Latest / I Am Astrology Readings Podcast with Paul Heath / Shadow Work & Mirror Work — Restoration Series Finale | Astrology Ride of the Day

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Shadow Work & Mirror Work — Restoration Series Finale | Astrology Ride of the Day · I Am Astrology Readings Podcast with Paul Heath

• 0:00
  What's up, y'?
• 0:01
  All?
• 0:01
  Welcome back to the Restoration series final Episode, Part three.
• 0:06
  And we're gonna talk about something that most people run from, which is shadow work.
• 0:10
  And some of you may think when you hear shadow, darkness, negativity, bad things, unpleasant things.
• 0:17
  And that right there, that's exactly why most people never do the work.
• 0:21
  They've been conditioned to believe anything in the shadow is something to avoid, something to hide, something that makes us bad or wrong.
• 0:28
  But what we're going to unpack today, what it really, why we avoid it, and how doing this work is the key to remembering yourself beyond this body on a soul level.
• 0:38
  No, it's not going to be a lecture.
• 0:40
  Yes, it's going to be real talk.
• 0:42
  So I'm going to share with you the uncomfortable parts, the parts that people don't want to face, and the part that leads to actual transformation.
• 0:50
  But before we get into it, got a question that may trigger some, may trigger a few.
• 0:57
  Hell, they may trigger all y'.
• 0:58
  All.
• 0:59
  And that question is, should we judge?
• 1:02
  Most people immediately will say no, and then follow up with don't judge me, or only God can judge me.
• 1:10
  Then if they really into the Scriptures, they might recite Matthew 7.
• 1:15
  One, judge not lest ye be judged.
• 1:18
  But that's only half the verse.
• 1:20
  The full verse says, judge not lest ye be judged.
• 1:25
  Remove the plank from your own eye first, then you can see clearly to help your brother.
• 1:32
  It's not saying don't judge.
• 1:34
  It says, judge yourself first, then you can judge clearly.
• 1:39
  And let's be real, we judge every single day, all day.
• 1:44
  You judge who to trust, what to eat, where you go, what you wear, where you work, where you live, what you drive, and who you call friends.
• 1:59
  Every decision you make is based on judgment.
• 2:03
  And if we didn't judge, we'd be in danger constantly.
• 2:08
  Judgment is a survival mechanism, whether you believe it or not.
• 2:13
  So when people say, only God can judge me, that's just their ego talking.
• 2:18
  The ego protecting itself from being seen as wrong, bad, or the problem.
• 2:25
  We all judge, but we don't want to be judged, especially not by ourselves.
• 2:31
  Why?
• 2:31
  Because if we judge ourselves honestly, we might say things like, I'm the common denominator in all the problems.
• 2:40
  I'm the reason things went south.
• 2:42
  And nobody wants to be the blame for anything, regardless if they put the blame on themselves or others put the blame on them.
• 2:51
  And people have this prejudged notion of darkness as bad, which means they prejudge themselves as bad.
• 3:01
  And if they look at their own darkness, they May not like what they see, so they won't look.
• 3:08
  And sad to say that most people can't look, because looking means admitting I am the problem.
• 3:16
  And the ego will do anything to avoid that.
• 3:21
  Now, I want to get into mirror work.
• 3:23
  And mirror work is simple.
• 3:25
  What is it?
• 3:25
  Glad you asked.
• 3:26
  Mirror work is reflecting on yourself.
• 3:30
  Your actions, your thoughts, your emotions, without filters, without excuses.
• 3:38
  It's basically holding up a mirror to yourself, asking, what am I really doing here?
• 3:42
  What am I really feeling?
• 3:44
  What role am I playing in this situation?
• 3:47
  Not what somebody else did, but what you did.
• 3:51
  Mirror work is the tool used to do the shadow work.
• 3:56
  Kind of like a measuring tape is a tool used to do carpentry.
• 4:01
  Same shit.
• 4:02
  This requires honesty.
• 4:04
  Brutal honesty.
• 4:05
  Let me be clear about something.
• 4:07
  The hard truth about healing.
