Facing Shame

Week 1- Principle #1 - The Essence of Being - God, in form

“Although you appear in earthly form your essence is pure Consciousness. You are the fearless guardian of Divine Light. So come, return to the root of the root of your own soul.” ~Rumi

·       Creation is the shadow thrown by the light of Reality, revealing its beauty but also hiding the full light of Consciousness from awareness.

·       Write about this, create an image to express this or discuss this idea with someone today.

·       What is the essence of your being and how is it hidden from your awareness by the shadow of existence?

 “Conscience is the mirror of our souls, which represents the errors of our lives in their full shape.”  ~ George Bancroft

Can you step into the full light? Why not?  

“No-one can understand the sounds of a drum without understanding both drum and drummer; nor the sounds of a conch without understanding both the conch and the blower; nor the sounds of a vina without undertstanding both vina and musician.”  ~Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Your essential Spiritual Identity/Essence/Ground of Being/Existential Reality and Truth 

is Good and Loving

You are already enlightened - Pure Gold, Essentially the Energy of Pure Love and Truth - 

you just do not yet know yourself in this way. You have not yet uncovered and recognized your True Nature

and live from a place of your False self that is shame-bound

The very ground of your Being becomes entrapped and bound in shame

Read the following story by Jack Canfield, that explains our essential nature with different language and through a different lens but is the same principle as the Christian mystic, Thomas Merton, states in the quote above. Having read the story see if you can reflect on the following questions:

How have you thought of people as either good or bad? How would you represent this idea in a diagram/picture?

How are all people good and bad, but essentially pure gold at the center? How would you represent this idea in a diagram/picture?

Can you find good and bad inside of you and witness it from the center of Pure Gold? What is the difference between “good,” and your essential nature?

Diagram of Development Using the Golden Buddha story - Read here

The Spirit Likes to Dress Up

The spirit

  likes to dress up like this:

   ten fingers, 

   ten toes,

 shoulders, and all the rest

  at night

   in the black branches,

     in the morning

 in the blue branches

  of the world.

   It could float, of course,

     but would rather

plumb rough matter.

  Airy and shapeless thing,

   it needs 

     the metaphor of the body,

 lime and appetite,

  the oceanic fluids;

   it needs the body's world,

     instinct

 and imagination

  and the dark hug of time,

   sweetness

     and tangibility,

 to be understood,

  to be more than pure light

   that burns

     where no one is --

 so it enters us --

  in the morning

   shines from brute comfort

     like a stitch of lightning;

 and at night

  lights up the deep and wondrous

   drownings of the body

     like a star.

~Mary Oliver

Week 2 - Defining Shame - What is this emotion/State of Consciousness?

Shame is generally not recognized or talked about - it seen as a dirty word - as if you should feel shame for having shame. To be perfectly clear, shame does not necessarily mean that there is guilt., and the experience of shame is very different to the experience of guilt. And so there is no shame in feeling shame. It is the fundamental experience of all humanity.

In preparation for our studying together, consider the question of what this emotion/state of being, is and when do I feel/experience it?

See if you can define the feeling of shame. How would you draw it? What color would it be? How would it smell, taste, feel like? Use a metaphor to describe the feeling. Where in your body do you feel it? What other feelings are associated with it? What beliefs contribute to the feeling? What need is underlying the shame? How have you tried to get away from this feeling? What is the most shaming experience of your life. Can you go back to the feeling memory of it and describe it?

Do this exercise first and then read on about other people’s descriptions of shame.

Week 3 - What are Symptoms that Point to Unaware Shame?

Look at this check-list. Do you see yourself? Can you find and experience the shame underneath the symptom? Examine it carefully - what are the feelings, needs, beliefs that are the package deal of shame? How did you learn to distance yourself from your shame?

Blaming and judging are the surest signs of shame. For more …

Read here….

Shame Questionnaire

https://coda.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Patterns-Characteristics-2011.pdf - more symptoms

Why are you drinking? demanded the little prince.
"So that I may forget," replied the tippler.
"Forget what?" inquired the little prince, who was already sorry for him.
"Forget that I am ashamed," the tippler confessed, hanging his head.
"Ashamed of what?" insisted the little prince, who wanted to help him.
"Ashamed of drinking!”
~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Week 4 - What is the difference between Shame and Guilt?

For a summary, read here….

Consider times in your life when learning has not resulted in shame even if you made mistakes and struggled to learn something?

When in your life did you feel shame for not being able to master something quickly?

What is the difference between the two experiences?

When have you been treated in a shameful way and then felt shame as if the experience meant something about you?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqGFrId-IQg -

Week 5 - Principle Number 2

The Genesis of Shame - why and how is it fundamental/basic to the human experience?

Although our essential Life Force, Ground of Being, energy of Pure Love and Truth, is the infinite and only Real (meaning lasting) aspect of our being, this is experienced, if at all, as immortal, invisible, ineffable, and unknown. Who we are is not at the forefront of our attention or in our awareness and it takes a long time to recognize that it is THIS that we are. Spirit in form. Instead, what if fore and center is all that we are NOT.

