To Love or Reject Your Shadow Self

We all have a shadow self. Learn how to befriend your shadows, through the power of mindful shadow work, so that you can reclaim the joy and healing that is your birthright! 

Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow side: an impulsive, wounded, sad, or isolated part, that we generally try to ignore. The Shadow can be a source of emotional richness and vitality, and acknowledging it can be a pathway to healing and an authentic life.

In other words, the Shadow isn’t just the centrally wounded part of us, but it also provides a path towards a more authentic and fulfilling life. In order to heal and grow on a mental, emotional, and spiritual level, we need to practice Shadow Work.

All of us carry demons inside.

Sometimes, we catch fleeting glimpses of them. Sometimes, we witness them in full chaos. But, for the most part, we ignore and bury their existence, either out of fear, guilt, or pure shame.

However, as tempting as it is to suppress our demons, discovering and owning them is a vital part of our spiritual journey.

Shadow Work is a practice that helps us to regain access to our innate wholeness. It works on the premise that you must 100% OWN your Shadow, rather than avoiding or repressing it, to experience deep healing.

This daunting and often frightening task is a requirement of every person. But you don’t have to do it alone.

Shadow Work exercises should not be undertaken if you struggle with low self-esteem. Exploring your demons will likely make you feel a million times worse about yourself, and may spiral into self-hatred (especially if you’re going through the Dark Night of the Soul). Before doing Shadow Work, I strongly and emphatically encourage you to work on cultivating Self-Love. Shadow Work should only be undertaken by those who have healthy and stable self-worth, and a friendly relationship with themselves. 

Do you know what touches the very depths of your being?

Whether through the family environment I was raised in, or the cultural myths I was brought up clinging to, I once believed that all you really needed to do in life to be happy, was to focus on everything beautiful, positive, and spiritually feel-good. I’m sure you were raised believing a similar storyl. It’s a sort of “Recipe For Well-Being,” dictated by our culture.

But, a few years ago, after battling health issues, I realised something shocking-

I was wrong.

Not just wrong, but completely and utterly off the mark. Focusing only on “love and light” will not heal your wounds on a deep level.

In fact, I’ve learned through a lot of deep inner work that, not only is focusing solely on the “light side of life” one side of the equation, but it is actually a form of spiritually bypassing your deeper, darker problems that, let me assure you, are basically guaranteed to exist.

It’s very easy and comfortable to focus only on the light side of life. So many people in today’s world follow this path. And, while it might provide some temporary emotional support, it doesn’t reach to the depths of your being - it doesn’t transform you at a core level. Instead, it leaves you superficially hanging onto warm and fuzzy platitudes, which sound nice, but don’t enact any real change.

So, what is the Human Shadow?

In short, the Shadow is our dark side; our lost and forgotten, disowned self. Your Shadow is the place within you that contains all of your secrets, repressed feelings, primitive impulses, and parts deemed “unacceptable,” “shameful,” “sinful,” or even “evil.”

This hidden place, lurking within your unconscious mind, also contains suppressed and rejected emotions, such as rage, jealousy, hatred, greed, deceitfulness, and selfishness.

Everyone carries a shadow and, the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.

What is Shadow Work?

When the human Shadow is shunned, it tends to undermine and sabotage our lives. Addictions, low self-esteem, mental illness, chronic illnesses, and various neuroses are all attributed to the Shadow Self.

When our Shadows are suppressed or repressed in the unconscious long enough, they can even overtake our entire lives and cause psychosis or extreme forms of behaviour, like cheating on one’s partner or physically harming others. Intoxicants, such as alcohol and drugs, also have a tendency to unleash the Shadow.

Thankfully, there is a way to explore the Shadow and prevent it from devouring our existence, and that is called Shadow Work.

Shadow Work is the process of exploring your inner darkness or Shadow Self. In essence, Shadow Work is the attempt to uncover everything that has been unconsciously hidden, disowned, and rejected within you, and buried within your Shadow Self.

As mentioned previously, your Shadow Self is part of your unconscious mind, and contains everything you feel ashamed of thinking and feeling, as well as every impulse, repressed idea, desire, fear, and perversion that, for one reason or another, you have ‘locked away’, consciously or unconsciously. Often, this is done as a way of keeping yourself tame, likeable, and “civilized” in the eyes of others.

So, why do Shadow Work?

The reason why we do this work is because, without exploring what is hidden within us, we remain burdened with problems, such as; chronic anger, guilt, shame, fear, grief, and other issues, like; addictions, relationship meltdowns, and even spiritual maladies, like existential depression or the Dark Night of the Soul.

All throughout the history of humanity, Shadow Work has played a powerful role in helping us discover what is at the root of our individual and collective mental illness, physical dis-ease, and even insanity, resulting in crimes of all kinds.

Traditionally, Shadow Work fell in the realm of the Shamans, or medicine people, as well as the priests and priestesses of the archaic periods of history. These days, Shadow Work falls more commonly in the realms of psychotherapy, with psychologists, psychiatrists, spiritual guides, and therapists showing the way.

How is Our Shadow Side Formed?

Your Shadow side was formed in childhood and is both; (a) a product of natural ego development, and (b) a product of conditioning or socialization. Socialization is the process of learning to behave in a way that is acceptable to society.

When we are born, we’re full of vast, innocent, wide-eyed potential. As time goes on, we learn more and more to become a certain type of person. Slowly, due to our circumstances and preferences, we begin to adopt certain character traits and reject others.

But, as we develop our ego personality, we also do something else at the same time. What has happened to all those parts of our original potential that we didn’t develop? They won’t just cease to exist - they will still be there, as potential or partly-developed, then rejected, personality attributes, and they will live on in the unconscious as an alternative to the waking ego. So, by the very act of creating a specifically delineated ego personality, we have also created its opposite in the unconscious. This is the shadow. Everyone has one.

As we can see, developing the Shadow Self is a natural part of development.

But, you also formed a Shadow due to social conditioning, i.e. your parents, family members, teachers, friends, religion, and society at large all contributed to the repression of some parts of you.

How?

Well, here’s the thing… Polite society operates under certain rules. In other words, certain behaviours and characteristics are approved of, while others are shunned.

There are countless behaviours, emotions, and beliefs that are rejected in society, and thus, are rejected by ourselves. In order to fit in, be accepted, approved, and loved, we learned to act a certain way. We adopted a role that would ensure our mental, emotional, and physical survival.

But, at the same time, wearing a mask has consequences. What happened to all the authentic, wild, socially taboo, or challenging parts of ourselves? They were locked in the Shadow too.




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