I am going to start a new small series on Shadow work things and introspective things. I would like to do this to make a more carved path of notes for a specific line of work. The Shadow Work is the work on our subconscious and the work on our self (specifically our inner self). Arguably the Greatest Work is the Work of the Self, the self discovery and living life. The Magnum Opus.
Without further adieu, here are some notes and insights;
The Note
Another. Interesting topic with regards to shadow work is the idea that you can only meet others, to the depth that you have gone yourself.
So, you have to go to the depths of your own darkness, your own shadow. And then you can In theory, help others get to see The light- more so help them to find their own light from within the darkness.
That’s why people who have experienced great hardships and suffering, when they have the opportunity to heal and have gone through the healing process, they can be great and understanding people with wisdom and space to hold for other people to heal.
Not always, but occasionally that’s true. The Trials we set for us either make or break us.
Fixing a Car
As an analogy, it’s like someone who has to rebuild their car engine, they had to learn a lot and take many steps and actions to fix their car. So they become more knowledgeable and if they spot someone with a lesser degree of pain or suffering, like a flat tire, they can help provide the guidance for that person to change their tire. Providing that guidance for that person to do it themself is akin to being a support for that person and helping to ‘hold space’ for them.
As with healing, you don’t necessarily want to do it for someone. One perspective on healing is that we are just facilitators and that the people do their own healing. So healers don’t heal anyone other than themself.
If you really think about it, western medicine has doctors that provide help to triage a person and provide support to allow the person to have their body naturally heal themselves (unless the Doctors don’t know the condition or are stuck in a for-profit pill mill of lifelong medication or another reason). Thusly, we are our own healers, and our body wants to maintain the balance of where we know we should be, that’s in essence Homeostasis.
To go along with the car analogy, some people have broken engines and are still stuck on the road without tools. They don’t necessarily have to capabilities or resources to help them, and they might be stranded in the desert road or some place unsafe without access to the things they need to start their healing journey and fixing their car.
So the goal for anyone with trauma or suffering or limiting beliefs, is to be first aware of the problem, get to a safe point and bathe in the abundance of resources around you by being grateful and grounded. To be in a safe space or around someone that can hold space. Then to go in and do the work you need to help yourself – heal yourself.
- Be Aware of the ‘problem’
- Get to a Safe Space
- Bathe in abundance of resources
- Be Grateful and Grounded
- Heal
The light in the long dark
Once you find the light within the darkness within yourself (your shadow), you can help others find the light within the darkness within themselves. And that might take a series of reframes or stories or some other modality of ‘healing’ or ‘process work’ or ‘release work’.
Shadow work isn’t necessarily a One tool solves all kinds of thing, not a silver bullet. So some people benefit from stories, some people benefit from reframes, some people benefit from other practices or spells, even therapeutic models, or mirror work. Even medication can be a help or aide to provide people enough stability to resolve deeper conflicts or resolve the underlying issues themselves. Some people resort to a Shaman in the plains or jungles. Perhaps the medication is a movie or a psychedelic substance.
There are many roads that lead to ‘Home’ of the Soul in shadow work.
The important piece is to get the Triage to get from a point of instability to a point of stability. After that, seek a point of healing, when the coast is clear and the danger isn’t immediate or imminent, then we can provide a safe space and hold space to allow the work to heal. Uproot our inner traumas, transmute them, and rewrite our stories in life. To include our wounds physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional.
There’s all sorts of ways to do the inner work.
That’s essentially what shadow work is. It’s working on the internal, working on the dark side of your own perspective. The part of the subconscious. Our emotions, our stories, our habits, our beliefs. In truth, it’s altering our reality through perception.
Your own view of reality is the way it is because wherever you shine your light of consciousness, your focus and awareness, you will cast the shadow in front and behind you. That view changes when we work with these shadow aspects.
To be unaware of the shadow is,
Not the goal of shadow work. To lock the shadow and let it grow in the darkness is a dangerous thing. If it becomes too much, we bottle it so much that the bottle cracks, and we can break down or turn into an ‘agent smith’ and repeat dead lines from an old story to people who are living their first life too.
When we are in a danger situation or are limited in options in an unsafe space, we make decisions that we live by based on our belief system. The Shadow helps us to respond and act, because in reality, the shadow is our gut instinct, our intuition, our guide to survive. Thus we may do many things operating under the shadow, and in this moment it can grow.
So we need to be mindful when the old situations no longer apply, and to resolve our issues after the threat is long gone. If we don’t resolve our issues after the traumatic incident, then we will incur a penalty of having episodes, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, as a reminder and inkling to ourselves that we either resolve this thought pattern that is no longer serving us, or keep it if it is still serving us. Perhaps the threat is still there.
When we allow the shadow to grow, there comes a time when the Shadow is too big, it can consume us and we become a Shadow Monster manifested as ourselves, a sort of NPC or bot running on old stories and old lines of code. We lose our sense of self and presence of the present moment in the Here and Now when we are ruled by our ‘inner demons’ and judgements.
Twitch reactions and impulsive or compulsive actions take hold, habits from old, anger, violence, fear, etc. Many things manifest when we put ourselves in the survival mode that either helped us to get through our traumas or is a lesson from the trauma itself.
The goal of shadow work is to be aware of the shadow.
-And integrate the shadow into the totality of our being. You’re not just transmuting the shadow or darkness into light. More-so you’re also allowing the shadow to exist, acknowledging it and not allowing it to subconsciously subterfuge, sabotage, or pull heavily the strings of your life because you don’t want to be a puppet controlled by your subconscious. (Unless of course you do and you’d rather be on autopilot than live life).
To not be consumed by the masks that the shadow wears, the personas that we have.
To not have the masks wear us.
Essentially, we will eventually come to find that the shadow is a part of us, and is not really our enemy, but that can only happen and be integrated after an awareness of the duality of self. Awareness of the shadow existing and it’s purpose.
In a metaphorical sense, the shadow can be a demon that acts out a will that we willed or wished into existence. A Habit or routine we take because we desired a specific action or outcome. Thus the shadow is sometimes labeled as an inner demon.
Epilogue;
I do apologize, I am jumping around in a lot of places in my line of thought. There’s a lot to unpack here and I don’t know if I’m being to tangential with my connections. I hope that there’s enough connections in this article that you find atleast one thing useful. There are many connections here, and I may have accidentally knotted my message and not speak with the soul of brevity and wit that I usually try to aim for.
I hope you enjoyed these small notes on Shadow Work, they are my personal perspective and thoughts on the Shadow and healing. Arguably, if you can define the universe and the subconscious, then you’d probably already have all the answers you need in this realm.
If not, well, working or playing with shadows is one way to unravel the mystery of both the Universe and the Subconscious.
Cheers,
The Shadow is a Word
and
Words Mean Things
Words Mean Things 
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