Becoming Spiritually Awakened – Part Three – Burning the Shadow Side to be Reborn Again by Tracy Thompson

Associated with the sun, a phoenix obtains new life by rising from the ashes of its predecessor. Some legends say it dies in a show of flames and combustion, while others that it simply dies and decomposes before being born again. Van der Broek, R (1972), The Myth of the Phoenix, Seeger, I trans, EJ Brill

I’ve been stalling going through this process because to look at myself honestly, to look at my shadow side, my darker side, well it is very scary. But for me to receive my spiritual gifts I must go through this initiation process.  But even though it’s hard to do it’s also very liberating too. It’s like ripping off the Band-Aid that I’ve put over myself all my life to cover up what I truly am inside, that I may possibly be someone quite ancient, possibly a psychic, medium, creative medium, sage, healer, druid, witch…none of these identities are going to be acceptable to my family or friends. Whomever I am, I realize the truth must come out and the old me needs to be burned away in a show of flames to be born again brand new.

You might say I’m coming out of the closet admitting publicly and openly to be in some way spiritually gifted. Things have been changing for me ever since I started studying Tarot, Oracle cards, the Seven Hermitic Principles, learning about the Emerald Tablet writings of Hermes Trismegistus, ancient mythology from Greece and Rome, Runes, Ascended masters and Angels, Astrology, ancient old beliefs of philosophy and the Kabbalah. All ancient teachings that have been hidden in secret for many centuries but are now being revealed not just for me but for all to see.

Things also have been changing for me ever since I made regular routine of meditation practice, which I have my own personal way of doing my meditation. I am a very creative thinking person and have my own special rituals that I practice with my meditative practice. I go through nine chakras and not just seven, I also use my own past life personas that I use as avatars named Ashura (the Warrior), Tanaka (the Healer), and Elijah (the High Priest) to help guide me through the process of clearing my chakras. In another blog post I would love to explain my meditative process further.

The benefit of being of a certain age in life of which I am being a woman in my 60’s is that you can look back at your life in a somewhat detached way and realize the meaning for the choices that you’ve made that got you to the point of where you are at the present.

Now I have been hearing from many of you in the spiritual community worried about me being somehow still identifying with having ‘trauma bond’ issues or other such things. I want to assure everyone that I am fine, I don’t need to talk to any therapists about my past. The past is done, I forgive myself for my choices and forgive others who may not realize the hurt that I felt in my past. I only needed to look back at my past to see where my future was going. Specifically what things I keep on doing subconsciously that I no longer need to do.

So, my decision to write about my life experiences and then share them publicly is due to my wanting to help others who may be going through something similar in life. I am not looking for anything special here, my intent has always been to be authentic and honest about who I am to create a rapport with everyone. Especially before I start my Podcast and my other work doing my downloads. It is helpful if people learn that I have flaws, that I am imperfect and have had struggles too but that I have overcome these things in my life.

So Much Guilt and Shame

Where does one begin with this process of looking back at your shadow side of when it all started for me? When I think back a start would have been my habit of always being secretive about the voices that I heard, then keeping secret the kinetic power that appeared when I would think of using the name ‘Jehovah’ to rebuke what I perceived to be a negative, dark, energy force. The guilt for all of this became too much for me. It became an engrained habit so much that even in my dreams when the dark energy would come, I would automatically use my inner voice to say Gods name and they would go away. Many years I have done this, probably most of my life.

My late husband Ron would hear me talking in my sleep and tell me in the morning that he heard me and that I was doing it again. Often, he couldn’t understand what I was saying, only that I was talking in another language like a hushing sounding voice, and I would admit to him that I was having another bad dream. I would automatically push away these spirits.

My environment all through my teens was strongly influenced by my grandfather, father, and older brother. A lot of male energy. I found myself taking on the divine masculine in my mannerisms, decisions, confidence, and strength of character. This wasn’t so much that I didn’t want to be a girl, just that all this male energy seemed to be a huge influence on me. The feminine side was there too but I didn’t open the door with my inherent sexuality so to speak too often as I knew the power of the feminine was there too. Yes, we women are powerful in our creative energy we just don’t know how to use it to its fullest extent yet.

I have always been a very disciplined person. I chose at a young age, with the guidance of my grandfather of course, to be baptized when I was only 15 and then to go into doing the door to door preaching work as a JW full time as a goal when I graduated from high school. (40 hours per month) My way of disciplining myself to ensure that I would still be looked upon by God in a positive way even though I had all this guilt.

