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Lol this really sounds like a crappy reddit thread name doesn't it?
Know Thyself, this is a motto for many of the practices/practictioners and there definitely is a reason to be so. To understand ones self is a most noble work, and many practitioners just repress this side to us.
I am spesifically asking for the ones that went all the way to integration of shadow here, how did you accomplish this? What did change for you after? Are you complete? Broken? Scarred? Moved beyond good and evil? I would be greatful to know your experience.
It's actually different for everyone
It's healing of part of you that you have been avoiding to face
Including your deepest fears traumas
Before the shadow work you don't realize that most of the times
All of those events were have been influencing and controlling many aspects of your personality
I can tell what it's feels like after the work is finished
You feel less trapped and more free from behavioral patterns its just a few example
Before that you don't even think of it for a second that you are acting on autopilot based on your false programs and traumas
Lol this really sounds like a crappy reddit thread name doesn't it?
Know Thyself, this is a motto for many of the practices/practictioners and there definitely is a reason to be so. To understand ones self is a most noble work, and many practitioners just repress this side to us.
I am spesifically asking for the ones that went all the way to integration of shadow here, how did you accomplish this? What did change for you after? Are you complete? Broken? Scarred? Moved beyond good and evil? I would be greatful to know your experience.
There used to be a saying in old time Texas: "Never talk about a woman you have been with, or a man you have killed." I'd be open to expanding the saying to include shadow work. But then my shadow is rather un-integrated yet. (Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now everyone can say "Aha! Xeno is anti-integration!")
My point here is that the only guy worth listening to on this score is one who has successfully integrated his shadow. Which is hard to demonstrate in an anonymous online forum. Posters say the damndest things, you know.
In Freud times, people had massive chunks of their personality that they suppressed - that's much less the case now. There ARE 'unthinkable' thoughts (for example, a mother who realises she doesn't love her kids and regrets having them" may well completely suppress that thought, but she's unlikely to suppress, for example, all her sexual urges and every unkind thought she's ever had)
The vast, vast majority of shadow-work is unglamorous, unsexy, everyday brick-by-brick stuff, and as a result it doesn't get much attention within magic. It is what I would consider the bread-and-butter of being a mature adult - people who don't do it are kind of visibly assholes or dysfunctional
Like: you get into an argument with someone. Afterwards, you think: "was I actually in the right then, or did I get weird and defensive for some reason unrelated to the topic at hand?" That's shadow work
and re: the previous paragraph, I'm sure you know people who NEVER consider they might have been wrong or irrational in an argument they just had. Emotional maturity is not necessarily the norm. But it doesn't require a grand unearthing of the psyche, just daily humility and introspection.
I have a tonne of character flaws that I need to work on, of course, but I don't have a secret shadow-self that needs to be integrated.
When I was in my early 20s I was much less aware of my character flaws and didn't believe I should have to work on them. But the process of getting from there was just part of life. You hurt someone, you feel bad, you try to figure what in your brain caused you to hurt them, so you don't do it again. (jJust going "I will not do that again" is not shadow work, and also will probably fail. It's the figuring out underlying causes that's shadow work, and also prevents you repeating the behaviour)
You do some shady shit, it blows up in your face, and you go "man I hated those consequences! What structures do I need in place so I don't have to resort to shady shit in future?"
Someone hurts you, and you think "fuck, I do that exact thing to other people, and I hated being on the receiving end, insert SPIRAL OF SHAME as you recall all the times you did it to other people." (the shadow work is where you tolerate the searing shame in order to accept the reality of your past and make amends. Not doing shadow work here is where you feel a spiral of shame, cannot face it, and so you develop some rationale for why it was different when you did it.)
Repeat x100 for a couple of decades
Where a shadow grows is if you cannot tolerate feeling shame, so every time you feel it, you construct some teetering cognitive edifice to protect your psyche from it. That's just getting yourself into shadow-debt - at some point you'll have to deconstruct the protective edifices and face the shame.
