Shadow~Work - One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star ...

"One must have chaos in oneself in order to give birth to a dancing star." ~ Friedrich W. Nietzsche


Where does the term "Shadow" come from?

Carl Jung
1958

"Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow side: an impulsive, wounded, sad, or isolated part that we generally try to ignore. The Shadow can be a source of emotional richness and vitality, and acknowledging it can be a pathway to healing and an authentic life. We meet our dark side, accept it for what it is, and we learn to use its powerful energies in productive ways. The Shadow knows why good people sometimes do "bad" things. Romancing the Shadow and learning to read the messages it encodes in daily life can deepen your consciousness, imagination, and soul."

from "Romancing the Shadow," by Connie Zwieg, PhD., and Steve Wolf, PhD.


Jung's Theory of The Shadow

"The Shadow describes the part of the psyche that an individual would rather not acknowledge. It contains the denied parts of the self. Since the self contains these aspects, they surface in one way or another. Bringing Shadow material into consciousness drains its dark power, and can even recover valuable resources from it. The greatest power, however, comes from having accepted your shadow parts and integrated them as components of your Self."

from John Elder

WHAT WE DO NOT DARE LOOK AT, WITHIN OURSELVES, WE TEND TO PROJECT OUT ONTO OTHERS...........

"Shadow wants to be heard, simply that. But if it isn't, it turns nasty. It becomes a veritable demon, witch, or son-of-a-bitch, demanding its pound of flesh....in very painful real time, not dreamtime.
Pay attention to your shadow. If you keep distancing yourself, saying "Heavens, it's not my fault!"---then heaven help you. Hell won't."

Katya Walter


Jung continued:

Everyone carries a Shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions."

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."

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Who has not at one time or another felt a sourness, wrath, selfishness, envy and pride, which he could not tell what to do with, or how to bear, rising up in him without his consent, casting a blackness over all his thoughts, and then as suddenly going off again, either by the cheerfulness of the sun or air, or some agreeable accident, and again at times as suddenly returning upon him? Sufficient indications are these to every man that there is a dark guest within him, concealed under the cover of flesh and blood, often lulled asleep by worldly light and amusements, yet such as will, in spite of everything, show itself... It is exceeding good and beneficial to us to discover this dark, disordered fire of our soul; because when rightly known and rightly dealt with, it can as well be made the foundation of heaven as it is of hell."

- William Law, The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739)


More Quoteables

The range of what we think and do
is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice
that we fail to notice
there is little we can do
to change
until we notice
how failing to notice
shapes our thoughts and deeds.
--R.D. Laing


" The shadow is both the awful thing that needs redemption,
and the suffering redeemer who can provide it"

--Liz Green

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Robert Green Ingalls said: "in nature there are neither rewards nor punishments--there are consequences." We aren't being singled out for punishment, we are merely experiencing the consequences of our own rigidity. If we choose security over change, we have to suffer the consequences. As Gail Sheehy summarizes succinctly: "If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security."

We can learn how to recognize our own rigidity and how to correct it. It takes honesty and courage, but the rewards are immense. First, the suffering stops. This is the surest sign that we have chosen the right path again: the unnecessary suffering stops. More importantly, new possibilities open up everywhere in our life. Where everything seemed sterile and barren, and there seemed no possible answers, now everything seems possible. The possibilities may be scary, because each offers a path that we have never taken before, but it's a good kind of fear, like the fear that a fine pianist experiences before a concert.

from "Shadow Dancing" by Robin Robertson.

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Jung told me that he once met a distinguished man, a Quaker, who could not imagine that he had ever done anything wrong in his life. "And do you know what happened to his children?" Jung asked. "The son became a thief, and the daughter a prostitute. Because the father would not take on his shadow, his share in the imperfection of human nature, his children were compelled to live out the dark side which he had ignored."

(A. I. Allenby describing a conversation with C. G. Jung.)

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"The secret is out: all of us, no exceptions, have qualities we won't let anyone see, including ourselves---our Shadow. If we face up to our dark side, our life can be energized. If not, there is the devil to pay. This is one of life's most urgent projects."

Larry Dossey, M.D., Author of "Healing Wounds"

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"Each psychology is a confession, and the worth of psychology for
another person lies not in the places where he can identify with it
because it satisfies his psychic needs, but where it provokes him to
work out his own psychology in response".

James Hillman

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"He (Great Spirit) governs the flowing of all waters, and the ebbing, the courses of all rivers and the replenishment of springs, the distilling of all dews and rain in every land beneath the sky. In the deep places, He gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo of that music runs through all the veins of the world in sorrow and in joy; for if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomed at the foundations of the Earth."

J.R.R. Tolkein, "The Silmarillion"

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The Core of Shadow Work is this: To KNOW YOURSELF FULLY, from as many angles as are required, in order that you might dare to let yourself go free. Being neither judge, jury, prosecutor, nor defender---you give no explanations, nor do you require any. You are AT HOME in your place between the sun and the moon.

~The Reconnections.

from: http://www.reconnections.net/shadow2.htm

Interesting...

