Breaking free from S.H.A.M.E.: Secrets, Healing, and Self Evolution

Transcript generated by AI:

Music: 0:01

I want to be afraid of the shadows in the dark. They will lead the way to the hidden pathways of the heart and that secret place that is where I find my start.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:17

Welcome to the Shadow and the Light podcast with internationally renowned meditation teacher davidji.

davidji: 0:24

And heart healer and psychotherapist Elizabeth Winkler, as we guide you through our unique fusion of ancient wisdom and modern psychology.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:34

Get ready to awaken your true essence, heal your wounds and transform your shadow into.

Elizabeth Winkler: 0:44

Hi davidji.

davidji: 1:06

Oh, hello, there, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:08

I have a new acronym. Oh, I can’t wait, just created it. Are you ready for this?

davidji: 1:14

Do tell.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:15

Shame.

davidji: 1:17

Shame S-H-A-M-E.

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:21

Secrets. Hold all of my evolution Secrets. Hold all of my evolution Secrets. Hold all my evolution. Do you like it? Love it?

davidji: 1:31

Oh, do you think people have shame?

Elizabeth Winkler: 1:34

I think shame is at the root of everything. The ego is covering the shame, where we feel not enough, where we feel bad as children. Things happen If our parent says we did something wrong or you can’t do that we naturally, just, out of a child’s inability to hold non-duality, they make themselves bad. I’m bad, and even if your parent is abusing you, you have to make them good in your mind because you depend on them for survival.

davidji: 2:00

And now we live in this world where there’s so much social shame.

Elizabeth Winkler: 2:06

Oh yeah, I noticed in many sessions people were saying I’m embarrassed. One of my clients said I was embarrassed to tell my friend and then he told me something that he had said to his friend. And then maybe like 20 minutes later in our session he said I’m embarrassed to say this and he told me something. It really stuck out to me and I talked to him about it the fact that he said I’m embarrassed to share.

Elizabeth Winkler: 2:30

He said I’m embarrassed, I’m going to go somewhere with this. This is going to be like our little prompt I’m embarrassed. And I had had another client that had talked about embarrassment earlier that week, and so then I had a group the following day and shame came up and I started to talk about this theme of people being able to talk about what they’re embarrassed about. And actually this one client who had said that in the session I said if someone hasn’t done a lot of work on themselves and they’re hearing you talk about what I’m embarrassed about, they might be like are you okay, you’re talking a lot about what you’re embarrassed about, but in reality, when someone is able to walk into the room of shame and say I’m embarrassed to say, and then you talk about what this embarrassing thing was or is or has been, that takes great courage. That’s actually courage.

Elizabeth Winkler: 3:18

That’s someone who is not being controlled by shame. I’ll tell you my own personal story with this as well, because I recently I will admit publicly about some shame that was controlling me and for whatever reason, I was able to say at dinner with my partner I’m out to dinner with my partner and I said I’m embarrassed to tell you this. I heard myself say that, and this was way before last week, and I admitted something that I had been hiding from everyone in my life, and I’ll say what it is it was. What was funny was once I said it to him, then I was able to talk to everybody about it.

davidji: 4:03

It’s like our secrets won’t shut up about that thing.

Elizabeth Winkler: 4:09

So there was, basically I was avoiding the doctor. I didn’t want to get a physical. I didn’t. I turned 50 in January and I’d always been regular about going to the doctor and all that sort of thing and I was avoiding it and I was really scared to go to the doctor because my mother died when she was near my age and my son is almost my son’s 18, he’ll be 19, I was 19. And so in the last year or so I’ve had this desire to avoid and it was intense, I got to tell you. So I admitted it to my partner at dinner. I said I’ve been avoiding the doctor. I’m just letting you know. I have not told.

davidji: 4:53

Just so you know. I think this is actually pretty common. Yes, Because I remember my sister speaking to me when she attained the age that my mother died.

Elizabeth Winkler: 5:03

Yeah, that’s why I thought it was important to talk about.

davidji: 5:06

She was like I’m a little nervous approaching this age. You know, my mother died in her 40s. I said to my sister okay, you made it, you’re through the other side. I think it’s a common thing.

