EYES THAT CAN SEE IN THE DARK: EXPLORING your SHADOW
Working with your shadow is about working with your unconscious and blindspots, with what you cannot see or what you haven’t known about yourself. It is a process that requires the confrontation of strangeness and otherness. It is a process that invites you to integrate disowned and rejected parts of yourself that are necessary for your growth, the strengthening of your character, and the expansion of your awareness and consciousness.
Why do we exile parts of ourselves?
For many models of the mind, the psyche is formed and structured into levels of awareness. At an unconscious level we build a reservoir of content, memories, and autonomous functions that need to stay outside our conscious awareness so that we can focus on what our daily lives demand of us. In the unconscious mind, the constant data and input from the daily interaction with the world gets stored or discharged. In that reservoir that you cannot fully know but can explore and have access to lies some of the most valuable aspects of who you are at the core.
A big part of the repressing and exiling is automatic and done as a defense mechanism, as a survival system, and as a way to belong and remain safe within your family, your culture, societal groups and beliefs, or just as a way to protect your self-image. You can exile what you reject or deem unacceptable, but also good qualities of yourself that were shamed, ridiculed or not well loved and acknowledged while growing up.
Why does it matter to explore your shadow?
Shadow work is about reclaiming ownership of your primal self, your core, and the reclamation of creativity and vital force. It is a process that requires the confrontation of strangeness and otherness. It is a process that helps you integrate disowned and lost parts of the self. What you hold in our shadow wants to find its way back to the home of the self where it belongs.
The process of shadow work challenges and pushes your limits, throwing you out of your comfort zone and into the place where transformation happens, to a place of possibility and belonging.
When you feel ready to embark in this process, remember that self honesty and self acceptance become the key elements to help you see the unpleasant attributes of yourself with compassion. Once you venture into the depths of the unseen, dedicate time to find how you were hurt and, more importantly, where. Which parts of yourself were under attack or scrutiny, and which were shamed or ignored. Were you wounded in your good will? Your kindness? Your sensitivity? Your hopeful spirit? Your openness? Your capacity to love and speak truth? Your innocence? Find the place where you were wounded the most. Bring light to it, and help it back to the surface, where it belongs, where it can restore along with yourself.
Take the time to slow down and sit with what you found, breathe it in, and practice self-acceptance, self-compassion, and self-love.
All of you
belongs
here, now
to this life.
