The Shadow Self

Every person has lightness and darkness in them. The darkness does not make them a bad person-it makes them part of nature. Every aspect of nature has lightness and darkness there cannot be one without the other.

Every person is flawed, imperfect and deeply damaged. We all are corruptible, greedy, jealous, and selfish. Just as we are all honest, generous, caring sharing people. We cannot be one with out the other. If we suppress the dark, negative emotion we also suppress the opposite feeling and emotion. We cannot truly be happy if we cannot truly feel sadness. We cannot feel love if we are afraid to hate.

Every experience you have in life is there to make you who you are. Just as the happy positive experiences are there to enable you to learn and grow so are the negative, sad experiences.

The shadow self is the part of ourselves we deny. The part that blames others for our problems never willing to accept that the only person truly responsible for our own path in life is ourselves. There is no devil or Supreme Being of darkness who makes us do things, the only person who is responsible for our actions and thoughts is ourselves.

We deny we could ever have such bad thoughts or that we could every do such bad things.

We may try to rationalize our thoughts find reasons why we act the way we do. Saying such things as I only did it because of this or that. However we are always looking for a reason outside of ourselves rather than accepting the responsibility. We project our shadow self onto others-seeing our own faults within other people. Other people act like a mirror the badness we see in them is actually our own shadow self trying to be heard. When you judge other people you actually judging yourself. We teach ourselves to respond in certain ways. If we are asked what we think of our brother it is not deemed right by society to harbour negative feelings and emotions towards him so we learn to say we love him and are proud of him. We learn the answers that or acceptable to society. We all know the right thing to say to make ourselves look the good person we so desperately wish to be.

We compensate our perceived shortcomings by trying to prove we are the complete opposite. Someone consumed by anger and hate may try to do something to show how loving and forgiving there are in nature. Someone with a selfish nature may try to show how generous he or she is. All the time we are trying to prove to society that we are this perfect being, that we do not have faults, only other people do.

We can also identify our shadow self with other people. Look at the people you admire and see what aspect of their personality inspires you to admire them. They have the qualities you wish to have. Maybe you already do have those qualities maybe you are just pushing them to one side and rejecting them.

We use tactics such as keeping ourselves busy, sarcasm, co-dependency and drink to try and drown out our shadow self. However it is always there always trying to break through into our lives

Denying our shadow self can lead to such problems as depression, irrational emotional outbursts or illness.

We choose to hide our shadow self because we want to be loved, liked and accepted by society we feel the aspects of ourselves in our shadow self will prevent this. We fear people judging us as bad people or as having faults. We want to give the impression to the world that we are perfect people, that we have no faults. This is an image that nobody can ever live up to. Yet somehow we think we should be like that and we expect everyone else to be perfect. There is no such thing as perfection. The only true perfection is imperfection.

We claim we have no choice but to hide our shadow self. We use our relationships, or career as excuses to continue pushing away our darkness. We blame other people and say we had to do this because of them. We claim we had no choice in the matter. Other people may try to convince us to think like them, to do certain things however we always have a choice. Sometimes other people's actions have a direct affect upon our lives, however we have the choice about how to react. How we let this other person affect our lives. There is always a choice.

Even if sometimes the choice isn't easy there is always another option if we choose to take it. Sometimes the other option will take great courage, but this is when we must face our fears-the fears that lie within the shadow self and keep moving forward with our lives. Life isn't always easy and there isn't a magical solution to end all your problems. People in real life don't go on to live happily ever after. Life is a journey and on that journey you will face many stops for refuelling, releasing emotions, resting and the unscheduled stops due to unforeseen circumstances. However we can choose how long we stop for, and we can choose the direction to go in.

Sometimes we don't want to see the choices we have out of a sense of loyalty, we sometimes can feel that making the right choices in life are betraying people and we feel guilty. We must always listen to our intuition and be prepared to make hard choices in life. We must follow our own path and let others follow theirs. An act you view as betrayal may also help the person you feel you feel you have betrayed by making them face part of their shadow self, part of them selves they feared.

In order to be truly of aid to other people in our lives we must follow our intuition and be prepared to act. What good are we living in a world where we are not happy but fear moving forward and fear changes within our lives? Only when we are truly connected with ourselves can we truly support another upon their path.

Yet even when supporting someone you must remember their path is within their hands. We cannot control their lives we cannot live their lives for them. Only they can be in their lives, only them can truly know their path, only they can choose how they wish to live.