Elizabeth Winkler: 5:18

If you approach the age of something that happened to you abuse anything that happened that’s a thing as well when you’re approaching the age. So for me, it’s like my son is 18, he’s approaching 19. I was having all these fears, truly. I’ll just put it out there. I was having fears. I talked to my partner about it.

Elizabeth Winkler: 5:35

I’m like he’s what are you afraid of? I’m like I’m afraid, honestly, of my children watching me die, like I watched my mother die, and it doesn’t make any logical sense that I would avoid the doctor, because going to the doctor actually prevents that from happening. But this is not logical. Okay, I am the person that says the wound is the way. Okay, this is what I teach. And then there’s this little area of my life or you could call it a big area of my life where I was like I’m not going to go there. I’m not going to go there. It doesn’t make any sense. But I want to humanize this experience and talk about it, because there’s a story of what happened, so I was able to talk to my partner about it.

Elizabeth Winkler: 6:10

I’m going, I’m going there. I was able to talk to my partner and then I was able to talk to more people and say, okay, I’m doing this thing, I’m going to go to the doctor. I the day before I had one doctor’s appointment. It was amazing what my mind was doing. I didn’t listen to it, but my mind was like how can I cancel this? How can I get out of this? Truly so much fear, it was overwhelming. That’s when I really looked at okay, I’m afraid my children are going to have to go through what I went through and all this sort of thing. I go to the doctor the next day most wonderful doctor. I told him I was afraid. I cried in the appointment. I got through it.

Elizabeth Winkler: 6:49

I had to do all of these different things, all these different tests that had nothing to do with my genetics, by the way. I had to get ultrasounds and all these things. And when I got the call from the doctor in the car and he’s like everything’s okay, I was certain that there would be things wrong, absolutely certain. Okay, no, then I had to get the chest x-ray. So the chest x-ray is actually what my grandfather and my mother both died from lung cancer. They weren’t smokers, and so that’s actually the thing that I do need to be paying attention to and I do normally. But I had taken, like you know, a couple of years away from that. But by the time I did the chest x-ray, because I had done these other things, I really didn’t have any fear. The fear was gone. And so that’s my point.

Elizabeth Winkler: 7:31

When you can admit, I’m embarrassed to say whatever it is, just uttering those words takes so much courage to walk into that room, much courage to walk into that room. Once I did that, then I was able to actually deal with the room. People were so incredible. I thought people were going to judge me, like how could you do this? This doesn’t make any sense. I’m like I know it doesn’t make any sense and there was so much compassion, so much love, people willing to be there for me.

Elizabeth Winkler: 8:03

And, as you said, this is a common thing. We all have these things that control us so that we avoid. We avoid things. We also lean into things, but I’m encouraging people to look at is there any area of your life where you have done this or you are doing this, and is there one person it could be a therapist. A lot of people come to me to talk about things they can’t talk about. That’s why people go to therapy.

Elizabeth Winkler: 8:29

So I’ve been really interested in this little prompt of I’m embarrassed to say, I’m embarrassed to say, and then something that is a secret, and when you do that just in the last several weeks or months, that this went down and I’m still going to more doctors and doing all the things. Right Now I’m doing it all and there really isn’t fear there. I mean, of course, a little bit, but not the way that it was like terrorizing me and controlling me. So, shame. Secrets hold all my evolution. When we can talk about things, when we can connect with others, we are not isolated, we are not alone and we are able to experience the freedom that we are here to live. How does this maybe hit you? Do you have anything that you would be open to share?

davidji: 9:17

First of all, congratulations on going to the doctor. There are certain times in our life I don’t even know that it’s an age thing, but I think there are certain times in our life, certain like milestones, where suddenly the fact that we’re going to die or the fact that other people that we have been built in their mold died you know, my mom died when I was pretty young, but she’s been with me every single moment since then. The path that I’ve taken as a teacher of spirituality or meditation, that held a lot of. In my early formation I was like shall I reveal that I watch TV? Shall I reveal that I enjoy the occasional margarita? And I don’t know that I was ashamed to admit it but I wasn’t volunteering it, and then it became such a relaxed part of me.

davidji: 10:03

This is so classic shadow and the light because I think when we can shine a light on the shadow of shame, it just dissipates instantly. What is that light? It’s truth. So when we can shine the light of truth on the shadow of shame, boom, it instantly dissipates and is gone. And of course that is your evolution, of course that is your healing, of course that is your emotional expansion. Shame grows in silence as we sit in our little bubbles and it’s festering and getting more intense and more intense because the fact that we’re not sharing it you know where attention goes energy flows. The fact that we’re not sharing it keeps it in our little echo chamber and it gets louder and louder and our echo chamber gets tighter and tighter. So you having that cathartic moment to share with your partner, I’m embarrassed to say it just happened.

