MAKING PEACE WITH ALL YOUR VILLAGERS 1. Think of people you dislike. Rank them in order according to the intensity of your feelings—the number one person being the most reprehensible and the most worthy of contempt. Write a line or two under each person specifically outlining the character and moral defects that repel you. 2. Read over each name on your list. Pause and reflect on the reprehensible aspects of that person. Be aware of your own feelings as you do this. Which one trait brings out your feeling of righteousness and goodness most intensely? 3. Reduce each’s defects to what you believe is his or her one most reprehensible character trait. For example on my list: a. Joe Slunk—grandiose egomaniac b. Gwenella Farboduster—aggressive and rude c. Maximilian Quartz—hypocrite (pretends to help people; does it for the money) d. Bob Evenhouser—uses Christian facade to cover up phoniness e. Rothghar Pieopia—a wimp; has no mind of his own 4. Each of these personality traits may represent one of your disowned parts or an energy pattern that you do not want to integrate into your life under any circumstances. If it is one of your repressed parts, doing this exercise allows you to externalize a disowned personality trait. 5. Every disowned part has an opposite energy with which your protector/controller is identified. It takes lots of energy to keep this part disowned. This often explains the intense energy we feel about our enemies. Hal Stone compares this energy to a dam that has been built to stop the flow of this energy. Behind the dam there is an accumulation of dirty water and all kinds of debris. It is important to integrate this energy and use it more creatively. Ask yourself this question about each person on your list. How is this person my teacher? What can I learn by listening to this person? This person to whom you feel averse can help you look at the parts of you that you are overly identified with. On my list Joe helps me to see that I’m overly identified with being humble. In my case it is really more like appearing humble. Gwenella helps me to see that I’m overly identified with people-pleasing. Maximilian helps me see that I’m overly identified with being a total helper without wanting anything in return. Such helping is inhuman. It’s a product of toxic shame and trying to be more than human. Bob helps me see that I’m overly identified with having to be a perfect Christian (which at times keeps me from being one at all), and Rothgahr helps me to see that I’m overly identified with my “be strong” driver. Being strong is a way I try to be more than human—refusing to accept normal human weakness. This is the way I reject my healthy shame. 6. As you go through your list, talk to the disowned part directly. Ask it what it thinks. Ask it how it would change your life if you owned it. Let this part talk to you. Listen to what it has to say. See the world through its perspective. Feel any new energy that it brings you. It’s bound to be a source of new ideas. Maybe it can offer new solutions to old problems. “After all,” Sidra Winkelman writes, “its views have never been available before.” You may be surprised at the new energy you receive from this exercise. You are bringing a part of you out of hiding and secrecy. You are turning your shadow into light. You do not have to become the disowned self. That would be doing the same thing you did before—identifying with one part to the exclusion of another. In this exercise you learn to speak to and listen to a shamed and disowned part of you. By so doing, you free up an energy that has been bound in shame.