On Being Deeply Honest With Yourself

Let’s have a talk. A real talk. A heart-to-heart, honest talk. Pour yourself a coffee, tea, water, juice or other beverage of choice and let's go.Are you allowing yourself to see the parts of you that maybe aren’t so sparkly, pretty, and social-media worthy?Are you carrying around someone else’s dream? Someone else’s “shoulds" and reasons why or why not you can do/be/have the life you’re truly meant to live?Are you afraid at what you might find if you were truly honest with yourself?Never before have we lived in such a time where we can so carefully select what people see about us and what they don’t. If you look at our lives online, we all look like perfect, happy, successful people with hardly a problem in our lives. We don’t let people see the parts of us that we think are ugly or that we think will make others turn away from us, judge us, abandon us and even hate us.We even go so far as to refuse to see these parts of ourselves, shoving them way back, deep into the recesses of our beings, until some crisis comes up, and it all comes tumbling out in one great, tangled, confusing mess. Maybe this isn’t you. Maybe this is an old version of you, and you have learned how to see and integrate these shadow parts of yourself. To you I say, congratulations! Tell us your secrets. How did you do it?To the rest of you, to those of you who know, deep down in your being, in your gut, in your innermost knowingness, that this is you, there is hope.Some part of you is whispering to be heard, to be acknowledged, to be given attention and love. Some part of you wants you to know your true power. Well, you asked for it, and here it is.If you don’t know how to begin an honest dialog with your shadow side that leads to reintegration and standing tall in your true power, then listen up. Start with the simplest method: ASK. Ask yourself to be gently and clearly shown one place where your power is locked up in your shadows. Where is your power and truth waiting to be seen, acknowledged, accepted, loved and reintegrated into your awareness of yourself as whole?If that doesn’t work, ask yourself to show you where you have been deceiving yourself. Then notice when it shows up.What have you been trying to hide?What attitudes or beliefs do you have a strong emotional attachment to?What have you been forcing yourself to believe, even though you know it’s not right, not true to you?What is it? What is it? WHAT is it? What habits, judgements and expectations from others have you not been willing to acknowledge or let go of?When it shows up, you’ll know it. It might hit you in the gut, or send a river of tears down your face. It might make you want to throw up when you realize how much energy you’ve been using to keep this lie in place.Honesty lets energy flow. It takes more energy to hold deceit and lies in place than to face the consequences of honesty. And with the realization of your deceitfulness, you will be removing the dam that’s keeping the flow blocked.Honesty doesn’t have to be harsh. It doesn’t have to come through these ways. It could show up as a HUGE RELIEF. The trick to this is to be willing, to ASK for it to come through gently and clearly, and to trust it when it shows up.When you realize you no longer need to hold onto this belief, or that you can love even this shadow side of yourself, then you are stepping into your power.When you can see your shadow for what it is, simply a part of yourself that you were unwilling to love or accept, then you can see its gifts. Every shadow comes with a gift. Thank it. Accept the gift and use it. If it’s not apparent what the gift is, ask that you are gently and clearly shown what it is.Honesty doesn’t have to be brutal. Brutal honesty is often thinly veiled aggression. One of my teachers has a saying, “Speak the cold, hard truth with soft, round words.”See yourself (shadow side and all) and love yourself just as you are. It’s that simple. It’s THAT simple. You may be brand-spankin new to this, so give yourself some time. Give yourself compassion if you don’t get it right away. When you were a baby did you go from crawling to effortless walking? No. You learned first by holding onto a table and walking around it. Then you took some wobbly steps on your own. But soon, with consistent practice and an undying desire to get it, you were walking and then running and jumping and playing and woooow! You are that baby right now, learning how to see your shadow side, reintegrate it and OWN your power. Be in your power. Love your power. Use your power.You’ve come this far. Your soul has been asking for this, and now the method for support has shown up for you. This is you walking around that table, about to take your first wobbly steps.You can ignore this or not do this if you’re not ready. Opportunities will keep showing up for you to take these first steps. But the sooner you start the process, the sooner you really will “level up” into a life that reflects what it’s like for you to be in your power, to be clear on every level and easily manifest your desires and dream visions. It’s true. It’s