Elizabeth Winkler: 10:58

I wasn’t planning on it. I don’t even know why it happened. Maybe it was the conversation, the energy that was present allowed me to bring that up and then I just started to talk about it and now it’s completely transformed that area of my life. The silence of shame is an engine that is running this part of your life right and it makes you inauthentic. You know so I’m all about authenticity and I’m all about the wound is away. And here’s this area that I didn’t want to look at. Of course, I’m a human being, and so are you. You’re talking about watching television. Also, when I was able to share it with different people, lots of different people, everyone leaned in with love, because everyone gets it. Everyone’s like yeah, you think you’re going to be judged? Well, no, you’re not going to get judged. You were judging yourself. That’s why you silenced.

davidji: 11:44

Right Now. There are some other things that are deeper than oh. I’ve been holding off going to a doctor.

Elizabeth Winkler: 11:51

You’re kind of dismissing that as but this was very this was huge for me, Like because I?

davidji: 11:58

I understand all the nuances, but I’m just saying if instead you said I’m embarrassed to admit I killed a deer while I was driving last week, yours was an inaction.

davidji: 12:11

Sometimes the embarrassment the shame is right is something that you did. So as a therapist, you have heard it all and practiced it all. Maybe you could talk about just the nuance and the difference between shame about something you haven’t done whether it’s, oh, I forgot to call this person back to thank them, or whatever that is and shame for the thing you’ve done. That actually now is it. It’s still in the echo chamber, in the internal echo chamber, but it’s eating away at you because you can’t undo it.

Elizabeth Winkler: 12:43

Well, this is reminding me of that story that you heard me share about. I was on Instagram and I saw this article about healing generational trauma and I just felt called to read it. And this woman her name is Leslie. She wrote about the abuse she endured as a child severe, terrifying abuse and I’ve been a therapist to many people who have been abused over the last 20 years. I’ve listened to many, countless stories. This was one that I don’t really have words. So she and her sister were abused by their mother all the time and growing up with that as a regular part of their existence. There was also alcoholism and addiction with her mother, and when she was, I think, 13 years old, her mother had found Buddhism. They made a bet or something like let’s try out this chanting this mantra. I’m like, let’s try out this chanting this mantra Nam Myoho Renge Kyo. She said let’s chant it for 100 days.

davidji: 13:48

And we’ll post this on our page and we’ll type it in the description so you can really see how this is spelled, so you can begin this practice as well.

Elizabeth Winkler: 13:52

Anyway, they make this bet that they’re going to repeat this mantra 108 times, which is the sacred number. And they’re going to repeat this mantra 108 times, which is the sacred number, and they’re going to do that for 100 days. And in the article she said we’re repeating it. And then the first week I just started to notice my mother was kinder. She started to change.

davidji: 14:11

And this is the person who abused her.

Elizabeth Winkler: 14:13

Yes, her mother. And so it started to shift and change. Her mother stopped drinking. Her mother stopped drinking, her mother stopped abusing, the abuse ended. And after I finished this article and there’s more in the article I had already meditated that morning and I literally ran to my altar. I am going to repeat this mantra. This is such a powerful practice. I want to bring it into my life. I’ve been repeating it every day since. So I repeated it and then when I was done, at my altar, I’m like I remember this mantra. Didn’t Tina Turner use this mantra? And I looked it up and it is the same one that she did when she went through all the abuse with Ike, and that was her lifeline that got her through what she went through.

davidji: 14:57

I’ve always taught that as the Tina Turner mantra.

