Align! Module Six Self-Study

Align! Week Six Self-Study Coming home to Heart is the key to our healing, which is why we have spent the last several weeks clearing the “noise” from our signal and removing any barriers that prevent us from accessing our true nature, which is pure Divine Love.

Stepping out of Ego mind into a place of expansion and acceptance of all that there is is a key first step that allows us to begin to shift our relationship with ourselves, and to meet all aspects of ourselves with love, understanding, and compassion.

Vocabulary/Concepts: Contrast Master Teachers Soul Contracts Mirroring Shadow Self Resentment Heart Shields Sacred Heart Cave Ho’oponopono Mantra Tonglen Practice

Concepts: Understanding the Heart: If the Ego mind is the central “control” system of the Ego, the Heart is the central control system of the Soul. As we allow Ego to take a back seat to Heart, we rewire our system from 3D to 5D and shift from the vibration of fear into love to run our inner guidance system. This heart-based mode of living is rooted in the belief that love is the only thing that is real—everything else is illusion. When we stay in the Heart we strengthen our relationship to ourselves and to the Divine. As we do so we find ourselves spending less time in fear and scarcity and more time in love and abundance. This 5D Heart-based mode of being is the key to building the New Earth.

What We Mean by Self-Love: The elusive, and much coveted, self-love that people talk about can only come once we are in a place to accept all of our pieces without guilt or shame. This is why it is so important to work with the Ego mind and to heal old Mind Patterns that are rooted in judgement of self and others. Self-forgiveness is a central aspect of this, and is what allows us to rebuild enough trust with our younger selves to begin to work with our Shadow Self. As we work to integrate our Shadow Self, we move into a place of unconditional and Divine love for ourselves and each other.

Contrast, Master Teachers, and Soul Contracts: As we begin to come home to ourselves and live in the Heart, we are in a better position to evaluate what soul lessons we have been learning along the way and begin to more deeply cultivate self-love and compassion.

Each of us has a particular spiritual path, complete with life experiences that allow us to learn the soul lessons that we have asked to work on in this life time and soul expression.

To gather these life lessons we have agreed to certain Soul Meetups, or Soul Contracts, before this earthly lifetime. We can think about these soul contracts as playing dress up—we perform different roles for each other’s souls so that we may learn the lessons we have called to us. These relationships, situations, and scenarios provide us with contrast between the situation and what we know to be true in our hearts to help us come back to ourselves. In other words, they show us what we don’t want. The people and relationships around us are our Mirrors, and those whom bring contrast into our lives are our Master Teachers who show us where our work is. Our master teachers can take on any form— older or younger, friends or strangers, parents or colleagues, partners, siblings, peers, teachers. Our master teachers are anyone whom we have “stuff” with.

As we make our way on the spiritual path, these personality conflicts become transformed into soul lessons and learning

opportunities for self-growth instead of “problems” and obstacles to be overcome.

Integrating Shadow Self: Our Master Teachers also provide us with opportunities to examine our Shadow Self. Our Shadow Self consists of all of the qualities about ourselves that we have disowned and banished because we judge and perceive these qualities to be “bad.” This could be from other people telling us that these qualities within us are negative, observing other people be judged for similar traits, from familial, social, and cultural programming, and also from trauma. The truth is, we all have everything within us— we are infinite and we are all connected. Therefore our traits are not “good” or “bad,” they just are.

Similar to Ego Mind, the Shadow Self is something we want to work to incorporate into our “I-concept” so that it becomes a welcomed part of us. To do so, we need to step outside of seeing ourselves as “good” or “perfect” or “blameless” and be real with ourselves about some of our less flattering qualities. That takes courage and bravery and honesty to sit with the parts of ourselves that we are embarrassed about, or afraid make us unworthy and unlovable.

The Shadow Self when we begin working with it is largely unconscious. It’s almost too much/too painful for us to see these Ego qualities in ourselves, so we put filters in place that

prevent us from seeing aspects of our own selves and personality that would shatter the “I-concept.” As we work with the koshas, or sheaths, that are keeping us in illusion, we begin to bring some of the patterns and behaviors that we’ve overlooked in ourselves into our conscious mind to be cleared.

When we remember that the truth of who we really are is Divine Love, then we can remember that any of these Shadow Self qualities are simply misdirected soul qualities.

As we work to bring them out into the open to take responsibility for them and to understand them, we begin to integrate and accept all aspects of ourselves and the guilt and shame we have around these parts we have banished becomes transmuted and cleared. As we integrate these qualities we come to a place of acceptance and humility.

This leads us out of duality and conflict between Ego and Soul—when we can accept all of ourselves there is no longer any need for Ego to remain in control or for us to operate in a state of fear of being “found out.”

