Meditating while ignoring the importance of shadow work is not enough. Without shadow work we are incomplete, after seeing our shadow we are whole. Many are ready to fly to unknown galaxies or retreat to a new earth to escape their shadows but who wants to do the work that interrupts the promised ecstatic state?
Into space, some astral travel far from their crude lifestyles, away from the rude the raw and tough but who could have thought, that even if through our chakras, when like light switches, we look to activate points of light to turn ourselves on until our light suffocate our dark sides, who could have thought that even then, the human body vessel can’t be escaped.
Thinking ourselves whole while living in peace in our bubble, we look at our light and in between our eyes, we stare anywhere but at the horrors starring right at us. The more we close our pupils, the safer we feel in our high energetic shield until we see patterns engraved in the psyche; a part of us that plays itself alone. The part that sabotages and attracts the same deceits, themes and relationships, that keeps putting us in situations that reactivate our past wounds; those we wished not to repeat.
As a part of us, the dark shadow can’t be erased but it can be loved, understood, integrated, mastered with our light like yin, yang, feminine, masculine, white and black and so on; like any opposite energies that complete and need each other. Does it suffice to take a magic new age blissful pill or an apnea into a meditative trance to brush away the old sticking stinking skins scratching our present actions; those controlled by past indecisions, past demons and outdated beliefs?
Thinking light, crystals and love is still very important, however, if we don’t come together as a human tribe and remain disconnected from each other and earth, then it isn’t enough. Wanting to bliss out ecstatically in a crystalline field whilst talking about new ages things is all fun and games, yet it’s just one game. There are many more games to play to become game masters. All games need playing. Even though light, crystals and love are still very important, you don’t have to play that game only. It’s great to raise our energetic vibration but diving deeper is also necessary. Oftentimes, going higher is a method of coming out of the self to shallower states of consciousness, of retreating from this difficult self and of trying to ascend out of it, however, unless we soar with it we can’t access our full potential.
Shadow work is about being able to operate from a deeper place of consciousness. It’s dredging up uncomfortable memories and bringing them back to life then resolving them and shift our restrictive beliefs in the process. Unlike positive affirmations and other similar techniques that change our thoughts on a conscious level, shadow work works deep on the subconscious for us to retrieve our souls lost parts and experiences which we have blocked out, forsaken and stuffed down into our subconscious since they are too difficult to deal with.
We decided to continue on with our life separated from these parts of ourselves and in doing so we lack wholeness, true internal unity and the opportunity of being empowered by the fullness of who we are. And after doing so we projected our shadows onto the outer world, we sought out the light when we came closer to our dark side; a part of us that pulls the strings of our lives as if we are puppets. Instead of seeking the invisible in dark corners, we found the light but flew too high, we flew to other dimensions via outer body experiences where we were cocooned against the true vision of life; one including a harsh side in its totality, one thwarting our souls from acquiring their cravings.
The shadow is…
Harsh like toxic relationship magnets, self destructive mindsets. Harsh like the self loathing heavily weighting on the conscience of perfection pursuers, like the self denial of the repressors of their own uniqueness. A harsh society’s shadow raw like the hidden horrors filmed in broad daylight. Like the explosion of events that make the news instantly, a society’s shadow noxious like the poison bubbling to the surface through the process of humanity acquiring gadgets, broadcasting the messed up chaos happening that ends up going viral real fast on the internet, where it’s like, “Oh God! Police brutality is real, racial profiling is hardcore, and see it’s real… things, people, buildings really explode!”, then in ashes, their remains feature on our social media feeds.
And the obvious power plays and mind freezing games are read while humanity who was emotionally brought up to wake up feeling loved, cared for, heard and valued in protected environments, goes through its waking up process aware of all the darkness that’s happening instead. Indeed, as a result of countless brutal inhuman acts of violence and crime, in this world, the loss of human life happens everyday. It’s been so for a long time but we would rather forget the mess until it blows up in our faces, until the facts become irrefutable evidences, until we are brought back to consciousness and we build more social consciousness.
Neptunian and alive or dead Plutonian; the shadow in the collective unconscious is elusive, similarly to the ocean, it waves beautifully but beneath could be a ferocious water deity waiting to sink ships. Tormented, there is a dark side to this collective unconscious, it’s not only full of spirit like yogis and enlightened truth seekers, there is also everything that’s been suppressed and stuffed underneath… like patriarchal, dark, insane energies and madness and delusions that can lead to neurotic and psychotic forms of behaviors. No wonder some go nuts, in between feeling super high one minute and super low the next. In between having a super high vision of how we understand how everything fits together and then the next day, abruptly, in fear or suddenly unstable not wanting to talk or see anybody. Are we being tested, being challenged on who we are, who am I, who are you, afraid of and what are you made of?
How stable, how fearless are we? Are we going to face the shadow or run away to parallel universes and pretend to ignore what’s going on where we are now? Are we truthful or do we hide our true selves while pretending to be someone else? Before each reversal one must fall and evolution involves effort, attention to detail, and confronting evil, the shadow, the dark or whatever excludes burying heads in sands of illusions where we think that everything’s gonna be alright simply by loving while waiting for a miracle to fall on our laps.