Elizabeth Winkler: 14:59

Right. So Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, and it’s from the Lotus Sutra. So, whether the shame that you are, something that I’ve done or something that I didn’t do, no matter what it is in this article, the mother wrote and asked for forgiveness for many, many years and admitted all of these things in therapy with her daughter and there was endless conversation about that. So she really was taking ownership of what had happened and had a lot of guilt and shame around it. And Leslie is telling this story and writing a memoir now and I reached out to her and I said I’m going to talk about this on the podcast. I want to let people know that this healing from this kind of shame whether you were abused or you were the abuser in this situation right Healing is possible. Transformation is possible. The generational trauma ended, which is really, really a hard thing to do.

Elizabeth Winkler: 15:59

There are powerful practices that we can put into our lives and that we can practice, and that’s why I started to practice this mantra. Therapy is a space for people to be able to talk about what they can’t talk about, and I remember Ram Dass when I started to really explore this shame thing because I had my own thing. And then you know, I’m reading this article from this woman and hearing my own clients admit things. And do you remember the story, ram Dass? He would do it in his retreats, it was all dark. He would invite people to admit something.

davidji: 16:33

David Simon created Healing the Heart, where we would sit in circles so 200 people sitting in a circle with a seat. So 100 on the inside circle, 100 on the outside circle sitting facing and I participated in this several times over the years. It’s pitch black. Sense people around you but you can’t actually see them. And you sit there and one person reveals, speaks what is the most horrible thing or what are you holding onto, what is this horrible thing? And then the inside circle everyone gets up, moves to the right. So you do this a hundred times. By the time you hit a hundred like whatever you thought your most horrible thing was the things that I was hearing and have heard over that we’re talking about everything from abuse, cheating, murder, theft, grand schemes, unbelievable stuff. And by the time you’re done with those 100 things, whatever you think your issue issue is, in comparison, it’s nothing.

Elizabeth Winkler: 17:38

I read somewhere that Ram Dass did something like that and how healing that was, and I’ve never done it in a group setting like that, but I am very inspired to do something like that.

davidji: 17:47

What also happens in an environment like that is like that’s a story that you’ve been telling. So if you have this shameful thing, it’s a story you’ve been telling. And at a certain point, imagine you’re listening to a hundred different stories but you’re only saying yours, and once you’ve said your story a hundred times, you’re sick of it, everybody’s sick of it. And then you realize how many times do I go out into the world? And here’s what happened to me. And I’m not saying abuse of any sort is not horrible and traumatic and agonizing. You know it’s up to the person who was abused, obviously, to make that forgiveness contract. But suddenly things begin to come into the clear light out of the shadow of shame. So I wonder, Elizabeth, as you’re thinking about, you had such, you know I’m embarrassed to share.

Elizabeth Winkler: 18:35

After I had gone through this journey, I was noticing people were saying this. There was another client. This wasn’t a big thing, she was playing a game with a friend. The question was how have you changed over the years? And her friend had said I think that you’re more anxious. I looked at my client. I’m like I don’t think that’s true at all. Do you think that’s true? And she said no, she goes, but I talk about it more now. I talk about my anxiety. I always had anxiety.

Elizabeth Winkler: 19:05

So when we become more comfortable or more courageous with things that we maybe were shamed of before, we can talk about them more. And so one of the things that I was kind of wanting to note to my clients is people who don’t know that will be like you’re really anxious. Now you talk about it, it’s like no, actually I’m free of it because I can talk about it more right. Or my other client who had said days later I’m embarrassed to say that was an act of courage. It’s an act of courage to be able to name it. They say like name it to tame it right. When you can allow yourself to get it out, it no longer controls you, it no longer becomes this thing that’s defining you.

davidji: 19:39

Yeah, and I like to look at all different things in our life through the various lenses. I’ve talked about the five realms of existence the physical, the emotional, the material, the relationship and the spiritual. That’s like the five realms. You can look through things through a filter that really helps you understand it. Otherwise it can be so overwhelming. So even if I asked everyone here today okay, so what’s your current shame? Perhaps it’s too big a question. So maybe we could look at all the different types of shame. There’s the personal shame, there’s the body shame, there’s the sexual shame, the relationship shame. There’s even shame of achievement or underachievement or overachievement. Right, Some people feel ashamed to tell you oh, by the way, I made a billion dollars in crypto last month, type of thing.

davidji: 20:25

They’re ashamed of it. Like I didn’t do anything and now I have riches beyond belief. This classic family shame that we all have. Some of us have distanced ourselves from our families because we’re not particularly proud of who they are. You don’t want to be seen. Those are just my friends or people I bump into. They’re not actually my bloodline.

