Illuminating the Shadow – Sophia Temple of Light

Beautiful Blessings!!!

As we soar upon the luminous glow of this month’s powerful portal of light, we have a wonderful opportunity

to heal the Shadow aspects of ourselves and integrate them into the light. Some of your most powerful gifts, soul treasures and talents have been hidden within the inner recesses of your unconscious.

I have had the blessed opportunity to facilitate doing deep soul/Shadow work for over 20 years. I have worked with thousands of people to help them to transform the places within that feel unlovable to access their true authentic gifts and talents.

As Shadow work has been a deep passion of mine for many years-and I do believe it is one of the reasons I truly feel balanced and happy in my life at this present time-I am excited to offer a group healing by phone. I will be sending out the information soon. I am feeling that this will be very transformative, a true re-birth into freedom and authentic living from the heart!!!

This long distance group healing promises to heal past wounds with love and through forgiveness, acceptance and grace to help you embody your authentic self in this very present moment.

Today’s Cosmic Lineup

Today, on May 20th, we experienced the Sun and the Pleiades come together as they cross the zenith point (directly overhead) at 20 degrees north latitude at high noon. This is a time the Mayans called the “Days of No Shadows”. It is called this because no shadows are cast when you place a straight stick in the ground. At this time there are no shadows cast by the pyramids. This spectacular celestial event is happening now and only happens for about 144 years out of every 26,000 years.

Additionally, and quite remarkably, the Beltane Scorpio Full Moon, occured on May 18th during the “Days of No Shadows” at the pyramid complex of Teotihuacan (and for all those at 19.6 north latitude), so close to the Days of No Shadows, which is exact on May 21st at Chichén Itzá (and for all of those at 20.6 north latitude).

We also had the Beltane New Moon. It is rare to have a Taurus New Moon and Scorpio Full Moon so precisely aligned with these two significant annual solar alignments. It will be all of 19 years before we have this particular alignment happen in this same way again-as a similar type of alignment will happen in 2029.

New Moon in June 2019

On June 3rd, we have a powerful lineup with the archetype of the Gemini New

Moon, the Sun in Gemini and Mercury. The way we think in Gemini reveals that this is a very powerful lineup for our Shadow work as Gemini symbolizes the twins and the different aspects of self and how we relate to them.

As I was tuning in to this energy, I was guided to offer a Healing of the Shadow Activation for everyone-to take a journey into the realm of the Shadow to create a relationship with the parts of self that are hidden in the dark to truly embrace all parts of self-with self love and care.

What is the ‘Shadow’ self according to psychology? The ‘Shadow’ is known as the side of your personality that contains all the parts of yourself that you don’t want to admit to having. It is at first an unconscious side. It is only through effort to become self-aware that we recognize our Shadow.

The Shadow is the “dark side” of our personality because it consists chiefly of primitive, negative human emotions and impulses like rage, envy, greed, selfishness, desire, and the striving for power. The personal Shadow is the disowned self.

Our healing and activation will take place on the New Moon in June, which is in Gemini. This is a perfect time to dive into the inner recesses of our being to bring light and re-birth to our Shadow.

The brightest flame casts the darkest Shadow.

Maybe that is why sometimes the only thing each of us can see is our own Shadow.

In many cases we become seekers on the path to personal growth because have come to a place where we understand that in order to move forward in life we will need to face and heal the pain that we buried long ago deep within the depths of our Shadow self, This pain has become a burden that we can no longer bear. With the personal journey into the dark night of the soul, we come to understand how this hidden Shadow self sabotages our relationships, douses out the fire of our dreams and keeps us from fulfilling our soul’s destiny.

This inner shadowy realm contains the aspects of ourselves that we feel are unloveable and we have tried to hide or deny. It contains those dark parts that we believe are not acceptable to our family, friends, and most important, ourselves. We have stuffed this dark side of our consciousness deeply within, hidden from ourselves and others. For we fear that if someone sees this part of us they will no longer love this unlovable and tragically flawed aspect of ourselves. So we deny our emotions or wounds and pain away; here it lives unresolved within our subconscious mind.

On your journey to discover your inner secrets and mysteries, you may find it valuable to explore the dark, hidden crevices within your psyche. Here within the inner depths of your subconscious and unconsciousness, we find the “Shadow self.” It is also known as the place where the darker, unowned side of your personality lives. Your Shadow self is the part of you that stays unknown, unexamined, hidden and out of the light of your conscious awareness. It is the part of you that you have denied or suppressed because it doesn’t fit your image of who you believe you should be.

We spend our lifetimes trying to sidestep our fears and even deny their existence, but looking back we can see that some of the major decisions made in our youth were based on fear, rejection and humiliation. The concept of fear of failure and sometimes, even more, the fear of success can set us up for the disappointment and derailment of our dreams. For in the face of fear of rejection, we fear we are not good enough so we don’t try for the things we long to do because we might not get hired, so we don’t even try and we can sit on the sidelines time after time letting opportunities pass us by.