• 4:09
  Healing won't be fun at all.
• 4:11
  But anything worth doing won't be easy.
• 4:15
  Won't be fun.
• 4:16
  You're gonna have to rip the bandages off wounds you've been hiding.
• 4:19
  If you swept any issues under the rug, push down trauma, pretended it didn't happen, you're gonna have to go back there.
• 4:27
  Yes.
• 4:27
  That means potentially reliving moments where you felt at your worst.
• 4:32
  And I know that sounds terrible to some.
• 4:34
  I know that even sounds like the last thing you want to do.
• 4:37
  But here's what people don't get.
• 4:39
  The version of you that you built walls around to protect yourself.
• 4:44
  That part of you is suffering more in isolation than it ever would in.
• 4:49
  If you let it breathe from behind those walls.
• 4:52
  Yeah, you may cover up and say those walls are built to protect.
• 4:58
  But the same walls that you look at as protection are the same walls that actually trap you.
• 5:07
  And the key to healing is looking at yourself with honesty.
• 5:12
  No sugar coating.
• 5:14
  No, but I had a reason.
• 5:17
  No.
• 5:18
  Yeah, but they.
• 5:20
  If you truly, truly want to get past what's blocking your growth, you have to be willing to see yourself clearly.
• 5:27
  Even when what you see isn't pretty.
• 5:30
  Now, I'm very blunt.
• 5:33
  No bedside manner at all.
• 5:35
  But it's all out of love.
• 5:37
  Cause the truth is, you can't heal what you won't face.
• 5:42
  Can't transform what you won't acknowledge.
• 5:44
  Now, what happens when you rip those bandages off?
• 5:47
  You face your fears.
• 5:49
  You're gonna bleed for a second.
• 5:51
  You're gonna feel everything you've been holding back.
• 5:54
  All of those toxins that sent you spiraling downward, they need to come up and they need to come out.
• 6:01
  This is the purge.
• 6:03
  This is the release.
• 6:06
  It's uncomfortable, but it's necessary.
• 6:09
  You're going to have emotions you've been suppressing.
• 6:12
  Anger, grief, shame, rage.
• 6:16
  All of it needs to move through you.
• 6:19
  And this is where most people quit.
• 6:21
  They think feeling this much means something is wrong.
• 6:24
  They're doing it wrong or making it worse.
• 6:28
  But you're not doing it wrong or making it worse.
• 6:32
  You're finally letting it out instead of keeping it locked inside where it festers.
• 6:39
  Now, that wall I was talking about.
• 6:41
  Here's what I discovered when I did this work.
• 6:44
  And you'll discover it too.
• 6:46
  Version of yourself behind the wall.
• 6:48
  The one you thought was broken, damaged too much or maybe not enough.
• 6:53
  That version actually has more to offer to the world than society ever led you to believe.
• 6:59
  Because society sets these standards for the good life.
• 7:04
  And we think we're failing when we don't fit into those boxes.
• 7:09
  But we're not failing at life.
• 7:11
  We're failing at fitting into those boxes that was never meant for us to fit in.
• 7:18
  The version behind that wall, that's your real self.
• 7:21
  The one society could never touch even if they tried.
• 7:26
  The one that knows the truth.
• 7:28
  When you reach the other side of this process, something starts to shift.
• 7:33
  You won't be afraid of what you might see in the future.
• 7:37
  That fear gone because you've already seen the worst and you survived it.
• 7:42
  Your thoughts starts to shift.
• 7:44
  The internal dialogue changes.
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  Goes from I'm worthless to I am worthy, I have nothing to offer to I have everything to offer.
• 7:56
  I'm broken and damaged to I'm real and authentic.
• 8:02
  You know, you stop measuring yourself against society's standards and start measuring yourself against your own truth.
• 8:11
  And that's when the real self emerges.
• 8:15
  The wounded version of you that you found behind the wall.
• 8:18
  It's not broken.
• 8:20
  It's authentic.
• 8:21
  The one that never bought into the lies.
• 8:24
  The one that always knew there was something more.
