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Shadow Work

Shadow work is the process of exploring one's unconscious "Shadow Self" which contains repressed feelings of guilt and limiting beliefs. Examining the shadow brings hidden qualities like power and sexuality to light. Signs you're doing shadow work include feelings of upset and lack of empathy. Effective techniques involve journaling negative thoughts and feelings, connecting with difficult emotions, and recognizing when you project flaws onto others. Ultimately, shadow work supports lasting healing by transforming deep-seated beliefs driving unhealthy patterns.

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Jesica Pollen
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175 views

Shadow Work

Shadow work is the process of exploring one's unconscious "Shadow Self" which contains repressed feelings of guilt and limiting beliefs. Examining the shadow brings hidden qualities like power and sexuality to light. Signs you're doing shadow work include feelings of upset and lack of empathy. Effective techniques involve journaling negative thoughts and feelings, connecting with difficult emotions, and recognizing when you project flaws onto others. Ultimately, shadow work supports lasting healing by transforming deep-seated beliefs driving unhealthy patterns.

Uploaded by

Jesica Pollen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Shadow work is the process of exploring your inner darkness or “Shadow Self.

” The shadow self


is a part of your unconscious mind and contains everything you feel guilty for thinking
and feeling. It is where your projection toward others waits in the darkness, ready to pounce at
any moment and where your limiting beliefs of self, live and breathe. When we live life through
the perception of our Shadow there is a veil of distortion for what is actually real and therefore
we make decisions out of reaction versus response.

From the shadows point of view it is protecting you, keeping you safe, and avoiding any
perceived pain and upset by keeping people away. But in reality it stops our ability to feel
intimacy, connection and most important vulnerability.

The benefit of doing shadow work is the bringing forward of our transcended qualities that
have been hiding for a long time. These include our inner power, voice, energy, sexuality,
abundance, breaking of family systems and pushing through societal pressures or expectations.

One of the easiest ways to find out what lies in your shadow is to ask your partner or family
what drives them nuts about you. Another option is when your button is being pushed, instead
of being upset about your button being pushed and lashing out at the person pushing the
button ask yourself where has the button come from and when have I felt this feeling before?

The main signs you are discovering the shadow are feelings of anger, frustration, depression,
and any other types of emotional upset, lack of empathy or compassion for others, over
working, disconnect, addictions and any other avoidance of emotions through methods of
numbing out.

Here are some tips for owning/healing your shadow?


• One of the first things you must address is giving yourself permission to think the
negative thoughts, feel the feelings, and say the uncomfortable words. Not necessarily
to the person directly, but instead through journaling.
• A great exercise to do is ask yourself the following question about a person that upsets
or triggers you the most and journal the answer…
What I see in you that I don’t like about myself is?……
• Connect to the emotion and connect to that little part of you who has felt it for a very
long time.
• The lenses on your glasses are dirty and need to be cleaned, you think the specks on
your lenses are actually on the other person when in fact what needs to be cleaned are
your actual lenses, but we want the specks to be on the other person and therefore not
our responsibility.
According to Shadow Yoga teachings we are under the constant attack of our Ego & Shadow
through our subconscious beliefs (kleshas) which are only healed by addressing where they
come from. Thus only by going through the veil of the Ego beyond the Shadow can we access
our Samskaras or Mistaken Beliefs of self.

We may heal the body, mind and spirit temporarily through medical or alternative healing
modalities, but unless there is transformation at the level of self where our beliefs are held, no
lasting healing takes place. We are doomed to repeat our deep patterns and may end up
recreating the same or similar situations again and again unless the shadow is reintegrated.

SHADOW WORK IS THE PATH OF THE HEART WARRIOR


-CARL JUNG-
Anyone who wants to know the human psyche will learn next to nothing from experimental
psychology. He would be better advised to abandon exact science, put away his scholar's gown, bid
farewell to his study, and wander with human heart throughout the world. There in the horrors of
prisons, lunatic asylums and hospitals, in drab suburban pubs, in brothels and gambling-hells, in the
salons of the elegant, the Stock Exchanges, socialist meetings, churches, revivalist gatherings and
ecstatic sects, through love and hate, through the experience of passion in every form in his own
body, he would reap richer stores of knowledge than text-books a foot thick could give him, and he
will know how to doctor the sick with a real knowledge of the human soul. -- Carl Jung (from "New
Paths in Psychology", in Collected Papers on Analytic Psychology, London, 1916)

www.onpurpose.global
www.thesouljustknows.com

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