SGM Oct. 2013 Weekly Message Two: “Integrating Lost Parts Of Your Self”
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Welcome back to the October 2013 Edition of Spiritual Growth Monthly. I’m Kevin Schoeninger. It’s great to have you with us here at SGM!
Do unexpected challenges seem to be cropping up in your life more than usual? Or maybe you feel afraid or hesitant in certain situations for no logical reason? Or perhaps you feel limited or restricted from being your fullest self or enjoying the success that you truly desire in a relationship, your finances, or your health? Do the same disappointments and frustrations keep happening again and again?
If so, it could be that a forgotten part of you is trying to get your attention. Perhaps, you were laughed at in school play practice and never wanted to get on stage again. Or maybe you felt neglected as a child and avoid depending on others for anything. Or, perhaps, you were told that an interest you had was “unacceptable,” so you shoved that part of you into a deep interior closet.
You learned to live without that part of you and do your life in a way that would avoid confronting it. Now, after years of doing that, your normal activities and routines don’t acknowledge the existence of that voice at all. It’s as if that part of you has ceased to exist. Yet, at a certain point, your conscious evolution calls for you to recognize its existence and welcome it back into who you are and what you are doing.
Interestingly, that voice might feel darker OR lighter than your normal consciousness. It might feel hurt and resentful or it might be more joyful than you normally allow yourself to feel. At a certain point, when you are ready, that voice you’ve shoved inside and not paid attention to will start knocking on the door of your conscious attention with symptoms or situations that ask you to look deeper. Your alienated parts will call to you through illnesses and challenges.
In Stage Five of the 12 Stages of Healing described by Dr. Donald Epstein, we are asked to recognize and welcome these marginalized parts of our selves. As Dr. Epstein says: “For many people, Stage Five will be a time to merge with their dark side or their shadow. Others have spent a considerable amount of time with their shadow and are all too familiar with it. For this group of people, Stage Five will be a time to move past the illusion which kept them from their light or their goodness. After you have gone through Stage Five several times in your life, it becomes more common to merge with your separated goodness or light.” (p.77, 12SOH)
It may seem obvious why you would want to separate from your “dark side.” After all, those are the parts that challenge your positive self-image. Your dark side might include habits you’d rather not look at, or patterns of thinking and behavior that just are not becoming of a responsible, well-adjusted adult in our society.
But, why would you ignore or separate from your “light side?” Isn’t that the Divine within you? Isn’t that the Source of your life meaning and purpose? Isn’t sharing your light what makes life satisfying and worthwhile? Yes, yes, and yes. But, that’s also what could make this side of you uncomfortable to that responsible, well-adjusted self-image you like to present to society.
The “light within you” may challenge your normal routine or your current comfort zone, just as much as your “dark side” does. The “light within you” may ask you to say the direct, honest, loving truth instead of just saying what is safe and pleasing to others. It may ask you to do something outside “normal” to help someone else. It may ask you to let go of control and trust more deeply. It may ask you to go out of your way, go off schedule, and break with convention in service to a deeper need. You might be asked to help someone who is outside your circle, let go of thoughts and beliefs that keep you small, and take actions or risks that make you look and feel vulnerable.
Stage Five asks you to step outside your neatly-defined concept of self and your normal beliefs and routines that give you a sense of certainty and control. In Stage Five you are challenged and asked to expand. You are asked to welcome the parts of you which you have dishonored or ignored.
Now, a primary way you can do this is by learning to observe the process behind your experiences of suffering. You “merge with” your suffering, so you can discover the alienated parts of you that are speaking to you through your suffering. This becomes possible because, at this stage on your healing journey, you are strong enough and enlightened enough to know that you “are not” your suffering. In other words, you don’t take your suffering personally, but simply see it as a pattern of self-limitation caused by the fact that you have cut yourself off from a part of you because of some painful experience you had in the past.
Here’s how Dr. Epstein describes one of his own experiences with Stage Five (from p.86-88, 12SOH):
After 20 years as a chiropractor, Dr. Epstein began to experience severe pains in his left arm whenever he was adjusting his patient’s spines, even when doing very mild re-alignments. His arm was just killing him. The pain was so severe that he would have to excuse himself, go into the bathroom and cry.
Because of what he knew of the healing process and the stages he had gone through already, he was ready and willing to ask his body “What are you trying to tell me?”
As he continued to focus into his body sensations, an insight flashed into his mind that “his arm was not killing him, he was killing it.” Furthermore, he understood that the pain was not because he was sick or injured; it was because he was needy. A part of him needed him to pay attention. So he asked his body, “What is it? What do you want?”
