Soul Fragmentation Series

1. Soul Fragmentation Explained
2. Three Rules Governing Soul Fragmentation
3. Englightenment, Salvation and the Rejection of Power
4. Soul Fragmentation, Neg Interference and the Paranormal
5. The Law of Attraction and the Mobile Soul
6. Adding a New Dimension to Your Perception
7. Tips for Smoother Integration

As this series expanded a lot further than the originally intended two posts (oops), it became evident that the most fitting way to end it would be to provide some info on doing one’s own integration work. This posed a dilemma though. As you know if you’ve read through the rest of the series, integration work, while rewarding, is not without its dangers and difficulties. I do not claim to be an expert on soul retrieval, and have never received qualified Shamanic training (in this life anyway!), though in a sense most of my life has been a crash course of sorts. Nor would it be very responsible for me or anybody to try and provide said training in a blog post. It is my understanding though that by the time one is well integrated and knowledgeable enough that initiating retrieval is a possibility, not much further training is necessary.

That said, I strongly suspect that the coming years will see us “cleaning up our own mess” and having all things restored to their rightful place, affecting a “system reset” of sorts for all the planes on which we exist. For practical purposes this means that each soul reintegrates all of its own “stuff” – all the aspects of ourselves we have fragmented, released, relinquished, rejected, handed away and abdicated responsibility for, will be returning to us. Keeping in mind that I have done much of this work deliberately, and it has still been an often difficult, messy, painful, crazy-making process, it stands to reason that if it is going to be happening on a wide scale, it would be a good idea for information on this phenomenon to become more widespread. I’m not sure I want to know what it looks like when the better part of six billion people who have never been big fans of personal responsibility have a close encounter with their respective shadows all at once, but I strongly suspect that every individual doing their own inner work has a powerful effect on the energetic network of which we are all part.

With that understood this post is not to be taken as a manual for soul retrieval, but rather “this is how I did it,” and “these are the key factors I’ve identified that caused my own process to run much more smoothly than it otherwise might have.”

The first bit of advice should probably go without saying, but it is important to realize that you have a say in how this process plays out. One of my biggest pet peeves is that with potentially volatile spiritual processes like integration, as well as kundalini and awakening in general, all too often there’s a tendency to perceive ourselves as being at the mercy of forces we couldn’t possibly hope to understand, much less harness and work with in a spirit of cooperation. Even worse, there’s often a strong undercurrent (assuming it’s not said outright) that it’s “not our place” to have a say in how these processes play out.

Bullshit!

This is your awakening, your system, your integration process, and your best interest is what’s at stake – so take charge of it! Firmly stating your intent about how you want the process to go is a great way to do that. Gaining knowledge of what’s happening via research, asking for guidance from whatever higher help you feel an affinity for (your own Higher Self is always a safe bet), and following your own intuition are the best ways to start.

The first step toward accomplishing any goal is to set a strong, concise “mission statement” of your intent, and take stock of what tools you already have on hand to work toward it. In this case the goal is full reintegration – that all parts of your soul that originated with you will return to you, to form a harmonious Whole, in the smoothest possible way. I strongly recommend setting your intent to integrate your aspects from the easiest and most agreeable, to the least so. This ensures that you don’t suddenly have something dysfunctional or otherwise more substantial than your local Self return that hits like a cannonball, which, at worst, can shatter and further fragment the psyche. Reintegrating a large volume of aspects that weren’t all that dissonant or unfamiliar to begin with before moving onto the more difficult stuff, ensures that when aspects return that are dark and even potentially hostile, you’re already balanced, secure and substantial enough that this won’t be overwhelming.

Start With What You Have

I recommend starting out with integration work, not by seeking out fragmented aspects at all, but by starting with the aspects of yourself that are already on hand and most familiar. Starting out by balancing and integrating yourself as you stand right now has the dual benefits of giving you a solid foundation for successfully taking up the later stages of this work, and creates an environment that will attract many aspects of the Self back to reintegrate without otherwise having to seek them out at all.

In his seminal work, Initiation into Hermetics (aff.), Franz Bardon offers a technique for balancing the personality, called “Soul Mirroring,” which is a useful exercise in itself, regardless of whether one is interested in further pursuing his system of initiation. This involves spending a week (or more, if necessary) making two lists – one of all your shortcomings, faults, bad habits, self-sabotaging tendencies and so forth; the other list is of all your strengths. It is recommended that you be as detailed and specific as possible with this.