If you can face shame each time it appears, then no shadow develops. (Throughout my life, if I felt ashamed of something, my impulse was always to defuse it by immediately telling someone else. So I don't have any deep dark secrets - I have things I regret ofc, but I'm not worried someone will find out about them, because everyone who matters in my life already knows them, so they don't have power over me)
So, if by "integrated shadow", you mean being aware of your flaws and maladaptive behaviours, and being able to work at improving them without triggering a shame spiral every time, then I would say I've integrated my shadow (although as above, I've done this piece by piece throughout my life, rather than having a giant built-up shadow golem to deal with). I don't, for example, do self-sabotaging things and then go "what the hell is wrong with me, why did I do that??"
If I sabotage myself, I do it out in the open in full daylight, and my reasons aren't mysterious to me.
This isn't the norm, but it's not that rare either, it's not like achieving enlightenment or something.
(If you mean "no longer has character flaws" then haha no)
As most people understand it, the Shadow may be an outdated and very static Jungian concept originating from the early days of psychoanalysis when therapists were still firmly convinced that 'working through' you childhood traumas (or even more cruelly 'reliving' them) was the answer. I used to think so, too, now I'm more of the opinion that 'integrating the Shadow' as well similiar spiritual methods are nothing but an attempt to conquer the irrational by means of the rational. I mean, neat idea - just integrate the Shadow and you're whole (or 'clear', in Scientologist jargon), no dark corners left, right? However, this notion presupposes that gaining control over the irrational in oneself by means of reason alone is possible, which I strongly doubt.
I think that all endeavors involving healing past traumas, coming to terms with obsessions, character flaws, addictions, weaknesses and so on are all brave and worthy pursuits but we will never plumb the murkiest layers of our mind, let alone bring them to light - thats a NewAgey pipedream, in my mind. I say this because of some workshop experiences I had where we went deep into the subconscious. I suddenly found myself at the bottom of a swamp and there was just black mud, no 'repressed' memories or images from the past, just amorphous dark gunk. Yes, I could have brought a handful of that gunk to the surface where it would have presumably disintegrated but there would still be an enourmous amount of black mud down there; I could spend my whole repeating that manouvre and all I would have is that dark stuff yielding no meaning whatsoever; they were just some sort of excretion, nothing more.
It sure is good to know oneself deeply but there is a limit to what's knowable, I'd say, and we have to accept that we will never be a 100% squeaky 'clean'. And don't talk to me about 'harnessing' or 'unleashing' the powers of your subconscious, or 'tapping' into them - if the subconscious doesn't want to play ball, you're screwed.
One more thing: analogies and metaphors don't prove anything, they can only ever be illustrations of something otherwise unfathomable. So when somebody says, "Just follow your heart!", it may very well mean paying close attention to what is going on in the swamps of your subconscious (in itself a component of a purely allegorical model). Which goes against all received spiritual wisdom because the heart chakra is oh-so-noble and loving while the yucky swamp stuff belongs to simpleton Muladdhara down there. Or the whole 'inner plane lasagna' - why 'plane'? Something two-dimensional like a for realms which physics doesn't even grasp (and 'dimension' is probably only a crude approximation that will be hoplessly outdated in a hundred years' time)? And so it is with the Shadow - it's just a metaphor for something that probably isn't a distinct entity at all but all-pervasive or only exists when we conceptualise it (or something else entirely). Doing Shadow work is not futile, I'd say, just more complicated than we might think.
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To answer your question as to the method - I used to be obsessive journaller, now it's pathworking when I can find the time; keeping a journal is still highly advisable, I'd say. It's more a recordf of psychonautic voyages than anything systematic. What I find down there (or somewhere at least) is not the absolute truth but it yields some meaningful experiences that may be useful later on. I still haven't found the Shadow, some abysses here and there but these are just metaphors, My 'dark side'? Dark stuff crops up in all kinds of unexpected places. 'Whisps of dark clouds' is probably most apposite... together with the black gunk, of course.
Along the lines of what Pixel said, I don't think shadow work can ever be "done". Your self constantly grows and evolves with experience, creating new aspects of the shadow requiring regular integration. However, one can develop a pretty neat bag of tools to last a lifetime, which makes the job a lot less of a chore, easy to maintain.
