America Needs to Do Their Shadow Work
It’s time for America to do their inner work.
Healing the masculine and embracing the feminine has been an ongoing topic in healing arts for many years. Since the women’s rights movement, women have embraced autonomy and self-sufficiency, continuing to manage their homes while solidly engaged in their careers. This sacrificial energy is usually met with a lower pay grade and higher accountability standards.
The rebellion against this is reconnecting with femininity. Women are tapping back into their innate ability to flow with nature and trust their intuition. The great resignation in 2022, with 50 million people quitting their jobs, was led by women. The game has changed.
The U.S. now has another chance to elect a woman president, and it’s time for all of us to consider healing the masculine.
There is something you can do that will have a massive impact on election outcomes, and that is your shadow work. It is time to get aware of where you’re giving away your power, where you use power to manipulate others, where you sabotage yourself through procrastination, or where you choose patterns of martyrdom instead of saying what you mean.
Caroline Myss says what is big is small, and what is small is big. This November election is big.
Lives are at stake.
While it may feel that all we can do is vote, there are far more significant ways to influence outcomes than action. We can have the most significant impact through what feels small, our very intentional relationship to it all.
This means making anything that isn’t your focus or goal irrelevant. Is your neighbor’s flag disrupting the peace? Irrelevant. Was that news headline written to create drama? Irrelevant.
Focus on the message you want to develop and block anything else unless it is a blatant injustice. Utilizing calming techniques like taking an intentional breath is especially important for stopping the charge before it hits your center. This is a practice and requires awareness.
Since 2012, I've reaffirmed The Four Agreements as a rule of life. They are most helpful for discernment, criticism, and change in times of chaos. Healing shadow patterns requires blocking outside stressors as much as possible, and that’s even more crucial during election years.
So, what does being intentional and discerning in times of chaos look like? Space and grace are the names of the game.
To do introspective healing work, you must give yourself the space to process what comes up in that work. One hour of therapy looks like five hours of processing time; one acupuncture treatment means five hours of rest, and one breathwork session means five hours of integration.
You may immediately think you don’t have this time, which is when I’ll ask, what are you prioritizing? The key to incorporating these intentional integration periods is being disciplined with your time.
Look at all how you might be checking out (social scrolling, binge-watching TV, anywhere there is a perfectionistic tendency) and see if you can give yourself a little space around those to journal, bring presence to your right now experience, pray, or focus on your breathing.
I started with two minutes a day. Success is consistently coming back to yourself and keeping your word. If you say you will focus on your breath for two minutes daily, do it.
Your commitment to yourself is the most important one you can make. Only when that exists can the rest follow.
Shadow work is usually uncomfortable, and healing practices help bring hidden patterns to the surface to work through, not bypass. This is why integration is the most significant part of any practice.
You must build the capacity to deal with the discomfort by making room for it, giving it a seat at the table, and detaching from it.
Meditation allows you to bring awareness to what is available, whether pleasant or unpleasant. Sitting with that awareness requires that you create space there. It is not a part of you but a circumstance or feeling. When you breathe space between yourself and this charge, it reduces clinging and resistance.
Grace sets the pace.
Sometimes, you can work through things more quickly than others; sometimes, it requires breaks. By consistently trusting yourself, you’ll better know when more gentleness is needed and when it’s time to power through. This requires years of practice, but the time is now to begin.
You have so much more power than you may realize, and the healthy expression of that power will change the world.
I encourage you to get started, to keep going, and to vote in November.
