Shadows

The shadows… That part of us that we don’t even want to accept, acknowledge, face, confront, observe, at least admit it is there! Be optimistic! Be positive! Stay strong! Don’t give up! Be nice!

We hear these things every day, with every commercial that we watch, with every training that we attend, all the self-development courses, classes, articles, posts, headers, flyers, they are literally everywhere! And still, none of them treats the shadows.

The shadow is that part of us that we are usually ashamed of having, bearing and living with. We would like it to go away, just disappear, leave us alone so that we can live a long, prosperous and happy life. But this is wrong. You can never be happy if you are not complete, and you are not complete until you don’t look your shadows in the eyes. These didn’t just come up from nowhere, were not stuck to us backs by others, didn’t attack and jump on us in the middle of the street! No! These are ours! We helped them grow each time we felt misjudged, mistreated, each time we felt fury, anger, disappointment, and all the other so called ‘negative’ feelings.

Up to some age, it is normal for us to feel all these low feelings, and guess what? It is normal for them to come and go for longer or shorter periods in time, to our minds, bodies and souls for the rest of our lives. We are not perfect, therefor nor are our feelings. But dismissing them, hating them, judging them is wrong, brings no benefit and in the end, we hate, judge and do wrong only to ourselves. Because these feelings, these shadows, are part of us, part of what we experienced as suffering. They are part of our journey, of the experience on Earth and the means by which at one point we thought we could protect ourselves from others or from situations that we did not know how to handle. You see, whenever we find a situation or a person that we don’t understand, we don’t know how to work with, we don’t understand it’s mechanism, we label it as ‘threat’, therefor we recognize danger in that specific situation and we act accordingly, doing our best to keep us alive! Yes, all fear comes from the necessity to keep ourselves alive, so from the conservation instinct that pretty much helped us get to today’s history. But fear is something that deserves a different chapter, as it is a whole different complex subject.

So, coming back to the shadows, we should understand that we own them, they are not who we are, they don’t define us. We own them! That means that we are responsible for what we do with them, how we treat them, and, why not? use them. It is a mistake to be ashamed of them, it’s like being ashamed of having two hands, or blue eyes, or… anything else that is part of you. Fighting them is a battle lost from the beginning, as fighting with yourself brings only negative influences in your life and is a time and energy consumer. Feeling the burden that they bring in our lives, admitting we should be hit, mocked on, marginalized, outcast, punished for having them is another mistake. That only leads us to feel like being the victim of our own shadows and to minimizing the importance of our actions and decisions.

In this case, what can we do with them? How should they be treated? Should we be proud of them? Indulge in them?

Proud, yes! Indulge, no! Because as soon as we feel ashamed about something, we lose our personal power and we give it to others or to the circumstances, so yes, we should be proud of them! As we should be of our entire self. But not indulge, bot give into them or make them our sole purpose in life. It’s better to face them, acknowledge them, admit them, put them under the spotlight, observe them. See where they are coming from, why we started having them in the first place, what is their purpose in our life? And while admitting we have them, there is no weak spot where others can try to hit us.

As I foresee there will be some questions and possibly some explanation needed, I will talk about one of my shadows, that I just got to accept and actually be proud of, instead of feeling guilty that I have. I believe I should also explain, that being proud of the shadows, as to of any other things that we have gone through or own, means that we acknowledge its presence, we chose not to fight with it, but better observe, understand its roots and be aware of it so that it can’t ever take us by surprise. The pride that I am mentioning has nothing to do with the EGO pride, doesn’t mean we are going to be delighted each time we use our shadow to harm someone or something else. That is EGO stuff, and that also deserve a whole, complete, different chapter.

To give my example, through most of the years of my life, I was told I was messy, not organized, and misplaced a lot of stuff. I even misplaced my ID, forgot my phone on the restaurant table, and so on. I felt bad about it, ashamed, down, broken and not compliant with what the society expected me to be and so alone in this world. I thought I was the only messy one, and the messiest that could ever exist on Earth. And I always tried to organize my stuff, put them in order, fight with myself not to forget things that other people told me I should remember! But my brain just got stuck. Something was not OK! I felt like I was a car running normally on gas, but everyone else expected me to run on water! There was a huge difference in my perception, in what I felt right for myself, and what the others demanded for me and from me. I also didn’t want to admit it, I wanted to run away from myself, from that awful person that just couldn’t remember important tasks assigned by family members, the right place for all the stuff in the house, that would always have her desk looking as Big Bang just hit it in a flow of chaos.

And then, one day… I stopped. I started thinking about myself and my actions. I realized I am a messy person, I don’t have a sharp and organized desk, I do forget what doesn’t seem important or significant enough to me. This is who I am! This is one of my shadows! This is part of me. It has an origin, chaos inspires me. When there are no rules in how I have to organize my space, I can accidentally, or purposely, find new ways of doing things, new ideas for future plans, I can paint, I see a different perspective. When I forget something, people should not take it personally, my mind is busy thinking of new unthought things. There’s nothing personal in not remembering to buy bread! Also, nobody will die or be harmed because of it. There embracing of this one particular, shadow, made peace between my mind and my soul, brought a lot of comfort in my life, and, amazingly, as my mind is more relaxed now, I can remember more and also organize entire courses, schedules, tasks for myself and for others.

The greater the light, the bigger the shadow. The more intense the light, the darker the shadow behind it. And this is only until the light grows so big that it embraces and dissolves any shadow there ever existed.