• 8:28
  The ones that that's been waiting for you to come back and get.
• 8:32
  When you integrate the part of yourself, when you bring it out from behind the wall and let it breathe, that's when your power comes back.
• 8:41
  That's when you remember.
• 8:43
  So shadow work equals soul remembering.
• 8:48
  And here's where it all comes together.
• 8:50
  When you face your shadow, your perspective shifts entirely.
• 8:55
  You're not just healing trauma.
• 8:59
  You're unlocking dormant parts of your DNA.
• 9:02
  You develop a curiosity that can't be satisfied by surface level answers.
• 9:08
  You realize there's something deeper than surface level stuff that we were taught.
• 9:15
  You go down the rabbit hole and somewhere down there you find truth about what you are and who you are.
• 9:24
  Facing your fears fac your Shadow doesn't automatically mean you remember a soul.
• 9:30
  It's not like some magical switch or button.
• 9:34
  It's a doorway.
• 9:35
  You only walk through this door if you have a deeper urge to find out anything about yourself.
• 9:44
  That's opposite of the lie you were fed.
• 9:47
  The shadow work removes those blockages.
• 9:51
  Curiosity pulls you towards truth.
• 9:53
  And that combination leads to remember.
• 9:56
  When I say remember who you are, I mean it literally, but on a soul level.
• 10:03
  Remembering that you are not the body.
• 10:05
  You know that you're the essence that controls the body.
• 10:10
  You're not the car, you're not the house.
• 10:14
  You're not the vessel.
• 10:17
  You're the driver, the one living in it.
• 10:20
  You're the conscious piling it.
• 10:24
  And when you remember that, everything changes.
• 10:28
  Your priorities shift, Your fears dissolve.
• 10:31
  Your purpose becomes more clear than it was before.
• 10:35
  Because you're no longer operating from the wounded ego trying to survive.
• 10:40
  You're operating from the soul that knows it's eternal.
• 10:44
  Now let me bring this full circle.
• 10:46
  Within this series, spiritual decay showed you what happens when you lose connection to that authentic self.
• 10:54
  When you trade truth for comfort, rust sets in.
• 10:58
  That was the diagnosis.
• 10:59
  Recognizing something's off, that you drifted away from your truth.
• 11:04
  Spiritual maturity gave you daily practices to stop bleeding, to catch yourself, to choose differently, to polish the steel.
• 11:13
  That was the treatment, the tool to respond differently in the moment, to create space between trigger and reaction.
• 11:22
  Where we at now.
• 11:24
  Shadow and mirror work takes you to the root.
• 11:27
  It shows you why the decay happened in the first place.
• 11:31
  It reveals what you've been avoiding and gives you the integration that makes the maturity last.
• 11:39
  You can't sustain maturity without facing the shadow.
• 11:44
  And you can't safely face the shadow without building maturity.
• 11:51
  They work together.
• 11:52
  Maturity without shadow work, surface level healing.
• 11:55
  You manage the symptoms, but you're not addressing the cause.
• 11:59
  Shadow work without maturity, re traumatization, you're ripping open the wounds without the tools to hold yourself through it.
• 12:08
  But together, that's the transformation.
• 12:12
  That's remembering.
• 12:15
  That's coming home to who you really are.
• 12:18
  Now, why you keep slipping back?
• 12:20
  Because remember in the maturity episode, we talked about catching yourself in real time, Creating that space between trigger and response.
• 12:29
  That's the maturity.
• 12:30
  But the shadow work asks the deeper question.
• 12:34
  Why does this specifically trigger you?
• 12:37
  What wound is underneath that reaction?
• 12:41
  What part of you got hurt so badly that this particular situation sets you off every single time?
• 12:48
  In the Decay episode, we talked about the moment where you justify something that you know ain't right with everybody's doing it.
• 12:57
  That becomes your excuse.
• 12:59
  On why you do it.
• 13:00
  That's the decay.
• 13:01
  Shadow work reveals what wounded part of you is so desperate for acceptance that you will compromise your truth to fit in?