The next step is to find ways to turn the weaknesses into strengths, and integrate the entire set of traits into a unified whole. The technique I’ve gotten the most use out of is along the lines of what’s described in my article Internal Time Travel, where you interact with an aspect of yourself in meditation as if it was a separate person, allowing you to change the way it’s operating at the root. For each of the traits you’ve listed, I recommend spending some time identifying whether there is a faulty set of beliefs or assumptions at the root of the trait. Is there a fear that you can resolve? Are you being influenced by a past experience that is no longer relevant? Are you using your energy in a way that’s inefficient, destructive or otherwise not helping you? It can be pretty amazing how quickly even longstanding and seemingly deeply rooted issues can be completely transformed, simply by identifying the faulty programming that gave rise to it, and updating the aspect of the Self that holds it with a healthier outlook.

Don’t be surprised to find that aspects of yourself hold a wide range of beliefs and patterning that you don’t remember ever actually believing or operating with consciously, as well as things you did at one time but have long since abandoned in practice that are nonetheless still having a subconscious influence. It is not uncommon for aspects of the Self to be operating with programming we’ve simply absorbed from our environment even if we’ve never accepted, or in some cases, even rejected it consciously. In other cases, programming that seems to be completely out of left field and at odds with who we are in practice, can be imposed due to various forms of negative interference. While it is important to be thorough with this work, don’t get too hung up on following everything to where it came from, why, and understanding all the history and context. Aside of the fact that some things just plain don’t make logical sense where the subconscious mind is concerned, one can easily get lost in details, when in reality the goal is simply to identify and remove destructive programming, and usually only a minimum amount of background details are necessary to accomplish that.

In spite of the fact that you’ve done your detailed soul mirroring lists, it is common for areas of concern to keep coming into awareness long afterward that were not recognized as a problem (or even part of the Self) at the time of the original list. By definition, your Shadow consists of aspects that you’ve labelled “other” and projected outward; sometimes this projection is so complete that the aspect in question ends up completely alien to the way we view our self-concept. So, most likely they won’t all come out at once — but the initial Soul Mirroring exercise is a great way to get the ball rolling, give the subconscious mind the message that you intend to become aware of these aspects, and take a substantial chunk out of the ensuing work.

The Value of a Strong Ego

Cultivating a strong personality, conscious mind and sense of self, has been one of my biggest assets when taking on some of the more difficult situations that can come with integration work.

Imagine for a moment that you’ve got a collection of very dissonant, conflicted characters who are part of a group that is tasked with figuring out how to function as a unit. Not all the members are entirely functional; some are downright nutty. Others have their own agenda entirely. Still others are operating with some very strange ideas about “the way things are,” or should be. You’ve also got imposters who do not belong in the group, trying to pass themselves off as members, and other members returning in a state that, if left to their own devices, could shatter the entire project.

If you want to accomplish this objective, preferably without madness or bloodshed, you’re going to need a leader whose traits include strength, flexibility, understanding, patience, discernment and excellent critical thinking skills, who can lay down “how it’s going to be” and take no crap when the need arises.

The conscious mind is ideally suited to this role, I find – as it’s the role it generally occupies to begin with. The problem with the ego is not that it exists, as some traditions suggest – it’s that, like most other aspects of the Self, it is misaligned and not doing its job properly. Most egos are far too rigid, self-limiting and badly programmed to be able to act as the mediator I described above, but as I said in a past article, this is down to socialization rather than the mind being inherently “bad.”

By default, the mind is the part of the Self making it seem like there is only one self, rather than the rowdy bunch of competing interests described above. The conscious mind normally holds them all relatively stable even if not entirely at peace, and keeps the more volatile or otherwise socially unacceptable ones from gaining too much control over the central personality. Unfortunately the way the ego usually accomplishes this is with a rigid view of “the way things are and should be,” as well as various combinations of releasing, repressing or otherwise getting rid of aspects that are perceived as being too much trouble, as has been described throughout this series.