The shadow blinds those born in horrors, conditioned to ignore the painful truths in their sight so much so that they are blind to their own horror. The shadow, all parts of ourselves, hidden, denied or degraded. Apart from being our worst nightmare, the shadow, can also be the awesome parts of ourselves that we’ve given up on, like brilliance, creativity, power, voice, originality; a successful self.
The shadow is innate to human beings, hence if you are human you have a shadow, a dark side willing to be explored instead of hated. One willing to assist you in reinventing yourself in a way you never thought possible. Willing for you, if you’re willing to stop trying to get rid of it, to transcend, drink or spend over it. Of course thinking positively and raising our energy is important – no, it’s not all doom and gloom, yes we need light, more light, however if we really were shining that light, we would be shining it on the darkness for it to brightens and for us to find out why we should love it, how it has supported us and what’s good about it.
Thus, if we were standing in the light, there wouldn’t be any darkness since we would know that the shadow is a beneficial human part that’s coming to support us in our development. Shadow work is having tea with shit we don’t want to deal with. It’s sitting in the dark with a part of us that wants to kill, manipulate, sacrifice, rage or destroy, it’s seeing it to transmute it into its light.
Shadow work forces us to change and to deal with the skeletons rattling in our closet aspiring to come out and be embraced. Can you embrace what you resist, can you go into your dark closet? After all our walls have broken down, the shadow tells us to continue showing up in vulnerability without reacting but with truth and well thought out responses instead. And even if we do get defensive, the shadow tells us how to come into forgiveness, apology. It tells us how to come into that humanity and say, “I screwed up and it’s okay.”
Shadow work is about dropping the defenses, being willing to see parts of ourselves that we might not like and might look ugly to us. It’s being open minded to the less than perfect aspects of ourselves, the willingness to see how we interact with others. It’s the decisions we make, why we make them and how we approach life and it’s becoming aware of what we are afraid of in a way that might be unreasonable.
All imperfect, in this life we all made mistakes, at some point all chose unappealing options that caused great pain, and each of us have deficiencies and issues of self worth or judgments about reality that are inaccurate thus limit our being.
Shadow work is challenging but as if the universe supports us to welcome everything that makes us grow in every moment, as if we signed up to it, we are rightly equipped to face it. Even if it’s chaotic and confusing when you don’t know your up from your down and your left from your right, you have all the gifts. You have sound, you have silence, you breathe and move with the ability to go on and transform anything.
Along your growth journey expect to take the spiritual path to inner power and to see aspects of your being that motivate you, those driving your feelings about the world’s diseased heart, about how you unconsciously feel about yourself and your judgments about the way the world works, about the cold reality that pours from the sky and the kind of experiences you think you deserve to have or are going to have… shadow work is about the subconscious imprints that got ingrained within you as a child and beyond.
So how can you face the shadow?
You can begin shadow work from a childhood memory but they are other places you can start from, such as a spotted repetitive negative loop that keeps coming up in your life. Look first where you struggle, at the places in your life where you don’t have everything you want, where you keep having the same issues or where you try to be different than you are but you keep showing up in the same way and mysteriously repeating the same patterns. That’s it, that’s your shadow lurking, you might need to embrace more of your courage, of your strength, your worthiness or lovability.
Secondly ask yourself, “How could I be kind to my imperfect, unworthy or naïve self,… kind to any of these less flattering or too overwhelming parts of me? Why am I afraid to live fully in this life and to become all that I am? Am I afraid of my own power?” The biggest illusions to work through are the deeper ones. With shadow work we can find then learn how to love a quality that we don’t like, deny or project onto others in anger because we are angry at ourselves; anything you judge is your shadow. Thus judging other people is judging a part of you and it’s your perception that creates what’s out there.
Let’s say you see someone whom you have a certain prejudice towards, you’re not going to see that person as such. As you see it, instead, you’re going to create prejudice while observing with YOUR very intimate view of reality. That’s why working on our shadow is essential to see ourselves, others and the world as they are and not as we were programmed to unconsciously process them. As the outer world is a reflection of our inner worlds, a new unimaginable future will come from loving something that we judged. To liberate from such illusions, our work is to uncover the nature of our shadow then owning up to it by asking, “How could this serve me, how can I love my true self?”
Shadow work vs positive thinking.
To be human is to posses a dualistic nature, like the saint and the sinner, the divine and the diabolic, and the light and the dark; for none would know light if there was no darkness, none would know kindness without experiencing meanness, and no one would know what it’s like to be selfless without first embracing the selfish self. It’s easy to love unconditionally when feeling good, looking good, everybody doing as we wish, enough money, as everything’s going our way but what about real love?
How do we love ourselves after failure, once betrayed or hurt? That’s what shadow work teaches us, how to really love, in moments that uncontrollably trigger us, when we’re in a out of control loop, left wondering if there a little trick to stop stumbling or if it’s going to take a long deep work made of hours and hours of torture? Accepting that we are human and divine is the torture and once this is understood, the trick is to retrieve the right balance in between opposites.
