to pursue whatever is joyful for you but if you have been thinking that the more you work on yourself the more perfect you become and the more you get what you want then spirituality has, perhaps unwittingly, been more of a system for acquisition than for evolution and it is bound to disappoint.

 There’s more to the Law of Attraction

 What’s more, there is much more complexity to the Law of Attraction than meets the eye. As the September Group reading phrased it, you do not attract things by your ‘cognitive intent’ but by your whole vibration, which includes all levels and layers of self and not simply the small part of you willing or affirming something. That’s because the Law of Attraction, like all natural and spiritual laws, is a powerful feedback mechanism to you about the permissions you have been giving. It is not simply a system that you can use to intellectually control what does and does not happen to you. The drive of the universe is towards expansion, integration and wholeness, not perfection and success as we have been lead to believe.

 The outcome of a truly spiritual existence is Joy

 Don’t believe this if it doesn’t accord with your experiences or observations, but if you are feeling disappointed or tired of spirituality then one of the possibilities is that you have been expecting an outcome from your growth endeavours. An outcome could be a reward, a summit, or a sign that you have been ‘doing well’, like getting a new relationship or becoming successful in some area. The only outcome that I can comfortably promise from personal growth work is an increase in your permission for joy. And remember that joy is not a state of being that arrives when all your circumstances line up to your ego-expectations. Joy is the experience of living uncontained – being free to live without being contained by your past, your pain, your fear, your expectations or any other limited thoughts. Sometimes not getting what we want takes us closer to authentic joy than anything else, at least initially, so it is a huge misunderstanding to equate a spiritual life with getting more of what you want more easily. It will happen, and it won’t and if you can hold that paradox then personal growth won’t tire or disillusion you, it will merely offer up the next open door to wholeness.

 Joy is the outcome – growth is a tool

By precisely the same logic, personal growth should never eclipse your joy! If it is in no way fun, exciting, or wonderful to do a workshop, read a self-help book, meditate (note that this doesn’t mean it isn’t scary or uncomfortable) then don’t do it. I have seen in myself and many clients that spirituality can become an excuse or a crutch or a shelter if it is being used to avoid being fully present in other relationships – with the body, with pain, with feelings. It is sometimes more of a challenge, and more of an opening, to embrace the parts of yourself that don’t seem spiritual (sexuality, humour, irreverence, the body, the shadow) than to develop only the ones that do.

I laughed when I recently came across one of Osho’s essays in the book The Man Who Loved Seagulls. In it Osho speaks of meditation as medicinal. It’s useful for when you are not well, he says, it can make you feel better. But if you are really well, you don’t need medicine and when you are really joyful, you don’t need meditation. That’s because, as the readings have said for years, joy is the motivation and spiritual growth is the tool.

If at any moment walking in nature, watching silent stars, cooking, shouting, lying naked on the grass or anything else makes you feel alive, relieved and open (the 3 characteristics of joy) then go there. It may well be that a personal growth workshop or conversation or book does this for you, but be careful of presuming that it will and getting stuck in an expectation that is not in alignment with an experience. 

If you are feeling tired of personal development, ask yourself if you have been expecting it to ‘deliver stuff’ or if you have been privileging it above your joy. Then, as always, just drop it softly and be still.