When we are triggered into the fight or flight response based on a perceived fear or threat of being hurt, rejected or abandoned, our inner child becomes activated. Through these illusions, we may move deeper into our Shadow aspect to where core beliefs such as unworthiness, shame, and/or abandonment issues take over our awareness-especially if we have learned in childhood or adolescence that love is conditional and based on behaving and acting in certain “preferred” ways. We may deny our authentic feelings to wear a mask or act in a certain way that we feel is lovable. This includes stuffing down emotions, overdoing or becoming co-dependent with others. Often we have come to believe that our emotions were invalid. All of these experiences further deepen the personality split that creates the Shadow.

Everyone is a reflection of ourselves

It is said that we never really see others, instead we see different aspects of

ourselves mirrored back to us through our own inner lens. Shadows parts of self become projections of our highest qualities as well as our darkest ones. Our associations with different people in our life, especially our parents who helped to form our thoughts and ideas about the world through their own beliefs and experiences. Shadow work is deep, profound and prolific it is one of my favorite practices to share with others and is the basis for the core soul healing work that I created through years of facilitating healing work for others. I have found it to be one of the most rewarding of the many types of healing modalities that I work with for myself and also others.

Where Shadows Come From

You weren’t born with your Shadow. Your Shadow was developed over time through the conditioning of your family lineage, your school, upbringing, community and those who had influence over you when you were young.

From our earliest years, we build belief systems about ourselves based on our childhood experiences and things we were told about ourselves by those we looked up too. In essence, we are shaped by our parents’ beliefs and thoughts and desires for us.

As a child, we were very open and did not have the protective shields that an adult has developed over time. You did not learned how to filter and discern the information that you received, so you take in all of the positive and negative or fearful statements that were shared about you and the world you lived in as true. A child who is told that she is unlovable, not smart, or unworthy will believe this to be true. As that child grows, these beliefs will become overtly obvious, or they will become masked in the form of a Shadow self.

Breaking Agreements With the Shadow

You also made agreements and contracts that aligned with what others told you about yourself. The wonderful thing is that through diving into the Shadow, bringing these wounded aspects to the light and giving them a voice, you can break these old agreements to illuminate and integrate your Shadow aspect. Here, you will find that some of your greatest gifts and talents have been hiding from view.

The more hidden your Shadow is, the more covert an influence it will have on you. Once you are prepared to shine a light on the darker parts of yourself, you must be prepared to be honest about what you uncover. I believe that you will never be completely fulfilled as an authentic person until you look in every corner of yourself to reveal what lies deep within. Until the moment that you face your fears and honor your Shadow side, there will exist a separation within that you will not be able to understand or connect with.

From the perspective of the quantum universe, we create our reality from our subconscious mind. The subconscious is hundreds of times more powerful than the conscious mind. So that being said, it is only natural to then understand that these suppressed aspects of our psyche that reside in the subconscious would play a huge role in the world that is reflected around us. They create what is often referred to as energy patterns. These energy patterns become a powerful point of attraction. In other words, the people we encounter who we have resistance to are actually projections of our own Shadow. Being in resistance to any aspect of our true self drains our life force energy. These experiences take us out of alignment with our higher self and Source energy-and this is why it feels so draining to be in these types of interactions.

The goal of working with the Shadow is to integrate and come to know and accept all of those parts that we have attempted to hide or run from-to make that which has been operating at the unconscious level conscious. Some may not be aware that these aspects even exist. However, these aspects are always trying to become noticed. The higher self will always orchestrate opportunities for us to come to know ourselves more deeply for the purpose of nurturing wholeness.

It is always up to us if we choose to answer our own soul’s call and turn inward. Shadow work, if practiced properly, can help us to create not only more compassion for others but also for ourselves. It helps us to change our views, perspectives and beliefs. It asks us to embrace what we consider to be our weaknesses and turn them into strengths. When we work with the Shadow, we begin to reclaim the projections we put on others. We turn inward and begin to gently listen and heal those aspects within ourselves instead of casting someone else as the bad guy and us as the helpless victim.

With continued awareness and healing, we will no longer need to attract into our experience people who trigger those energy patterns. We will notice that the people who we attract into our lives are whole and healed as well, no longer looking to blame their parents, others or the world for their misfortune. We will be able to look back with compassion on all of the experiences that we chose to have (consciously or unconsciously) and see that there was a lesson and purpose in it all. Within Shadow work, the practice of forgiveness helps to fully empower us.

During next month’s Illuminating the Shadow Activation in June, I will be sharing a step-by-step process designed to help you heal your Shadow aspects and break old agreements and contracts that don’t serve the light of your soul to integrate your disowned parts of self in order to illuminate your greatest gifts and talents.

Through our soul-journey work, I will guide you into the core belief pattern that has your Shadow aspect locked in a pattern of unworthiness, shame or blame. As we work with this Shadow aspect, you will be able to recognize the root or core belief that has created the Shadow to begin with. Once we have identified the core belief that we are holding that has created a Shadow, we can easily become aware of how this is creating resistance to Source within us. Often what happens when we start to ask these questions is that we may be brought back to a time in our childhoods where we can identify the original trauma that created this Shadow split.

