Shadows In The Cave: A Reclamation

I remember during my college days reading about Plato’s Cave. It hit a deep chord in me at the time. This feeling that the life I was participating in was not real, and thus I began to feel ‘unreal’ as a result. That awareness brought a layer of depression up to the surface that I spent many years trying to medicate over or assuage one way or another. 

After leaving the world of career, and even what it meant to be a ‘father’ and a ‘son’, many years ago, I found myself in a world of mystery. Who was I outside of the roles I had co-created in my former life? It is not that they were false. There was something very real in it all. I inhabited each role with everything I had at the time…until the time ran out and I was at the threshold of something that needed to be shed and reborn into.

Yet, even after all that, I could feel that the former version of me was still attached to some of those old patterns and illusions as if they were still real. Just by removing ourselves from the external doesn’t mean we have removed ourselves from the internal. “Wherever you go, there you are.”

There were still anxieties and pressures still unmet, unfelt, and unloved. It was hard for a part of me to be vulnerable about those as they had so defined who ‘I’ was for so long. Growing up, I learned to suppress those feelings as they only triggered the same in others. That could be a lot for all of us to hold if no one had a container to be with them. 

It took connecting with these feelings as parts of me, rather than just swirling emotions that could overwhelm ‘me’, whomever that ‘me’ was at the time. By taking a step back and being guided in a safe space, I could start to untangle my ‘self’ from those parts and feelings. I could start to feel some air between us and be able to feel this new ‘me’ as someone that could offer care, love, and compassion as well as boundaries. 

In the past, I tried to ‘fix’ it all through the mind, and yet what I really needed was to feel it through the heart. Those shadows on the wall were not just projections of a false world, but the parts of me that had been fragmented over time. I could not just ignore them and turn toward the light. I had to gather them and bring them with me. It is still ongoing for there is much to gather on our way back to the Light of our true essence, aka our Divine Self. 

What has been programmed, conditioned, wounded, and forgotten all live in that cave. It becomes a Grail quest all its own, feeling where we have lost that connection to Love and Life itself. Except it is not external or mental, but rather internal and emotional until there is nothing left to feel but Love and Divine Grace leading and showing us who we really are, what we came here to Be, and who we came here to Be with.  

This is my journey. Just one man’s journey. One that I will be writing about over time to share my notes from the road. I feel we are all on our way back Home, just in different ways and maybe we can share that way together.

*****

Gabriel Amara is a Divine Masculine Love Ambassador, Divine Self Embodiment Facilitator, HEARTist, and soul scribe.  Visit https://www.divineselfembodiment.com for more information about space-holding sessions and free 45-min intro calls, group calls, videos, community, etc.