Seminar-mystery “Me and My Shadow”, 11-19 February 2012, the Carpathians

****In the East they say:

“Sow an action, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.”

Over the course of their conscious life, modern man forms a character, that is, gives value and significance to certain socially conditioned qualities, events, actions. Out of a set of such conditionings, which secure the position “I’m fine”, “Everything is great with me”, the personality puts together, as from coloured puzzle pieces, an image of itself.

Today this self-identification of the personality with a socially approved position is usually called by the word “Ego”. The Ego creates fate. Is it the kind of fate you wanted or expected?

The Ego begins to form back in childhood, and its aim is to satisfy the child’s basic needs for love, parental attention, bodily comfort and safety. The artificial superstructure of the Ego makes the child adjust their behaviour to the formal reactions and social expectations of parents and other adults, in order to match their ideas of the world and to survive.

The Ego is a false personality. It is created in order to ensure survival and the conditions for the development of individuality. And no more than that! In adulthood, when the personality becomes strong and can survive without parents and other adults, there is no need for the Ego. However, the habit of adjusting to the principles of others has already become a character!

” …The state I keep striving for is a state “on the edge”, on the edge of tears of grief and joy, on the edge where I am unable to do anything, and I can do everything. And when nothing is happening, when I don’t feel the sharpness, I die… I am bored, the time I live is empty. The meanings of my existence slip away from me. I need sharpness. And what frightens me most is the monotony and measuredness of life, the very thing I hear about all around me and think that I need it too… After all it is so normal – to want peace and stability!..

These contradictions give me no peace. I think that people who want a life like mine are not as many as those who strive for stability, and I am afraid to show them my craziness. Why? I don’t know, fear… Of losing. What?”

**The Ego is not individuality. The Ego strives for stability. Individuality lives in the flow and thirsts for evolution.
Functions of the Ego:

• to conform, in order to be accepted and to receive love
• to defend itself – to close up, to justify itself, to attack, criticise, argue.
• to control safety, the actions of others, its own image

The Ego dictates certain strategies of behaviour – always the same ones! It gives rise to situations – always the same ones! “Favourite rakes” are unable to change the Ego’s mind. A set of conditioned reflexes, a matrix of automatic behaviour, or a character – is the Ego’s steady resistance to changing strategy.

“… Who would have thought that the mystery “Me and My Shadow” in the Carpathians would turn my brain around by 180 degrees and shake my insides so that I would be putting myself together again out of some spare parts, like a wizard-surgeon in an Eastern fairy tale. And what I have put together I like as I never have before: in childhood, in youth. This is a really cool Me! “

However, the qualities of the personality that are valuable (from the Ego’s point of view) wear out, burn out, and no longer bring the former effect. And the “unpacked” ones, stored in the subconscious, reactions adequate to the moment – atrophy. In this way a person cuts themselves off from their resources, shortens the time and quality of their life and hinders their own evolution. And instead of living, they fence off the entrance to new realities.

These displaced realities in time make up the Anti-ego, or the Shadow. The Anti-ego is the direct opposite of what a person shows. Specialists in people easily read the essence from a bright, exaggerated positioning: for example, someone excessively clever is afraid of looking stupid (and is stupid!), a rich person of looking poor, a courageous one of looking cowardly, a beautiful one of looking ugly. And so it turns out that the true nature cannot be hidden: the secret becomes evident one way or another, the false image bursts at the seams and from under the “glammed-up princess” crawls out the “vile demon”.

What is your shadow’s name? What you hide from the “light”? What you are afraid to let your social circle see? Maybe it is “Posh Stinker”? Or “Snooty Wretch”? Or “Mother Bitch”? Or perhaps “Sex Bomb”, or “Thick-headed Tyrant”? And what will happen if the shadow is revealed? Surely the same as with an ordinary shadow – brought into the light, it disappears?

It turns out that the Anti-ego holds an enormous resource – it is both encapsulated energy and the forces that are spent on guarding the Shadow, and the brilliant strategies of our success. You only have to allow yourself to unite the Ego with its Shadow – and you are convinced: the might of the whole is incredibly more effective than the struggle of divided halves!