real, and I invite you to begin.Forgiveness, for ourselves and for those who planted the seeds of these lies and self deceit, is critical.Forgiveness helps you get out of that resistance-struggle relationship with yourself or someone else, and into the flow of love that is always flowing to and through you.It brings you clarity. Clarity helps you manifest more quickly, more aligned with your true heart’s desires, and more easily.Your shadow side is showing up, so you can clear the lies you’ve been telling yourself and move forward as a clear expression of your true wholeness. The trick is to RECOGNIZE that it’s showing up for it to be REINTEGRATED, and for the emotional charge around it to be dissolved. Then you see a whole different perspective of possibilities. I want to take a second to address a common misbelief in spiritual circles and teachings that may trigger your shadow side to surface. Are you deceiving yourself into thinking that if you can ONLY THINK POSITIVE THOUGHTS, then you’ll have it made? You’ll be THERE?!I hate to break it to you, but that’s not what’s up.True, when you clear your junk and reintegrate your shadow, life gets easier. You DO think positive thoughts more often because you’ve cleared and transmuted the seeds of limiting beliefs that negative thoughts come from. But this is more of a side-effect than a cause. Your negative thoughts and feelings are gateways into your shadow side, not something to be feared or banished.When you clear your junk and reintegrate your shadow, life gets more fun. You learn how to live in the flow. Your desires show up left and right. It's because you are no longer resisting the flow of whats coming up to be reintegrated and LOVED by you.You’re human, and it’s inhumane to expect a human to NEVER HAVE A NEGATIVE THOUGHT. It doesn’t work like that.It works by becoming that ninja who notices that thought before it has time to reach its tentacles into your entire being and consume you in the storm. Notice it and then work with it. Acknowledge it. Challenge yourself to see the hidden belief in that thought. Challenge yourself to see the hidden self-deceit. Challenge yourself to see what part of you has been banished, suppressed, and hidden and is now asking to be accepted and loved.I’m pressing your buttons and showing you what to do with the junk that comes up. I’m challenging you to clear your clutter, dissolve your blocks, and step into your power. This is real talk.If you’re willing to ask for help from the spirit side, call on your spirit guides and the angels of healing, forgiveness and clarity. Ask them in your head and heart or even out loud to help you move gently and gracefully through this reintegration and to KNOW your power, to KNOW your wholeness, and to KNOW your true being.Gently is key. You can learn this with great turbulence or with gentle, loving surrender. It’s ok either way. You’ll get there. You’re already there.  ❤️If you don’t want to do this by yourself, find a trusted (very trusted), skilled helper like a friend who’s done this for his or herself. Or an elder who has been through this process. Or someone who you know, in your heart of hearts, is willing to hear you and help you reintegrate your self-deceit and shadow side.I do this by myself, with my journal as my witness. I do this with friends and family. My sister Lizzy and I do this with each other. I do this with my soul sisters in my shamanic healing circle. If you are feeling called to do this with others, trust that call and ask the universe for the people who are willing and able to help you to show up!No matter how you do it, give yourself the gift of clarity. Release and reclaim all that power that’s tied up in keeping your self-deceit and dishonesty hidden away from conscious view. Liberate all the power and energy that is being spent on keeping those parts of you hidden in the shadows, and welcome them back into your wholeness and love.Then take a nap, a bath, or go out and play! It’s no joke that you are changing on every level right now: mental, physical, emotional and spiritual. You’re shedding the old and stepping into your truth. Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself some rest, compassion and space.If you want to do this by yourself, but you need a little more guidance, I HIGHLY recommend this book: Emotional Options by Mandy Evans. You can read this book quick, like in a couple of hours, and get started on her process for releasing your limiting beliefs. This is an extremely effective way of digging into that shadow side in a very gentle and even fun way. It’s just a few bucks. I can’t recommend this book enough, and I’ll probably talk about it again in this 30-Day Challenge.XoxoNataliePS - For those of you who like to see examples and hear stories, I offer an experience of seeing and reintegrating my own shadow side. Mind you, this is just one instance out of many many many instances where I’ve had the great fortune to reintegrate my shadow.In 2007 I was in journalism school in Chapel Hill, and I won a grant to do a photo project in New York City for the summer.Late into the summer, August 