The Shadow And How To Deal With It Right Now
The real “shadow work” you need to know about.
The lord of the unconscious world. The darkness in you and me. That intangible something attached to us every second of our existence.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the Shadow!
This article will be one of the most important ones you’ll read, no doubt. Not because I wrote it.
It’s simply because getting to know the Shadow is the basis of any type of psychological and spiritual growth.
When I mention the “Shadow” people usually think about the traumas, the negativity, and the programs we bring from our parents. Although these are important components, focusing on them solely won’t give you an understanding of the reality of the Shadow.
What we need to discuss is:
- what the Shadow is,
- how it works,
- what strategies it uses,
- and what to do about it.
It took me 32 years to figure it out and be able to put it into words. And that’s a freaking long time!
Okay, so let’s start…
What Is The Shadow?
If you’ve been reading my stories, you’re familiar with my worldview on how souls are born by two. One stays in Consciousness while the other has human lives. They’re bound for eternity and together they form the Self.
Human lives come with human bodies, brains, and egos. We could argue that the Shadow is another item on this list but I disagree. It’s much more than that.
When we die, the body and the ego die — kind of. But the Shadow doesn’t go anywhere.
Why not? Because it’s attached to our souls!
That means, the Shadow exists because human existence was created, and vice versa.
The same is true about our unconscious. It was always there and will always be there.
So both the Shadow and the unconscious are eternal.
Light And Darkness, Consciousness And The Unconscious
Imagine Consciousness as a bluish-white liquid light that fills our mind through our crown chakra. It brings us understanding.
Our unconscious is everything that is not conscious, or not conscious yet. Everything that is covered or hidden (e.g. a survival program coming from our childhood we repeat unconsciously). This is why we associate the unconscious with darkness.
Now imagine a dark corner of your unconscious. When you let in the light of Consciousness, suddenly all hidden things become enlightened in that spot.
Consciousness brings us divine knowledge and understanding. “Divine” here means something our human brain might not be able to rationalize. You just know. “Divine” also means eternal so you cannot unsee that small piece of truth anymore.
Enlightenment doesn’t mean that a human turns into this pure spiritual person who can do no wrong. Enlightenment is a process of opening yourself up to your Consciousness so it can fill you up slowly to uncover small parts of your unconscious.
To simplify things, we could say that:
Consciousness → knowing,
Unconscious → not knowing.
But here comes a twist…
Despite being the ruler of the unconscious, the Shadow knows stuff too.
The Two Types Of Knowledge
The Shadow knows everything that’s hidden in the unconscious.
And it uses every opportunity to try to “red-pill” you. Often about the suffering of your human existence.
Now imagine this naive, innocent soul. That’s us, you and me. The souls with human awareness. We can’t remember much more than what happened to us in our current life.
On the other hand, both our Consciousness and our Shadow remember everything.
Have you heard the expression “dark knowledge”? To me, it means being aware of all the terrible things that happened and could happen to my soul during my entire human existence.
It sucks.
Your Shadow knows this and reminds you of it over and over. Every millisecond, 0–24.
How? Via our thoughts, of course.
Consciousness does the same, it sends us thoughts constantly. But instead of scaring us, it tries to remind us of who we truly are. Where we come from. What our mission is.
So the Shadow is the opponent of our Consciousness.
And There’s Us, Trapped In The Middle
Yes, we’re trapped between the two. Darkness and light. Shadow and Consciousness.
And oh boy, those two don’t like each other at all.
Our Shadow side wants to keep us in the cycle of birth and death. It rebels against our Consciousness and pulls every attempt to keep us away from reuniting with our fully conscious self.
Why is the Shadow like this?
The short answer is that because this is its nature. Creation needs the unconscious and the Shadow. They are necessary for the third dimension (and human life) to exist.
How?
Imagine a projector in a dark room. Our physical reality (life) is the picture projected onto the wall from the Source. Light alone wouldn’t be able to project and create life. It needs the darkness.
Also, the Shadow is not all “evil”. There are nice things in your unconscious too. Sometimes the Shadow can appear as loving. When you dream about being with friends, or “entities”, or people guiding you… Those are most likely representatives of your Shadow. Memories, ideas, beliefs, little pieces of the unconscious part of your psyche.
How To Handle Strong Emotions Like Rage And Hatred
“Don’t engage” is the generic rule to follow when it comes to the Shadow.
Unfortunately, most of the time it’s not that easy. We can’t monitor every single thought we have. Even if we practice mindfulness and examine some of our thoughts, we can’t always decide if they come from our Consciousness or our Shadow.
So what can we do (besides trying to heal our traumas and most frustrating unconscious programs)?
To help you understand the mechanism a bit more, I’m going to share an example of my life and a chat I had with my Consciousness (whom I call my Higher Self).
Despite feeling connected to my Higher Self in my inner world, the outside world didn’t spare me from things going down.
I was in a difficult living situation and I didn’t see a way out. My Higher Self told me to hold on for longer while trying to stay out of the drama.
My Shadow had a different idea. It never missed an opportunity to remind me of how frustrating my situation was, how I deserved better, and that it was Consciousness’s fault.
Whenever the people in question pissed me off with something, my Shadow enticed me more with distractive thoughts and ideas.
So instead of drama in the outside world, I engaged in huge inner-world meltdowns.
“I can’t believe you guided me to this situation”, I told my Consciousness/Higher Self during one of those times.
“It’s necessary. Stuff needs to come up from your unconscious so we can heal the belief system behind it and move on”, he answered in a calm tone.
“But you don’t understand! I can’t live like this anymore. These people make me miserable. I hate them.”
“I understand and it’s okay.”
“How is it okay? I hate them so much every time they do something that hurts me and I hate that I hate them.”
“Hate them all you want, just don’t engage with the hatred.”
Hate them but don’t engage… what is he talking about?
“Hating is an emotion, a state of mind”, he explained. “Engagement is an active reaction. When you engage, you push that emotion further.”
“Oh…”
“Engagement generates a chain of thoughts. It fuels the emotion. Then you engage even more and more until it gets completely out of control and it becomes your entire reality.”
It made me think.
“So it’s okay to hate?”, I asked finally.
“Of course. You’re human. You have an ego. It’s okay. Always acknowledge the emotion but don’t engage with it. You already know that you’re angry and why you’re angry. There’s no reason to engage with it further.”
“It’s hard. I know”, he added.
“Oh my god!”, I said in my head when a new idea hit me.
“What is it?”
“Is engagement an inner dialogue with my Shadow?”
“Yes.”
“And I should try to talk to you instead, I suppose?”
“That would make me very happy”, he answered.
Conclusion
This shadow topic is heavy and complex, I know. I hope I was able to give you an overview with some depth in it.
I’m working on more posts — and possibly an eBook — on our shadow side and how to cope with it.
I believe everything you ever experience is a dance between you, your Consciousness, and your Shadow.
In my experience, it’s crucial to understand the nature of our dark side and where it comes from before studying it any further.