“Go to where your light casts a shadow. There you will find…” (Ezra Tngoo)

Everyone who wants to go beyond slavery must meet their shadow.

There are two paths: the path of the slave and the path of the hero. There is no third!

Our mystery is for those who have ripened to the decision to move along the path of the Hero and to allow themselves a victory over the power of the Ego and its Shadow.
Here, in the snowy Carpathians, in a cottage specially created for holding mysteries and training laboratories of human development – alternating the extreme of lonely mountains with the cosiness of a fireplace, adventure and learning, challenge and delight – you can safely and boldly immerse yourself in the energy-bearing world of your Shadow. To become whole again!
” … There I understood that all my life I had been only a part of myself. And the people in my life were also somehow half-made and unfinished, and didn’t really suit me, just as I didn’t suit myself. Meeting my shadow was not at all easy… Now my world has doubled. And now I no longer need my halves – I am whole! Of course I will go on growing and developing, building relationships – living, only now as a whole, healthy being (without the idea of my painful inadequacy). I feel that I am ready to meet a whole person!”

In the mystery “Me and My Shadow” you can expect:

• Exploring the Ego and discovering your Shadow
• The chance to live for a week the self that I do not yet know
• Deep relaxation of the personality – the chance to take a rest from your Ego, and to let the Ego take a rest from You.
• A unique necessity: to be aware 24 hours a day
• Meditations: dynamic and static
• Holotropic processes and other breathing practices
• A battle with the shadow and the victory of the conscious “I” over the lying entity of the “Ego”
• Thanatotherapy, a meeting with birth and death
• Spontaneity, the unexpected and other surprises
• Reprogramming of the emotional, motor and vegetative mind

  

The mystery is based on the authors’ own technologies and the practices of Eastern monasteries:

• Vipassanas from the world of Gurdjieff
• A retreat of local silence
• A blind day and night

Bonuses:

• A personal retreat: individual stalking practices inspired by the world of Castaneda
• A space of sound: Tuvan-Altai traditions
• Protection from psychic viruses (like “I must…”, “They are to blame…”, “I can’t…”)
• Freedom to choose your path and move towards yourself
• The power to be accepted, loved and in demand
• The will to manage life situations

«Take the blue pill — and the story ends. You will wake up in your bed and believe it was a dream. Take the red pill — and you will enter Wonderland. I will show you how deep the rabbit hole goes»

( Morpheus, “The Matrix”)

“…And he showed us… The one who was Morpheus for us all nine days of the training. Who, it seems, almost never sleeps or tires. Who has a perfectly childlike smile together with incredible masculine charisma. The one to whom I now relate not simply with love, but the way one can relate to a vital organ that has been implanted in me and that has become for me a source of strength and a fountain of energy… Ed, thank you! Edmund Shchebalsky, a.k.a. Ezra, a.k.a. Lim, a.k.a. the one with thousands of names and an even greater number of talents.

Thank you for the Mastery, for the ability to lead and feel a group, for the wish to live yourself and to teach others to do so. For all nine days of the training I was scared. Scarily curious: when would I break down and go back – into the “Matrix”? They didn’t let me, the rascals!:))) I know it was all you, Lim, and she who this time called herself the Connector of Talents (Natasha Valitskaya), and with whom you worked together so well in this event! After all, two Masters, two polar energies, two worlds and two views of life act on a completely different level than one!”

Cost of participation: 2900 UAH.
Included: transfer from Lviv, accommodation in the cottage, special meals, sauna
Prepayment and an interview are required!

The nine-day adventure is created for you by: the authors of the mysteries “The Hero’s Path”, “The Slave and His Master”, “The Circle of Life”, “Initiation: the Path to Man and Woman”, Edmund Shchebalsky and Natalia Valitskaya
Registration:

• Odesa: 067-484-62-95; 050-333-08-90
• Kyiv: 095-463-11-79; 096-33-77-199
• Lviv: 097-41-514-97, 093-690-39-94