Elizabeth Winkler: 20:45

But that’s so defining. This is so defining when we don’t allow ourselves to talk about it. I just want to note on sexual shame, because I’ve worked a lot with that with people. The transformation that occurs when someone has the ability to talk about their sexual shame is tremendous. I mean, that is part of trauma healing is being able to speak about it and to talk about what happened. There are no words, what I have seen happen in therapy with people but that doesn’t just happen.

davidji: 21:15

There’s trust that needs to be built in a relationship and then within yourself, because it’s really overwhelming the fear of talking about it, because there’s so much built up in it Right, and because it has so many of the other types of shame are not so necessarily embedded in the culture or the religion when it comes to sex, sexual abuse, sexual shame, all those things converge on that, heightening the intensity of it, because sex in general is not an area that we’re talking about so comfortably in the Western society, and especially when it comes to, like this familial messaging concept, because that is part of it isn’t just like here’s what happened to me, but part of it is also revealing. Imagine my mother. Unlike your mother, who loved you and nourished you, my mother abused me. That’s even a separate component. Beyond the sexual trauma, beyond the physical or sexual or emotional abuse that occurred in that moment, I’ll reveal a certain shame that I had. I don’t anymore. It flickers in and out of me.

davidji: 22:24

But you know, I worked in the World Trade Center for a bunch of years before 9-11 and left just a few months. I worked on the 82nd floor of Tower 2. No one lived who worked on the 82nd floor of Tower 2. So for many years I had this survivor shame. I didn’t even want to tell people. People would say so what’d you do? Where’d you work? And I’d say, oh New York, you know, I wouldn’t want to even possibly let anyone know that I had worked in that building or on that floor or in that environment. Through no genius move of my own, I was hired away.

Elizabeth Winkler: 23:02

What allowed you to walk into that space and talk about that?

davidji: 23:07

You know, part of it is like oh my God, I made it. I have a calling here. I lived. I didn’t die, I lived. So I need to get to work.

davidji: 23:16

And part of me was how dare you, how dare you? You just happened to not be there. It was my visit to the naughty palm leaf reader, which you can listen to in another episode. It was where it was revealed to me when I was going to die and how I was going to die, like all the details of my death in this life and knowing that the clock is ticking. That’s why a lot of people think I’m a stoner surfer because I have this hair and beard. But I made a pledge on that day that I would never cut my hair.

davidji: 23:48

So every time I look in the mirror I am reminded of that moment and the fact that I know when I’m going to die and how I’m going to die and under what circumstances. That puts a little fire under me and it turned me like I don’t have the right to be sitting around here. Oh, poor me. I’ve got to get busy and I’ve got to serve others and I’ve got to help heal and figure out ways to elevate other people, and so it was perhaps finding a deeper meaning or a deeper purpose, and we’ve talked about in PTSS or PTSD or PTG, all those post-traumatic scenarios. It’s always finding meaning that helps you move to the next level. Whether you’ve lost a child, whether you’ve lost a parent, no matter what. If you can find deeper meaning in so many people who have been physically and or sexually abused, or through drugs or whatever that is, they find new and deeper meaning in their lives by helping others who are trapped like they were trapped in that.

Elizabeth Winkler: 24:49

Absolutely. So when we can talk about the shame, then we can help other people with that thing. Absolutely, this is like what 12-step is all about, right? And so another thing when I first made the acronym, I almost did secrets. Hold all my energy, because that’s how I look at everything is transmutation of energy, but I went with evolution. Anyway, there’s a lot of energy that you are trapping when you are not speaking about the secret. So understand that when you give voice, you are transmuting energy and you are also. It could be energy, it could be empathy. Secrets, hold all my empathy, because you have no empathy for yourself. You’re judging yourself, but once you allow yourself to talk about it, you open the door to the empathy for yourself and then the empathy for others.

davidji: 25:38

I can’t handle it. I can’t handle it. It’s too profound what you’ve created here. And I really vibed with the energy one, because it’s like, because I’m big on energy and it’s like, yes, my secrets are like trapping my potential, which is your evolution, but my secrets are trapping all this energetic flow because I’m so constricted and I’m so self-held down. Remember, our secrets are self-imposed. The content of those secrets may have been created or co-created by somebody else in our life, but our secrets are the self-inflicted wounds.