 For more … Read here

For more read here - the good gold leaf cover up

Week 6 - The Big Cover Up of Defense - Gold Leaf

For more … Read here

Defenses

Threat (unmet need in past, in perception in the present) =

 Emotion = Fear, Fear of loss of identity (shame) =

Belief attached to the feeling is an identity issue = I am bad, worthless, not good enough, unlovable, a failure, incompetent, stupid, a horrible person AND it is my fault =

Defenses or tactics to control needs and feelings, or to overpower the external threat =

Flight                                                 Fight

Externally Passive                            Externally Aggressive

 Externally Victim                              Externally Perpetrator

Internally Perpetrator                       Internally Victim 

For more … Read here

For more on the necessity of defense in terms of the evolutionary process in consciousness - read here

Week 7 - Principle Number 3 - Shame is not your enemy, shame is your guide: The correct relationship to shame.

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.” 

~Brene’ Brown

Most of us, throughout our lives have spent an inordinate amount of time avoiding shame, getting rid of shame, denying that shame exists. We are terrified of our shame. But the truth is that shame is an integral and fundamental aspect of our humanity. In theory, we often try to define shame as different from guilt. Literature often defines guilt as simply an understanding of wrongdoing, without making it mean something about you. While shame is defined as a feeling of wrongdoing that is attached to a MEANING or a BELIEF SYSTEM about you. So, when shame is felt, the immediate meaning we make of it is that we are wrong….and bad. But in truth, we have virtually no experience of simple guilt, and that wrongdoing is nearly always attached to a meaning we make of it. So let’s just name our shame, and get to work on figuring out how to relate to it. The truth is, no matter how hard we try, it is not going away. In fact, we need it as our guide.

For more … Read here © Charisse Lyons

Deeper Learning:

Brene Brown uses delightful humor and groundedness in discussing how to listen to our shame. 

https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_listening_to_shame?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Don’t hate your shame. 

It is the alchemy of the sun 

And the dung

- And the toil

Rolled altogether

That creates the

Shiny blue-green

Sacred scarab ~L Johnson

For more … Read here

Week 7 1/2 - How do we work with Shame as Adults?

Shame is a cellular memory of how we felt when we interpreted events and experiences in childhood to mean that we were bad, wrong and not good enough. When this feeling arises - we must relate to it with grace and dignity, correcting our young perceptions and beliefs about our identity. For more … read here

Tell your inner child - she never was “bad,” or “wrong,” or “not good enough.” She was always of intrinsic value. Life is just learning and expanding … not good or bad. On the other hand using feelings to manipulate others into meeting your needs as an adult is bad, wrong behavior and must be corrected. Others are not there to soothe, indulge, pacify and empathize with the unmet needs and feelings of your past.

Week 8 - Interrelatedness of Feeling and Thought

Feeling and thought are integrally related, in fact are just the same thing. Emotion is an energy that is almost visible and the symptoms can be seen very clearly in the body - tears, shaking, butterflies in the tummy etc. Thought is a higher function of survival and not quite as visceral… just energetically a little higher than the dense slowness of emotion. Shame cannot be separated out from it’s meaning and the overlay of understanding, interpretation and thought that may be pre-verbal, but nonetheless a cognition. Let’s look at the core beliefs, related to the core feeling of shame.

For more … read here

Week 9 - Principle #4 - Relationship heals the split

Shoulders
 
A man crosses the street in rain,
stepping gently, looking two times north and south,
because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him.
No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo
but he's not marked.
Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE,
HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills up with breathing.
He hears the hum of a boy's dream
deep inside him.

We're not going to be able
to live in this world
if we're not willing to do what he's doing
with one another.

The road will only be wide.
The rain will never stop falling. 
      ~Naomi Shihab Nye

I especially love this beautiful poem because it speaks to the masculine being tender, protective, awake, present and loving.

And I wonder about this father’s inner relationship to his own inner young soul. Is that soul asleep and protected, or awake and recognized, loved and related to with integrity, compassion and complete acceptance, even when it is rambunctious, angry, hurt, shamed, noisy, rebelliious.Is he still the loving father then?

 Use this poem to deeply introspect about your relationship to the younger part of yourself and think about when you were accepted and loved, protected and nurtured, and when were you rejected, shut down and tamed by shame. 

 How can you be the all loving, accepting and listening parent to that part of yourself now? Can the rain stop falling in your own inner life, and can you be the sun to yourself. As so many spiritual texts tell us, the sun does not discriminate between “good” or “bad” – it merely shines, because it is the nature of the sun to shine. Is this not the nature of your own mature Self?Examine the words and concepts below and dedicate yourself to bringing the two aspects of self back together into relationship with one another. The essential you that is free of shame, needs to be in relationship with the part of you that is bound up in shame and suffering. Love needs to be brought into relationship with Shame. Look at the list and think what it would be mean to bring the opposite quality into relationship with all the shame-based qualities of human life? Reconciliation, love, forgiveness, all need to happen inside of you in relationship. Without it happening internally it can never happen internally. If you do not understand these concepts deeply, start researching them and observing how they show up in the world. Eg. what is meant by perfectionism and how is this different to creativity. What is meant by caretaking, and how is this different to caregiving? Can I bring caregiving to my caretaking self and reconcile the two, so that they become ONE in love? Sacramental Holy Union happens internally.

For the list … go here

Week 10 - Identification with your Essential Self and learning relationship with your Shame-based self

For more… read here

Week 11 - A Roadmap to Gain Awareness

Every word we utter, thought we have or action we take is rooted either in unaware motivation or awareness with Love. Unawareness leads to destruction, awareness to creativity and life. Use this simple roadmap to assess yourself in all that you do and as a tool to gaining deeper awareness.

For more … Read here