There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” – C.G. Jung
The more we run, the less we get away.
What are you searching for? Are you chasing the perfect house, the perfect car, the perfect partner, the perfect job, the perfect “something?”
Do you think that something tangible will bring you the feeling of freedom, peace of mind, happiness, or security? When you envision yourself in the future, having attained whatever “that” is for you, how do you feel? My friend – THAT FEELING is actually what you’re chasing.
There’s nothing wrong with setting huge goals, wanting better, and working hard to accomplish your dreams. It becomes a problem if you are only driven by an internal void you’re hoping to fill with possessions or if the work becomes an attempt to escape from something. Examining your internal life is key because the difficult truth is that if you’re not happy right now – internally happy, happy within you and with yourself, you will not be happy once you obtain that car, reach that goal, or marry that person. If you don’t like your life right now, it’s because you need more self-love, not because you need a bigger house.
Self-love becomes evident when you get in touch with your whole self, especially your shadow side. The shadow side represents all the parts of yourself that you don’t particularly like and that you would rather keep nicely tucked away. The parts that you hide from the world. But it’s time to come face to face with these parts. This is the way towards living fully and authentically. Open all the windows and doors of the spaces where you’ve tried to contain these parts quietly. The irony is, these parts have never been quiet, they have always found a way to sneak out and wreak havoc in your life, simply because you haven’t acknowledged them.
You Create Your Own Suffering
You are literally causing all of your own suffering by trying to escape and block parts of yourself that can’t be avoided. I’m talking about your shadow side or you dark side. The parts that embody your shadow side carry immense energy. But remember – this energy is PART OF YOU. This is why you will never truly succeed in blocking or avoiding this part of yourself. On the surface, it may seem like you will have won and perhaps others won’t be the wiser, but the energy of a repressed shadow will always emerge. This is when we see widespread addiction, violence, anger, and any intense behavior that spirals out of control. The negative charge associated with blocking a part of yourself intensifies over time, usually leading to an “explosion,” either internal or external.
We all have self-destructive tendencies. We all experience strong feelings of anger, fear, insecurity, jealousy, sexuality, and anxiety sometimes. When we block our shadow side and all the unwanted emotions that define it, we also block, on a certain level, the feelings of joy, love, connection, and fulfillment. We cannot separate our energy in that way. Our inability to accept and integrate our shadow side also prevents us from experiencing everything that we’re actually longing to experience in life. Blocking our shadow side also allows us to fall victim to our emotions and our tendencies, instead of taking responsibility for them. We know all too well that playing the role of the victim carries with it a certain heaviness. It’s so much better to explore that instead of pretending that it doesn’t exist.
Unless you fully accept all parts of yourself, take full responsibility, and shower yourself with complete self-love, you will always be chasing the proverbial carrot – your proverbial carrot – and you’ll always fall short. You will probably always feel dissatisfied and empty until you begin to open your eyes and realize that you are already everything and that nothing else will ever truly fulfill you like your own self. It’s kind of scary to think about, I know, but it’s the truth. It’s also so liberating.
Things and people can never fulfill the voids within us. We must do this ourselves, through work and acceptance of our whole selves and by taking full and complete responsibility for everything in our lives. Think about all the instances of self-sabotage that you’ve caused and about the events that led up to them. Think about all the things you received and achieved and still felt broken, unfulfilled, angry, or anxious. This is the window into the work you have to do regarding loving yourself.
The Power of Duality
– How do you know truth?
Because you’ve been lied to and felt the pain of deceit.
– How do you know courage?
Because you’ve felt and witnessed the paralyzing effects of fear.
– How do you know motivation?
Because you’re succumbed to laziness and idleness.
– How do you know goodness?
Because you’ve hurt others and others have hurt you.
– How do you know joy?
Because you’ve felt the crushing force of despair and sadness.
This is the power and beauty of duality. It’s inescapable, you can’t run from it. Yet we resist and run from the duality within us; from our shadow side. We do everything we can in order NOT to face it. We do not easily open up about all the negative things we have thought, said, and done. When we converse with others, we avoid sharing the messy parts of ourselves. We try to paint ourselves in a positive and uplifting light. We all do this. However, there is immense value in exploring and befriending our shadow. When we begin to look at our shadow side as a source of energy, creativity, and authenticity, it becomes easier to integrate it into our lives. And this, my friend, is the ultimate goal. Integrating your shadow side will give you immense power and awareness and allow you to live a truly authentic and whole life.
“It’s only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are without any self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events by which the path to success may be recognized.” – I. Ching
Every time you see an athlete “pumping himself up” before a game shouting, swearing, and jumping around aggressively, he is tapping into his shadow side. When you hear about a public speaker shouting or throwing a wet towel or an unbreakable object on the ground before her talk as a motivational tactic, she is tapping into her shadow side. Every time you tap into the awareness that the thing that bothers you most about another person is the thing that you’re actually working on within yourself, you’re acknowledging your shadow side. The examples are abundant, my friend.
