How Can We Be Free If We Don’t Face 'The Shadow'
The What, Why, How Of Ironing Out The Kinks In Our Subconscious.
Shadow work is the process of ironing out the kinks in our subconscious. Aka things we’d rather not face, like old emotional/energetic ‘knots’ and the beliefs, behaviours, choices and thought patterns that stem from them.
This is for anyone curious about healing the subconscious patterns that shape their life.
I’m not a Jungian psychotherapist (C. Jung popularised the term shadow work), but I dove headfirst into it, so it’s just my take from personal experience.
I’m not saying everyone NEEDS to do this either. Some lucky bastards don’t need to, besides, everyone can do whatever they like.
Take what resonates. Share if it helps. Cheeerrrrsssss!
Pandoras Box
About a year ago, I had a dream… I was at home, the doorbell rang… It was an old friend who is sadly no longer with us (in real life). He was carrying a large black box in his hands.
“Here, this is for you… Come with me!”
We ended up in a strange hotel-like building that went deep underground. Each room triggered an unpleasant, uncomfortable reaction in me. I only made it through a few, then my dog Ted showed up to take a shit on the hallway floor.
“Ffs Ted!!!” I reacted enough to wake up, this time.
The dream was a tour of my unconscious patterns. The black box was a nice gift, I thought! What’s a friend who doesn’t help shine a light on your stuff? Maybe Ted was trying to tell me something too… like ‘it’s time to clean up the doo-doo Kieran…’
Dreams are cool. When used intentionally, they are a powerful tool for ‘shadow work’. They are a doorway into our subconscious, where we can become aware of patterns we might struggle to see in daily life. It’s a bigger topic for another day.
Why am I writing about this?
Many reasons. In my opinion it is one of the most needed things for a large chunk of this world to do. Plus I just find it fascinating. It’s about inner freedom and that’s empowering.
No one really wants to face the ‘black box’ inside. I fully understand. There can be some bitter pills to swallow in there. So why bother?
The main reason is so that you can be OK with being yourself. Sounds simple, but considering we’re all tangled up in conditioning, beliefs, biases, and so on, it’s not so simple.
The problem is that we can spend our whole lives identifying with and being driven by our unconscious patterns. And until we see and iron them out, they’ll continue to seep into everything we do leaving us wondering why the fuck nothing seems to be working the way we want it to.
The other reason is that you get more of what money can’t buy: an expanding sense of understanding, compassion, love, forgiveness, etc. and we need it all, especially when we see all the ways we’ve been fooling ourselves.
The Cause/Effect Of An Unmet Shadow
Unmet emotional needs lie at the root of most of our issues, in our own lives and in the world. They’ve created a culture of unsustainable over-consumption, whether that’s for a dopamine hit online, eating two tubs of Ben & Jerry's, or just buying a bunch of stuff we don’t need.
I know there’s good in the world, but it’s also a fear-based shit-show of shadow-projection a lot of the time. Think politics, COVID, and most victim/villain dynamics.
Maybe if we understood that the world is a bit of a mess because of our collective shadow, we’d be more willing to whip out the ironing board and work on our own slice of it.
Heavy stuff, I know, but there’s some good news… It’s happening.
Fingers crossed it’s happening fast enough.
Oh, and it’s all based on a lie, so that’s good.
What I mean is that there is nothing in ‘Pandora's box’ but a bunch of beliefs that aren’t true and don’t even really exist when we shine the light of our awareness in there. Nothing to be afraid of, then.
The Process Of Shadow Work
Here’s how I see it…
Fundamentally, it’s just a bunch of emotional/energetic ‘knots’ stored in the USB memory stick that is the human being →
The ‘knots’ are held in place by some unconscious beliefs (and maybe some duct-tape) →
This fuels our behaviours, habits, thought loops, career/relationship choices etc. →
Unfortunately, we cannot see what’s really driving them →
So we tell ourselves: “That’s just me… Twenty pints McGee… Yippee”. →
Until… it becomes too much of a pain in the ass →
And we find ways to become more conscious.
Then comes the…. “Fucccckkkkkkkk!” as we somehow find ourselves smack bang in the middle of a dark night of the soul, not knowing which way is up.
Eventually, we make it out the other side, slightly dishevelled, a little disoriented, with an expanded awareness ready to put ourselves back together again. “Fun times! Let’s do that again…”
And round and round we go, down the spiral staircase, into the unknown depths of our subconscious.
Some Gotchas I’ve Encountered.
1. There is often a not-so-obvious link between the emotional/energetic ‘knot’ and the belief holding it in place → to the myriad ways that manifests in our daily lives.
If it were obvious, we would’ve seen it already, and it wouldn’t be ‘work’.
For example, I’ve had some sort of inferiority complex for as long as Ican remember.
Intellectually I’ve known this for a long time. But recently I dove much deeper into it and realised I was actually still largely unconscious about all the ways it was playing out.