Elizabeth Winkler: 26:10

We all want to be loved and accepted right, so that goes to the secrets. Hold all my empathy. And accepted right, so that goes to the secrets. Hold all my empathy. You know, if you want to be loved, you need to be able to walk into the room of the peace of yourself that you’re not allowing yourself to talk about.

davidji: 26:24

Right, and I think another conversation that seems to be just coming out into the light these days is cultural and identity shame, where suddenly it’s my race, it’s my gender. Even within my race and gender, I’m comparing myself. My sexuality, my identity, makes me less In a world that is so judgy and opining on every single thing that exists out there. I don’t want to be judged by you, and that is why black people many, many years ago lightened their skin, why, within India, darker skinned Indians lightened their skin just out of the perception of like. A lighter skin means you’re better or more intelligent, have a higher standing in life. And then suddenly we find ourselves several friends of mine who are Black, or we call African American, but their skin is light. They’ve said to me I held a shame for so many years, I’m not Black enough, and so we could apply that to your gender, your race, your sexuality.

davidji: 27:29

You know so many different aspects of that, even in a world where people are paying attention to immigration and it’s like no, no, no, I’m not from that realm, I’m born here, type of thing. Shame is so important and your acronym is like spot on, and maybe that’s something that in our title we’ll put a period after each of those letters Because, gee, so how do we get to the place? Therapist, to the cosmos. How do we get to the place? We all know the expression TMI. It’s not going to help us to just be mumbling out there and bumbling like oh, here’s something you didn’t know about me. Here’s another secret. Oh, I haven’t gone to the bathroom in two days. Oh, I ate five pizza pies yesterday, you know, at what point.

Elizabeth Winkler: 28:17

I mean, there’s like a lot of addictions and things you know, whether it’s food or drugs or whatever it may be. I think a way that you could play with this and I’ve been thinking a lot about it. I’m embarrassed to admit. Get a journal and start to just have that prompt. What are you embarrassed to admit?

davidji: 28:33

Isn’t that the Elizabeth Winkler I’m embarrassed to admit journal, didn’t I see that on the printing presses? As we were walking in here, I saw that being digitally put onto every iPad on the planet.

Elizabeth Winkler: 28:44

I’m embarrassed to admit, and just to allow yourself to visit that and write it on the page and see what comes forward, right, and this all stems from some kind of seed of I’m not good enough.

Elizabeth Winkler: 28:58

Of course, which, okay. So not enoughness, not real, but why does it feel real? Okay. So we build this ego which is built on I’m not enough, I’m bad. So I’m bad is the shame thing. Remember, I said at the very beginning something happens in your life when you’re little and could be big thing, little thing. But we make ourselves bad and the person taking care of us is good. So I’m bad, I did something bad. It could be a small thing, okay, or it could be a big thing. So we have this badness right, and then we have to hide that in order to get accepted, in order to get love right, or even just attention.

davidji: 29:37

So will you love me if I’m a little more palatable.

Elizabeth Winkler: 29:40

Well, you start to notice what gets attention. How do you get attention? This is how people start to construct their personality, and then their persona, and the persona is the mask that you wear. That covers this.

davidji: 29:52

I’m not enough, and this is how the shadow is cultivated in all of us.

Elizabeth Winkler: 29:56

Right. So the shadow is what’s disgusting your shame, what’s not good, what wasn’t accepted, what was pushed away. I hope nobody knows this, right? And so, yeah, if people are trying to discover their shadow, the question I always ask is what disgusts you? What disgusts you in the world? Because your shadow is unconscious, so you don’t know what your shadow is right, but you know what disgusts you in the world Because your shadow is unconscious, so you don’t know what your shadow is right, but you know what disgusts you in the world. That is an indication of what your shadow is.

