There are no monsters inside us… only parts that look like monsters to other parts of us.
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Last week we heard from Anna, who was responding to my YouTube video where I talk about accepting “our darkest parts” as honored guests. She said she had a hard time accepting a part of her that seemed scary, full of intensity, like a dark monster.
In my response I recommended not trying to be with the “scary” parts at first, but turning toward “something in you” that finds them scary.
But another reader wrote in to say: “I do get uncomfortable when ‘darker’ keeps being used to mean ‘more scary’ ‘monstrous’ and the like — this just doesn’t seem okay to me.”
Dear Reader,
I agree with you. I would say it this way: There are NO monsters inside us. There is no part of us which wants to hurt us. Everything inside us is trying to save our lives and protect us from pain.
But what to do when someone says, “I have this part of me which feels like a dark, scary monster”?
I’m not going to be very helpful if my first response is: “No, it’s not.”
That there is something so scary it looks like a monster is how reality feels right now — to a part of her. The point of view “it’s monstrous” belongs to a part, not to Self-in-Presence.
So I’ll say, “You might want to acknowledge something in you that feels scared of what looks like a monster to it.”
At the same time I’ll be aware that what is being called a “monster” has its own point of view, its own reason for being how it is, and that we really don’t know yet how it would describe itself. We just know that “monster” will not be that description.
What are the “dark places”?
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This is what I said in the video:
“We cannot fix ourselves and no one else can fix us.
And we cannot change through will power, it just doesn’t work.
We cannot change through trying to control who we are and how we feel.
And so the darkest feelings inside us,
and the places in us that we most feel are our enemy,
are the ones we need to throw the door open and invite in,
as the guests, as the honored guests.
Because they are the ones, they are the only ones who will show us the way forward.
It’s the dark places that hold the life energy,
and our life energy has been bound up in trying to hold those places hidden,
where if instead of that, we turn toward them with radical acceptance,
they themselves are the ones who will lead us forward.”
What you think is your enemy is not your enemy.
It is a part of you trying to save you.
That doesn’t mean you have to act in the ways that it urges.
Your actions can come from wholeness, not from parts of you.
But what feels like a “dark” place — because it has not been in the light, because it is scary to other parts of us, because it seems to be in the way of our being the way we need to be — is not an enemy. And the only way — I believe — to tap into the tremendous life force it is holding is to treat it as a guest, to invite it to sit down, to get to know it better in its own terms.
To do that, we will need to disidentify from the scared parts of us, because they don’t make good hosts! They should also be guests at the table, they should also have some tea and take their shoes off.
Self-in-Presence is the host, and when we can be Self-in-Presence to all our parts, we can receive the rich treasure they all bring to us.