This is where I developed very tough skin, people can be nasty when you go door to door as a JW. I’ve been chased by dogs within inches of biting me, one did bite me on my wrist and kept me in a strong hold while I quietly didn’t move a muscle, the dog growling the entire time, eventually he let me go allowing me to pet him on his head. Thankfully he only punctured my skin a bit, a big bruise followed. I did a lot of studying with the many publications (indoctrination) from the JW’s at the time but in the back of my mind I still had many questions. But because there were three meetings every week drumming in all the belief systems from the religion, I was becoming programmed by the negative belief system of the JW’s. Looking back now it was an expert way to use mind control techniques and conversational hypnosis upon people already traumatized or feeling guilty, so they create a solution that keeps followers. This system has been used repetitively by many different religions throughout the world in history to keep people in control using guilt and fear.

So, for three years I was very serious about becoming what the JW’s call a ‘pioneer’ when I graduated. So, when I turned 18 and moved out of home, I started rooming with a girlfriend DK from British Columbia who also wanted to pioneer. She was the person who introduced me to the other side of life as a JW. The fun side, yes there actually is a fun side, who knew? Thank goodness. She showed me that you don’t have to be so serious as a JW you can have some fun too. But we did get into a lot of trouble, as young 18-year-olds would of course. DK was such a breath of fresh air for me. We had a lot of fun and we moved to Swift Current to rent a house with three other girls. Yes, five girls all living together in one house. Crazy times. My family at the time was living in Medicine Hat since we had moved from Calgary in 1972 and my father owned a Singer Sewing Machine store in the ‘Hat’. I started working for my father in the store when I was only 15.

After doing the ‘pioneering’ thing for three months, DK and I agreed that this was nuts! We didn’t have enough money to live on as well as it was taking up too much of our time in life and truthfully who wants to deliberately have the door slammed in your face for 40 hours every month. So, we both quit doing the JW pioneering. Much to our parents’ demise as they thought we were such ‘good girls’. Well, we were just normal young women learning, experiencing all kinds of things, maybe not ‘good’ in the JW sense but ‘good’ in the human sense of things.

Living in a house full of young women all in age range of 18 to 22 years old was a bit of a challenge, and we only had one bathroom. Tough for five women all wanting to get makeup and hair done every day. Lots of jealousy over boyfriends, weird habits about grooming, doing laundry and cooking would sometimes be a bit of a fight. Everyone’s mother showed them a different way. We found ways to get along despite it all.

I was working two jobs at the time. I worked in a daycare center from 1:00pm to 5:00pm Monday through Friday and from Wednesday to Saturday would work from 6:00pm till 12:00pm in a restaurant bar and the cook and I would sometimes go out to local night club on Saturday nights after our shift ended until 3:00am closing time especially if there were live bands playing ‘Foreigner’ or ‘Trooper’.  Sunday was a day off. The things you do when you are young and have lots of energy. My JW programming was beginning to break away from me, more and more I was questioning the beliefs that I was brought up with in life. As I was spending more time with ‘worldly’ people and discovered that they were just normal people, some good, some not so good. And I began to question the self-righteousness of the JW belief system.

I went on a couple of dates with two different guys. And the long and the short of it is well, sex was involved. Let’s leave it at that, no details here needed. I was no longer a virgin, and both men were not in the JW religion, so marriage was forbidden. And back came the guilt and shame again. I went to the elders and confessed, and they had me take bible studies again so that I could be programmed once again.

My guilt and shame were also added to myself due to my overly passionate, sexual, side as a woman. I engaged in pre-marital sex before my first marriage (it was the 70’s what can I say). A big no-no when you are in a religion like the JW’s. I was always in trouble with this. I was constantly marrying men to prevent me from being unchaste. A way to dampen my desire you might say and to prevent me from any undue male attention.

About this time my family in Medicine Hat were moving to Vancouver Island to live in Saanichton, BC. I really had a need to be closer to the family again and needed to save enough money to move three provinces to British Columbia and start brand new.  So, I bought a beat up old 1966 Ford Mercury Comet for only $200.00 dollars and drove it all by myself from Saskatchewan to Vancouver Island. Thankfully I stopped in Medicine Hat and my brother G helped me out by giving the car an oil change, points change, and new plugs. The transmission was on its last legs, I had to keep filling it with transmission fluid the entire trip. G also lent me his credit card as I didn’t have one and I used it for an overnight stay in a motel at Three Valley Gap, BC. Pretty risky thing to as a 21-year-old woman. But I was determined to be close to my family. I never told my family about my wild life in Swift Current until just recently this past year I confessed to my two sisters, they were shocked to say the least.

