The Shadow of Nihilism
Do you ever listen and feel into your Shadow of Nihilism? The suppressed aspect within you, which believes everything means nothing. That life has no inherent meaning. Can you step out of the illusion of your everyday life for just one moment and listen to your shadow of nihilism? What the hell am I doing? Who am I really? Where is my life headed? Is there even any point to all of this? Life may be good right now for some, but we all know that won’t last forever. Eventually, if we make it long enough, we will become old, weathered, forgetful, and be lonelier. Some will have the care and support of their loved ones around during their death, while the rest of us will die alone, and fade into nothingness.
This is the Truth from the eyes of our Shadow of Nihilism. When I am able to allow this part to speak its truth to me, no longer denying its existence, no longer pushing it away, its voice finally gets heard. It is a big wake up call, a kick in the guts, and motivator for action and drastic change. Denying this part of us moves us closer to a life that is a self-fulfilling prophecy of becoming our very own nihilism. Hearing its call and feeling its gravity, grounds us back to this reality, to our most fundamental awareness of life, so that we can set a new course, prepare for a new chapter, and become reborn yet again.
The Shadow of Nihilism has revealed to me that I am just a scared little boy. All grown up, though still a little boy stuck inside a man’s body. I have always been resistant to change, to growing older when I was a youth. I observed how quickly my peers transformed their identity, altering who they were in their teens. Whereas I unconsciously decided to hit the brakes and withdraw, thinking this was all just bullshit. This change didn’t feel real, instead it was forced by indoctrination, by societal and cultural conditioning. It was an imitation and camouflage. Even in adulthood I noticed how everyone was still changing and yet I did not feel the same. Year to year, day by day, others around me were caught in their illusions of everyday life, unaware of their gradual transformations or what was causing them. It was as if these changes in people were nothing at all to them, they were oblivious to them, believing they had just always been this way.
Of course, I was changing also, just in my own unique way, and at times I needed to decelerate often, before a burst of rapid momentum would occur in my life. Truth is I never really felt that I fit into modern society. There was a great void between me and the way society functions. Being a highly empathic, sensitive, and intuitive individual, it is hard to be around others in large numbers, especially when people are completely unconscious to their shadow selves. I feel their suppressed emotions. I hear their repressed thoughts. I used to mistake them for my own, until I was able to build healthier boundaries between myself and others.
The Shadow of Nihilism exposed to me that I push people away and don’t let them in, as I try to avoid being left hurt, or mourning their loss when the time comes. However, this leads to more loneliness. I had already experienced the loss of my two best friends in my childhood, my dogs, who left me too soon after being poisoned. It took me multiple decades before the timing was right for me to be ready to have dogs once again in my life. Raising two puppies now is showing me what true unconditional love is, and is awakening my paternal instincts to raise a family of my own and connect more with others. Something I had been avoiding and running from throughout my life. It was also the shadow of nihilism that inevitably led me back to Nature to reconnect to my Essence, and to live a life more in alignment to my Truth. To live a simpler life where I can express, create, and share more openly to those around me.
If our Shadow of Nihilism believes life has no meaning, then it is up to us as individuals to give our life meaning. Not by following and imitating the status quo via social conditioning, but rather by creating our own life from within us. Nihilism provides us with the necessary contrast and clarity to wake us out of our trance of everyday life to see beyond the illusion, when we are able to navigate through its heavy fog. For our life is what we make it. What we choose to be and create. To live a life true to ourselves, true to our hearts, that embodies our essence. The Shadow of Nihilism believes there is no light at the end of its tunnel. If we are to embody and surrender to this aspect within us, it means we must honour this belief as truth in the moment it appears. So, we can feel its emotions entirely, integrate with it and grow, going through the necessary changes of uncertainty in the darkness, for the light to eventually reappear in our lives once again.
