You may be wondering, what the heck? Reclaim your Shadow Self? Why would you want to do that? Isn't the Shadow Self a part of you that you don't want? A part of you that is bad and dark and nasty? So why claim it? Why recognize it?
Because it's a part of you and to deny it only makes it surface in another form usually as a mirror in another person that is close to you. Perhaps I better explain what I feel is the shadow self. It's an interesting archetype discovered by Carl Jung. That's how I first heard of it anyway.
The shadow self is an unconscious or unaware area of your mind. It is the repressed, suppressed or unowned qualities of the conscious self. There are both constructive and destructive aspects of a person's shadow self. To own or discover these qualities transforms them and is incredibly healing to ones consciousness.
This process can be quite threatening to some but I would choose to simply see it as an inner transformation to becoming more aware in your everyday life. It brings more light into your life and definitely helps you to find a sense of peace. Personally I found it incredible and it assisted me in my own awakening which is still an ongoing process.
"Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is
embodied in the individual’s conscious life,
the blacker and denser it is.
At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag,
thwarting our most well-meant intentions."
— Dr. Carl G. Jung
How to recognize your shadow self? Well this is how I do it...
If you can be 100% honest with yourself, take a look at all the people in your life, look at your relationships that you've had over your whole life. Now take a deeper look for a moment and do you see a pattern emerging? Do you attract the same kinds of people over and over? Somewhere in there is an aspect of your shadow. I'm not talking about the nice loving people( however they are a lighter side of your shadow), no, I'm talking about the ones that hurt you, that cause pain and grief, the ones that push your buttons and make you feel irrational, rude, emotional, distressed, repulsed, angry, and just plain, old, uncomfortable. Those ones.
What kind of person keeps popping up in your life that has some of these effects on you?
Keep going, I am going somewhere with this I promise...
Make a list of all the feelings and emotions these people bring out in you that really bother or upset you.
Now the hard part. I want you to take responsibility for bringing these people and these experiences into your own life. Yes, you did it to yourself! You have to own this and take responsibility for it. This is part of your shadow that you have yet to transform. Once transformed these things will not bother you, there will be a shift, an inner transformation will occur. It's true and it works, and I speak from personal experience, 100%.
Change your attitude from one of blame to responsibility, and an amazing shift will happen! Unconsciously you did attract it to you in one form or another. This doesn't happen instantly, so be patient with yourself and do it gradually perhaps with each person or relationship on your list. How you feel on the inside does affect your external environment. What is within us will also be outside of us.
Then what I did was I took each emotion I took a long look at myself, and made another list of all the times I unknowingly acted in this way myself! I claimed these actions or emotions as my own. Yuck! It was hard medicine to swallow I'm telling you! But I did it.
After I felt lighter and sort of cleansed. I thought "but how can this do anything to help me? What could it possibly change about the horrid people I was attracting in my life?" And there were a few.
Well, after that work I noticed that these people stopped irritating me as much, they didn't rub me the wrong way so to speak the way they did before. I think it was because I was so aware of how I had been reacting to them in the past and I had changed that. My whole environment changed in a matter of weeks. It was amazing, I felt so free and in charge of myself for a change. It's still ongoing. I never stop paying attention now. Whenever I come across someone I can't stand or they irritate me, I stop and think for a minute, why? What about them really bothers me? And usually I can find some part of me that I dislike that I find familiar in them. Then my defenses lower, I see them in a different light, and they relax and everyone gets along just fine.
Doing this work also breaks the pattern of negative energy being drawn to you, it changes the types of people you attract into your life, it changes your relationships. I always said, so funny, that I never changed but everything around me had changed. But really it was just me. I didn't have to confront the people that bothered me to set things right, I didn't have a battle of wills on my hands anymore, and I didn't have to feel like I was getting ready to go into battle every time I was around certain individuals.
Other examples that you can also catch your shadow coming through when you have a slip of the tongue. You know when you say something silly or rude to someone and then say "just kidding," or "just joking," right after saying it. You did mean it, it was an aspect of your shadow speaking. Or when someone makes a comment about you in regards to your character and you feel defensive after hearing it, or you say, "I'm not at all like that!" That's part of your shadow trying to remain unseen. Another example is in the people you really like and are really attracted to but could not imagine yourself being like. The attributes they possess that you really admire are actually other clues as to what your unconscious side is crying out for you to explore. This is the law of opposites at work. These people are usually totally different than you are, or the opposite.
It is impossible to learn and grow as human beings if we only know one side of ourselves. Why not know as much as we can and evolve. This shadow work has done wonders for me and I will continue doing it on a daily basis. That is why I'm sharing it here. Thanks to all who read it. I hope it works for you as well as it did for me.
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