May 10, 2021
In this episode we are talking about The Most Important Thing that No One Wants to Talk About.
1:16 This is Important for Your Journey
We're talking about something important that nobody wants to talk about, but if you're on any sort of spiritual journey, personal growth journey, success journey, you got to get this under control.
KISMA
If you just want to be a little bit happier, this is actually really important for that too.
Nick
2:18 The Role it Plays
What we're talking about today is shame and the role that it plays in our lives and also how to really start acknowledging it and dealing with it in our lives in a healthy way.
Nick
Even if we're running little seeds of shame, or vibrations of shame, it pulls us down.
KISMA
It ties in really closely with guilt and the guilt mechanism to control behavior. So it's a mixed message to start with and the shame is something that's put on to suppress you.
Nick
6:47 It’s a Big Deal
It's a big deal.
I think one of the first steps in just kind of understanding this is recognizing that basically everybody has some level of this and the degree to which you have will determine just how suppressed certain parts of you are and how suppressed your personality is.
Nick
8:33 What is Shame?
Shame is the thing that we use that covers up and suppresses our personality. It's the mask that we put on to hide those parts and to show to the world what we have decided for ourselves is good and worthy of showing to the world. It covers up our humanness and when you cover up your humanness, you never have a chance to get to the essence of your being because you just can't face it.
Nick
So self love is a long way off and true love from another human is impossible.
KISMA
Well, yeah, because they're not really loving you. They're loving what little pieces of yourself you've decided to show them.
Nick
12:26 Losing What is Not True
How does this relate them to this spiritual journey of exiting out of this shame?
KISMA
The real essence of a spiritual practice, in my mind, is not about getting anything, but it's about losing everything.
Nick
It's about losing what is not true.
KISMA
Yeah. That's what it's really about.
Nick
16:24 True Self
If you have shame around just the way you are as a human being then you're going to make it wrong and then you're going to cover it up and then you're going to try to be different. And that's the worst thing that you can do because it takes you further away from the essence and the truth of who you are.
You're never going to get to the essence and core of your spiritual being by trying to be somebody else.
Nick
I think as we go through this process of really finding who we are and wanting to be ourself, when we turn our shoulder against our true self or when we're on this path and all of a sudden it's like, “Oh, I'm not comfortable with that. I'm not going to look at that in me.”, it's because there's a wall of shame or layer of shame.
So we miss out on this true self.
KISMA
18:36 Peace Treaty
So where does everyone start removing the shame?
KISMA
I think there's an inherent conflict when you're trying to cover up part of yourself. And when you have shame around that, there's going to be a conflict because there's a part of you that is like trying to do the right thing and there's a part of you that's trying to not do the wrong thing, and those two things are going to fight with one another.
So when you're in that place, there is an exercise called the peace treaty where you go through a process of basically writing a peace treaty with yourself.
What the peace treaty does is help you to really look at yourself and recognize where you're in conflict with yourself. And basically you just stop that. You lay down the arms and you're like, “We're going to stop fighting”. And what you find is that you start to not make so much of yourself wrong and that opens the door for you to start to have some respect for exactly who you are and where you're at right now.
It's a serious endeavor in the sense that it's not just a throw away thing that you do once. Like if you're making peace, you have to be actively engaged in that process.
So it's starting to have the awareness of where the negative thoughts, the shaming thoughts, the self-defeating thoughts start to come in, where the conflict starts inside of you and then making a new decision for yourself in it.
And when you have a peace treaty written with yourself, there's a really powerful, energetic thing that happens along with that.
Nick
22:51 Make The Decision
I think that's a great place to start.
I'll give my tip. When shame starts coming in, I actually talk to it. I just say, “Yeah, we're not doing that today. We're not going to do that”.
There's something really magical when you just voice. I think it's that conscious mind telling the subconscious not today. There's like a shift in that. You're making and stating a stand for yourself. And I feel like to exit shame, that's what we're doing repeatedly.
We just have to make the decision each and every day.
KISMA