8th to be exact, I was woken up when my housemate came into my room and told me to look outside. Rain was coming down sideways and the wind was shaking our house.We didn’t know it at the time, but tornadoes were ripping through our neighborhood just a couple of blocks away. The subways were flooded out, and no one could go anywhere. Everything came to a stop.It was a day of reckoning. A few hours later that same housemate got a call that her favorite tarot reader was in town and had a couple of spots available. We jumped at the chance and found a way to get there.It was my first professional tarot reading. She turned over the cards, and they didn’t look good. They looked terrifying.There was the tower card staring at us. And then she started talking. She started talking to my depths, to my spirit, to my soul. Right there, with tarot as her guide, she called me out on how I’d been living someone else’s dreams. I’d been living in someone else’s “shoulds” and expectations, and I was ignoring the part of myself that most wanted to be seen.At that time I was so repressed that I had no idea how to even begin seeing this side of me that begged to step into the light of my awareness and love. I had ignored my true desire to be an artist and to delve into the depths of spiritual studies. Neither of those had practical purposes in the world, so I didn’t think they had value. I repressed them, shoving them down, as I did the “right” thing and went to school for a skill I could turn into a reliable job.I tell you this story as an example, and this is an extreme case (because I'm extra af and used to have to learn everything the hard way), but it was necessary for me at the time. What I’m about to share isn’t necessarily what will happen to you. It took me many years to learn how to be gentle with my growth, with myself and with my truth, so this is an example of past me.I resolved right then and there to not go back to school. It was sucking my soul dry, sucking away my creative energy and power, and leaving me feeling wrung out and tossed aside.It wasn’t my own fire of desire that was keeping me in school, it was my fear. It was my fear that if I didn’t do what I was supposed to do and go to school and get a practical job, then my life would forever be a total failure.I won’t say it was all rainbows and butterflies from that point on, but that clarity, that truth, and that choice allowed me to shed a great big old chunk of baggage that I didn’t need.If I were to do that day over again, I’d make the same choice AND I’d also immediately find a mentor, coach or guide to help me figure out what I DO want to be doing.The backlash from my friends and family sent me whirling because I had no clue how to navigate in this new way of being where I reclaimed my power and led my own life according my my deepest inner truths.I know now that finding support from a skilled expert who can help you live your truth is invaluable. I didn’t know then what I know now, and I struggled for many years to figure out how to be in my truth in tangible, everyday ways. And truth be told, this is an ongoing journey that will keep unfolding until the day I die.However, my reintegration of deeply suppressed and banished parts of myself began with that moment of seeing my artistic and spiritual sides and being willing to admit that they’re important despite their apparent lack of functional utility in our consumerist society.This willingness to acknowledge and accept these parts of me (and they weren’t that scary after all, were they?) enabled me to continue to explore my power, to explore my ability to create my reality, and to be honest with myself that art and spirit are my life! This acceptance of my inner truth also helped me through some of the toughest times of my life because I knew that what I was going through was all for something that I truly cared about deep inside.It’s been cyclical, and there's always new layers to peel, but I keep at it, and now I stand here, in my power, producing a podcast about nature and intuition and leading brave souls on journeys to become conscious creators of their dream lives.You, dear one, have an inner fire and a dream vision that holds those seeds of what you DO want. You are learning how to create that life that is a great big YES.You may want to invest in a mentor or a coach, or you may want to do it at your own pace and get help from the book I recommended above. It’s all good, and my best advice is to start now and enjoy the journey, ups, downs, and all! You don't have to be extra af like me and throw your life away to start anew. You can take smaller steps and take your time. It's ok.Remember to play. Have fun. Rest. Give yourself time and space to explore and be curious. And learn these skills, so when shadow shows up, you welcome it knowing full well that there is a gift hidden in this acceptance and reintegration.I just admitted to you that I dropped out of college because of a tarot reading that revealed my inner truths that had been hiding in my shadows! Now what can you admit to yourself that you’ve been trying to hide? image from Pinterest