This is the eighth of our new series of arti­cles on The Zen of Let­ting Go, with side ref­er­ences to body­work, breath­work, and energy (espe­cially sex­ual energy) work.

So, strange con­flu­ence of stuff right now.

I sat down to write, and 2 things hap­pened. I got a blog com­ment from a new reader, with the fol­low­ing question:

Regard­ing your “5 Paths to Self-Knowing”, how would one look and feel through the Shad­ows of one’s self? This process of look­ing deeply, how is that done, what actions does one take?”

I have new com­ment soft­ware installed, and appar­ently I can sim­ply reply to the e-mail, and it will post to the blog. I gave that a try, and decided I that I needed to visit the BLOG to grab a link or 2.

Wouldn’t you know it, the blog, and web­site, were down!

I really have to say that this hap­pens sel­dom — how­ever, it’s been twice in 3 days, and I’m becom­ing aware of my Shadow side! What’s com­ing up for me are the feel­ings of fear and anger.

• If I just sit with the feel­ing, I feel an ache in my stomach.
• If I let my head get involved, the sto­ries start. First, I cre­ate a fear­ful sce­nario that the server will crash, and every­thing will be lost. I’ve never had to test the back­ups of the site, and have no wish to.
• Then, I shift to anger. The anger one is obvi­ous, and might even be famil­iar to you, too. “This isn’t fair! They can’t do this to me. They need to fix it!” Said with great force (as if they are out to get me, as opposed to a server prob­lem that’s affect­ing many, many sites.)

In order to get past this, I have to shift my atten­tion from my head, and my ego sto­ries, to briefly feel­ing my pain, to get­ting back to what I am “called to do” —in this case, write this article!

So, let’s use what I just said to look at the tran­si­tion from Chakra 3 to Chakra 4, and why this hap­pens so seldom.

Ok, so the Chakra story to date: the devel­op­men­tal path through the first three Chakras mir­rors our psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal devel­op­ment. Safety (c1) Rela­tion­ships (c2) and Self-knowing (c3) form the tri­pod upon which we stand. As with a real tri­pod, if any of the legs are weak, stuck or bro­ken, the thing starts list­ing in the direc­tion of the weak side. Now, here’s the odd part.

The voice of the ego func­tions to keep us stuck in a loop—the loop con­sists of the first 3 Chakras

The ego is what causes us to argue with our­selves, and with oth­ers. We blame, we story-tell, we come up with excuses. Or, ter­ri­fied of our self-created drama, we dis­tract our­selves with “pain killers” — TV, work, affairs, drugs, alco­hol, food.

… We are imme­di­ately con­fronted by the con­di­tioned ten­den­cies that have uncon­sciously dri­ven our life. Our his­tory, with its expec­ta­tions and fears, is embed­ded within these con­di­tions. These ten­den­cies con­tain our pre­set ways of relat­ing to this moment and can­not be per­ceived as long as we are uncon­sciously act­ing from them.

These uncon­scious pat­terns assure that our present actions will be based upon our his­tory and that we will end­lessly repeat this con­di­tion­ing into the future. Every uncon­scious action strength­ens our pre­con­ceived view of the world and assures our reac­tions within that view. We find our­selves going around and around like the char­ac­ter in the movie Ground­hog Day, aware of being entrapped but find­ing no exit. Step­ping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha’s Lib­er­at­ing Teach­ing of No-Self
, Rod­ney Smith, page 125

What we want to remem­ber is that our ego, or sense of self, is part of what was cre­ated dur­ing our early devel­op­ment. In other words, our self is created—it’s a story

To use terms devel­oped by Ben Wong and Jock McK­een, founders of The Haven, we are born with an immense yet untapped skill set, which they call the Authen­tic Self. In infancy and childhood,our fam­i­lies and our tribes help us to become “cit­i­zens” who engage in behav­iours and meth­ods approved of by our culture.

This process cre­ates an Actual Self, which you might think of as the socially accept­able parts, based upon our cul­ture, that are extracted from the Authen­tic Self. You might think of it as the Small Self.

Because of our iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with I, me, and mine—which we can call our ego—we read­ily believe that our Actual Self is both real and all that we are.