Often when Master Teachers show up, they provide us with a mirror for understanding aspects of our shadow self that are up to heal. When a Master Teacher brings out aspects of our Shadow Self we deem as “bad,” we can begin to investigate our relationship to that trait and heal our connection with it.

For instance, because I was so invested in being “good” as a child, I was afraid of my fire—an element that just “is” for someone with a pitta dosha. So I banished it. I labeled it as bad. Because I denied this fundamental aspect of myself, it started to only show up in dysfunctional ways. Instead of allowing it to show up in a healthy way—like a campfire—it showed up more like a raging forest fire. Yikes.

When I started allowing my fire—honoring it, befriending it— I was able to recognize that my fire is also what makes me, me: passionate, a change agent, a leader; my unique soul qualities in this life expression. My so-called “shadow” quality only needed the proper home, context, and care— and to be channeled through the heart—in order to thrive and become one of my great assets, instead of a liability.

Heart-Based Relationships: Each of us is love at our core, and from a spiritual perspective, we are all one in the Unified Field. We are simply different expressions of The One. Each of us have also played all the roles—the hero, the villain, the perpetrator, the perpetrated, the betrayer and the betrayed. And if we haven’t yet, we will. When we judge someone else we not only reveal a wound, but we expose an aspect of our Shadow Self that has yet to be healed.

When we remain in Ego, we often build Heart Shields, Resentment, anger, and hatred around our hearts without

knowing it. We resent when someone else gets attention, or gets a promotion, or has things work out for them, because our wounded Ego self is wondering why they are more worthy than we are. When we are not aware or accepting of these aspects of ourselves, they continue to build more and more energy, leading to our Shadow Self, which allows these wounds to be an easy target for pain bodies.

This is what we see playing out on the collective scale between feuding social groups—an old power play and Ego duality that is fighting for a sense of worthiness and belonging. When we judge another from a place of selfrighteousness, we in fact invert and replicate the power play. Until we come to a place of accepting our own role and part in it, we will continue to repeat the same “us” versus “them” logic over and over at different registers and in different ways, all as a way of trying to be “good” and “worthy.”

When we come home to our Heart, there is no reason to judge another because we know we are worthy regardless of someone else’s actions. Instead of wishing those of us who treat us unkindly ill will, we can actually send our Master Teachers love and be grateful to them for the opportunity to grow our own Heart and our capacity to love. This requires that Ego Mind takes a back seat to the Heart, and that we step out of duality to embrace 5D Heart-based relationships.

When we so we can recognize that other people receiving love and support does not mean less love for us. When we see other people seemingly getting ahead through deeds that seem unethical or unkind, we can both wish for their healing and also trust that Universe will help them to learn their soul lessons as they are ready, for the highest and greatest good of their soul development. The only person we need to worry about is ourselves, and how we are showing up to the world and in relationship with ourselves and others. From a spiritual level, what other people are doing and how they are living their lives is not our business until we can bring ourselves to engage them through our Heart. Until we do so, we will be coming from a place of Ego and judgement and accrue additional karma.

Engergetic tools such as the Violet Flame and Ho’oponopono mantra can allow us to clear, or “burn,” accrued karma in our field that is serving as a strangle hold on our hearts. Resentment, hatred, and judgment create resistance in our field and we accumulate more and more Heart Shields around our Heart, essentially locking us out of our own love. This works ancestrally, too, so that if we are born into a lineage of hardened hearts, we will be burning karma off not just for ourselves, but for our entire lineage. If we are born into a social group with more accrued karma, we will be clearing for ourselves and also for the collective. We can also be clearing for ourself in past life incarnations.

The only way to counter this constriction is through expansion, and building relationships of compassion and reciprocity by meeting each other in our Heart moment to moment as a conscious choice. This right-sizes the Ego and rewires us to begin cultivating 5D relationships.

While it is possible to transmute and alchemize relationships from earlier in our lives (family of origin, childhood friends), these tend to be rooted in more 3D “contractual” relationships, and we might begin to watch them fade away from our lives if there is not reciprocal effort in upgrading these relationships to 5D. In these instances, no one is “bad,” we are simply tuned into different vibrational frequencies and are no longer to “tune in” to each other’s reality.

The core of Heart-based relationships begins with our relationship with ourselves and flows outward in the world towards others.

Practices: Journaling on First Contrast: Our first trauma can lead to a perceived fall from innocence. Going back to get the data can lead us to understand why, where, and when these shadow qualities first began to be expressed, and why we banished them. Begin by getting into the body and the

breath. Have a journal nearby. By working with early, formative contrasts we can begin to realize how they set up later patterns, repeat scenarios, and symptoms in our lives.