Needless to say I am not a fan of approaches to the ego that include denigrating it, failing to take its concerns seriously or observing it while holding the intent that it is a “silly monkey.” The chattering of the ego originates with the very subconscious aspects we’re trying to unify, and in many cases, denigrating them is what caused them to fragment in the first place. Get in the habit of observing this voice in a condescending fashion without addressing their concerns in some way, and what do you think happens when you’ve got an autonomous Shadow aspect that needs to be told forcefully to cease and desist so that it can release its programming and integrate? Yep: said aspect will say “you’re not the boss of me, monkey!” and deny the authority of your conscious mind in the same way that you have. At worst, if you’ve eroded your own authority to the extent that most religions encourage, a difficult aspect may decide “I’m running things now,” and you’ve got something approximating a case of possession on your hands.

After a time, the ego will generally behave in the way that its been treated. Treat it as a valuable part of the Whole that is expected to play a necessary role in this work just like all your other aspects, and hold it to the standard you expect of yourself, and it will rise to the occasion.

Make friends with your energy body

Bardon points out in his aforementioned book that the negative traits you list can be linked to one of the four elements (earth, water, fire, air). Those are in turn associated with the bottom four chakras, which he doesn’t state, but I have found to be useful information for doing this work. Usually the aspects of the Self that you interact with and integrate will be associated with one or more chakras. Thus working with and learning about your energy body, with an emphasis on the chakras, has the effects of creating a supportive environment that encourages aspects that have split from them to return, as well as strengthening the structures and pathways to safely accommodate them.

Working regularly with energy also increases your sensitivity, which will allow you to better discern “me” from “not me.” There are many entities that would love to convince you to let them “integrate” with your system, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Conversely, aspects of the Shadow side of the self might well behave much like your average negative entity, but that doesn’t mean they should be rejected, unless it is not possible to safely integrate without compromising the rest of you at the time. Once you are familiar with the feel of your own energy signature, you will be in a good position to succesfully identify aspects that originated with you, upon their return.

The energy work system I’ve started with, and still use, is Robert Bruces NEW. I recommend it highly for its effectiveness, ease of use, and emphasis on balanced energetic development. A full instruction manual can be found here.

Cultivate your Center

While one’s “center” will ultimately consist of the Higher Self and Kundalini, those two, and the other aspects of integration, can and do come into play for individuals in literally any order, and I’m not sure there’s any “best” order to recommend. As in my case, it’s very possible to do a lot of integration work (deliberately or not) before achieving a conscious connection with one’s Higher Self or raising Kundalini, but one should still have a sense of their own center to work with in the meantime.

When I started integrating fragmented aspects of myself that came back with all manner of beliefs, values and behavior, I soon recognized the need for a set of values to unite them all. Just because these aspects are relieved of toxic programming and willing to play nice, doesn’t mean they’re not still pulling in all directions. So, to preserve coherency, sanity and a unified sense of direction, I began looking for a set of values that were specific enough to have the desired unifying effect, yet universally applicable. Deliberation and intuitive proddings led me to realize that part of one’s center and value system is already inbuilt and integral to the function of the chakras – it’s just that usually we’ve got all sorts of weird hangups and distorted beliefs about them that lead to poor understanding of what they actually are, and thus further internal discord.

My exploration of this subject led me to Power, Wisdom and Love as the three universal principles that are among the most basic building blocks of creation as well as our chakra systems, and thus a reliable combination to aid in the unifying of the soul. While I generally hesitate to impose values on others, I do hold that these three are the basis for all value systems, whether by affirmation or negation. When properly understood, our relation and expression of these three principles will be filtered through our major personality archetypes, and can be implemented and combined creatively, like an artist who has gained understanding and experience with his tools and is then able to use them fluidly, in a masterful display of self expression.

Get to Know Your Archetypes

One of my biggest breakthroughs in integration work came after reading the book Sacred Contracts (aff.) by Caroline Myss, and later doing a lot more study of Carl Jung’s take on the subject than I had previously. Myss puts forth the premise that we all have 12 major archetypes; four universal “survival archetypes,” common to all, as well as eight more that combine to give rise to your own personal essence.

After spending a while exploring that premise, I can vouch for the fact that it carries a lot of validity. While Myss’s book relates to the subject of identifying your “soul contract,” a concept I don’t have much use for, her ideas provided a good jumping-off point to work with my archetypes for the purpose of integration. Identifying and working consciously with the primary archetypes that are influencing your personality and coloring your experience carries many benefits, starting with gaining further understanding of the anatomy of your subconscious mind, as well as identifying aspects of yourself that are genuinely yours, as opposed to conditioning that has been imposed by external sources. Once I started experimenting, I found it surprisingly easy to dialogue with my archetypes mentally as if talking to a separate identity, and making visible lasting changes. In this way it is possible to identify what specific patterns they’re operating with, release them of destructive programming and patterns, and giving them new “marching orders” if need be.