Our Shadows exist to teach us, guide us and give us the blessing of our entire selves. Shadow aspects, in truth, are developed to help us cope with our environment. When we tune in with them, they are always willing to heal and grow and help us to integrate our deepest thoughts and feelings.

Diving into the Depths of Our Psyche

We see that, deep within the unconscious self, we have hidden not only the

things we don’t like about ourselves, but also our greatest gifts and talents. Yes, deep within our Shadow, we have hidden our most exquisite light, our soul’s inherent gifts and our greatest abilities. We have dimmed ourselves down because of the ways we have felt not good enough, not beautiful enough, and not lovable.

Why do we do this? Why do we dim our light, our authentic self, self-love, true love, and our gifts and talents into the deepest unconsciousness places of self?? Sometimes the answers are simple: we often do this just to fit in or because somewhere along our path of development someone said that our light was too bright and we should dull it down, or someone was jealous of us or we simply never got the proper encouragement from those around us.

Was there ever a time in your life when you did not want to overshadow someone you love, a friend, a family member, so you did not follow your heart and do what your passion was calling you to do? We live in a society that is very competitive about how we look, our strength, brain power, and body image, and at the same time we have been scapegoated into being small, playing small and following along with our fellow humans-as if we are a herd of sheep. So we put on the face that we’re expected to, even if it doesn’t fit our heart’s passion or our true authentic expression. We learn to play the game of life as set by the rule makers before us. And it is in these very rules and regulations that our first encounter with the Shadow may ensue.

Here, we stuff our authentic voice deep inside to put on the outer mask that we feel will make others happy-and here our happiness sinks into the dark recesses of our being until we become the rebel to break the rules set out for us and embrace our true authentic voice.

When we dive into the mystical realm of our Shadow, we discover that we are vast, magnificent and complex beings. Defined by our life’s experiences, both exalted and tragic. Here in the depths of our Shadow self, we find the places where have we lacked compassion and love for others. Here, if we are honest with ourselves, we find that most often it is truly our lack of self-love and compassion for ourselves that we are projecting onto others. We are judging in others what we don’t like about ourselves. This inner unworthiness creates a feeling of separation from others, from our wholeness, and especially from God/Goddess.

If we get truly honest with ourselves, we find that the fear of not being loved is what keeps us from truly trusting others and opening our hearts to love, to loving others, to loving Life. Here, we are trapped in the Shadow of true love and we are beginning to live from conditional love. When we are meaning, “I need this from you to love you,” or “I cannot love you if you do this or that” forces love into the Shadow self. Love anchors itself in our Shadow and is submerged in the darkness of the box we have placed our love within. Again, as we dive in to explore these inner spaces, we have the divine opportunity to heal these old belief systems and break old contracts of unlovablilty and unworthiness to birth ourselves into a new way of being.

How Do We Heal and Free Our Shadow?

The best way to do this is to make a relationship with your Shadow. Here, you

will see that your Shadow has been developed to protect you from things you could not handle at the time. However, as we grow, we also discover that we have much to teach the Shadow, and that through our darker and dramatic life experiences we have made agreements which may have served us at the moment, but no longer serve us now.

As you tune in to these limiting agreements, you will find that you can break these agreements to make new agreements that support you.

You can listen to your Shadow; you can understand her/him and offer the wisdom you have learned through the years. As you connect and integrate your Shadow, you become free to love yourself and here you are also free to love others. You have the power to heal yourself, to love yourself to forgive yourself-the ability for transformation is within you.

Remember that you are created in the image of Source, Mother Father God; you are simply divine in every aspect of yourself. I believe that an enlightened person has come to accept all of her light, her God-self, but even more, she has come to embody her darkness; and through this, she is able to love humanity, love its beauty-light and also darkness. Here, you learn that both the light and the darkness are experienced and that it is all valid and it all has a place within the duality and polarity of life. Through this exploration, you can come to a place of balance-simple, pure, clean, and bright, honoring all aspects of self, all experience. And through the honoring of all, you naturally embody the wisdom to choose.

Live Your Authentic Truth

Explore the true meaning of love, compassion, and forgiveness.

Embrace a conscious approach to living in integrity, honor, and respect for others and self. As you are looking into the eyes of another, remember that they are reflecting aspects of yourself back to you. What do you want to see; what do you choose to see?

Attune yourself to truth.
Always tell the truth, especially to yourself. Moreover, you will begin to trust yourself.

Also, you will find that you can live life from your heart. Here within your heart, you find your true purpose, your passion, your ecstasy.

Transformation

Your life will be transformed when you heal and make peace with your Shadow. Here, you are the caterpillar who becomes the breathtakingly beautiful butterfly. You will no longer have to pretend to be someone you are not for you will honor your authentic voice in the world. Your Shadow holds the keys to your loving and honoring every aspect of self. These are the keys to personal freedom and living your best life.

To honor these magnificent energies, I am creating a powerful healing journey designed to heal our wounded hearts and spirits, guiding us to heal the parts of self that we have disowned, a journey of forgiveness and compassion to illuminate our paths of empowerment going forward. A journey of self-love, wholeness, and inspiration… I hope you will join me for this incredible Spring event!!!

All of my love, Susanna Sophia

About the author

Susanna Sophia