When Shame Falls Away, This Is What’s Left

The inner shift our hearts are longing for

Photo by Oleg Ivanov on Unsplash

Hello beautiful human,

Last week, I wrote about how truly embodying our hearts requires others to bear witness to our inner being—warts and all. Today, I want to take you deeper, into the living field of what that might actually feel and look like. Enjoy!

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We’re sitting in circle. Around 50 of us. A double-layered ring of humans, yet the space feels intimate and cozy.

A woman stepped into the centre and asked the field to hold space for her as she peeled off the stories of self-hate and judgment toward her body.
Literally.

Layer by layer, she undressed until she stood there—stark naked, the way God made her—looking us straight in the eye.
Allowing herself to be seen.
Allowing us to take her in.

Here I am, underneath the shame.

The silence was deafening. The space felt like a temple.
The sacredness of the moment was felt in every breath.

I’d never been so deeply moved by anything I had witnessed before.
My body was tingling with reverence.
I was in awe.
We all were.

That single act of courage—of saying no to the mind’s stories—lifted something tangible from the collective field.
We were in the presence of such raw authenticity, it pierced straight through to the soul.

We saw and felt her. And through that we saw ourselves. Fully.

You are another me cleverly camouflaged as you

Or: we are all One.

This is something we all of have heard before, but not all of us have experienced it at a level that broke us open and rearranged our very being.

Because when it does, there is no going back. There is no possibility to believe the story of separation any longer.

But how do we get there?

How do we enter that living space of embodied intimacy—where we not just conceptually understand, but truly feel, this truth in the whole of our being?

The answer is simple—
But maybe not always that easy.

It’s called core unworthiness.
Or, in one word: shame.

This is the energy inside of us that hides parts of us so deeply, that most of the time we are not even consciously aware of it. It runs on fear. Fear of rejection and abandonment. It stops us from truly being ourselves.

We can imagine it like this:
our life force is like water.
Shame is the dam.
It blocks the flow and silences the current. It does so subtly, often without us even noticing. We just believe its normal, who we are.

It's also the source of our inner un-safety.
The source of psychic conflict and tension that we all live with:

I have this feeling inside. It wants to express itself and show itself, be felt and seen, but if I do so, you will stop loving me. I will have to deal with the discomfort of feeling that. So I better shut up, pretend it's not there.

The result?
I feel unsafe.

Not because the outside world is unsafe, but because I am not aware of the deeper layers of me and I don't fully own my feelings. I haven't yet matured into a healthy relationship with myself.

So let's go back to the woman in the circle.

How does anyone master the courage to do something like that ever?!

Well, I don't believe she is just more courageous than others. Or has less shame than you might feel yourself having.

I believe she (or her Soul) has carefully prepared her for such a moment for a long time. She had simply cultivated enough inner safety to know that even though scary, no matter what reaction, this wouldn't break her. Psychospiritually she was able to hold herself safely in that sacred tension that births transformation.

Her body and ego were shaking with fear.
And at the same time her heart was longing for the liberation that her soul knew was on the other side of it.

She had developed discernment and clarity within herself. She knew how her body and heart were capable of feeling when un-burdened by the shackles of mind.
She could perceive and feel the energy of the story —my body is unlovable— as something heavy and painful in her soma and she was unwilling to endure this any longer.

But this is not all. She had obviously also come to trust the container she was in.

Over the years her Nervous System had received imprint after imprint of what it's like to be safely held by a group of mature, attuned, nervous system regulated and heart-centred humans.

She had witnessed others overcoming their fears, not necessarily to be physically naked, but to show their most vulnerable, shame-ridden parts. And she had experienced in her own body the elevated, liberated energy that came with that…not just for them but for the entire collective field.

She also knew that everyone present in the room was there for the same reason, the same intention: to expand their heart, grow and love more.

All these factors combined, perfectly aligned by grace, made that miracle of truth happen.

And the best part?

When you are on the path of love, of freeing your body and mind of all the stories you have been told (as Yaima reminds us in her song), you don't have to make these moments happen.

You don't have to attend a HeartIQ circle retreat or other work of that kind to get there. These are just tools and spaces that help. And you certainly don't have to get naked in front of everyone.

Life does it for you. All you need is a willingness to show up. To be present to your body and to trust its intelligence. Its gentle nudging

And that is so, so easy to dismiss.

Because the real miracle isn't the ‘grand’ gesture—it’s choosing to stay present when everything in you wants to run.

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I don't have a paywall yet for my content, but if you enjoy it and would like to support my creative juices with a cup of coffee, I will graciously accept! Thank you in advance!

Curious to explore this in real life?

I create spaces—online and in-person— where we all get naked…Just kidding.

We do get naked, but not physically. We reveal our inner parts to each other and re-wire our nervous systems for safety. So we can all live more un-burdened, more from the heart and carry that torch to the people around us. Because ultimately that's what we came here for.

If you're longing for more than just therapy or traditional coaching… if you're ready to feel seen, safe, and alive in connection… this might be your kind of medicine.
Check out my website for my workshop on Inner Safety, www.kasiapatzelt.com. Or book a free 1-1 discovery call with me.