I surprised myself these last few years in such a regard. I started trying to communicate more with my body. Regular body scan meditations, relaxation exercises focussed on particular muscles, paying attention to physical manifestations of emotions like stress or elation, and asking it what it wants in terms of things like sleep, food, etc. in a given moment - often in these cases addressing it as a separate entity from myself. These exercises snowballed into a keen awareness of emotional states and their underlying causes. While unintentional, it appears to have improved the channel of communication between my subconscious and ordinary self. I have never known myself so well before!
I suspect that any technique involved with relating to the subconscious or body signals will strengthen one's ability to do shadow work. As with so many things in life, pick one and get to it.
Fucking hell you guys, one excellent response after another, I am kinda worried my response is gonna look silly in comparison but whatever
I came from an Islamic background, where you do turn your face away from lots of things about yourself. Thats haram! Walk away now or you will be an infidel and burn in Jahannam for eternity!
After I have quit, overtime, I started to break some taboos I would NEVER EVER even cross my mind as possible. Wasn't easy to do this. You just don't bumrush out of your religious programming that has been integrated right away from your childhood. Over time, I grew to love them even. I suppose I indeed had that shadow and did face it.
But as you guys pointed out, this is not a one and done deal. It was naive of me to think so. Also a good point that you can only dig so much and after a point it won't even make sense to.
One last question,
Recently I have re-done the sould mirror excersise from Initiation Into Hermetics. The dark mirror qualities outnumbered the light one 4-to-1. Would I be wrong to assume this is good for shadow work? I am not planning to associate them with elements, if you ponder hard enough you could associate them with any one of them. This doesn't seem to reach that "unconcious" level so to speak but as long as there is character change, it would be nice.
I struggle daily with past Christian Baptist and Pentecostal programming. I still like the Anglican, Catholic and Presbyterian churches, but magic/occult and Christianity don't jive well.
I'm trying to live the values Christ represented - truth (even self truth), kindness, compassion, love.
As far as my therapy goes, I've laid out my life and daily struggles, dream analysis as relates to my life and feelings.
Next week tackling fears and hopefully touch on trauma work.
That to me .. with my dreams representing my subconscious and unconscious ... holding me accountable to my acts in life ... Is to me shadow work.
My opposite self would likely be a perverted Hannibal Lector.
The Bardon Mirror exercise would be a good touch. I was a year ago analyzing negative natal qualities and the Bardon Mirror is one way to transform vices to virtues. You have to see the good qualities and enhance those at the same time. My take.
I think the soul mirror exercise is very good for shadow work, with only caveat being not limiting the work to magical methods (eg consciously exhaling "poor money management" but ALSO googling "how to do a budget" or whatever)
I don't actually believe your negative traits are 4:1 so I'd add "I take my positive qualities for granted" "easier to see negative traits than positive ones" to your black mirror haha
(What is common: people think "this is positive thing is hard for me, but I still do it" so that goes on the white mirror. When there's a positive trait that comes easily to them, they don't give themselves any credit for it.
For eg: I love reading books, I read very quickly, I rarely have longer than a day or two to finish a book. Once someone complimented me on this - "I respect that so much, I wish I read more". Now this person struggles to pay attention to books, so they I imagined I struggle too, but power through, and they were giving me credit for my discipline. I did NOT give myself credit because it doesn't take discipline and I didn't think I should get credit for "doing a fun that thing that I enjoy".
But objectively: is it a strength to read books quickly and easily? Of course if it is. If I'm facing a challenge ( say, "poor money management") the fact that I can read a book on good money management within a day will make it easier to improve that area of my life. It doesn't SOLVE the poor money management problem, but it makes one part of it easier, so it's a strength, so it goes on my white soul mirror.
I bet if you think less in terms of "traits that make me a good person" and more "strengths that I can use when trying to address my flaws" you will think of more. (Strengths typically DO come easily in a way that you take for granted - that's why they're strengths).
Also if you've listed bad habits, I bet you have good habits that you didn't list, because they're just how you live your life. If someone doesn't shower often enough, and their hair is always greasy, they'd put on that on the black mirror. But most people wouldn't put "I shower regularly, hair always clean" on their white mirror.
