An excerpt fron INITIATION by Shannon Kelly

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Chapter 7 Secrets, Fears and Truth

If it is difficult being honest with others; it’s even more difficult to be honest with ourselves. A difficult aspect of taking ownership of your gifts or magik involves being honest with yourself. 

When working with my students, there are two questions I routinely ask of them. What is your greatest fear right now? What is your biggest secret that you don’t want anyone to know? Then I ask them to say it out loud. If they don’t tell me, I ask that they later state it out loud to the Universe. The goal is that they hear it and deal with the realities of it. The amazing part is that most of the time my students want to tell me about it. This is not normally where they have allowed themselves to go. Keeping this type of information to ourselves is dangerous -- emotionally, physically and spiritually.  

One of the greatest fears people face when they confront initiation is the possibility of changing certain aspects about themselves, their lifestyles or surroundings. This is the resistance of the identity ego, afraid of losing its control. By identifying the power of the ego in relating to our own needs, we become more conscious of the work to be done regarding our own journeys. 

The true threat lies in not dealing with fear and secrets. A fear or secret may once have caused a mildly embarrassing moment, but over time that secret can develop into a major fear and generalize into other areas. Like a cancer, fear and secrets grow into paralysis and avoidance. What could have been taken care of easily early on becomes a major life-altering event. The dangers of holding negative information are similar to failing to treat a low-grade infection. There may be only a mild discomfort initially, or it may not be noticed at all. If left untreated, it becomes a systemic condition requiring urgent and extreme care. 

It is up to each of us to confront ourselves about the truth of who and what we are. When we address these things and release them, they simply become information about our history.   

The identity ego wants us to keep these secrets; secrets are a weakness that can be used against the ego. This ego doesn’t want to be vulnerable unless vulnerability serves its own purpose. 

Secrets are held in two ways: intentionally and unintentionally. Intentional secrets are obvious; they are the things we choose to hide from others and sometimes from ourselves. These are the ones that people use to make moral and social judgments. To avoid judgment, we don’t always tell the truth.  

The unintentional secret is much harder to work with. These are the “oh, by the way . . . ” comments that come out in the course of our personal work. I have worked with people who were in the middle of intense personal process, being stuck because something was missing. Then out of the blue they would drop a bomb with some information they were holding, but never thought it was important enough to mention.  

An example was a woman I had worked with who was suffering from extreme grieving over a pet’s death; she had only had the animal a couple of years. She wasn’t that attached to it when it was alive but became inordinately attached when the pet died. In our initial conversation I had asked her if she had ever experienced any other traumatic deaths in her. No close friends or family had died. There was no transference to this pet from previous pets, and no trauma she could remember that would give her this much sorrow.   

About three weeks into our work, she said there was one thing that she did remember, but thought it wasn’t really anything big enough to mention. She didn’t bring it up in our initial interview because it happened at her birth. She told me that she was a surviving twin and that the other had died at birth. Upon further exploration, I found she was raised thinking that her twin had sacrificed herself so that she could live. Because she was so young, she hadn’t been able to grieve her sisters’ death. She had been primed all her life to do so, and her pet’s death initiated it. The information was not intentionally held back, but to her it was so ingrained that she hadn’t seen it as important to the situation.  

This was the unintentional secret, something that she had normalized and considered unimportant. With this information, we started talking about her sister and the myriad of things she had thought over the years. The pet was quietly put away and the grief and resolution process proceeded in a powerful manner.

In my journey there are people that have accepted the work I do and have chosen to invite me in as they experience their own journeys. This is referred to as walking parallel paths. These include my children and a few close friends. Life does change, and as it does, there is more clarity. In the shifting process conflict may occur, but peace can be found because it is in the core of who we are. Acceptance and understanding can replace conflict and complexity. So, yes, there will be changes, and they may be gradual or rapid, depending on the person’s level of investment in his or her journey. There is one thing I can say with absolute certainty: It will not happen faster than it is supposed to. 

It is our personal connection to all that we have around us and everything that we have access to that supports our growth. It is at this point during your own awakening that you realize only you can be on your journey. People travel on parallel paths with others, but each transition, each awakening is your own. When you understand this, working with others becomes much easier. If your path is such that you are working with others, you must step out of ego and control to assist them cleanly. When you do this, your work with others deepens your own practice of staying out of ego and judgmental states. It also confronts you on your own issues.  

When you start working with people and you feel triggered by their issues, it suggests that you have work yet to do in that area. A question that comes up regularly in my work is: Am I able to step beyond my self, my issues and my attitudes to truly assist this person in his or her situation? The answer to this question controls my work with that person. If I am not ready to cleanly work on the issue and attempt to defuse it, the results will be less than optimal.  

It is always important to be brutally honest with your self. If you are, then you are working with your highest integrity and abilities with those who choose to work with you. It is not a wise idea to use someone else’s problems or issues to address your own. Karmic clean-up can be quite severe for those who force to make things work.

There is no reality, only relational points of being. This is what frustrates those who try to find out how magik works. Only through adopting willingness, acceptance and consciousness of the work that it takes to experience magik can a person hold a deep understanding of it. It is this level of existence that the ego cannot comprehend and fears confronting.