The drama of our shadow work

As we grow up, it is natural that we concentrate and develop our strengths, what we are good at, and that we will spend less time on our weaknesses, however we can not ignore them forever or we will always have an Achilles heel that defeats us in the end. With age the s-curve of returns from single focus development flattens and if we want to grow further we have to turn back to our weakness as they are the only things holding us back, we might have a great job but poor relationships because we never learnt those skills, there is a natural point of reflection that occurs to all of us. Whether we explore ourselves through self-development with or without meditation (which one of the best tools for self-knowledge), it is normal that as we broaden the light of our awareness the shadows of our past come into sharper contrast, our stable attention is a powerful magic torch that allows us to focus on our actions and the thoughts that accompany us through life in the current moment, however we do not exist just in present and shadow work leads us back into our past.

Our minds are constantly linking what is happening with everything that has happened to us, and our predictive visualisation of what is going to occur in the future depending on our current actions and life situation, in to a binding moment of consciousness that is our sense of self. However as our light of stable attention increases in brightness, our broad awareness grows in balance with it and that light spreads out into the corners of our mind that is the landscape of our current moment, we start to see the links between how we are feeling and our past experiences (and traumas, we all have them) that shape our current personality and way of being in the world.

They were hidden before in the general darkness of everything that is not what is happening now, that focus was necessary, paying attention to the current moment is good and useful, especially when it is what is actually happening rather than your thoughts about this moment. That is the first shift that happens with mediation or living more mindfully, you take the light away from your thoughts and emotional reaction, you shine your attention on the physical senses, on what you see, hear, feel (both internally and touch), so that you can pay attention all the information at your fingertips. When that light is focused instead, the routine thoughts that you had are still there in the back of your mind, you are just not paying attention any more, but when they do break through to your consciousness, they become stronger because of the contrast between the light of your attention and the shadows of your past.

This can feel intense as those thoughts have never had such clarity before, previously you were lost in the middle of your ordinary thoughts about lunch, tiredness, the work you need to do, the message you need to send, the important and the trivial. When the mind is spinning and jumping from one topic to the next, there is not room to give one thought much weight or attention, but when the ride stops turning, that is when you notice how big some thoughts can be. The little thoughts can be dealt with and need to be, lunch? We have a plan for that, work, I will pay full attention to it when I do it and none whilst I am not (so that the sub-conscious can do the heavy lifting until then, it can not do it's thing if you are consciously thinking about it, so the best action for work is to pay it no attention whilst you are not working on it), the little jobs you do when you think about them so that you do not make it into two jobs, the job itself and the the job of remembering to do it later. These little thoughts need to be cleaned up and dealt with to give you room to deal with real issues.

These routine thoughts might sound like trivia compare to the big job of dealing with your shadow side, the under developed, immature sides of your personality and past, however most of your thoughts are trivia and repetitive, you have them everyday on a re-occurring loop, when was the last time you had an original thought (not original to humanity even just to you), they are memorable for the very reason that they are rare. There are systems for dealing with these repetitive thoughts, that is part of what stoicism is about, am I in control of this? Is a question that divides thoughts into things you can deal with and those that are out of your control and therefore not worthwhile worrying about or planning for, a meteorites might hit the world but there is nothing you can do about it and living in fear of it does not help anything. It becomes a matter of finding resolution for thoughts that satisfy the underlying fears of the mind, if something keeps bothering you, deal with it, if you are worried about the tires on your car, you take it to a garage and have them checked, then you stop worrying and those thoughts disappear.

Not all thoughts are so easy to deal with, and once you have deal with the easy ones, the hard thoughts and feeling are the only ones that you have left, and they tend to be the ones that also contain an emotional tone, that are full of fear, which is almost always the driver of concern that the mind have about them. If you forget to return a library book, you might not like the fine but you could accept it as a lesson not to do it again, or you can see it as a sign of how you are a useless and stupid human, there is clearly a healthier response, but imagine if it was not late instead there was a computer error and you were fined unfairly, the rational response is to pay the pound fine anyway and get on with your life, I am not sure I could, I would have to at least complain in real time, and there is certainly an argument to be had about having boundaries but it is a pound at the end of the day. I would pay a pound just not to get annoy, not to be anger for the next hour (day, week?), not to be anger on behalf of those who would not complain or would be confused and pay anyway (which is a whole good knight syndrome thing).

We are complex being with multiple motivations and there are hard decision to make in life, and more information can help, but when all you are left with is hard decisions, life can become tiring and you can start missing just worrying about what you are having for lunch. It is not surprising that people turn away from the work of dealing with this shadow side, turn back to a less illuminated life, but there is a way through this pain, it is not easy but it is simple, you stop holding onto thoughts, you let them flow by letting things go by letting them be. You have not got to fight every windmill that emerges from the shadow, you do not have to turn over every thoughts in your mind, you can just let them be and be as aware of them as you are a sunset. You do not take sunsets personally, you appreciate and observe them, then they are gone, you do not hold on to them, you are not annoyed that they only happen once a day, you let them be exactly what they are, you let them be.

Most of shadow work is finding out what your shadows are, recognising them in the first place, in naming your demons you have power over them, ohh, there is trauma, owh, there is abandonment, pow, there is rejection. It is only when you have judgement about your demon that you get your power back, if you think that you deserve your demons you will keep them, if you think it is your fate, luck, a part of your personality or the price you pay for creativity, you make them part of you and how can you get rid of a part of you, you have to live with it. That is not to say that the shadows do not then need dealing with, that there are no actions to take at all, the shadows can inform of a weakness that needs addressing, no one is perfect, but you can take that knowledge and use it, you can build boundaries, confidence in your abilities, gain skills. A fear of public speaking is different from recognising that you lack the skill of public speaking, lacking a skill is not the same as a lacking self-worth, if you do not know how to drive that does not make you stupid, it just means you have not had any lessons in driving.

When you take the subject of your fears out of the shadows, you are left with a solvable problem, whether it is worth your time to deal with that problem is merely an allocation of resources issue. You might have felt shame at not being able to sing as a child, you can carry that shame or leave it behind, whether you take singing lessons, watch a teaching video or devote your whole life to singing does not matter, that shame will remain unless you let it go, on the other hand without the shame, it then becomes an issue of whether you want that skill or you are quite happy murdering a pop song on karaoke, you do not have to be good at everything, you can even enjoy singing badly in the kitchen (it is allowed and it is joyful to everyone except my neighbours). What matter is your relationship changes with the problem, it is not your problems, it is just a problem, you reframe and move past it, and left behind the guilt, shame and fear.

That is the joy and great reward of shadow work, with every shadow gone, you move further into the light of just being, you leave the weight of your karma behind, that is what karma is, the weight of the shadows dragging yourself inwards and backwards so that you do not get to live with the light. There is only light in the current moment, our regrets, shame and fears take us out of the moment, out of our presence with a state of grace, ease and joy, it only by letting our shadow be that we can turn back towards that source of light. We can not be aware of joy in our heart, if our awareness is dominated by these shadows, joy is a candal in the corner, ever present but we have to look for it in a sea of darkness, that is the drama that we all finally face and there are no happy endings, only happy beings.