You are a beautiful and powerful being. You also have a dark side. A side that haunts you and wants to be known, but you’re scared to show it. You’re scared to accept it and reveal it, because in accepting it, maybe you feel like you’ll become it. The irony here is that you are already it, it has always been a part of you and it always will. Pretending that it doesn’t exist or running away from it just perpetuates your pain of wanting it to go away.
Integrating Your Shadow Side
By doing the work to tap into your shadow side, you will transform your own life as well as the lives of others. You will understand the struggle of others much more clearly and you will quit projecting your own feelings upon others. You will be able to relate better and form deeper connections. No one is all perfect, everyone has done something in their past that they have regretted. That’s the truth, but we hide those parts away because we are so scared of being disliked, judged, and unloved. We grow intensely uncomfortable at the thought of people judging us so we only unveil the parts of ourselves that we know they’ll love and admire, while neatly hiding away all the messy parts. What are we so afraid of?
Refusing to acknowledge and integrate our shadow side makes us vulnerable to self-sabotage and at risk of becoming under siege of our shadow as it takes over our interactions, our goals, and our lives. Awareness, my friend, is your weapon against everything. However, this weapon is not loaded with bullets of judgment and righteousness; instead it fires love, compassion, and acceptance. We don’t fight to “defeat” our shadow side; we work to integrate it into our everyday lives. And we do this by intentionally practicing self-love.
Self-Love
True self-love does not mean chasing material things to fill voids within us. You are only temporarily mesmerized by the shiny new object or person, and then you find yourself craving more. When that moment fades (and it will), you are again left with… Yourself. You are the common denominator in everything you do. So do you love yourself? Do you love being with yourself?
What would your life look like if you loved all parts of yourself? How would you move through the world? What would you get rid of? What would you want more of? What is stopping you from fully expressing self-love?
The beginning is always the hardest because in order to work on loving parts of ourselves we don’t like or accept, we must come face to face with them first. This is difficult but we must be able to sit with everything that comes up. The most interesting thing is that you probably already know what your shadow side is all about, you know exactly what you block, avoid, and ignore. The next step is allowing these parts to surface and sitting with them.
Start spending 20 uninterrupted minutes every day sitting in silence. Sit by yourself. Sit and allow any and all thoughts to enter your mind without blocking or placating. Pay attention to the thoughts. Pay attention to the feelings they bring up. Pay attention to your automatic tendencies to block or justify or ignore when certain thoughts come up. In this process, you will learn a lot about your shadow side as well as your current relationship with it. This is a process of knocking on your soul’s door and accepting whatever opens the door. I want you to imagine that you’re inviting whatever opened the door outside with you and you’re going for walk with it. Be scared and do it anyway. Be nervous and walk alongside it. Think, ponder, and accept. It’s you. It’s part of you. If it came out, it’s part of you.
“What you resist, persists.” – C.G. Jung
Silence is invaluable to our awareness and growth. It’s boundless and raw and it reveals the truth. Silence exposes everything we try to hide through talking, music, drinking, partying, etc. Everything we do to disengage ourselves from facing the truth about our shadow side is noise. We can always count on noise when things get too difficult and when the truth becomes too hard to bear. Noise is the perfect band-aid. Band-aids don’t stop gushing wounds, however. Band-aids don’t stop the pain from overflowing. Stop using band-aids to cover up the broken promises, the deceit, or whatever you did to cause another person to feel pain. Admit when you mess up; don’t allow your pride to win. Your pride is your shadow side and if you haven’t explored or accepted that part of yourself, you’ll continuously feel the need to lean on pride when you mess up.
Let me remind you that you have a gift. You can do something amazingly well that others struggle with. Something comes easy for you that others have to work hard to do! You do beautiful things every day. You help others. You uplift them. You take care of people. You are light and you are energy. I want you to remember that by befriending your shadow side, you don’t let the dark parts define you, you simply gain a deeper understand into yourself and become so much more aware. You begin taking full responsibility for your life. When you are able to integrate the parts that you don’t like with all the parts you love, you begin to operate from your whole self, and you strip away the fear, the deception, and the excuses. You connect and you love more fully. You pursue your goals with passion and you start to truly believe that you deserve everything that you want. You set goals to defy your own odds and to break your self-imposed limitations. You start doing things because you want to, not to prove anyone wrong!
Living wholly allows you to be the most authentic and the most true to yourself. And by living this way, you allow others to do the same.
I leave you with this declaration for you to use on your journey:
I AM LIVING AUTHENTICALLY AND WHOLLY. I am love and I am light. I accept all parts of myself and welcome the integration of my shadow side with the sides that I freely show to the world. I choose to live fully and as my whole self. I am working every day to welcome and accept my shadow side.
Thanks for reading! Let me know how you’re integrating your shadow side to live your whole self.
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