Hi everyone, thank you for watching and listening to this episode. Today is all about our shadow sides. So you may have heard talk about this a lot or come across it for yourself, realizing you’re meeting and engaging with your shadow. And how we look at it, and – you know – constructively do something with it, is a question that comes up a lot. This episode we’ll look at 3 practical ways we can cope with – or approach – it when our shadows are rising up for us.
Ooooo my, I was under for a bit. For three weeks actually. Maybe even still going on for some of it. I’ve been visiting my shadow side. I just couldn’t get myself out of it. And every time I thought , okay, now I’ve done the work, I’ve processed, I’ve gone through it all,it turned out I was kidding myself, I started right back over again. Have you had this too? When in a certain amount of days, or even a few weeks, you just can’t get yourself together, you keep returning to thought that you think are not constructive in any way.
You know, being about living intuitively, I know I should listen to calls from myself, and tune in, whereas when I was young I would also be able to just hide it away in a filing cabinet and just naievely hope it would stay there forever. Now I know I should face my demons, so to speak, and I do. But well, if it just keeps coming, keep coming up, you can sometimes start to wonder why you’re doing it. I was feeling fear, insecure, nervous… for 3 weeks straight. I was having constantly returning pain and tension in my stomach area. I know I have to face my shadow side. But even formulating it like that is not very constructive: “having to face it”. We all have that tendency, right?  to want to hide it, look away from it and focus on the light. And we should. But not light without dark. Only light coming from dark (and going back to dark) is truly light. I have found out that which many great teachers have said in one form or another is that if you want to truly heal, move forward, grow, you should see, acknowledge, accept, feel, make friends with your shadows.
So, how do you get through these challenging periods, where your shadows are coming up big time? How do you heal your shadows and – eventually – learn to love and integrate your own shadow parts?
(1) The first very important step is to realize that Your Shadow is you. It sounds so obvious, but it took me a while to really grasp this: for years, it felt like something/someone was doing that to me. That it was ‘unfair’ somehow. But, It is not a demon, something from outside, put on you, it is you, it is in you, it is part of you, it is yourself. Yourself is not all roses and sunshine and rainbows (although roses can be super prickly, so that’s not all good either, and we all know that rainbows come from a combination of dark rain and bright sunshine). But you get what I mean, we don’t only have to strive for positivity, lightness of being. It is okay for us to not always feel bubbly and happy. There are many sayings that go something along the lines of: without dark there can be no light, and that is so true! For myself, I’ve noticed that at the end of a great prospering time, at the end of growth, personal growth, at the end of learning and understanding and having had the possibility to apply that newly acquired wisdom to your own life, there is always a period where you return inside, as if to collect the next challenge from your own box of themes for your lifetime on earth. After the learning and growing period for a theme or multiple themes at once, it gets returned back into the box, because you won’t just be done with it after one learning period. You will notice that you must return to it later again, on a different layer then before, a deeper layer, as if you peeled off one layer of the onion, laid it to rest for a bit (or months or years) and pick it back up to pull back another layer. All the onions go in the box. And after a time of great prospering, you reach in the box again and take out one of your onions. You may notice it is a heavy one and you stay internal longer then you may have anticipated. Maybe you thought: well, I see I’ve taken this onion out before, this will be a breazy one, easy enough! But it might not turn out that way. There’s just no saying how long you will return inwards after you’ve taken out one of your onions again.
This also depends on your willingness to look at and acknowledge and work with what is there for you. There are periods where you really don’t want to face your shadows. And even that is no guarantee that you won’t have to do some form of ‘work’.
And if you’ll allow me one more intermezzo: when talking about facing your (current) shadow, looking your shadow side right in the eye, it is often referred to as ‘work’: shadow work. But realize that it doesn’t have to be ‘work’ in the sense that it’s going to be hard, or long, or difficult. It’s more – in my own experience – taking on a different perspective, while being and remaining completely aware. So, looking at the whole thing from behind or below, and remaining attentive for whatever comes up.
