From shadow safety to soul safety: How to Build True Inner Safety Without Abandoning Yourself

When safety silences the soul...

There’s a kind of safety that doesn’t set you free. It numbs you. Requires that you flee your body.

It convinces you to exile the parts of yourself that you perceived as vulnerable or responsible for the discomfort or pain you’ve experienced. That includes aspects of yourself that once carried your fire.

I call that shadow safety. Even though it provides a short lived relief from pain, it’s for the most part a coping mechanism disguised as self-protection.

It’s the kind of safety built on fragmentation and self abandonment. And the protective parts we rely on to shield us from pain, are often dysfunctional.

Because of all of this, it’s a kind of safety that makes you feel trapped between pain and pain, and it prevents you from fully embracing the aliveness that life has to offer.

It teaches you to hide the parts of you that are too tender, too bold, too much, too real.

The rite of passage into soul safety

I think one of the highest invitations of these times is to outgrow the old paradigm of shadow safety.

I see it as a rite of passage.

Shadow safety is mostly concerned with the survival of the ego and your self image.

Soul safety is about the survival of your soul. The survival of your wholeness. That thought itself can be a complete paradigm shift.

Embracing that rite of passage does not require that you shame yourself for all the ways you’ve coped.

Soul safety doesn’t come from controlling the world around you, but from reclaiming the world within you.

It is anchored on the refusal to abandon any part of you, especially the ones you’ve been taught to silence.

Soul safety doesn’t mean you won’t feel fear. It means fear no longer gets to lead, or at least not permanently as it used to.

It means you build the capacity to stay as Pema Chödrön would say. To stay open. To stay present. To stay in your body. To stay you, even when it’s hard.

How is this sitting with you so far?

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A blueprint to move from shadow safety to soul safety

In this week’s podcast episode of ENHEARTENED, I explore the profound difference between shadow safety and soul safety, and why so many of us stay stuck in a protective version of ourselves that quietly suffocates our soul.

I also share a blueprint that you can begin to use today, to build the kind of internal safety that allows your heart to stay open in a world that won’t always feel safe.

I consider this one a must watch/listen.

Episode 9 of ENHEARTENED with yours truly Is Live

*PS: If you find value in the HeartCast, please support the show by subscribing and leaving a review on your favorite streaming platform.

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In gratitude and reverence,
— Xavier

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