Chasing the Light Creates a Bigger Shadow
We bring more light into the world by embracing the dark, not rejecting it.
When I hear people describe themselves as a “light-worker”, I hear their intention to bring more light and love into the world, and I find that beautiful. At the same time, I am wary of how often that term implies focusing only on the happy, feel-good side of life and avoiding everything else, by thinking only "positive" thoughts or wanting to feel only joy and gratitude.
What those who chase the light don’t realize is that avoiding the dark only ends up empowering it, and focusing only on the light ends up diminishing it.
Now wait a minute, how can this be? It sounds completely counter-intuitive. However, it makes perfect sense if we consider the nature of the Shadow, and how it is formed in the human psyche.
What is the Shadow?
Our Shadow is the unconscious aspect of our personality that is created in childhood as we learn to judge certain parts of ourselves as bad, wrong, or unsafe to be. There was nothing inherently bad about these parts of us – they were all expressions of our authenticity and divinity.
But because they weren’t considered acceptable by our family, religion, or culture, we chose to reject them for our own safety and survival. Psychologically, our conscious ego identity rejected them to the degree that we stopped considering them as part of ourselves at all.
So the Shadow is, by definition, NOT US – except that of course, it is still us, because we cannot ever truly “get rid of” any aspect of our authentic, true nature. But because our conscious identity rejects them, these parts of ourselves are now imprisoned in the area of the psyche that is outside of our conscious identity.
From a more shamanic perspective, this “shadow closet” exists in the shadow of the light of our own love and divinity. It is where our love and light do not reach, so it is where everything that we hate, fear, and ultimately reject about ourselves (and therefore reject in others) ends up.
And by trapping these parts of ourselves in the shadow closet, denying them our love and light, they become twisted expressions of their former selves. Just like Gollum in the cave, they mutate, and in the process grow more and more angry at us for consigning them to that fate.
Our Shadow shapes our reality, whether we acknowledge it or not.
The most terrible actions committed by people in the world are the work of the Shadow, this inner toxicity influencing human behavior. And I believe that the Shadow is also behind the biggest challenges and disasters that happen in our personal lives. Those disasters are not our “karma”, they are simply the universe reflecting back to ourselves our unhealed, unintegrated Shadow.
We are powerful manifestors of reality, and we are always manifesting. The real question is, what parts of ourselves are doing the manifesting? We like to believe that we can simply focus our conscious intention on what we want to create in the world, and manifest the life we desire. And yes, that is how it works. Partly!
Because the Shadow contains valuable, essential parts of ourselves, it holds a tremendous amount of our power… which includes our power to manifest. And manifest it does!
But because our shadow parts are angry at us for rejecting them, and have become twisted, toxic expressions of their true essence, their manifesting ends up wreaking havoc in our lives. But that isn’t because there is anything inherently wrong with them! Believing these parts of ourselves are bad - or simply not ok to be - only reinforces the psychological dynamic that put them into the Shadow in the first place.
The truth is, our Shadow wants nothing more than to be seen, wanted, and loved. Our shadow parts long for us to pull them out of the darkness and into the light of our conscious identity, so they can be healed. So they can come home!
This is why obsessing over the “light” only reinforces the shadow. The more we limit our awareness to what we love about ourselves and consider “positive” and pure, the more we encourage this internal separation between the parts of us that we love and accept, and the parts we hate and reject.
The more we turn away from and deny our own “negativity” – in the form of pessimism, unwanted thoughts, or emotions like anger or fear – the more firmly we push those parts of ourselves into the Shadow. This process is inevitable, because it’s how the Shadow gets created in all of us.
And believe me, we all have a shadow side. Some of the most shadowy behaviors I’ve witnessed have been from those who claim to be the most light-filled and pure of intention. There are countless stories of spiritual gurus abusing and assaulting their students and followers. I have learned through painful experience that good intentions simply are not good enough… and in fact they can often blind us to the truth when our shadow is at play.
A focus on goodness and purity to the exclusion of anything else will always inevitably create more toxicity and shadowy behavior in the world. How often have you seen people claim to want one thing while actively creating the opposite – without any conscious awareness of what they were doing?
Denying our shadow empowers it because it makes us blind to it, which thereby makes our blind spot (where it lives and operates) even larger. This gives it greater power over us, because the larger our blind spot is, the more room it has to act in the world, and the greater the ability it has to "act out" through our behavior - without us even realizing it! As a result, we end up manifesting and embodying even more the very things we want to avoid.
Working with the Shadow rather than against it
The bottom line is that the more of ourselves that we continue to reject, the more we will subconsciously end up manifesting a reality counter to our conscious intentions. This is precisely how we “get in our own way” – and we get out of our own way by doing shadow work.
I would even go so far as to say that the only way we can ever create true healing in ourselves and in the world is by embracing and transforming the shadow, not denying it. This requires that we be willing to see into our blind spots, by listening to others when they point them out to us.
True healing requires that we accept that we are more than what we consciously believe ourselves to be. We must accept that we all have the potential to express the most toxic and evil aspects of humanity, and that we all play a part in the expression of evil in the world, because of how our toxic, shadowy parts contribute to the manifestation of our collective reality.
And we must realize that this understanding is only the beginning. Although the essential first step is acknowledging our shadow, that does not automatically heal and transform it. Healing our shadow parts is a conscious process that takes time and effort, and most of all choosing to be with those parts and truly embrace their divine essence. Only once it is transformed with our love can we reintegrate those parts of ourselves into who we know ourselves to be, and truly bring them out of the shadow closet.
Often when people talk about doing shadow work, they are focusing solely on gaining insight through noticing shadow behaviors. “But shadow behaviors are not the Shadow itself,” explains shaman Christina Pratt, in this profoundly revealing radio show on the shadow: WhyShamanismNow.com/2014/03/what-is-shadow-work/.
When shadow work is limited to awareness of shadow behaviors, she says, “the focus is on a symptom and not the source. This means the sincere work of transformation results largely in a spiritual bypass. This relieves the conscious ego, which will not need to change after all, and leaves the Shadow Self largely intact, to undermine our conscious efforts and lay out a seductive path of self-destruction yet again.”
Truly transforming a shadow part requires first pulling it out of the shadow closet, which can’t be done with the mind. Journaling alone isn’t enough. Here is where shamanism shows its value, as the ability to journey to the spirit world allows others (or ourselves with a specific “back-door” process) to access our shadow closet for us, that is by definition closed to our conscious awareness.
Once the shadow part has been energetically reclaimed, we can then begin the work of transforming it. The most powerful method for this that I have learned is dancing, while embodying the energy of the shadow part. Through the dance the shadow part is able to express itself, and over time its true essence is revealed, in all of its power and beauty. In the process, through love and acceptance, what was effectively our enemy is transformed into the ally it was always meant to be.
The final piece of effective shadow work is integrating this transformed ally energy, and finding ways to express it in our lives. Ultimately, it is in the embodiment and expression of these reintegrated parts of ourselves in our daily lives that truly brings them back to us. In this way, we regain an essential piece of our power and ability to manifest, so that it is now contributing to manifesting the life we do want, instead of subversively creating the life we don’t.
Becoming a force of love and light in the world is a wonderful goal. But I believe that the only way to actually do that is to go into our darkness and heal it. It is long past time to replace the phrase “light-worker” with one more accurate to what truly enables more light to shine in the world. We should be proud to call ourselves Shadow-workers.