A New Year, a new beginning, a fresh start. A time of diving deep and opening up. 2017 is a year of the Divine Feminine, and where the 1 vibration appears to be holding an alchemical frequency of something new wanting to break through and transform our old reality.

Since November and in the silence of the Mercury Retrograde, I had an opportunity to do some inner clean up of my own. This recent Portal gave us all an opportunity for quiet time to go within, and it certainly showed me others projections of their shadow and where their unhealed childhood wounds had become activated.

We have a Full Moon in the watery, feminine, emotional sign of Cancer on the 12th January, symbolised by the sign of the crab. Now is not the time to run away and hide inside our shells, but to come out of hiding now and expose our vulnerabilities which can lead us to higher states of awareness and Heart energy.

We are in a time of letting go all that no longer serves us, and releasing the patterns that have kept us from being fully present with ourselves and others. So Loves message this month from the essence of the Black Rose is this:

We MUST do the necessary inner work and heal our core pain!

We all have an inherent need for belonging, Love, and to feel safe. Yet many are still shying away from doing their own inner work, not wanting or interested in looking at their own messages of limiting beliefs passed down from their parents and their own painful patterns.

It is time for us to go within and tune into our feeling body to understand the deep connection of Shadow Work and our emotions. This is where sacred alchemy begins. Many of us in adulthood can become easily triggered due to unhealed experiences from childhood. Perhaps we did not get our needs met, or we learned to survive and suffer in silence which bleeds over into our adult lives.

Maybe through our experiences we were told that we were not deserving or good enough, or we were not nurtured or loved in the way we wanted to be. We may also have internal messages running that Love was conditional and emotions were invalid, and shamed and shown disapproval if we did not do or conform in a certain way. 2016 was definitely a year filled with experiences for all of us! In adult life when we are triggered by a perceived fear or hurt from the outside, the child within us becomes activated again.

Repressed Shadow

Through my own suffering I have been burned in the holy fires of initiation and walked the inner depths of darkness, so I could bring back the gifts of wisdom and messages of the Black Rose, and share the Light of my own inner realizations through these blog posts.

This is the gold I continue to share from the depths of my own soul, based upon my own healing journey and observations of my personal experiences so that it may assist in empowering others to do the work if they so choose.

Perhaps we continue to project our unhealed wounds and unmet needs onto others through anger, people pleasing and over doing for others, seeking approval from the outside, self-doubt, hiding, self sabotage, depression, giving up, emotional overwhelm, separation and disconnection, manipulating or controlling behaviour, withholding, running away from perceived confrontation when we feel threatened (women in particular are good at doing that) and the list goes on…and on.

One of the biggest barriers in learning to Love ourselves and live an authentic life is the repression of our negative emotions, thoughts, beliefs, behaviours, our childhood wounds and core pain. So how do we know if our shadow is acting out? How do we know if we are projecting “our stuff” out there onto others?

“An unexamined life is not worth living” said Plato.

The thing about the shadow is these things play out unconsciously – until we take the time to consciously look at why we do things, examine our beliefs, and become aware of why we react or behave the way we do. We may be a 30, 40, 50, 60 year old adult in physical form, yet we can be “acting out” from a 3,4,5,6,7 year old child that never got its needs met.

If we were not nurtured properly or made to feel safe in childhood, (there is no blame here), our inner child can play havoc and behave in destructive ways throughout adulthood in our relationships, friendships and even in the workplace. Our life’s challenges are bringing to our attention our unresolved pain from the past.

In 2010 my world changed as I knew it and in early 2011 the White Rose paid me a visit. Integrating my own shadows, I had to acknowledge my repressed anger, resentment, guilt and shame, and heal my own sacred wounds of Injustice and Abuse – these were the emotional wounds that I had carried for the collective in my own personal story.

In my quest to understand my own emotional pain, over many years it took me down the route of studying counselling, Spiritual Response Therapy, Angelic Reiki and other healing modalities, yet none of them showed me how to heal the pain I felt at the core of my being.

There were other holy wounds I had to heal too, including Betrayal, Abandonment and Rejection, and in grieving the powerlessness of my inner child, my story was shared in 2013 of how to in the blog The Importance of Healing Our Core Wounds. It is why healing Core Wounds of the Heart became an integral part of my service work with the Rose offerings.

The sad thing is that operating as a child in adult life means we are not giving ourselves permission or allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. And it is only through being vulnerable, holding Love and compassion for ourselves, can we heal our wounds of the Heart.

Seeing with the Eyes of the Heart

So how can we possibly be authentic with ourselves and others and live from the Heart, give out Love to others in an authentic way, and accept ourselves completely just the way we are if we can’t be bothered to look at those aspects of ourselves, don’t know how, or we are too frightened to explore them? If we do not do the necessary inner work our inner child can end up sabotaging our relationships and friendships. It also means we cannot make peace with ourselves and the outside world, and our true potential remains unrecognised.

In the healing arts there is a terminology that says our past informs our present. In other words, our present pain is illuminating our unresolved pain from the past. When we work towards becoming more self aware and understand and accept this, we have an opportunity to own our power and do things differently.

When we stop projecting “our stuff” and emotional overwhelm out onto others in the world, look within to see what is causing it, we shall have peace within and without. We are all so much more than we know if we are open and willing to explore that.

Each and everyone of us holds a belief within that caused the separation from Love – mine was I believed I have done something wrong. Where we have separated from Love is the root cause of our emotional pain.

Our wounds become our greatest gifts of service – when we fully embrace them, seek healing if we need too, and truly express the grief we suppressed. It is then our gifts of service come through and rise from the transformation of our pain and wounded-ness.

Our job is to find the beauty in the death and decay of all our challenges, to find the gold in our negative experiences and turn them into positive.

We do not need to get into heavy processing, the ego will always find something to keep itself occupied if we believe we have something to clear. All we need do is stop resisting our vulnerability, not close down emotionally, and become present for our pain to be seen and heard. This is the greatest alchemy of Love. It is the foundation of our work in the Temple of the Black Rose and Sacred Heart Circles offered through Light Messenger.

In Love, Grace and Service,

Linda