Further, it's easy to see the problems a bad habit causes. So "procrastination" might be listed multiple times as "pay bills late" "hand in work late" "didn't get around to replying to my sad friend" etc etc. But you take for granted the ways your good habits help you, so even if you recognise them, they probably only get one listing
I think it's very useful to have your strengths listed on your white mirror because they're tools you can lean on for shadow work
I don't think it's so helpful to list all your positive habits ("shower regularly"), but it is good to be aware that having more negative things listed than positive isn't necessarily an accurate reflection.
(If "low self esteem" is on your black mirror, however, it could be worth listing the positive habits as a way of working on that - not taking for granted what you're doing well at. If someone would write not doing it on their black mirror, then you doing it is a positive trait)
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Re: non magical methods for addressing negative traits - so there's the Bardon magical techniques (exhaling poor money management), then there's practical steps (learning how to do a budget)
And then there's what I would typically call "shadow work", trying to analyse what underlying beliefs and issues might be relevant.
For example, I used to believe that doing a budget basically meant you were a square who should go work in a bank, and that artists and poets don't do stuff like budgets or setting routines. So I wasn't just bad at it, I had an unconscious resistance to doing it because I thought it would condemn me to a life of mediocrity.
Well, no wonder you struggle to do something if you believe the consequences are a life of mediocrity! Who wouldn't want to avoid that?
Saying that belief out loud, you can immediately see it's absurd, but when it's subconscious, you just feel resistant without knowing why, "budgets are just hard for me!"
(Not getting into my younger-self's false belief that you couldn't be an artist and also work at a bank.)
So learning that, maybe I could have gone and spoken to an artist friend (who would immediately tell me that all successful artists take budgeting very seriously), for example. And then googled "money management for artists".
Without shadow work "go speak to an artist" would not have been an obvious method for helping with poor money management. But it's actually quite a practical step once you know the underlying belief
Sometimes self analysis works to uncover the belief, and when it doesn't, there is a somatic technique that, like Ancient, I've found very effective (feeling into your body), I will upload a book on that later.
What happens if you go "when I think about money management, I feel a tight feeling in my stomach" and then you dialogue with that physical feeling.
But I think I find it very helpful because more logical analysis had already done an enormous amount of good, and so I'd reached the end of what it could do. Rather than because logical analysis wasn't helpful in the first place. Both methods are good and have lessons.
And, importantly, isn't a good thing that I have a part of me that's trying to protect me from a life of mediocrity? What a kind thing for it to do!
This part is not well educated on what would lead to a life of mediocrity, but it has very good intentions and is trying to have my back. So, I can say thanks to that part of me, instead of, say, calling it an idiot and a snob. Just be nice to it and give it the education it needs to do it's job better ("actually, a lack of discipline is far more likely to lead to a life of mediocrity, because I won't be able to follow through on any beautiful ideas and plans. Can you help me with that instead?"
(This idea above is part of IFS therapy, the idea that all your parts are trying to help but incompetent, rather than being evil saboteurs living inside your head)
Could you give a brief description of the Soul Mirror exercise? I've only gleaned an idea of what it involves from Google and I don't feel like digging through that tome to find it
My initial reaction is that it sounds more like an alchemical exercise than shadow work, although I might be splitting hairs. Shadow work is most about how you feel about what you do. From what I gather regarding the soul mirror you're supposed to change the dark qualities into light? Shadow work would be more along the lines of "Why do I feel that I need to change this trait? How did this trait develop?". Such questions will likely come up naturally during the process, but you can focus on it as much or as little as you like.
Sounds to me like it has the potential to be good for shadow work. Just make sure you're seeing past the conditioning to what is actually at play. Like this:
Saying that belief out loud, you can immediately see it's absurd, but when it's subconscious, you just feel resistant without knowing why, "budgets are just hard for me!"
And remember that integrating a shadow doesn't always mean eliminating or transforming a "bad" or "negative" trait. Sometimes it means accepting it. An example I can give of this is with anger.
I was lucky enough to grow up in a very calm, very peaceful household. This was due to two very meek parents who kept a tight rein on their emotions and always spoke positively. I used to think their thoughts were always positive too, because I never saw the negative make it through that rose-colored filter.