The voice of the ego then sets up shop as a vocal critic. It chal­lenges us to try harder (the kind of per­son we try harder to be is called the Ideal Self in this model), and blames us when we inevitably fail. It’s the Self Hate loop on the graphic.

This ego loop, for many, is all that there is.

The ego loop is con­cerned with our place in phys­i­cal real­ity. In other words, it’s con­cerned with Chakras 1 through 3. In a sense, this is what desta­bi­lizes the legs on the tri­pod. As long as there’s some­thing wrong, as long as there’s some mess, as long as the ego can come up with some lame-ass story about who and what is to blame, our poor lit­tle ego is happy. Even though we, decid­edly, aren’t.

Yet on and on we loop, because that’s what every­one is doing.

Inter­est­ingly, the way out of the loop is to pay atten­tion. (self-compassion on the above chart.) That’s all. That’s it. Of course, it’s harder than it seems, what with all the ego noise nat­ter­ing end­lessly in the back­ground. This is why we sug­gest zazen, or med­i­ta­tion. In this way, we just sit there and become really clear about how noisy our egos are. There’s noth­ing to do about it, other than to sim­ply observe.

It’s sort of like my ini­tial illus­tra­tion. My server was down, and that was sim­ply real­ity, in the moment that it was down. My ego, how­ever, sim­ply can’t help get­ting involved. And its involve­ment is, as I described, to go in the direc­tion of fear and anger. I observe it, I let myself feel what going on in my body, and I have a breath… and wait.

“Wait? You’ve got to be kid­ding! I have to do some­thing! Blame some­one, yell if some­one, whine, throw stuff.”

Or not.

This, really, is the point. I’m not try­ing to stop my ego, destroy my ego, or try to force the world to bend to my real­ity. I sit, I watch and lis­ten, and I smile. And about 50 min­utes after it all started, the nice techies, with­out any help for me, rebooted my website.

Fight­ing these ten­den­cies only strength­ens the assump­tions embed­ded within them. The self adheres to strug­gle because resis­tance solid­i­fies these ten­den­cies and simul­ta­ne­ously gives the self a sense of pur­pose, which is to over­come the resis­tance… What could be sim­pler than sur­ren­der­ing? We sur­ren­der all forms of resis­tance and protest to the con­di­tions here and now. Wise Action is the con­tin­ual sur­ren­der­ing of our sep­a­ra­tion through all activ­i­ties of body, speech, and mind, and is more of a release than an action.… Sur­ren­der is the col­laps­ing of alter­na­tives into reality.

Pages 125 — 127 SOOSD

Sur­ren­der is not a dirty word

Peo­ple are addicted to hid­ing, giv­ing up, or fight­ing the good fight. These approaches get us pre­cisely nowhere. There’s noth­ing to fight. After all, how can you fight reality?

Now, sur­ren­der is not the same thing as blind accep­tance. What we are sur­ren­der­ing is the urge to do dumb stuff—like blame or com­plain. Sur­ren­der helps us to see what’s going on, to “sim­ply notice,” and then to do some­thing. Part of the doing might be to express the emo­tion that’s aris­ing, which allows us to be kind to the work­ings of our body. Body­work is really help­ful here.

And then, we begin to act from the heart.

This is not what it sounds like. We all tend to think that the heart has some­thing to do with love—Hallmark Cards did that to us when they started flog­ging Valentine’s Day. The mushy feel­ings con­nected with the heart should actu­ally be attached to the gen­i­tals. And to our hor­mones. They’re there, they feel good, and that’s about it.

The heart is actu­ally the home of com­pas­sion. Com­pas­sion is not pity. Com­pas­sion is an action—a sit­ting with—a being with. I remem­ber times, back when I was a min­is­ter, of sit­ting with peo­ple who were dying, and know­ing noth­ing for sure. I’d ask them what they needed from me at that point in time. Often, they sim­ply wanted me to hold their hand, or just be with them. No speeches, no prayers, just pres­ence. Now, my ego would nat­ter in the back­ground, telling me to “Act like a min­is­ter.” What­ever the hell that means. I learned quickly to not act like any­thing, but rather to sim­ply just be me, sit­ting there, pay­ing atten­tion. Switch­ing into some mode—“helper, healer, fixer, Doc­tor, lawyer, Indian chief,”—all are designed to get the ego involved, to block being present by insert­ing the role between me and the other per­son. Because to just sit there and to seem­ingly do noth­ing is hard for our egos to take.