It is all too easy to blame other people, to say if this person acted differently I could sort out my problems. We have no power over another person, we must accept them as they truly are and learn to move on with out own lives regardless of what we think this person should do differently. They have their own life to lead and their own path to follow. It is not your place to tell them what that path is. Your path is the one that must concern you. You can choose to be around a person or you can choose not to be around them-but it is your choice and your life will be affected as a direct action of this decision. Wherever you go in life their will be a person within your life you perceive as a problem you cannot use them as an excuse for the situations within your own life.

We like to think at times that we are in hopeless situations-but we always have some power. We may not have the power to instantly cure or put back things the way they were but we always have the power to change things for the better. To change we may have to give up some security in our present life. We may even have to put ourselves in a worse situation in order to eventually bring about the change for the better. However we always have a choice-even when the choices aren't good.

We fear surrendering any part of our life or ourselves that we feel secure with. However in order to grow, we need to change and in order to change we have to give something up. We fear change; we fear what we may become, we fear who we really are. It is so much easier to sit there and say what we don't like this and that about life and what we would like out of life without ever actually making an effort in order to achieve our goals and dreams. It's almost as though we are still waiting for our fairy godmother to arrive and wave her magic wand for us. Unless we can see the end result tomorrow and it's all good and the sun is shining and the flowers are all out in bloom we fear moving on with our lives. We fear that step into the unknown, into the shadows. Even if there was a fairy godmother to give us our heart's desire would be truly be happy-to have everything given to us and never having to earn and work for such things. Would we also never learn to appreciate what we have, to see the good and would we also learn to want more to constantly want our fairy godmother to provide us with something bigger and better.

We are told to control our emotions, we can have intellectual debates about subjects, but it is deemed as wrong to talk and express your emotions. Emotions must be controlled. We are told that negative emotions such as greed, anger, jealousy and sexual urges are unacceptable to society and push them to one side. These feelings do not just go away like that instead they become part of the shadow self. We need to accept these feelings into our life, learn to love them and acknowledge them. Then as with positive emotions they will pass through us and become part of our whole being. We will not be consumed by them-they will just be a small part of us. The shadow self are all the thoughts, emotions and actions we have been told are wrong and shouldn't do or feel. They weigh down our spirit and consume our energy. All the time we are denying these feelings they grow, and we add to them. Weighing us down even more. Denying these emotions gives them strength. A strength that could see them spilling over into your life some day in a major way. A shadow self can become big enough to make you do something completely out of character or lead a double life.

In small doses is any feeling or emotion negative-is it really wrong to feel greed. Greed is defined as wanting something especially food and wealth. Is it wrong to never want to go hungry and to have enough money to provide for your family? Angry is someone has done something to harm you or your family haven't you the right to be angry? Someone causes you pain and you are expected to smile and say its alright. You have a right to be angry.

Jealousy is craving something someone else has. Well so long as that person doesn't obsess you what is wrong with jealousy? It can make you strive to achieve similar goals as the person you are jealous of has. It can show you what it is you hope to achieve in life.

Sexual urges are part of your nature. There is nothing to be ashamed about because you are have sexually feelings. You may have to decide how to act on that feelings-to act them out or leave them just as feelings. However they are part of human nature, they are part of nature as a whole. They are not dirty and disgusting they are vital to the continuation on life. They are expression of your soul.

They are many other emotions and feelings that are deemed negative by society. However none of them are negative in they are allowed to be acknowledge and felt-and then you let them pass through you.

Even happy emotions are thought of as wrong at times. If you are really happy you are thought of as being mad and insane. It's not deemed ok to walk down the street singing out loud as your heart is full of joy. It's not ok to be so excited you can't sit still-society expects you to have emotional self control and suppress your true nature.

Everyone you meet comes into your life for a reason. The people you meet who annoy you and you'd like to never see again, often has similar qualities to your shadow self. Even though we would like to think that we could never be like that.

Write down a list of things you hate about other people and you will find yourself looking at a list of things you hate about yourself. The elements of yourself contained within your shadow self although you may try to deny its true. These are the aspects of yourself you must face and accept into your life.

You may come across certain aspects where you think -but I am not like that! However maybe that is because you really want to be more like that but you control your emotions so well so you are not.

Think of the people you want to be like, think of the qualities you admire The only time there aren't shadows is at night, in the pitch dark. If we are to live in light we must also face our shadows. The only place we can live without facing our shadows is to live in the shadows.

When we finally face our shadows we may be surprised and find there contain what we spent years looking for in the light. Shadows can be our biggest friend and ally or our biggest enemy. As always with nature there is a duality.