The Shadow Self and Attachment

      It is often in the solar plexus that we begin to recognize our dark side, the shadow aspect of our personality. When we are willing to look honestly within, we find the ways in which we have succeeded or failed in fulfilling our dreams and goals. Western society is strongly built on concepts of success and failure. However, a major part of the healing that occurs in the solar plexus is the realization that success and failure only have to do with ego.

     The soul is busy taking a journey and having experiences from which it will learn. It knows nothing of success and failure. The soul only knows truth, honesty, and integrity. As long as we live our lives from a place of truth and integrity, allowing Love to flow through our being, we are following a pathway toward healing. With this realization, we are able to let go of attachment to success, and simply take the journey.

     Attachment is a big issue of the solar plexus. Through attachment, whether to a person, job, situation, problem, idea, or belief, we feel some kind of control or security. There are literally bands of energy that form between the solar plexus chakra and the object of our attachment. Energy bands form from the second chakra through emotional-sexual attachment, and from the heart chakra in love attachments, but from the solar plexus we find the energy bands that form out of control and security issues. In balancing this chakra, we learn to let go of our attachment to the outcome of a situation, to a job, or to a lover, no longer depending on the object of our attachment to give us an identity or a reason for being. As we let go of the attachment, we experience healing, because we begin to find wholeness within ourselves.

     Here we also address issues of desire and need. When ego and soul are in balance, desire is a healthy feeling, leading us forward in our journey of development. However, when ego begins to reign, desire becomes need. As the energy becomes more and more distorted, need becomes greed.

     Martha began working for a large bank in an entry-level position with a great desire to advance. She was very bright and learned quickly, earning several promotions in rapid succession. However, as she kept being promoted, she became somewhat obsessed with climbing the corporate ladder. She basked in her newfound status and power over other people's career paths, and began to thrive on those feelings. She became willing to do anything necessary to ensure her continued promotion and increased power.

     What was once healthy ambition had become desperate need, leading to aggression and manipulation. Her ego craved more and more power at the expense of others. Only when she was faced with a life-threatening illness did she realize that she had alienated her closest friends, family members, and colleagues. Desire, need, and attachment to outcome are important issues to address so we can be aware of the important inner balance and always follow the direction of the soul.

     Another aspect of this issue is when genuine need becomes neediness. This is a sign of tremendous weakness, not only in the solar plexus, but in the lower chakras in general. When people become needy they tend to suck energy from everyone else around them, refusing to step firmly into their own power, strength, and life force in order to find sustenance. Rather than addressing their own issues and learning to provide both the physical and emotional nurturing that they require, they seek out others who will take care of them.

     In the third chakra (solar plexus) we face the practical challenges and problems of our lives, and fight our daily battles. The deeper we go in our work here, the more we realize that the people in our lives are simply mirrors for us to see and know ourselves. The person who irritates us is often giving us the gift of showing us a part of ourselves that we don't particularly like. When we are standing in a place of less awareness, we tend to create battles and enemies outside ourselves, finding someone or some situation to fight against. That is the ego's way of coping with inner conflict. But when we come to the essence of the solar plexus, we realize that the battles are just the manifestation of what is happening inside, and that we must go inside to meet our well-disguised dragons. That's where the real battle lies.

     Being rigid in our beliefs and harsh in our judgments only leads to inflexibility in life. This makes any kind of adjustments to situations and conditions all the more difficult. When we can become more fully aware of our inner battles and stop projecting them outside of ourselves, we can more easily let go of ego judgments and prejudices and come to a place of peace inside. Then we can more fully realize that a true state of peace does not necessarily mean the absence of conflict, but is an inner state.

     When we achieve an inner state of peace, we can accept conflict around us and work through it in a gentle and nonjudgmental way, not getting tied up in our attachments to certain feelings or outcomes.

This article is excerpted from Intuitive Living: A Sacred Path, ©2001, by Alan Seale.   Reprinted with author's permission.

About the Author

     Alan Seale is an ordained Interfaith Minister and spiritual development and life coach, as well as an established singer and voice teacher to leading Broadway and opera singers in New York City. He brings a wealth of experience to his work as an author, teacher, workshop facilitator, and spiritual/clairvoyant counselor. He has served on the teaching faculties of Chautauqua Institution, the New York Open Center, Wainwright House, New York's Learning Annex, and conferences and retreats throughout the United States. He is the author of Intuitive Living: A Sacred Path, as well as On Becoming a 21st Century Mystic: Pathways to Intuitive Living. Visit his website at http://www.mystic21.com.

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