1. Bring up your Inner Self or Inner Child. Perhaps you go into the Sacred Heart Cave and begin feeling the vibration of the truth of who you really are. Get curious about the sensations and where they live.

2. Feel your way into your first formative Contrast. See if you can stay in the heart, reminding yourself that you are safe and you are only “trying on” this memory in the body.

When you’re ready, allow yourself to surface your first contrast or a period of your life that was full of contrast--any situation that does not feel in line with the truth of who you are and that is not in resonance with Divine love.

• Watch the people involved. Watch your reaction to the situation(s).

• Bring your focus into how that period of experience feels in your body. Where do you feel it?

• How would you label these vibrations or emotions?

• Write down the contrast that started those negative vibrations in the body and how it feels.

3. Identify what stories and belief systems were formed by that contrast.

• Are there any stories or belief systems that you put together in your life around the confusion and the contrast that you experienced?

• How did the contrast form the way you related with people—with the world?

• How did the contrast set up your direction in life?

• How did it create a series of decisions for you as you moved onward in life?

• How did the contrast create confusion for you?

Shadow Self Work: Our Heart qualities are our “positive” traits, Soul qualities, spiritual gifts, true essence, and strengths. Our Ego qualities are our shadow qualities— what we have deemed to be “negative” destructive traits, expressions of our pain bodies, weaknesses. Our Heart qualities are our conscious qualities. Our shadow qualities are our unconscious qualities. Similar to neutral mind, part of coming into true self-love is releasing ourselves from “good” and “bad” and being radically honest with ourselves with all of who we are.

1. Make an honest list of all of the pieces you are working with that you wish were different about yourself— especially the ones that sting or make you worried about someone finding this piece of paper! Sit with the list.

Love into it. Think of sending all of these qualities love, and ask where they came from. What are they

protecting you from? When we can come to a place of understanding ourselves rather than judging, these old wounded aspects and their shadows begin to come out from hiding.

2. For this exercise, make two columns in your journal.

On the left side list your heart qualities—those unique gifts and qualities that allow you to stay connected to source and love. On the right side list your shadow qualities—those aspects of yourself that are operating in fear and separation. Be radically honest with yourself— no one needs to see this list except you.

• What do you notice about this list? Do any of these qualities map onto your doshas? Blocked chakras?

Limiting belief systems? Pain bodies? Contrasts?

• Do you struggle in acknowledging/accepting any of your shadow qualities? Are there particular qualities you are more willing to admit than others?

• Are you able to fully embrace and honor your soul qualities? What does it feel like to recognize and honor your gifts?

• Begin to look across both columns and see if there is any crossover in the two columns—is it possible that there are any shadow qualities that are also soul qualities when differently directed? Are there any soul qualities that tip into Ego when misdirected?

3. Spend time with your younger selves in your Sacred Heart Cave asking them what their coping mechanisms were to keep themselves safe and what tricks and forms of manipulation they learned to feel worthy and secure love. Let them know there is no judgment, and you know they were doing the best they could at the time.

Remind them that they already are worthy just as they are. They don’t need to be perfect. They are love.

Remind them of this. Be tender.

Master Teachers: Take some time to reflect on your past and present Master Teachers. These are the people who challenge us, and those qualities in our Master Teachers that we label as “bad” or particularly irritating are usually projections of personality traits we have banished in ourselves that comprise the Shadow Self. When there is a charge, or judgment, there is a wound. When we are in a place of acceptance we do not need to judge other people’s actions. We can work to understand them and send them love.

• Who have been your master teachers?

• What qualities do they possess that challenge you?

• Which of your shadow qualities must you face with them as your projection mirror?

• How have you made the issue about them when it’s really about you?

• What key lessons were learned, or what qualities were built within you due to learning with them?

• What qualities are you developing in yourself as a result of your experiences?

Role Models: Take some time to reflect on people in your life whom you admire, past and present.

• What do you admire about them?

• What qualities do they possess?

• Have these role models changed over time? If so, how?

Often those people we most admire in our lives exhibit our soul qualities—our own unique gifts and strengths. Take some time to recognize these qualities within yourself, maybe recognizing how you have allowed these qualities to remain dormant out of fear and Limiting Belief Systems.

Sacred Heart Cave Practice: Spend time dropping into your Heart Cave. As you are here work on visualizing your Sacred Heart Cave. This cave is a safe meditative space that allows you to connect with your true authentic self. It is a safe haven within you that allows you to get still and quiet and meet yourself with love. As we strengthen the vibration of the heart, we begin to shift from an Ego, minddriven approach to life to a spiritual, soul-based approach.

