Masquerade:

The difference between one's freedom and self-indulgence is that they are willing and brave enough to integrate and face their shadow. All the pieces of ourselves that we don't like and don't want, are our own power, are energies. And one of the profound things that happens when the presence, awareness, and inner marriage happens is that you can begin to step into the shadow and retrieve all those pieces, which becomes the power that allows the love that you are to fully manifest in the world.

One of the ways you can begin to feel the shadow's agitation is projection. When we disown our shadow, the first thing we tend to do is project things around us, relationships, the world, the other, situations are all those voices that say "this is too sexual, not sexual enough, this is wrong, that's ugly, that's very spiritual, that's a lot of this, that's a lot of that!" We are experts at projecting what is happening inside us from the outside. This creates a huge shadow, not only in groups, but in the world and in an individual sense also with our experiences. Integrating the shadow is realizing that what you're projecting is your power, and giving it to someone just because we don't like that shadow, disables us.

True shadow recovery is part of the job of becoming whole and self-empowered. The shadow wants to move energy, it wants to release energy, but it doesn't want to be conscious, so it has to project, doing what we call: Shetion, Dhistordog e Pbramblecation

Ao select, the path we walk is, "Daddy didn't love me" so let's select a partner who can't love us to prove that we are unlovable, unlovable, which will make our lives prove that we are not worthy of love. We select partners, jobs, we choose things that will prove our unconscious truth.

If selection doesn't work, if we can't select according to our shadow automatically we will distwist, and let's say you finally have a partner - something weird happens - and you finally have a person who is able to love you, and that's the scariest thing ever for your story because you really have to let go your story and being helpless in the face of love. To honor that shadow, you start to distort.

You were expecting him to abandon you, so you act through an unconscious shadow of distortion saying to yourself, "I'm sorry, I know you haven't abandoned me yet, but I'm going to go ahead and distort your being so I can prove that you can or will do it".

The third tool is to tease. Let's say you finally manage to have a relationship with a partner who is healthy and sees your soul, is loving and present. You try all his tricks, you select, you twist what he does, but he still loves you, and then you tease them: "If there's a 1% chance you won't love me, I can prove it. If you loved me, that would be the scariest thing ever because my life (as I know it) would end.

People think love is this cute little thing like a cat in your lap. Love is a raging tiger that will rip the guts out of anything you think you are and make you helpless until you surrender to your knees. Love is not your pet. Love didn't come to make you feel better. Love came to tear you apart and open you up to who you really are and that's AMAZING.

Much better than a little piece of shadow story you run day after day. So when we really start bringing in energy and the deep truth that we're love, and we've always been love, that there's support for us, and we're with our tribe, then actually everything starts to unfold. And that's where the shadow comes. And this is where you actually start to exist.

So how do we deal with shadow coming? In tantra it's simple: Move energy! Shadow is energy, you can begin to feel it in your lower chakras (much of our shadow is pushed down). When we are in the therapeutic process with Tantra, we tend at first to lower the power center of the mind to the lower power centers, just for the rescue of these shadows to happen, so that we can again rise in the presence of this energy making it consciousness, making Be aware, and one of the ways to start chasing your shadow is to notice where the repetitive patterns are in your way of thinking, feeling, and moving in life. Everything is integrated, even if they are not in perfect balance.

There are also very important tools for mapping these shadows of power in us (patience, sweetness, dexterity and cruelty), and we will deal with that in the next text. Until then, stay present in who you are now, to reach your highest state of mind and discover who you are.