Lesson 17
Step 4 Fearless Heartwork
Last week we worked on getting our narrative into a concise, but all encompassing paragraph. This is an important part of the healing journey and should not be skipped over or missed. Please take the time to work on it until your paragraph accurately portrays the hole you feel in your heart.
Once you get your paragraph the way you want it, you might ask: What do I do with this? There is a lot to “do” with all the insight and digging you have done so far. For now, it is important to let all of that work really sink in and give it a place to rest and be. Keep your paragraph in a safe place for now and we will revisit it once we have down some more digging in other areas of ourselves.
We are going to take a few minutes to help each other finish our paragraphs before moving on. If you feel comfortable share them with your group.
We have looked at the hurt that happened to us, our experience, our feelings and how it affected our lives. We are now changing focus in step four and we will begin to look at ourselves. Now we will be exploring common destructive responses to our hurts that caused us to feel resentment, anger or fear. We will look to see where the character of Christ was distorted in us.
We will complete a thorough inventory of our responses to the hurts we processed over the last few weeks.
There are a few things we need to wrestle with in order to freely look at ourselves.
Ego
The ego is that part of the self that wants to be good, right, significant, respected, it wants to be superior to everyone else. It is selfish, defensive and self-protective by its very nature. It must eliminate the negative or wrong to succeed at this. The ego is what Jesus called an “actor,” usually translated from the Greek as “hypocrite” and how he described the pharisees (see Matthew 23). An actor wears a mask to portray who they want us to believe they are, so does our ego. It makes us pretend to be someone we aren’t. We transform ourselves so others believe we are better, accept us, value us, respect us. This means we are all hypocrites. Our problem is our over-defended ego never wants us to see our faults. It wants to keep it in the dark.
Shadow self.
Our shadow is subconscious, hidden even from our own awareness. We don’t see it unless we are looking for it. It develops over time by our experiences. It’s our unconscious driving force. It takes effort and life-long practice to look for, find, and embrace what we dismiss and what we disdain. Our ego does not want to acknowledge our shadow self exists. The church calls the “sin nature”, not sin itself but the tendency to be sinful.
If and when an individual makes an attempt to see her shadow, she becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses she denies in herself. One way to explore your shadow is to explore the things you hate in someone else, it will give you a clue to your own shadow.
We cannot really get rid of the shadow; we can only expose it—which is, in great part, to get rid of its effects. Or as it states in Ephesians, “Anything exposed to the light turns into light itself” (5:14). Acknowledge and bring your shadow to the light by admitting it to yourself, God and another person. Only then can you operate in your true nature, your God given design.
Jesus’ phrase for the denied shadow is “the log in your own eye,” which you instead notice as the “splinter in your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5). Jesus preceded modern psychology’s shadow work by two thousand years. His advice is absolutely perfect: “Take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your brother’s eye” (7:5). If you do not recognize and name your own “log,” it is inevitable that you will project and hate it elsewhere.
The true seer knows that “the angels of darkness must disguise themselves as angels of light” (see 2 Corinthians 11:14).
The ability to recover and transform has much to do with necessary shadow work and the emergence of healthy self-critical thinking, which alone allows you to see beyond your own shadow and disguise and to find who you are in Christ.
All created things are a mixture of good and not so good.
It does not mean self-hatred or self-doubt because you have a shadow, but finally accepting both your gifts and your weaknesses as fully your own—they no longer cancel one another out. You can eventually do the same for others too, and you do not let one or the other fault in a person destroy your larger relationship with them. Grace will abound
3. Victim Stance
Jesus in John chapter 5 approaches a man lying sick , He says to Him Do you want to be made well? I think that is an important question to ask yourself. Do you want to live victorious under difficult circumstances? Do you recognize the power God has given you? For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline. 2Tim 1:7.
When a person has had a series of betrayals or trauma they can develop and particular mindset which tends to avoid personal responsibility for their lives.
They often don’t seek possible solutions, they develop a sense of powerlessness and believe they can do nothing to improve their situation, they display a negative self image, lack confidence, they are frustrated, angry and resentful. They often seem judgmental and accusatory towards those trying to help them.
Here is a link to a video Leslie Vernick did regarding Victim Mentality.
1.Name 3 times you can recognize your ego was in play.
2. Have you had any revelations about your shadow self, what drives your behavior?