As I’ve been working with the Chesedic current this month, one of the elements of the work I’ve been encountered are the shadow aspects of that current, which have manifested in being more aware of my own selfishness and how that selfishness shows up in my life. I’ve also had this mirrored for me in a fiction series I’m reading, where the one character’s selfishness has really stood out to me more than it may have in the past. Yet what I’ve found most fascinating with all this is a very interesting approach to this work with the shadow aspect that’s being called forth.
When you typically have an issue revealed to you, the inclination can be to try and work through that issue or get rid of the problem as quickly as possible. Certainly, I’ve done that in the past, but this latest time, I decided to take a different approach. I asked myself what lessons my feelings of selfishness could teach me about Chesedic wealth and myself. I considered that there is a reason I’m feeling this selfishness and that I ought to consider what that reason is and how I can address the underlying motivation and narrative behind that selfishness. I figure that if I can address that narrative, it gives me a different way to interact with and learn from that feeling of selfishness that I’m experiencing.
By shifting my approach to selfishness, its provided me an opportunity to hold space with it, without necessarily acting on it. Instead I am asking this feeling of selfishness to tell me what’s provoking it and causing it to rear its head. This helped me recognize that a need isn’t being addressed and that I need to do something about that, communicate it better or create distinct boundaries that allow me to honor what’s provoking that feeling of selfishness.
We have a tendency to treat certain expressions of our emotions as negative. Selfishness is generally judged to be a bad thing to express, but I would argue that if we recognize the expression of an emotion we can learn something from it without judging it. If we’re feeling selfish about a situation, there are likely very valid reasons for that feeling. What we need to do is be present with that emotion and learn from it. One way to do this is to personify the emotion and enter into a dialogue with it, where you discover what that emotion wants and then discover what it needs. What it wants is usually the expression of it showing up in your life, but what it needs may be quite different. You give the emotion what it needs and it can become an ally that helps you express and work through that need.
Another approach I like to take is to identify the emotion and then do some breathing meditation, where I work with the emotion to loosen up the emotional knots that are created by the feeling. As the emotional knots loosen I can discover what the underlying narrative is and start working with it to make changes that address the reason behind the emotions.
In each case what’s key is that we actually embrace the emotions and learn from them. We don’t try to get rid of them, but instead open ourselves to them, so we can discover what they are really trying to tell us. An emotion, like pain, is a symptom trying to express something that needs to be paid attention to. If we recognize it as a symptom and expression of something deeper than we can work with it together what really must be addressed and changed in our lives.