Elizabeth Winkler: 30:22

Now it’s not going to come out or manifest in the same way that you see it outside in the world, but anyway, that’s a whole thing. So that’s what’s in the you know, basement of the self. What you revere also is a shadow. Right, so like, oh, I could never be like the Dalai Lama, like so forgiving or whatever, because some people’s identity is very shadowy. Right, like they got attention because they acted out and so that’s what was given a lot of attention, so they have a Intrude. Right, exactly, so there’s, you know, so they would never be forgiving or kind like, oh, that’s so disgusting, I would never be that. Right, so their shadow could be the opposite of what someone who has a hateful shadow.

Elizabeth Winkler: 31:02

You have underneath the egoic structure which the voice in your head is running. All of that, this is not who you really are. These are just thought patterns and if you ever feel like a fraud, you’re in your ego. This is like a personality or persona that you have to keep up in the world and the truth is we are becoming in every moment. We are not a solid structure, right, we are like a river always changing, growing, evolving, and you can’t step in the same river twice. That is true for every single being in the present moment. But we try to hold on to this like I’m this kind of person and I’m this. You know I need to be seen this way. That doesn’t really work because you’re always changing and that’s why people feel like a fraud. That’s what imposter syndrome is all about. So underneath all of that that’s being driven, this need to hold on to this persona structure is being driven by. I’m not enough.

Elizabeth Winkler: 32:00

But if you can allow yourself to get uncomfortable and to drop all of that structure like who I’m supposed to be or who I should be, and just be in that uncomfortable, uncertain space of I don’t know who I am uncertain space of I don’t know who I am, it’s okay. What if you’re okay with not knowing who you are? By being okay with that, you start to discover who you are and who you are becoming. In this fresh new moment Because it’s always like just spontaneously arising rather than trying to hold on you can feel this kind of fear and not enoughness. If you’re really in touch with that, you’re getting closer.

Elizabeth Winkler: 32:44

People think, oh no, I’m regressing, I’m feeling this. No, that actually means you’re moving forward. You’re moving into the land that you’ve been avoiding your whole life by living in your mind. You’re getting closer to that space. And if you’re in a place of I don’t know you’re there, but we’re raised to know everything, oh, I should know. Of course I know who I am, of course I know what’s going to happen and of course I know no, no, no.

davidji: 33:28

There’s no finish line. We’re always discovering and things are always unfolding in new ways. It’s so performative, but you are with a trusted soul, a trusted partner, and when we share certain things with trusted beings and we know that they’re not going to ridicule us and maybe internally, you don’t know, you don’t know necessarily, but you’ve got to trust one person, and maybe it’s your cat, I think you know Totally, it could be your cat, it could be your lizard, you know it’s like honey.

davidji: 33:52

I know you won’t be sharing this with anybody else Peaches, who never barks, never even squeals or squeaks the things I have told Peaches. She has been my trusted confidant now for 16 years.

Elizabeth Winkler: 34:03

Writing it in your journal is more than enough. Right Saying it to yourself.

davidji: 34:08

We’re not even allowing ourselves to visit it within ourselves you know Right, but I think that’s a very, very core core place. We must speak it in a safe place, absolutely, because you figure that the secret is in the shadow and so it’s going to get like peeled away. So it needs to be peeled away and in an environment that will allow that. That’s number one. Also, there’s stuff that we’re carrying that somebody else is to carry. We don’t need to be holding on to that so we could.

davidji: 34:35

Maybe you ask a lot of this is mine to carry, but not this other 40% of it. That’s for someone else to actually feel that way or to carry that. One of the things that I did internally to shift my shame and obviously I’ve had things pop up in many, many moments, not just, you know, survivor’s remorse and shame from that, but shame in other things oh, I wish I could have done that better. Oh, I shouldn’t have said those words, oh, I wish I could take that back. You know things along those lines I made a pact with my heart to transform my inner critic into my inner guardian, as if I was giving my inner critic a new job, a new career.

Elizabeth Winkler: 35:16

That’s great. I love that.

davidji: 35:17

And so when my inner critic says, oh you loser, how could you do this? There’s a part of me because I’ve been working on this for a bunch of years there’s a part of me that says, oh, oh, oh, that was our old MO. You know, it’s like trading in one.