It was so ‘baked-in’ to my way of being, I couldn’t see it. I’d accepted that this was ‘me’ when it wasn’t. Honestly, there’s no greater feeling than the identity crisis that ensues when you start waking up to all the things you thought you were, but you’re not ;-)
2. The intellectual mind is blocking access to what needs to be ironed out.
This is the biggest ‘gotcha’ I’ve experienced over and over again. It’s that the intellectual mind loves to pretend it knows, so it slaps a label on it and says ‘job done’. But underneath it all, the energetic knot remains along with the self-sabotaging belief keeping it in place, and everything else that stems from this.
This can be a real issue, especially when we’ve become willing to face things head-on.
The mind's self-protective mechanism just won’t let what it perceives as a threat to be seen.
That’s why sometimes you need to bypass or ‘trick’ the intellectual mind in order to access the underlying emotional knot so you can give that muthafucka some love. This is where the right tools and guides come into play. Sometimes you need a toothbrush. Sometimes you need a jackhammer.
3. We’re trying to figure it all out in our minds.
The mind either wants to avoid it altogether or ‘fix’ it all asap. So if you’re stuck in thought-loops screaming “what can’t I see… wtf is wrong with me…” it’s good to remind yourself that the mind can’t iron… only presence can. When it’s ready to be felt, you feel it.
Sometimes it’s just not yet time.
Sometimes, the pressure needs to build inside until you’re ready to pop.
Who knows why this is. My theory is that some ‘knots’ need to wait until we have built the capacity (courage, willingness, emotional intelligence) to handle them in a balanced way, with some TLC.
Then bang! The ‘awareness bubble’ bursts, and you sing “I can see clearly now, the rain has gone”.
Can’t All This Stuff Be Simple?
I think it can. It all depends on our ‘lot’ — the karmic bag we’ve been handed.
The first thing is to take responsibility for everything we think and feel.
Helps to know we’re not either.
Sometimes this means a situation must be handled externally.
Most of the time it’s because we have some unconscious (untrue) belief, or emotional knot getting triggered. We can just sit with it a feel it out.
Building A Toolbox
Since, we don’t like simple and since sometimes our own intelligence blocks our progress, we need some tools. The good news is the tools are more available than they ever have been. Just a few decades ago we might have had zero access to the right tools, now we have too many.
We need to build our own toolbox for spiritual development— what this is really about. Here’s mine, you can build whatever works for you.
Yoga & Meditation (Kriya/Hatha) – a whole system for ironing out knots from all directions: mental, physical, energetic. There’s a lot more to it, but it does this well. I’ve practised for about a decade (via Sadhguru & The Isha Foundation). It’s my main path and practice, and it works great if done consistently. I fell off the horse a few times, so it’s probably why I needed to take…
A 2–3 year detour into Shamanic Healing – Plant Medicine (mainly ayahuasca). It’s not for everyone; seems I must have needed a jackhammer. It helped me access things I don’t think I would have otherwise. I’m glad I’d built some foundation from yoga, otherwise my nervous system would’ve been shot to pieces. Shamanism is much more than psychedelic plants — they just help open the door when it’s nailed shut. And of course, there’s no replacement for daily-life integration.
Recapitulation – A simple, but powerful Toltec breathing/meditation technique to disentangle/reclaim energy from where we lost it (events, people etc). I still do it regularly.The technique description is freely available online or message me and I can give it to you.
Journaling — automatic journalling or intuitive writing for insight, gratitude journalling to snap me out of the minds game of always focussing on what’s missing.
Dreamwork — When used intentionally, dreams can highlight patterns we’re not seeing. Then we can work with those (using, journalling, contemplation, recapitulation or some other technique) to feel/iron them out. Warning: may not result in a good nights sleep.
‘Process’ Coaching — You are guided by someone to find and stay present with the emotional ‘knot’, so you can breathe into it enough that it begins to lose its charge. In terms of this work, if talk stays on the level of the intellect, it doesn’t work IMO. How could it? Intellectual understanding is not necessary; ironing out the knot is. Talk alone is not ironing.
Breathwork — There are various styles, Holotropic, Whim Hoff etc. It’s more basic than something like Kriya yoga, but still a very potent practice for an emotional release.
Creative expression — the simplest and enjoyable tool I’ve found. Stuck energy needs to move, and what better way than through something you enjoy? (writing, art, movement, dancing, singing). Another reason to make time for it.
In Summary
Stuck emotional energy keeps us feeling stuck 🤯.
The subconscious is where it lives.
When we identify who we are, with the patterns in our karmic bag, life can be sticky and icky. When we don’t, it’s more of an adventure into the unknown depths of what it means to be human.
The shadow contains our gifts, power and creative energy.
Often we’d rather do anything but face this stuff so we’ll unconsciously create all sorts of complications, conditions and situations to make sure we don’t have to. This is what can make the game a bit tricky.
There’s no rush. All we can do is find our own way, do our best and take it easy on ourselves.
It’s just that… if we don’t do the inner work we won’t remember who we really are. Then an over reliance on A.I. might just turn our brains to mush, and the internal/external forces that want to control humanity by keeping our innate spiritual gifts subdued and dormant will succeed at keeping us trapped in an illusory conceptual reality chasing our tails for the false god that is soul-less materialism.
And then…
How. could. we. be. free?