I was on the main Thelema forum looking up information and one of the students of Thelema recommend I look into "shadow self" and provided me a link to the ritual they used (here). Supposedly, it worked wonders for her in making herself feel whole. Thelema was founded by Aleister Crowley, which they practice his teachings.



"The shadow represents all our disowned, despised, and repressed traits. It lives buried in the closets of our subconscious minds safe from our judgments. The shadow is our "dark side." It acts out for us all those denied emotions and urges we wish we didn't have. For instance, if we're prudish about our sexuality, it acts out our "vamp" side behind our backs. If we insist on always being kind and loving for all the world to see, it will express our other side by sometimes taking over and harshly misbehaving. It is an emotion-based self, slippery and hard to catch. And it is grounded in fear, drama, and competitiveness; it can destroy our relationships if not tamed. Its sacred purpose in our transformation is to remind us of our emotional unfinished business, of what we're trying to skip over or leave behind. Jung called it "our sparring partner," the opponent who exposes our flaws and sharpens our skills..."

You were/are curious about Thelema???? I brought it up on IS once and got the stink-eye for even talking about it lol ... I wasn't even saying anything, I just had questions.

I'm naturally gifted in precognition, so it only makes sense I would practice magick. I mostly just freelance in magick, which I don't follow rituals or perform the spells other people create.

I found out about Thelema in reading about Aleister Crowley. Once upon a time, I think when Crowley was in the Golden Dawn, he wanted the practice of magick essentially banned or heavily restricted. The reason he said this is because an apprentice practicing healing an individual through touch could have unpredictable consequences due to ignorance. Essentially, the apprenctice could accidentally cause the individual more harm than good. Most likely, he wanted apprentices to read and learn about magick for years to understand it before even attempting to practice it. Aleister Crowley was talked to by others of equal or higher authority about what he was announcing, which he back-tracked on his logic. Most likely, because such a thing can't be stopped and it also makes him look like he wants to covet the knowledge.

The practitioners of Thelema are typically very knowledgeable when it comes to spirituality, rituals, and the occult. They have their stuff down to an art. I was simply talking to some of them to get information about precognition, dreams, and magick.

I see and practice magick differently than the typical individual, New Ager or Old Ager.

Anyhow, why did they give you the stink-eye? Practitioners of Thelema normally keep to themselves and are very generous in sharing to those who are interested.

I made the mistake to ask on IS ... Crowley and his teachings are generally viewed as "evil" and anybody finding merit within is also potentially "evil" or misguided.

I find Crowley intriguing; that's not to say I agree with everything he proclaimed. Like you, I'm more of a freelancer in that respect; I dislike external tools or guidelines, I like to follow my own intuition instead.

FleurDeLis wrote:

I made the mistake to ask on IS ... Crowley and his teachings are generally viewed as "evil" and anybody finding merit within is also potentially "evil" or misguided.

I find Crowley intriguing; that's not to say I agree with everything he proclaimed. Like you, I'm more of a freelancer in that respect; I dislike external tools or guidelines, I like to follow my own intuition instead.

Christians view Crowley as the anti-christ, which they labeled him a drug addict and a sex fiend. Crowley wasn't exactly a drug addict, though I think it was said that he did die to an over dose. He was on drugs really bad, but that was primarily because he was in severe pain due to physical ailments. Him being a sex fiend is and isn't true, which it is merely perspective. He did rituals with ritual sex because sexual energy is very powerful. I'm guessing IS pre-dominantly consists of Christians, which would explain why you got flak.

Anyhow, yeah, intuition is the best way to go. Personally, I feel rituals etc. function more as a psychological amplifier to boost and direct focused energy. The best spell or best ritual is one that an individual has invested heavy amounts of his or her time into to the point of essentially handcrafting it from scratch. All that energy used is being gathered and focused the whole entire time, which results in higher accuracy of the desired outcome of said magick conjured. It is literally mind over matter.

In a sense, your life is your own personal ritual.

Sexual energy is indeed powerful ... I think I haven't come across anything that is so easily so effective.

I loved this post at IS but couldn't bring myself to post on the particular thread lol
Chaos all the way, screw rituals - they are for people that lack focus that's all.
My "shadow" side has saved my ass numerous times, I love it.
Sometimes it can get carried away; the power of the dark can be hard to control lol
I think it was Sontlux that said something about light having a "ceiling" and the dark is infinite, and that he uses the light as a sort of flash light to look around in the dark.
That's exactly how I see it, also that the balance is dark 10:1 light. probably why lots of people think they're fighting an uphill battle, but that's not the case. it only becomes that way when you pit them against each other, rather than seeing at as a cohesive whole.
love it love it love it

Team Sheen, Chaos all the way

http://soundcloud.com/dj-izmmusic/charlie-sheen-dubstep

Indeed, it is a cohesive whole!

I really like Sontlux's comment about the light-ceiling too ... I can loose myself in the depth of the dark sometimes and I always come out stronger than ever before.

sovnd wrote:

I think it was Sontlux that said something about light having a "ceiling" and the dark is infinite, and that he uses the light as a sort of flash light to look around in the dark.

That is a super good viewpoint.

Yep, he has a mad way of visualising things. He's one hell of a creative guy.