Next, he felt a wave of sadness and began crying in a way he hadn’t remembered crying since he was a child. As he focused deeper into these feelings with a curiosity to understand more, images of his childhood flashed through his mind. He began to feel a deep sense of sorrow. As he experienced that deep sorrow, his arm pain disappeared.
He says that this experience had no rational component. In other words, he didn’t find a specific reason for his pain or any specific insight about his childhood experiences. He simply saw images, experienced deep sadness, and witnessed his pain disappear.
One of the characteristics of Stage Five is that you’ve become able to observe past experiences and feelings deeply without being swept up in them or carried away by them. Epstein says it is like “going back to the neighborhoods we lived in as children and spending some time there, yet knowing we don’t need to live there anymore.” (p.88, 12SOH)
As we go into the experiences behind our pains and frustrations we locate and integrate parts of ourselves, parts of our life experience, that have been left behind. These lost parts of ourselves are necessary for us to experience wholeness. When we are ready, the limited confines of how we have learned to “get by” don’t work anymore. When we are ready, life will challenge us with experiences that require those parts of us that we have left behind. This could be an illness, an opportunity, or an unexpected and distressing event that requires you to be more than you’re currently allowing yourself to be.
At these moments of distress, Epstein says: “our bodies are acting from a small sense, a small circle of self based upon a limited, immature perspective. As we observe ourselves and merge with what is beyond the distress, we invite that aspect of our being to grow up. We invite that child to become part of the family again. We ask that alienated aspect of ourselves to merge with and work for the greater good of the whole. Stage Five offers the opportunity for that fragmented aspect of ourselves we have not served well to be viewed by the whole being. As we observe that consciousness, it observes itself and helps to set us free.” (p.89, 12SOH)
Now, it can initially be scary to merge with these alienated parts of ourselves. They may bring up fear because of how expressing that part of us felt in the past. Yet, it’s important to face that part of us directly because without it we are limiting what we can become now. For example, maybe you were called “stupid” by your Math teacher and have never been able to get the hang of numbers or follow a budget. Or maybe, you were made to feel responsible for your parent’s divorce and have never been able to stay in a committed relationship.
In Stage Five, you become able to revisit these experiences from a stronger Core sense of yourself. You have access to a calm center that is beyond your pain and fear. You understand that you are not defined by anything that has happened to you, nor do you want to be limited by perspectives from the past.
Having come through Stage Four, you are ready to honor your deepest essence and make a stand for living more fully. You are no longer willing to live inside your small safe sense of self. You are ready to confront what scares you. You are in contact with a deeper presence from which you can witness the lost parts of yourself and welcome them back into your inner family.
Dr. Epstein gives us a very expressive breathing exercise to help us move through Stage Five. Here it is:
(p.95, 12SOH)
In this exercise, you allow your body to express the energy of a lost part of yourself, a part that is calling for your attention. Now, it may seem strange to allow your body to move without your conscious control. You might find yourself moving in odd ways, in ways that you’ve never moved before—and that is your task in this exercise—to allow your body to move in any way it wants to.
Begin by lying on your back. Bring your arms up over your chest and begin to swirl them in horizontal circles over the area between your chest and head.
Breathe in and out through your mouth, allowing your breathing to synchronize in whatever way feels natural with your movements.
As you continue to move your hands, bend your knees and allow your hips and legs to sway gently from side to side. Allow your breath to synchronize with the movements of your arms and legs. Do this until this movement and breathing pattern becomes free and easy.
Then, let your arms move in any way they want to and allow this movement to connect to whatever movement that your legs want to do. See if you can allow whatever rhythm and pattern to happen without trying to make it move a certain way.
As you witness these movements, call up the part of you that is identified with any suffering or frustration in your life. If this suffering seems to be located in any part of your body, acknowledge that region and ask what it wants. Notice anything that arises.
Tell that part of yourself that you are ready to acknowledge it and welcome it into your inner family. You might find that a phrase comes to mind and a movement pattern relating to that phrase naturally comes into your body. For example, when I did this recently with a pattern of work frustration, I found myself saying “Take this away” and I found my hands pushing forcefully away from my body.
Allow the movements to continue until they naturally come to stillness. At that point, you can declare: “I welcome all parts of myself and all experiences I’ve had. I embrace every aspect of my whole being.”
I would love to hear about your experiences with this exercise or any comments or questions on this week’s message—or anything that is on your mind—in our Discussion below.
In next Week’s Message, we’ll learn how to become more flexible on the inside, so we see and receive the “right opportunities.”
Until next time,
Welcome the parts of you that life may have caused you to leave behind,
Kevin