When asked, ‘what are your shadows?’ I was stumped.
‘My shadows? What do you mean?’
I later learnt shadows, or as Debbie Ford eloquently put it, our darksides, are aspects of ourselves we reject because we have been conditioned to believe they are bad, or even sinful.
Carl Jung called them shadows because they are hidden from conscious knowing. When we are aware of them, we choose to hide them, pretend they don’t exist.
Many times we suppress or downright hate these parts of us.
So, what are these shadows?
One example is Jealousy. Yes that ugly emotion which we have been told from a young age only horrible people have.
Guess what? Everyone has jealousy in them.
Everyone is capable of being jealous, including ourselves. Once we can accept that fact, we open to changing the inner dialogue. We learn to stop judging jealousy as bad or wrong. It is simply an emotion pointing to buried memories and belief systems that need clearing.
Jealousy is a valuable indicator of how secure one feels about themselves. An individual who deep down feels they aren’t good enough, will show jealousy towards others they unconsciously deem are better.
Along with jealousy, come it’s two shadow besties, possessiveness and neediness. These lead to anger and need to control. Now we are really deep diving into the shadowlands.
Every shadow has a lightside, that is, the positive aspect of the shadow. Even jealousy. It teaches us to know our own self-worth.
We have many shadows hidden in our consciousness which drive our behaviours, make us pretend to be something we are not while hiding our authentic selves behind masks.
Working with shadows is vital if one wishes to live freely. That is, free of vulnerabilities, free of self-doubt, free of self-judgement, free of insecurities and fear.
The first step is acknowledging you, like everyone else on the planet, have a darkside.
The process of accepting and the ongoing monitoring of shadows is painful since the ego takes a serious bashing. But it’s worth it. Shadows have a lightside. They can become strengths when understood and used in the correct way.
Some examples to kick off with are anger, shame, hatred, judgement, fear. There are many more shadows to uncover. I am still in the process of discovery myself. Everyday I find new shadows to work on. Now, rather than thinking I’m a horrible person for feeling that negative emotion towards someone or something, I accept the shadow as an aspect of myself and try to understand the underlying reasons for it. The shadow turns into a positive quality that enhances my life.