Through my teens and early adulthood I was very hard on myself for feeling frustrated or angry with other people, and as a result when I took a leadership position in the workplace I had a tough time dealing with stress; rather than use the anger I was feeling I'd pick up slack myself and go home tired and annoyed, give workers chances again and again when discipline was better suited...in general I was lacking a force of character that the environment needed to function correctly. That force was within me, but I was repressing it, even trying to wrestle it into something more pacified, which I felt was suitable.
It took me a year or so to recognize this, and another to decide to do something about it. I began admitting to myself when I was pissed off, then allowing it to show in my posture and tone of voice. I began choosing confrontational routes of resolution in non-important scenarios in order to practice expressing that emotion without overdoing it or becoming anxious.
When I brought these skills into the workplace it responded instantly. I gained respect where I once thought it would be lost. Day-to-day operations started flowing a little more smoothly as tasks were completed properly and on time and I still had energy left at the end of the day - so much of it that had previously gone into managing that emotion was then available for me to use elsewhere.
It's just a fancy name for an inventory of your strengths and weaknesses, and parts of your life that are going well vs you're struggling with (taken over time, like you keep a diary, not just thinking of everything all at once). It's not shadow work in itself, but OP had just done it and asked if it would be helpful for shadow work
I think it will be, it's a good starting place.
(In its original form it also had an aspect of "elemental balancing" - that's just like, you might notice a pattern like "a lot of problems in my life come from jumping to conclusions and getting mad about them rather than checking if I have the story right" (fire) or "looking at this list, I can see that a lot of my problems come from overthinking and predicting negative outcomes that never actually happen (too much air")
Taking the element part out, it's looking at a list of your struggles all in one place, so you can see if there's common threads or underlying patterns
The soul mirror is not my personal preferred paradigm, but it's not useless, and since OP has already done some work there, I think it's better to start where they are, rather than them researching and finding a new, optimal paradigm - that would end up just being procrastination/avoidance I suspect
The important thing is not to let oneself get stymied, endlessly tearing oneself up because of (perceived) character flaws and ending up in a loop of self-reflection driven by guilt and shame (the traditional Abrahamic religion approach, or at least that's how it was for me - and still is for the majority of people).
Pop psychology says that you first have to become aware of your dark side and acknowledge it without judging, which is not the worst initial approach to choose. Contrary to what @pixel_fortune said, the elemental grouping of one's personality traits according to the soul mirror method has been the most helpful part of the whole thing for me. When contemplating them, I don't think in terms of 'good/bad', more in terms of 'deficient/normal/excessive'; for example, I'd say that meticulousness is a useful earth quality to have but not to the point of being anally retentive and suffering from OCD, while being sloppy and messy in one's habits is a sign of lacking earth energy in that particular field.
Shadow work is prone to degenerate in an endless game of whack-a-mole where you have successfully dealt with an issue (or at least think you have), only to have three more crop up in different places. I tend to overanalyse things (another earth trait?), so currently my own approach is to strenghten certain elements as a whole instead of tackling specific issues, thus bypassing reason and the intellect (air?) and shooting for a 'blanket solution' instead, so to speak.
Mind you, this highly unspecific 'blanket' approach comes after years and decades of futile good resolutions. Frankly I've had enough of reason and logic when it comes to shadow work because for me, it's no good to make ambitious plans for self-improvement that are constantly sabotaged by contrary gut feelings. Let's see where this kind of elemtal work takes me before I switch on my mental analytical machine again.
well i haven't fully integrated my shadow in any complete way, i did a decent amount of shadow work last summer using tarot and journaling the readings and my insights. there's tons of prompts and spreads available online which is majorly helpful since sometimes it's difficult to think of what exactly incorporates your shadow.
it was pretty rough to do in a lot of ways. really makes you take a look at parts of yourself you'd rather ignore, which was very uncomfortable at first cuz it brought up a lot repressed shame, guilt, and toxic traits i didn't even realize i had. but in the end it was ultimately very liberating to come to a better understanding of those things.
also, i don't know if i believe it's possible to ever fully integrate your shadow, at least not long term. humans by nature are flawed species and we're prone to cognitive distortions fairly automatically. so while someone may integrate their shadow very completely, you're never gonna get it perfect. there's always gonna be some things about ourselves we may not necessarily like, whether that be personality traits or ways we react or a response to new trauma. i feel like if you're living life right you're constantly growing, and that means there's always room for improvement.