(2) So apart from realizing your shadow is you – so kind of a mindshift practice – when we’re talking about ‘healing’ that shadow, I think the magic and the ‘trick’ is in really and truly and lovingly being with your shadow part, every time again, when it is surfacing for you. This is how, over time, you heal that shadow. Because it is not ‘just’ there by coincidence, it came out to be healed, at least in one way or another. This ‘being with your shadow’ doesn’t mean that’s all you can or should do with it, but it’s a really overlooked part of it. To just be with it, without wishing it away, wishing for it to transform into light or goodness. What you mostly see is that we spring into action mode: okay, something’s up here, let’s get to ‘work’, let’s analyze, let’s talk, let’s get it out. But what if we wait? What if we try and see what is there, if that is shown to us? What if we just let it be there? Not forever, but just let it be for a bit, and calmly see it and acknowledge it. It is us, after all. It is ourself. Don’t panick, don’t shoot into ‘head’ action mode. Be present, with loving attention, yes loving. This is how you can transform and grow, to see, acknowledge what is there, and that sets the energy moving, so that healing can come. If everything is just stagnant and absent , like what would happen if you pushed the shadow down, nothing can move, nothing can change, there will be no growth and no healing either…. So that’s why being with the shadow, looking at it, acknowledging it, is such a major step in the healing process. There can be other steps, for instance investigating  why the shadow is there, what event triggered it first to have it come into your life– and now again: but those things come on their own most of the time, once you allow the shadow to be what it is and where it is.
A first response we might have, linked to this allowing your shadow to be there, as we discussed a bit in the introduction, is to focus with all our might on the good side of us, the positive, the light, the happy, and that way just ignore or, smother that shadow a bit. And continue on dancing and skipping through life. And that’s a good thing in itself! But not to avoid having to look at that shadow. Dancing through life might be a way to take your shadow along with you on your journey, but that must be a conscious and aware decision, so not pushing the shadow down, but being aware of it and taking it along on your life with you, giving it the attention and space that it asks for. It’s a way to be fully present with your shadow, for example the stomach pain I was feeling along with the feeling of being scared. When you let your attention go there, in this case an actual physical spot, you will automatically give it space, to be and to move as well. You can put your attention there by breathing to that location, in a soft way, not pushing, but letting gravity take the breath there, allowing breath to move. And if you can incorporate some loving soft smile with it too, you’ll see that it will not be as rigid anymore. It will be allowed room to shift, to move, to give you a different angle to see it. Once everything is a bit looser you can proceed by just being still, listening, feeling, noticing if anything comes up, if anything is there to be noticed for you now. Remember to go in to this without an intention of a particular outcome, such as turning it into positivity, light, making it go away. It’s all about that loving attention in itself. And in the process you may even learn something about yourself that surprises you.
(3) So, to make this a bit more concrete: If you can , if you succeed in feeling love and connection to that shadow part of you, you can embrace it… then you can also start to feel into what this shadow of you is actually bringing you now, or cán bring you. You can change your perspective of what it is, look at it differently. Because it came from somewhere, it came for a reason, so you can investigate for yourself if you know or feel what purpose it served you, and if you indeed find that out you can thank it/yourself for having served you in that way up untill now. But you can go further and investigate what power this shadow, that which we call negative, what power can it give you now, today?
Let’s take the example of ‘anger’, say you have been feeling angry lately, or maybe anger has been top front of your mind always, your go-to way to vent frustration maybe. Whatever it may be, your anger can actually be used into serving you, giving you an advantage, a power, something you wouldn’t be able to access if you didn’t have this anger. It could be that you can make the anger into a razer-focussed goal-oriented action for example. You can take that strong passion that goes with it and use it for something else. It’s not really the same as transforming it, making it into something else, but more of an application of what you already have and – again – looking at it from another angle, look to see how it can serve you best, how this energy can be sort of turned to better use. Making art is of course another great example of this. This different view and application of your ‘negatives’ also shows you and your subconscious that in reality there is nothing negative about it, you can put it to use the way you choose to.
That’s basically  It, if you’re looking for the first and powerful things to look at when you want to face your shadows in a constructive way, with a mindset of growth for yourself. These are the simple essentials when you need to deal with your shadow side coming up, this is how to love your shadow, and how to start the healing. So first
1) you Realize that your shadow is not some foreign energy coming to bully you – it is you, it is within you, it is part of you – then:
2) (the most important part!) Just ‘be’ with your shadow, in loving attention, without any specific intentions – and then
3) Investigate what your shadow side is bringing you, what special powers it can give you.
I hope this gives you some inspiration and an alternative to our traditional way of looking at our shadows… you know, to push it aside, make it go away… We can integrate our shadows, explicitly make them part of our lives, because they are. That way you can grow on a soul level. And Trust me that will make your life much more interesting.