Elizabeth Winkler: 35:32

The old operating system. It’s time to update.

davidji: 35:34

Right, right, it’s time for the upgrade. Yeah, you know. So you know, click here for the upgrade. So it’s not like a hostile anything, it’s just a gentle reminder. Oh, you thought you were on DG 3.0? We’re actually on DG 35.0. So can we just move on here? That has allowed me to like not have any hostility and not to have any issues and to remind the inner critic, almost like to shame the inner critic into like hey.

Elizabeth Winkler: 36:00

No, lovingly, I think you’re not. I don’t think you’re shaming it. I think you’re lovingly guiding it yeah.

davidji: 36:04

Back to the guardian. Yes, the guard, my inner guardian.

Elizabeth Winkler: 36:08

I don’t think shaming it would work? I don’t think shaming it would work, but yeah, I love. This is such an important point because so often we go back to that old operating system. This happens all the time and this is to remember oh wait, that’s the old operating system, come back. That’s part of like the integration of bringing these threads that we’re weaving back into our lives.

davidji: 36:33

It’s really important, yeah, and sometimes I just will say to my inner critic oh, oh, we don’t do that here, maybe someplace, but we don’t do that here. Inside me, inside my mind, my head, my body, my cells, we don’t do that here. We got bigger things to do and that’s why, like I said, the shift for me was like I’m going to die. I’ve got to get to work. You know my heart, it’s like I’m going to die. I’ve got to get to work. My heart will not beat forever. Elizabeth’s pulling up one of her lemonade cards and it says I have a choice. It’s a classic Winklerism I have a choice and now it’s time for today’s takeaway.

Elizabeth Winkler: 37:08

Living the light. Elizabeth, why don’t you guide us? You always have a choice. You have a choice in every moment to be empowered in your voice, whether that’s writing on a page, talking to a trusted friend, therapist. You have a choice to be free or trapped in that prison of the critical mind, the judging, shameful space that we all have. So when that arises, just remember. I have a choice. I can take a breath, I can move from my head to my heart and just breathe there. I can welcome this energy and allow kindness. And then, after you’ve done that, what choice do you want to make? Is there something you want to say to yourself, to a younger version of yourself, or to your present self, or all of the selves? And allow yourself to transform, heal and become a conduit of teaching others how to do that.

davidji: 38:14

That’s how we do it so powerful, and reminding ourselves that secrets hold all my energy. So when you are holding one, you have the opportunity to just expand that and evolve and let that energy move into the light, and we all have this opportunity to rewrite our narratives. Such a powerful and important teaching. With each breath, I am reborn. Today I begin again. I am not my shame, I am my healing, and this is a way that we can just keep this moving forward and forward.

davidji: 38:55

Elizabeth, thank you so much for delivering this magnificent acronym SHAME and sharing that with the planet today so powerful, and I think a lot of people are going to heal from sharing that with the planet today so powerful, and I think a lot of people are going to heal from that, from the sweet spot of the universe. On behalf of the Shadow and the Light podcast. My name is davidji. I’m here with well you know who she is Elizabeth Winkler, and on the board, matteo Schmidt, and we are the shadow and the light. Jamar, take us home, I will not be afraid of the shadows in the dark.

Music: 39:25

They will lead the way to the hidden pathways of the heart and that secret place. That is where I find my start. The light Is here to remove all my fears and to bring new sight. The light Is a cloud that will go to the deep to take me to you the light. If you’re gone, I will go to the deep to take me to you the shadow and the light.

Music: 40:01

There’s hope out in rock bottom. You hold it as you’re holding me, but don’t rush past this moment. The darkness can become a friend. Love will come by your side and you’ll shine brighter than a million suns a million suns. You went through hell, but now you’re in the light. It is here to remove all your fears and to bring new sight. New sight. The light it is not able to go to the deep to take you to new heights. The shadow and the light has come because it loves us. The light has come to set us free. The shadow comes because it loves us. The shadow comes because it loves us. The shadow comes because it loves us. The shadow comes and set us free. The light is here to remove all our fears and to bring new life. The light is the light that will go to the deep to take us to new heights. The shadow and the light.