Rather than viewing the subconscious mind as a mysterious, disorganized and potentially frightening mess of gawd-knows-what, this boils a big part of the task down to working with a group of twelve to get them to the point of consensus, so that there’s only one of you – which is really what integration is all about. I definitely have a few future articles planned on the subject of archetypes, so stay tuned for that.

Practice Unconditional Self Acceptance

The whole reason we have a Shadow side of the Self to begin with, is because we have rejected those parts of ourselves as “wrong,” or have allowed others to do so. Thus, unconditional self acceptance is vital to successful integration, and should be practiced with diligence and free of judgment. A good rule to go by is that there are no “wrong” parts of the Self – only parts aligned with crappy programming and faulty beliefs. If you go about this work for any length of time you will encounter aspects of yourself that express in ways that are twisted, disturbing, malicious and pretty much every other destructive pattern under the sun. As a rule, if you think about the things you condemn most strongly, it is safe to say that some forgotten part of yourself is out engaging in that very activity on autopilot as we speak. The sooner we all just accept that we’re all in the same boat in this regard, the sooner we can get on with it and clean up our own mess, as it were. The mistake here is to identify the programming with the aspect (and thus discard both) – the problem is the faulty programming; the soul-fragment is part of the Self with a role to fulfill. These roles vary, but broadly speaking, well aligned Shadow aspects are a source of dynamic and creativity. Thus, my approach to all such aspects is to relieve them of their destructive programming and give them something better to operate with if appropriate, at which point they generally “snap into place” as functional (if not very PC) facets of the whole.

While it’s decidedly unnerving and likely a bit intimidating to look forward to meeting up with Self-aspects that are a vibrational match for Hannibal Lecter, there are ways to make this easier on ourselves. My previously stated rule about holding the strong intention to integrate in the order that makes for the smoothest experience holds here. Doing it this way, the Self local to the physical body and conscious mind builds a strong foundation and an increasingly organized and formidable Whole, that can safely integrate increasingly substantial and possibly adversarial fragments without difficulty.

As an aside, I am NOT of the opinion that everything negative we might encounter originates as a projection of the mind. I would however be willing to state with near certainty that if you have experienced significant negative interference, then part of your unconscious Self is either allowing, inviting, actively participating, or of all the above. It is not unheard of for interference to be directly perpetrated by misaligned soul fragments, though I would say it’s probably more common that said fragments are “helped” by other things that are either opportunistic or have an agenda.

I have additionally experienced aspects I’ve already become aware of and re-aligned, having destructive programming re-imposed on them coercively via interference. This leads me to believe that all the disturbing stuff we find our Shadow operating with did not necessarily originate with ourselves – it may just as easily be imposed on an aspect that has drifted around the astral for any length of time, vulnerable to being reprogrammed at will by any entity with an interest in doing so. This is likely the cause of the phenomenon I pointed out in a previous article, where negative astral manifestations, viewed clairvoyantly, often appear as something humanoid in various stages of regressing into something visibly demonic. I point this out as yet another example of why one should remain nonjudgmental and objective toward any unpleasant aspects of the Self. It’s like having someone throw trash on your lawn and ride off into the sunset — it’s an irritating problem, but you don’t judge yourself for having a dirty lawn; there’s not much to do but clean it up. Once a fragment’s patterning has been recognized consciously, it’s nothing to identify with or feel guilty about regardless of where it originated; just get rid of the programming!

Thus concludes the Soul Fragmentation series. While I will be exploring many of the concepts I’ve covered much more in depth in the future, my aim here has been to provide a viable framework for understanding, as well as for taking up personal integration work in a way that is reasonably safe and balanced. The further I go, the more I’m convinced that there are fewer things more important or pressing than the integration of humanity. It is thus my hope that my contributions to the subject prove helpful, and I wish you all the best on your path.

–Palehorse
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Related posts:

1. Three Rules Governing Soul Fragmentation (Part 2)
2. Adding a New Dimension to Your Perception (Part 6)
3. Soul Fragmentation Explained (Part 1)
4. The Law of Attraction and the Mobile Soul (Part 5)
5. Enlightenment, Salvation and the Rejection of Power (Part 3)

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