In my YouTube video post from yesterday, I referenced the five Buddhist morning affirmations I have been using in my life.
The first morning affirmation is: I am grateful for this new day. Gratitude is a great lesson to incorporate in your every day as you journey on your spiritual path to maintain a balance or learn what balance feels like so that you can continue doing your inner work. This is more of a daily practice and I may write a separate post on it, but at this time it’s more individualized and the more you practice it, like a muscle, it will get easier to find things or people or situations to feel gratitude about. This will give the feeling or affirm being centered and in balance.
I do you want to talk about the third morning affirmation: I cultivate compassion for myself and others. I want to focus cultivating compassion for yourself. This is the lesson or affirmation that will help guide you through that inner work and really looking in the mirror and seeing all of you, good and bad. I invite you to look into some of Carl Jung‘s work of dark night of the soul and the journey of individuation, shadow work. Marrying of the conscious and the unconscious psyche.
My own shadow work started with codependency. I started going to codependency meetings back in January because I realized that codependents, or more accurately co-narcissist, are addicts. In fact, addicts suffer from complex trauma and addiction/codependency are the symptoms of this and their habits are more about escape or escapism.
This is the real work. What are you trying to escape from?
I went to three CoDA meetings and enjoyed the journal meeting the most. In that meeting, I was provided a three page printout, which I’m sure you can find in the website, about behaviors and what a person not doing the work what a behavior might look like and somebody who’s healed what those behaviors would look like.
Now I don’t want to pass this illusion that this inner worker, shadow work, is fixing something, because that isn’t what I did, that isn’t what is being asked. Dark night of the soul, individuation, alchemy of the conscious and unconscious psyche, is really just looking at all your shadow aspect of yourself, understanding them, when they took root, how they grew and accepting it, forgiving it, with compassion and love.
Mindfulness is a great way to practice all the positive and negative things you might be capable of. And this journey will be different for everyone. But the unity of the conscious and unconscious of your psyche brings a clarity that is life changing.
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