Probing into Shadow Self!

From metaphysical point of view, a shadow self is made up of dark side of our persona. It is the wounded part of ourselves originated from past traumas and bruises from our many incarnations. Undoubtedly, each of us can display different personality or image depending on the role that we play in a larger society. We are a master of disguise; a hero with a thousand faces. Shadow work is one of the many subjects in my metaphysical study from UMS (University of Metaphysical Sciences) .

From time immemorial, the ancient sage who determined to reach enlightenment would shun away from human contact, and deliberately chose to live in a monastery located on a far-off mountain, where lazily drifting clouds, softly murmuring streams would be their companion and wild howling pack of wolves would echo in the valley. Contemplation and meditation were their major daily task. Life was hard and laborious to be sure, but they knew that having human contact was a big distraction and always was an insurmountable challenge to bring about the true character of self. It is almost impossible to live a perfectly moral life given the complexity of our earthly interaction with all kinds of people of many sizes and shapes.

I remember several highly emotionally charged instances reverberating throughout my childhood. One of the episodes was particularly disturbing. It was not until receiving Dr. Parker's teaching decades later that I was finally able to let go of it.

When I was in grade school, I was always fond of singing. When I sang, I lived in the moment, there was no concern either of the past or the future, I was "in the zone", and time stood still. One year, I was selected to be in a choir and practiced many weeks so that we can sing in front of VIPs in school's annual ceremony. Before the day of the performance, we had a rehearsal in front of the school Principal. For reason that I didn't comprehend at the time, another girl and I were ordered by my teacher to leave the choir. The teacher would not explain the reason why we were excluded from performance. I knew it was the principal who made that decision. I was heart broken, shameful and was shedding my tears profusely in all afternoon. In fact, I held the grudge and resentment toward the principal for many years.

From all the livings that I did, this event by all means wasn't the first nor will be the last misfortunes that I had to quietly endure. At times, it seemed that every insult and every bruise served to reinforce my already tattered self image. It would be many years before I knew that I wasn't the only person in the whole wide world who had to suffer from trauma and agony while growing up.

To some extent, we all have our share of bruises on living. Only after engaging myself in self paced study program of "Enlightenment Series" taught by Dr. Parker, I finally came to realize that every event in life, particularly the one that shook our emotion to the core, was divinely designed to test our integrity and to strengthen our character. Enlightenment simply means seeing our experience, whether good or bad, as a learning opportunity to shed the shadowy self and know our true eternal identity.