Using metaphor and feelings to communicate with your unconscious and deep inner Self and to deal with suffering.

Whether you speak and think in English, German, Mandarin, Thai, Hindi, Russian or another language, your unconscious mind and your Self, or Soul, communicate using imagery, metaphors and feelings. The unconscious and Self speak to you using metaphors and feelings that it hopes you will understand. You experience this most often in your dreams. If you are able to understand the metaphors and feelings from your dreams you will be able to ‘hear’ and to understand your unconscious and, sometimes, your Soul. The fact is that most of what you experience in your day to day life can also be seen as metaphors that express your beliefs, filters, maps, sub-conscious mind, emotions and whatever else you want to call the accumulation of information and experience you have amassed during your lifetime.

You usually identify yourself as this accumulation of experiences and call it ‘me’, ‘I’, ‘my mind’ or your name. But you are much more than this and the best way to discover who and what you really are is by learning and using the language of the Soul; imagery, metaphors and feelings. The feelings I refer to are not emotions. They are much deeper than emotions. I use the word feelings because there is no better word I can find in the English language.

Shadows are an expression in the language of the Self as are the metaphors and feelings of darkness, light, goodness and evil. To make the most of the practices in this book it is beneficial to use imagery to see, feel and hear these shadows as well as all the other metaphors presented to you.

Remember that no matter how real

the shadows and darkness feel

that they are only parts of the landscape

of imagery and metaphor and that

you can get rid of them

once you understand them.

 With all of that in mind and for the sake of this experiment, just imagine that there are dark ‘creatures’ existing just beyond your physical senses that feed on pain, fear, anger, depression and all the other negative emotions. These ‘creatures’ or thought forms also do what they can to perpetuate these feelings in humanity so that they are assured of a continuing source of sustenance. What do you think would happen if you decided to stop feeding them? What would happen if you began dissolving them rather than allowing them to control your life?

Whether you conceive of this darkness as metaphoric ‘creatures’, thought forms or energy does not matter. What does matter is your acknowledgement the metaphors of darkness and discernment of what is true and real.

Ultimately, darkness is not real.
All that’s real is God/Infinite Love.

But as long as humanity accepts the inevitability of anger, fear, pain and self-doubt, then this darkness will continue to be real and will continue to affect us all. Merely calling it a lie, denying its existence or ignoring it will not make it disappear. There are ways, though, to dissolve this darkness and keep it from being a part of your life. That’s what this book is all about.

The teachings are all based upon two simple spiritual principles…

Principle One

You are a pure, perfect, pristine
Spirit having a human experience,
Not a human having
Spiritual experiences.

The Spirit or Soul that you are exists beyond time and space, is immortal and knows Itself to be One with God. In truth, the Soul is an expression of the Divine.

You are an expression of the Divine right this very moment.

The Spirit that you are is untouched by anything that has occurred during a human sojourn. It has nothing to learn since It is all that It could ever be. The Soul that you are has no fear, no anger, no depression, no sadness no self-doubt nor shadows of any sort.

The shadows define who and what you are by being what you are not.
That is their only purpose.

As long as you identify yourself as a human being in a physical world, darkness will seem very real. Shadows can only appear when we identify ourselves as physical, limited, mortal, human beings. The body you call yours is made of Energy, Light, Divine Light. So, in reality, you are Light… Spirit, an expression of God.

Principle Two

God is Infinite Love, Truth, Light,Joy, Peace, Abundance, Goodness
And God is All.
Therefore all that is real and true is Love.

All That Is, God is Being.

Simple as that. If it doesn’t look, taste, feel or smell like an expression of Infinite Love, then it probably isn’t real. There is no darkness in God/Infinite Love.

Darkness is a shadow that defines Infinite Love, but darkness is not real
nor is it any part of God.

This in no way discounts the ‘reality’ of the suffering you may be experiencing. Until you come to an experiential understanding of these two spiritual principles, this darkness is very real and can torment you unceasingly. It can cause perpetual illness and suffering in your life. At the very least, the shadows will distract you from fulfilling all the purposes you came to physical existence with and will leave you feeling regrets with it is time to ‘go’.

Freedom through Deductive Reasoning

We learn about most things in our lives through deductive reasoning.

We learn what love is by experiencing what love is not.
We learn what truth is by experiencing what truth is not.
We learn who we are by experiencing who we are not.

Shadows are what we are not. As in the above examples, shadows allow us to know who and what we are and understand the nature of the universe through deductive reasoning. Ask yourself this question;

If there is no pain, fear, anger, self-doubt, depression nor any other shadow in who I am, then who am I?

Ask yourself this question all day, every day for the next few weeks. Feel for the answer. Do not depend on your intellect alone. This is one way to use shadows for their intended purpose. When you begin to feel the Truth of who you are, the shadows will begin to dissolve. Try it as an experiment. See what happens. Set aside the intellect’s philosophical arguments about the concepts. Just try the experiment.

Shadow, darkness is not your other half, your friend, your inner child nor any other part of you. It is just a metaphor for your opposite. If you use it to remind yourself of the Spirit that you are, it becomes powerless. If you fight with it, embrace it, fear it, succumb to it, deny it or ignore it, you will give it power it never had and it will feed on you and control your life.

The way out of suffering is a short path. The journey on that path must be a devoted and focused one however.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
Thomas Jefferson

If you would like to use a guided meditation mp3 to help you work with dissolving shadows download,
Leaving Behind the Darkness, by clicking on the cover below.