Yeah Pixel got it figured out.
That mirror exercise is basic psychology but everything grows from the basic.
Don't be dismayed most of us would likely have a lot more in flaws than merits when asked to self-evaluate
and sure, it's good even great to know and be aware of those things.
Especially since i imagine most (my self included) would much rather skip that part
and inevitably have those things come bite back when least expected in the worst ways.
strong foundations are a reward of its own. there is little glory or adventure in maintaining the self, it's just work
(stole that right out of Rick & Morty)
Even if you are not into self-transformation or other etheral woo-woo work, knowing oneself is a good idea because it helps you to find out where the unexploded ordinance is buried, so to speak, so you don't accidentally blow yourself up. The classic example would be a guy for whom love spells never work because he secretly despises himself, while wealth magic... most books on the topic have whole sections explaining why it doesn't work for some people.
What I am currently trying to figure out is how to dispose of that unexploded ordinance by magical means (as opposed to therapy, for example). Lots of empty-mind meditation will be involved, I can see this already. I still don't know much about the aforementioned elemental blanket approach yet but I don't want to spend the rest of my life contemplating my navel either.
I still don't know much about the aforementioned elemental blanket approach yet but I don't want to spend the rest of my life contemplating my navel either.
It doesn't interest me whatsoever. I am sure this "psychological alchemy with elemental work" could yield interesting results, sure. But you ponder on it enough, you could put these qualities to any of the elements.
So why bother with that route when you could just get into the meat of the problem, and I don't think everything I have put on dark mirrors make me a bad person whatsoever. I just need some self-acknowledging at first place. Lets say I can be jealous of people. This isn't neccesarily a bad trait if it motivates me to get off my ass and get that thing. I also could very well might be not appreciating what qualities are in me when it comes to light mirror, so to speak.
So yeah I am not going to blindly follow Bardon here. Hell of a guy, sure. But the world moves on.
The problem is that people don't know what the meat is, or have misidentified it.
My lesson:
So my mum was emotionally volatile and violent. My dad was emotionally distant, physically absent, and unreliable.
I grew up with my mum and as a result was very very concerned with not becoming like her, with not losing my temper, etc etc. I was never a very angry person honestly but I wanted to be sure.
One day, as adults, my brother said "you know, I don't really get why you try so hard not to be like Mum when your flaws are way more like Dad?"
WOOF. So yeah, I thought I was really on top of my shadow, working on the meat of the issue, when in fact I was completely missing it. (In fact, in trying to avoid being emotionally volatile, I had become more emotionally distanced - exaggerated the flaw I actually had a tendency towards)
I can believe that if I'd kept a diary, noticing each time I had a problem caused by own behaviour, or acted against my values, I'd have seen that I never lost my temper but did hurt people though withdrawal and coldness.
We can't always rely on our brutally honest siblings to point out when we're working on the wrong meat
I'm not a fan of the elemental aspect honestly! I agree with what you said, that you can attribute different qualities/flaws to any of the elements of you think about it enough
I think it's good to look for patterns but that the most useful categorisation will be different for each person, and you can only really see what categories will be useful when you're looking at your journal of problems
...I just realised I DO automatically divide flaws into "stuff my mum would do" and "stuff my dad would do" though. I wonder if a lot of people do that or not
I'm not a fan of the elemental aspect honestly! I agree with what you said, that you can attribute different qualities/flaws to any of the elements of you think about it enough
I think it's good to look for patterns but that the most useful categorisation will be different for each person, and you can only really see what categories will be useful when you're looking at your journal of problems
...I just realised I DO automatically divide flaws into "stuff my mum would do" and "stuff my dad would do" though. I wonder if a lot of people do that or not
I know at least a few that do the Mom/Dad thing. (Interestingly enough, all women in the same age group.) I tend to do it albeit I divide it into what would "young me" do vs. what would U. do? U. was a guy I worked with once upon a time. Role model and all that. A paragon after his fashion.