And yet, just sit­ting, just being, lis­ten­ing, attend­ing, being present—this is the great­est gift we can give. This is what com­pas­sion is all about. This is what sur­ren­der is all about.

Learn­ing to relate

One of the best things I’ve learned from being in rela­tion­ship with Dar­bella is that mostly she just wants to be lis­tened to. In other words, she isn’t look­ing for me to rush in and res­cue her. Occa­sion­ally, she is curi­ous about my opin­ion about what she might do next, but mostly she just wants to talk through what­ever is going on. In order to just lis­ten, I have to sur­ren­der my need to fix. And I have to accept that my ego isn’t going to like it.

You learn to get over your­self by sit­ting and lis­ten­ing. By ask­ing “curios­ity” ques­tions. You state your own stuff by say­ing, “Here’s what’s up for me.” There’s no expec­ta­tion that just because you think some­thing that some­one else ought to agree with you.

Now, there might be sit­u­a­tions or rela­tion­ships (ther­apy comes to mind) where stat­ing your opin­ion is part of the deal. But again, as you state it, you let go of any desire but the other per­son do as you say.

Which is a pretty good rule for relat­ing in gen­eral. In other words, you let up on expect­ing the other per­son to change, you let up let­ting your ego voice run the show, and you sim­ply sit with the other per­son and with the sit­u­a­tion, exactly as it is.

Shadow explo­rations

Carl Jung is the father of Shadow Work. He iden­ti­fied the Shadow as the vast pool of all the stuff that was stuffed. It’s what’s left of the Authen­tic Self after the Actual Self is removed. It’s the stuff which was judged by our tribes to be scary, wrong, imprac­ti­cal, or destruc­tive to the com­mon good.

In other words, The Shadow con­tains shit which would disturb.

I can’t really pro­vide you with a visu­al­iza­tion for Shadow Work, because you really want some­one around to talk with as you do this work. The Shadow con­tains all kinds of blocked mate­r­ial. One illustration—I had a client decade ago whose par­ents wanted her to be a Doc­tor. She was really into paint­ing. She was so pissed off at her par­ents for refus­ing her art lessons that she dropped out of High School and became a sec­re­tary. You might say, then, as an adult, that her artist existed in her Shadow. We there­fore needed to walk together into the dark­ness of the Shadow world, look for her, and bring her out. That’s an easy one.

Other weird things exist in Shadow land that might be scary. We all have ten­den­cies that are best left unex­pressed. At the very least, we all have nasty ver­sions of our­selves buried down there, and much of it shouldn’t see the light of day. The energy of the Shadow side, how­ever, ought to be expressed.

For exam­ple, many of us have a very repressed anger side (Google “Anger, Bound­aries and Safety” to learn more about deal­ing directly with emo­tions.) The prob­lem with the repres­sion, how­ever, is twofold.

1) if the lid is on too tight, we’re risk­ing stress related illnesses.

2) if the lid “leaks,” our anger gets in the way of true relating.

What I’m sug­gest­ing is that the Shadow is a part of a heart

Seems weird, eh? Yet, when I do body­work on the chest, anger, grief, and sad­ness often pre­dom­i­nate. If expressed, laugh­ter, joy, and com­pas­sion are released.

Find­ing your vocation

Voca­tion is heart work. It’s not so much about find­ing some­thing to do as it is choos­ing a way to be. It’s about shar­ing our gift or gifts and those gifts are likely lost in the Shad­ows. It’s about shar­ing with­out thought of reward—it’s just what you’re called to do. It’s act­ing out of open­ness, clar­ity, and presence.

I think, at our hearts, we all know what we are called to do—or bet­ter, who we are called to be. We’ve been stuck and beaten down for so long that it seems bet­ter to for­get. And yet we can’t, at least not eas­ily. There’s that nig­gling sense of purpose—we can ignore it, but it never really goes away. We can die with it unex­pressed, as many, many peo­ple do, and the world loses a bit of what “could be.”

So get on with it. Fight the urge to stay stuck in your ego, stuck in the first three Chakras, end­lessly loop­ing, play­ing the game you were taught, as opposed to liv­ing—really liv­ing.

Next week, how to enact your vocation.