• Invite in all of your younger selves still in need of healing and ask them what they need.

• Allow your Shadow Self in and ask what it needs to feel safe and worthy to come out of hiding. Practice sending it love and compassion while being held in your Sacred Heart space.

• Call in your Ancestors. Talk with them. Witness them. Honor them. Send them gratitude for allowing you safe passage into this realm. Ask what they still need.

• Connect with your Higher Self. Ask your Higher Self for guidance.

Energy Clearing Tools Tonglen Meditation: Tonglen is a Tibetan word that translates as “giving and receiving.” This Buddhist practice is an invitation to expand our heart, remove any lingering Heart Shields, offer other people energetic support for their pain and suffering, and deepen our capacity to love.

1. Drop in to your Sacred Heart Cave. Envision yourself sitting with your Higher Self and connect with the Violet Flame (Soul Flame) to use as a resource to transmute the pain and suffering of those you will be working with.

2. For the first round, imagine yourself sitting across from someone you care deeply about who is going through a hard time. Try on their situation as if it is your own.

Do not turn away from their pain. Lean into it. Really try it on. On your inhale, imagine sucking in all of their pain and suffering from their field, like a dark cloud or low vibrational energy, and willingly take it into your own lungs and heart, down into your Sacred Heart Cave. Place the pain and suffering into the Violet Flame here in your cave to be transmuted and cleared.

On your exhale, send out love, serenity, peace, ease, joy to the person in front of you. Encase them in the Violet Flame.

3. For the second round, imagine an acquaintance in front of you. Someone who is farther away from you and whom you feel neutral about. Repeat the practice as above.

4. For the third round, imagine a Master Teacher in front of you. Someone for whom it is difficult for you to empathize with. Repeat the practice as above.

5. For the fourth round, imagine a perceived enemy or someone who you find yourself having hatred, or other strong emotions for. This could be someone in your personal life, or a figure on the public stage. Repeat the practice as above.

6. For the fifth round, bring up a current event or social situation on the collective level that is in need of healing.

Bring it up in your field and try on the pain and suffering for the collective. Repeat the practice as above.

7. For the sixth round, bring up a younger self whom you have a hard time forgiving. Imagine them sitting in front of you and taking on their pain and suffering as if they are a 3rd party. Repeat the practice as above.

Forgiveness Mantras: There is a Buddhist quote that states “holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” Forgiveness in the spiritual sense is not for the other person. It is about releasing the karma and energetic chord between you in order to free up your prana for more of what you want in your life. Forgiveness does not excuse the other person’s behavior. It does not make their actions “okay.” What it does is clear the energetic entanglement between you by releasing resentment in order to bring you back into love. The following forgiveness mantras can be used and applied to various scenarios.

Ho’oponopono Mantra: This is a traditional Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) forgiveness prayer that literally translates as “to make right.” It works to release karma and can be flexibly applied. The mantra is powerful yet simple. Repeat each line as feels right before moving onto the next. You

can move through the mantra as many times as you would like: I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you . . .

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. . .

Please forgive me, please forgive me, please forgive me. . .

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you . . .

1. Self-Forgiveness: Forgive yourself for anything that you may still hold against yourself. It can be helpful to have your Ego self sit across from your Soul self, apologizing for forgetting your infinite nature, and having your Soul self receive the mantra to release and clear your earthly mistakes.

2. Forgive Others: Think about all the people in your life that helped create the Contrast for you to get your life lessons. They lowered their vibration and put on the cloak in order to serve you in this lifetime so you could grow and transform and transmute any karma or negative experience.

Imagine sitting across from your Master Teachers and repeating different rounds where you state the mantra to them and then allow yourself to receive them saying it to you.

3. Clearing Lineage: Imagine your maternal and paternal lineages lined up in front of you. Repeat the mantra to clear

karma for your ancestry and for the generations that were not able to come to a place of healing.

4. Collective Karma Clearing: Imagine different social issues and/or groups that are in need of release and healing.

Witness them. Try on the dynamics. Offer your mantra for collective healing.

Family Lineage Mantra: “Divine, for me and my entire lineage throughout all time, past, present, and future: please help us all forgive all people, help all people forgive us, and help us all forgive ourselves. Please Divine. Thank you, Divine. And so it is.” (Provided by Mirabai Devi) Self-Forgiveness Mantra: “Divine, release me from every mistake I’ve ever made, and replace those mistakes by such Ascended Master Sacred Fire Blessing and Perfection and Happiness to the rest of life that I never think of them again.

They can never be existing anywhere in the Universe and no one else can be touched by them!” (St. Germain Lineage)