Everyone was praying that I would arrive safely, understandably. I arrived and went out to look for work right away. My transmission went one week later, and my dad gave me his American Express card to get it fixed and told me I had one month to pay him back. The bill was $600.00 which was my full paycheck in my first job. I was just thankful to have found a job and able to pay for myself. I took community college courses to upgrade my skills and later got a job working for a Denturist which later became my getting an apprenticeship as a Denturist myself. I had a good aptitude for the job and went on to do this after several years of working.

So, I was older than most young women in the religion that were still single. When you are in a religion that forbids premarital sex and that you are only allowed to marry within the faith, most find partners by the age of 20. Also, as a woman, it was unusual to be in a career, so I was looked at suspiciously because I wasn’t working at some type of part-time job as a wife and mother. Which most of the married women in the religion were.

My choosing of my first husband was one of obligation, a man that would protect me from other men and keep me chaste. The next five years with him were the most dangerous years of my life. It was only three months after our marriage that the beating started. Usually when a lot of drinking went on.  Many times, I wondered if I would live through this experience. But like many women who go through an abusive marriage, you are very embarrassed, feel it might be your fault, you cover it up the bruises, you lie about what’s really happening. I experienced violence to my body, black eyes, bloody noses, concussions, one time he threw me across the kitchen, and I broke the table on my fall. That was because he didn’t like the dinner I bought because I worked late. I don’t want to go on too much about these details as I work hard not to go there anymore. The only good that came of this is it got me to realize that I no longer wanted to be in the JW religion or be married to this violent man. I secretly worked on a plan to leave him over a period of six months. My sister K and a good friend S helped me to move out in the middle of the night because he worked night shifts. Then I went to the elders and told them I wanted to leave the religion once and for all.

What happened next opened my eyes even further as to the fact that I have some connection to something beyond this realm, but at the time I couldn’t imagine what that could be. It was on the very night that they announced my disfellowshipping at the Kingdom Hall. I had one of the most frightening experiences with the visiting spirits. I was sleeping on my belly on a hide-a-bed couch in my little studio apartment. I felt several dark energies surrounding me, it was a group of them, they were pushing me down onto the mattress, then the bed began to lift off the ground curling up, my body was slowly starting to slide into the couch. I was having difficulty breathing, with all my might in my mind I yelled God’s name and the entire bed slammed into the floor with a loud crash. The room was lit up strangely at this time. I was so afraid and confused, because if the religion was so good why are demons coming to get me? And if I am condemned by the religion why did God still save me?

I didn’t know what to do, who would believe me as to what just happened? The fear of this evening is the one shadow aspect that I know I need to change for me to receive my gifts. Because I spent so many fearful nights worrying that these entities have targeted me and are coming back.

In the last year, however, since I have been meditating, journalling, studying Tarot and reading other secret ancient teachings, I was visited by my guide, Candace. It was a night when I was watching a Netflix show series called the Devils Hour, which in the show it was 3:33am when a woman would wake up visualizing a crime happening and go out to stop the crime. And the person doing the crime also was connected to the woman it seemed only they were the murderer, and they were about to kill somebody, of course, they had a weird connection. So, this stayed in my mind, I went to bed and guess what, I woke up at 3:32am looked at the clock and promptly said I am not seeing the Devil tonight and Candance whispered in my ear, it’s not the Devil I’m here to help calm you from your anxiety. This really struck me, because all these years anything that touched me in the night or was in a dream I would use my words to rebuke them away. It never occurred to me that some are not there to harm. So how do I learn the difference?

So, I would say in my search for my shadow side, the things I need to give up or change are my guilt, shame, and fear that I have carried all my life. So, just like the Phoenix I carry the bones of these three negatives to a nest of myrrh and frankincense as my wings are extinguished in mid-flight.  And in the nest as a worm, I change into this newborn Phoenix. I have so much to learn. Everything is brand new. There is so much to do, but for now I am going to learn joy and happiness first. The rest will follow as it should be. Everything is happening at the right time. 

A VIEWS EXPRESSED DISCLAIMER The following personal life accounts were accomplished by Tracy L. Thompson in her personal capacity according to her account of memory of times past. These points of view and opinions of accounts from memory are the author’s own and do not reflect the view of others in her extended family. Proper names have been changed to only one letter to protect their privacy. These stories are NOT Victim statements but given as examples for mainly those of the spiritual community or those of understanding. Thank you for your respect and kindness to others when reading these accounts in remembering that not all will be understanding or believing of these accounts.