There are many spiritual paths in life but eventually they all lead to the same thing. Which is that the true self is pure consciousness. Pure consciousness is divine. And its basis is light. So all reality is divine light experiencing itself. True Self and god are not separate. The only thing separating that union is ego, the sense of "myself" which is essentially the false self. We build ourselves based on repressing ourselves. We are raised into fitting into a mold. This mold is extremely superficial and fragile and society helps build it from the day we are born telling us what acts are punishable and what acts are rewarded. So all of the punishable acts or acts that are taboo or wrong become repressed shadows. This can be a list of positive and negative things that we are told that we must let go of and get past. The problem here is that when we think we are getting past it we are just creating the illusion that we have moved past it and in actuality we have just stuffed it into hidden areas of our subconscious. This instantly becomes a shadow and we begin the process of hiding it from ourselves. At first when we start out hiding it we can look at it like a repressed child that we are ignoring. But as we grow and leave this piece behind it grows up to be a demon that we have no conscious awareness or control of. And then it begins to control us. When we ignore these parts of ourselves they control us. When we pay attention to these parts of ourselves the energy of the anchors of the shadow that we have left behind reintegrates back into our conscious being and enables us to be more complete and whole.

So if you look at consciousness to be light as we said. And these unconscious shadows to be darkness then there in lies the problem with why we are not fully aware of our truly divine nature of light. We are only embracing a small percentage of what we are. We are using a flashlight instead of using the sun to enliven and enlighten our being.

If we work on shining the light of our awareness into the dark aspects of our hidden selves then we are embracing all of these lost children who we have thrown away within us, and the energy becomes integrated back into our conscious mind. The child that we ignore becomes rebellious. The child that we nurture and show love to becomes free. When we are young we have the experience of the "monster in our closet" or "under our bed", this is precisely the metaphor that exists now. When we hide from the monster we make it out to be bigger and scarier and more threatening by the moment. When we get up to look in the closet instantly it is released and we feel a stronger sense of wholeness and release for having faced and embracing that which we needed to overcome.

     In the past, experiences that effect us deeply emotionally act as anchors. The more we regret our past, the bigger the anchors become. This is how we become sickened on all forms. Old habits are shadows; they hide in the darkness of our consciousness. Awareness is divine light. Therefore when we expand our awareness to these hidden places we can destroy the shadows fully. Most people don't turn and face their shadows. They run from them. Like the child manifesting a monster in its closet in the dark; When it hides from this monster the monster becomes Huge, but when we face it we realize that it is non-existent. We do this in our own minds. And the more we focus on these parts of ourselves the less it becomes a monster, and the more it becomes a tiny baby that needs help and love and nurturing. All we have to do is choose to SEE the shadows and not ignore them. As soon as we ignore them they become bigger. This is from old biases, which are anchors from our past. And haven't been able to let them go yet. There are specific people and events, which we blame for our suffering, which have left a scar or a hole in our soul. Which leaves us feeling inadequate. So then with our biases we project those feelings into our present situations over and over again and that manifests the same situation for ourselves. And as soon as new people come into our lives we have all of our projections so we cannot see clearly into WHAT IS. So therefore we see what we want to see and not see what is actually there. Which is our own mental projections (shadows) corroding our present situations. That mental projection always pollutes your present perception and until you release yourself from that it will continue to manifest. Each anchor is a way of casting a shadow on a part of our wholeness. In this way we become fragmented when we repress the process of healing regret. The more anchors we have that we run from the more fragmented our soul becomes, the more pieces we unite the more whole we become.

     If one goes back and finds where in their mind and spirit body and physical body that the sicknesses of these anchors are and faces them directly and accepts it all as a beautiful learning experience and cries and screams WHATEVER they must do to let it out in some way, no matter how intense. Then one begins to heal the energy within themselves. They begin to remove these anchors, which makes their soul lighter and more whole. The more whole we are in the present moment, the wiser our life choices are. The wiser our life choices are the better our health is. Thus our mind becomes clearer thus we can Feel the motivation of our gut more. and Then our heart is closest to perceiving real love in all things. When we do this we begin to create our future. We begin to build trust within ourselves which brings us to higher and higher levels of spiritual knowing. And we begin to take action in accomplishing our goals because we have strength, because we are becoming whole.

so how do we release anchors?

     Actually physically make a list of all of the anchors and each one, or the ones that effect you most, Actually contemplate or re-live it in your mind and accept it and forgive the people and take responsibility that they are not the cause of your suffering. And you are always the cause of your own suffering, then and now.  And release all of your resentment and blame. And release your guilt of creating your own suffering, because this is how we learn in the first place. Nothing is in our way but US. This can have tremendous Healing effects if we actually take time to do this.

the importance of suffering in life

It seems as if it is humanities fundamental instinct to want to escape from suffering. I feel that this is where we go completely and utterly wrong and turned off to our emotions. We live a process of disconnection and desensitization from all things that hurt to look at. We are some how ingrained that this is the way to liberation. This is purely escapism and will not liberate anything but our egotistical sense of self and leave the rest of our reality behind.

I propose that in order to truly liberate from suffering we must embrace suffering as valuable and integral to our human development of the most vital and necessary human attributes such as love and compassion for ourselves, each other, and the earth. With this awareness we begin to see the melancholy beauty of suffering in that it expands us into one who embraces experience instead of takes everything for granted and sees the world in terms of what we can get from it.

Any truly introspective person will see instantaneously that there is absolutely no escape from suffering in that when we run from suffering our pure act of running is causing us the suffering. This is why it is such a fundamental principle in Buddhism that all life is suffering. Not because it is something to learn to run away from and escape. But because in the embracing of suffering comes the lifting of suffering. The veil of illusory happiness is penetrated through and we see that we single-handedly, by our own will, must create happiness for each other and especially ourselves. And with this knowledge there is no easy short cut to get there. With this realization and understanding we learn that we must dedicate our lives to this pursuit of creating true happiness if we want it to become a reality.

If we live our lives constantly looking to escape from suffering then we move with the intent to not allow our repercussions of our actions bare fruit, this is the most dangerous aspect of the idea to escape from suffering. We will never discover that our selfish actions create huge amounts of suffering for everything that we are surrounded in, most importantly we cause suffering for ourselves this way, and more importantly for the earth. . We never get smacked in the face with reality when we disconnect from suffering. We constantly act and avoid seeing the infinite loop it creates throughout the whole world. This action results in a disconnection from knowing how to treat ourselves, each other, and the earth.