Sunday Story...Me and my shadow

Sunday Story…Me and my shadow

I have a shadow self, several of them to be perfectly honest with you. My shadow lies very near the surface these days; it is not buried at all. I like my shadow; it is not scary or frightening any longer. I enjoy knowing and understanding this part of me that does not always live in the full light of day.

This was not always so. There were many years of my life that I was not aware of my shadow. That the actions and activities I was engaged in were part of some dark and devious parts of my psyche that I was not completely cognizant of. And there were many times parts of my shadow were running my life and I didn’t even know it until I awoke one day and wondered whose life I was living.

We all have a shadow. We all have bits of life that live under the rocks and detritus of our inner landscape. Some of them we buried ourselves. Some of them just got pushed away when they no longer served us and forgotten under some pile of trash in our mind. Often our forgotten hopes and dreams live in these shadows. Along with the parts of us that could make them happen. Sometimes they are the parts that we had to hide from the world to keep them safe. Sometimes they are the parts that we could not bring out due to fear.

I realize some of you may be saying, “Nope not me. No shadow over here. What you see is what you get.” Well…if that is so good for you. However you are a highly unusual individual, to be so completely aware and conscious and fully integrated…drop me a line because I want to spend a bunch of time with you. In my experience, however, (and that is all it is) people who claim not to have shadow are very scary indeed. Somehow they have managed to delude themselves, or hide those parts of their personalities from themselves so well that they can no longer see a shadow. The more light there is the more shadow there is. Congratulations you qualify as a very scary person in my world.

Often we do not realize what our shadow is or where it occurs. Maybe we don’t want to know, after all the shadows can be a bit scary. And turning on the light over there could reveal some things that are starkly unpleasant. Yet if we don’t do this work a couple things will be happening. As a matter of fact you might want to look this short list over and see if you recognize any of these things. If you do you are on the road to realizing just where and how your shadow is manifesting in your life.
• If you find yourself in addiction (drugs, alcohol, food, sex, love, etc) your shadow is in play
• If you are enabling someone else’s addictions, or you are being co-dependent your shadow is operating.
• If you find yourself having the same problem over and over again (jobs, people or more) it may be because your shadow is trying to get out and have you pay attention.
• If you have ever wondered how you ended up in the place where you are your shadow may have been driving the bus of your life before you woke up and took over the wheel.

Your shadow is not bad. Please do not think of your shadow as something you must get rid of or that you must cleanse or shake free of. Your shadow is there to serve you. Your shadow serves as very important foil for the parts of your personality that live more in the light. The light cannot exist without the dark and vice versa. The two of them are tied together like the sun and the moon and the sun loves the moon.

The idea is to understand your shadow and to befriend those places you are not aware of and to re-friend the ones you buried alive all those years ago. We turn the light on and start pulling the boxes out of the corners and opening them up to find out what we stored in them. And then we can start using them. Or at the very least to put them in their proper storage places and labeled to we can get at them when we want them.

You may be wondering how to find your shadow? It really isn’t very hard if you start looking. Every wonder why some people just irritate you? It is more than likely that person is carrying some part in the light that you keep in the shadow. Take a close look at those people and start exploring how you might be like them. Yes you might be like them in some little hidden outpost. Maybe someone you work with is especially challenging and it isn’t really about the work but it is about that person. That person may be dripping some of your shadow out that you really don’t like to face. Like they are arrogant and egotistical and well a royal pain but you are never like this, right? Here is s real zinger…our children often carry our shadows. They come into this world to teach us things about ourselves (and here you thought it was the other way around). The question is are you willing to pay attention and get the lesson or are you going to try to ignore it and hope it will all go away? Because it won’t go away.

The goal is to become ever more integrated; to enlist the shadow as an ally and put it to work for the greater good of your personality.

Of course you can ignore it and wonder why the universe keeps throwing the same drama and trauma in your path. Why your relationships keep showing up the same way with the same sort of problems. Maybe it really isn’t you at all. After all you aren’t the star of your own movie are you? You aren’t the common denominator in all your relationships. You aren’t the one with the drama…it always THEM, THEY are the problem.

Really? I mean really? Think about it. Maybe your shadow selves are having a bit of a joke in your life and you aren’t in on it! Or not. Maybe I am all wet here.

Namaste
John
“Teaching Focus, Inspiring Transformation”
www.martialartsnevada.com

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