• 13:10
  What happened that made you believe your authentic voice wasn't safe?
• 13:15
  Maturity teaches you how to respond differently.
• 13:19
  Shadow work reveals why you've been responding the way you've been responding.
• 13:25
  And when you understand the why, when you go back and get that wounded version from behind the wall, that's when the pattern breaks for good.
• 13:35
  Now, before we get out of here, I'm going to ask you some questions, some homework, just like we did in the past two episodes.
• 13:44
  Journal them or just sit with them.
• 13:46
  Question 1.
• 13:48
  What part of yourself have you judged so harshly that you've locked it away behind walls?
• 13:53
  Describe that part without defending why you did it.
• 13:57
  Just acknowledge what's there.
• 14:00
  Number two.
• 14:01
  If you looked in the mirror right now and saw yourself with complete honesty, no stories, no excuses, no justifications, what would you see that you've been avoiding?
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  Write down the first thing that comes to mind, even if it's uncomfortable.
• 14:21
  Number three.
• 14:22
  What lie about yourself did you accept from society that you're now ready to challenge?
• 14:29
  Number four.
• 14:30
  When you imagine yourself without the wounds, without the scars, without the walls, without the fears, who's standing there?
• 14:39
  Describe this version of yourself.
• 14:41
  What do they know that you've forgotten?
• 14:45
  And number five, what would your life look like if you operated from the knowing that you're a soul and not the body?
• 14:52
  What decisions would you make differently?
• 14:55
  What fears would no longer control you?
• 14:59
  Take a few moments, sit on those questions.
• 15:03
  Journal them down.
• 15:04
  We've talked about through these series, Spiritual Decay, Spiritual Maturity and Shadow Work.
• 15:11
  I want to be honest and clear about this shadow work.
• 15:16
  If you want to grow, it's not optional.
• 15:18
  Mirror work isn't something you do once.
• 15:20
  It's not a one and done.
• 15:22
  It's practice.
• 15:23
  It's a lifestyle.
• 15:25
  And most importantly, you have to commit to seeing yourself clearly, honestly, and without judgment in a negative way.
• 15:34
  Even when judgment comes up.
• 15:36
  Yes, they're going to be uncomfortable.
• 15:38
  I know.
• 15:38
  It was uncomfortable for me too.
• 15:40
  Yes, it's going to challenge everything you thought you knew about yourself.
• 15:45
  But on the other side of that, discomfort, freedom, clarity, truth, power.
• 15:52
  The version of yourself that's waiting behind those walls.
• 15:56
  That version is tired of waiting.
• 15:58
  That version knows who you really are.
• 16:00
  That version is ready to come home.
• 16:03
  So my question is, are you ready to go get it?
• 16:07
  We started with spiritual decay.
• 16:10
  The rust, erosion, the slow loss of connection to your truth.
• 16:15
  Then we move to spiritual maturity.
• 16:19
  The practices the tools, the discipline to catch yourself in real time, in the moment, and choose differently.
• 16:27
  Now, with shadow and mirror work, we've gone to the root.
• 16:32
  We face what's behind the walls.
• 16:34
  You.
• 16:35
  We've integrated the authentic self that's been waiting.
• 16:38
  This is the journey.
• 16:40
  Recognition to practice, to integration.
• 16:45
  There's no skipping these steps.
• 16:48
  You can't jump straight to the shadow work without building maturity first.
• 16:53
  You can't sustain maturity without even facing the shadow.
• 16:59
  They're all part of the same path.
• 17:01
  The path back to yourself, the path back to truth, back to soul again.
• 17:08
  I have to say it again.
• 17:11
  It's not easy.
• 17:12
  It isn't comfortable at all.
• 17:14
  But it is necessary.
• 17:18
  I appreciate y' all for listening, for being willing to look at yourself honestly, for being willing to do the work.
• 17:27
  That's the path.
• 17:28
  That's transformation.
• 17:29
  And this concludes the Restoration series.
• 17:32
  I'm your host, Zale B.
• 17:35
  And until next time, you're all stars, so shine like one.