Shadow work takes courage.
Not because there’s anything so horrendous awaiting us in our subconscious, but because shadow work asks us to bravely look into our inner-workings and into ourselves.
It asks that we break the habitual trance of how we think, feel, and behave. It asks us to examine how we’re being and why we’re being that way.
It invites us to go to the root of our conditioning so that we can elevate our operating system to serve us better.
For most, shadow work is accompanied by discomfort initially as we face aspects of ourselves we may not have faced directly before.
In much the same way as a child scared-of-the-dark would feel relief by actually looking under the bed, shadow work shows us that there is no monster lurking in the shadows, but we have to look to find out what’s really there.
Shadow work, facilitated optimally, is a gentle and systematic process of bringing whatever we’ve repressed and suppressed into the light of loving awareness.
Carl Jung said that shadow work is the work of the heart warrior.
Shadow work is actually light work as we move closer to ourselves, begin to accept the unacceptable and love the unlovable.
Shadow work is the process of loving ourselves awake and loving ourselves into wholeness. It’s scary and it’s liberating.
True freedom is an act of courage.
As mysterious and ambiguous as ‘shadow work’ may sound, it’s actually quite straightforward to identify our shadow material once we know where to look and what questions to ask ourselves.
What many people don’t realize is that shadow work is intrinsically linked to inner child work because the shadow material we carry is primarily formed in early childhood through interacting with our caregivers.
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If you’re curious about your own shadow and ready to dive in, one simple way to start is to ask yourself what aspects of yourself were encouraged and celebrated as a child and which aspects were judged, shamed, or shunned.
The encouraged aspects likely became exaggerated and form key aspects of your persona—the person you show the world. The shunned or shamed aspects form shadow material—the things that went ‘underground’ inside you and are repressed. This is one simple way to begin identifying your shadow and to increase awareness around how you show up in your life.
For those of you who’ve already covered the basics and are ready to go deeper, ask yourself what you judge about others, notice what triggers you in your life, and what less-than-optimal patterns are playing out.
These are clues to deeper layers of shadow work you may be ready to address and bring into the light.
