Or I think about a slice of a tree trunk, every ring mapping out my story: here was a year of tremendous growth, a rainy season, a dry season, a scar from a fire. If it supports you, you can connect the words with your breathing, arrived with the in-breath, home with the out-breath.

We don’t want to be with those raw, unprocessed parts of our experience that are painful and may be quite scary.Ultimately, shadow work marks the beginning of the end and is a turning point on the spiritual path. The “ former Catholic priest turned visionary bestselling author” John O’Donohue has a way of capturing heartfelt well-wishes in a way that lands deeply with me, and this short blessing (from his book Benedictus) is no exception to that. I was also walking on the feet of someone who was right then doing walking meditation and enjoying the present moment. Things like stress and tension accumulate in our bodies and minds, and over time, if we don’t tend to them, they can lead to physical or psychological illness. At its very core, the shadow is the collective name given to aspects of ourselves we are not taking ownership of because of fear.

Life is messy like this – so full of experiences that we’d never, ever choose for ourselves or wish upon another but also, somehow, tangled up with beauty. Its symptoms were nervousness and melancholy, and unfortunately for patients, doctors argued there really was no cure, other than simply to “go home” and see if it passed. It’s difficult to describe, but it has a quality of mild unease, of feeling unsettled, off-center perhaps, or a little ungrounded— like there is some place you belong, but you’re not sure it even exists. Her profound spiritual awakening is detailed in her eBook, An Awakened Life- A Journey of Transformation.

When we internalize these messages, we form beliefs about what is “wrong” with us and repress them so deeply they become unconscious. It aligned with my healing journey and my worldview - like I had a conversation with Deja about my experiences while she wrote this. During my time in India, I wrote in my journal, contemplated each experience, and asked the shadow to be revealed in dreams. The center of the nest can remain empty allowing room for whatever would like to come back to you, or you can place a symbol like a stone in your nest to as place markers. Safely kept in check for as long as I could remember, the rarified energy of this meditative environment was revealing my long lost friend, the “shadow.

I genuinely wanted to like this, and there were some pages that did hit close to home, but there were many more parts that felt kind of repetitive and disorganized.I began by being aware that as I was stepping with my left foot, I was at the same time stepping with my right, because my left foot could not be without my right. In her second collection of published writing, Déjà Rae explores the highs and lows of letting go of past relationships and embracing loneliness as a means to discover oneself.