For instance, positive focus vs embracing the shadow, both of these perspectives have a great deal of potential and also pitfalls, hence both need balancing in order to become happier and create a better life, a fun one that is positive, creative, enjoyable and not dragged down by murkiness, aggression and depression, it’s true that whatever you focus on is what you create. So if you’re solely focused on negativity then you’re going to create more unpleasantness. It’s true also, that this is unrealistic since it isn’t dealing with the reality of the fact that to manifest ideas into tangible things, you need to integrate the darkness and the light, and you can do so by working with the shadow.
Besides, only focusing on the positive doesn’t deal with the shadow and the unpleasant crap in our subconscious that ends up ruining our lives without us realizing it. Being glued in fictitious cycles while reality and the undealt dark stuff gets worst is messy. Still our visions, minds and thoughts have great power to direct us towards what we desire. There is much within the subconscious that we are not aware of, so truly embracing the shadow requires effort, openness to our actions, motivations, feelings and the willingness to expend our perspective in order to see what isn’t readily apparent, to see the invisible, see behind the veil, see what’s driving you to do the very things you do.
Although there is tough love, there is strong love…
During extreme times, big and bad but also good changes occur. Unfortunately we tend to only see the negative ones as they get the most views and publicity since we don’t see lots of TV specials about beautiful things happening in the world. Consequently, things seems to be falling apart for no apparent reason but the road of fear like greed, comfort and profit on the back of the suffering of others leads nowhere nice. So adventure with love, strength, courage and faith that your fate will lead to success, and overall don’t let the darkness harden your heart as to lose faith in good people.
Let’s each bring in a piece of light and hope for overall many things are better than they’ve ever been. Even if right now it’s taught to be in trenches where work is required, like a gift worth working for, humanity gets worse before getting better. When we want our dreams to come true in the midst of self delusions and outer illusions which are evaporating, there is a step by step process, like caring to understand why no matter how humanely they are behaving themselves, some seen as anomalies and outcasts are routinely stopped or shot in situations where they are handled bestially. Such a state of affairs is to put it simply; crazy. A craziness known by all, more and more, it, the rottenness of crumbling structures, the closed mindedness of rigid systems, the beliefs that no longer serve us and those that never served us to begin with. Like the autopilot mindsets with programs that don’t work anymore, it, can’t be ignored.
Helpful Links and Resources
To learn more about the topics explored in this blog post please visit:
Soul Retrieval: 3 Powerful Ways to Heal Soul Loss
Shadow Work
The Future of Gender is Increasingly Non-binary
Are you aware of your shadow self?
Shadow work and creative visualization
Recommended Book: Dolores Cannon Between Death & Life: Conversations with a Spirit – Book Excerpt: “…I am grateful I am allowed to have conversations with the spirits. What they tell me encourages the shedding of fears and doubts and brings the realization that what lies beyond the barrier between this world and the next is only a joyous homecoming.
…The Higher Self explains soul guides: Soul guides and spirit helpers do not try to directly influence our lives. Earth is the plane of choice. You have complete freedom to choose that which you may. When you decide you need assistance in your choice, that is their purpose. They can assist you by clarifying what is happening. You are not puppets, being manipulated from the other side. You have your destiny firmly in your own hands. Your soul guides are bystanders who are able to assist at a moments notice and are waiting for you to ask for assistance. YOU create your own destiny.“ Dolores Cannon, Between Death and Life.
However, by acknowledging and calling it all out, look how great we are doing at coming together. Our hearts heavy, feel how much it’s heinous. Some mourn, others do their grief work and many take energetic action at bringing their love out. When things change and people die, life can seem really dark. Sometimes waking up hurts but universal consciousness won’t let any deaths be a waste so let’s dance and sing, do something creative like art related to all the things you’ve been feeling. Let’s celebrate your heart, your soul as you express your authentic self for life is about radiating who you truly are.
Only you can tell you who you are, no one else. Only after trial and error, after faking it until you make it, after no longer holding back out of fear of rejection or judgement or else, only you can tell you who you are. Even though by doing that you’ll receive Stingy Scorpionic feedback like: no here, no way there, negative this, challenging that, power play conflicts, frequently unbalanced and mostly unequal… walls. Yet take it all in, listen, don’t fret or feel overpowered. Instead, ruminate then recreate and put your plan, your idea and yourself out there, out on the firing line again.
To bring our lives forward, let our frustrations out into a healthier manner and give love to the darker shades of ourselves, we have to face darkness first. Then even if every time we face that darkness, it feels like a block, it is in fact, a step forward to clearing it and bringing love to aspects of our beings that we have criticized, rejected or worse, hated. It’s okay that things are not going the way we exactly want but realize that it can work out as the light beams onto this, as each of us shines an authentic ray of sunlight by enjoying the now. There is only so much time we can ignore the now for what will be, so when fearful remember that there is love behind you sent by your invisible friends, waiting to be retrieved, the shadow is kept locked in a darken box, until guided by a blinking star, you come through the smoke to grasp tightly onto it and mix it with your light. So believe in the kind black light of midnight and in bright sunlight. They’ll meet you over the calm path of freedom to transform your tears and sorrowful nights into jewels of victory.
