Stop Chasing the Light: The Strength in Your Shadow
💜 Well, it’s been a while!
The family is doing great and staying busy. Finley is having an exciting 2nd grade year and with the holidays ramping up, we’re settling nicely into ALL THE BRIGHT SPARKLY THINGS! Our most favorite time of year, and kids just make you young and excited all over again.
For myself, I’m stepping my toe into the world of real estate for the very first time to buy my very first home!
Starting this journey, I quickly realized this goal/dream of mine to have my very own home and roots is a deep-seated NEED, for lack of a better term. I wouldn’t even want to call it a goal or a dream, it’s much deeper than that, words cannot convey. Discovering the painful wounds that led to this need has been life-changing.
Would I have wanted this sooner than 40ish? Yes, for sure. But I would not have appreciated it as much, most likely, and was not really ready for that solid foundation. I know, sounds crazy – but I had much more living and growing to do to get to that point.
For this, I am so grateful for divine timing. And now, hold your gasp – grateful for the suffering.
I actually heard Rainn Wilson talking about this on CBS Mornings this morning about his new book “Soul Boom Workbook: Spiritual Tools for Modern Living”.
First of all, I was floored by seeing him on the show talking about spirituality and how important it is to dive into your own soul for answers and clarity (I have the CBS segment linked at the bottom of this writing). I had no clue he was into the woo-woo, but I felt so full of joy to see him using his platform for this. He made a comment about being grateful for the suffering; it was a jolting reminder this morning, I knew I had to share it out.
All of that was a really great and unexpected segway into my main reason to want to write this morning. I had been sitting on writing about this topic for a while, but the Universe showed up this morning to give me a gentle nudge.
I want to talk about our shadow sides, our darkness that balances our light and makes it shine even brighter – that’s just basic physics, right? We need the dark to shine the light and turn it up.
We know it makes sense and we get the concept but, too often, fear stops us from even peeking at our shadow side. Fear turns into avoidance, anger, denial, and even harsh judgements on others.
But guess what? Those judgements come from looking at a mirror. We see our dark in other people, identify it, and cast judgement – all because we might be unable to face ourselves. We see it every day in the news and in our lives – accusations might as well just be called confessions most of the time.
This includes believing and working hard to be on your spiritual path, but then you find yourself judging the spirituality and practices of others – it’s the same thing. We are all still human at the end of the day, and do we really know another person’s spiritual walk, desires, dreams, goals, their WHY in life? No, we don’t.
All we can do is wake up every morning and try again, make better choices, choose kinder words, walk away when needed, show up when needed – the list goes on.
I do have one demographic of lovely humans I’ve encountered in my journeys that I want to talk about. This group embraces their darkness, talks about it regularly, and develops strong foundations for accountability. Those people belong to 12-step programs, mostly for those suffering from addictions.
They get a bad rap, they are avoided, they are judged, they are cast out. But if you want to experience and actually see this work in progress and feel the love they genuinely have for each other – go visit one of these meetings in your area. Talk to them. LISTEN to them. It could help you face your own shadow side and not be so afraid.
I have very important people in my life that are part of these types of groups/programs and it has changed ME for the better. And not just in the way I see those groups, but in the way I see myself and show up in the world, unapologetically.
The perfect Tarot card for this work is The Devil. Eeeeek! If you are not familiar with the tarot structure, please do not freak out.
The Devil shows us where we are stuck, and also shows us that we are the ones who can get ourselves unstuck. Too often we get caught in these toxic cycles and we can’t see far enough out of them to clearly see the solution is in our own hands.
The Devil himself, in my opinion, is not some creepy horned fantom dude whispering in our ears and making us do bad things and creating chaos – “he” lives uniquely in all of us. And we do finally realize that – we choose to either incorporate and embrace “him” (our shadow side), to transmute and fully understand the darkness, or we choose to absolutely fear “him”.
Ignoring it all and pushing it down because we think it’s “BAD”, can make the energy compound and build and then you find yourself out of control with toxic emotions or behaviors.
And most importantly, we can finally drop our SHAME.
With you in the fire:
Love,
Aimee 🩷
“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.” – Carl Jung
“There is a ‘light shadow,’ a place where we have buried our power, our competence, and our authenticity.” – Debbie Ford, as cited in Medium
“The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood.” – Connie Zweig
“The more we can acknowledge and own the different aspects of our shadow sides, the more we can face any residue of shame that might come with them.” – www.becomingwhoyouare.net
**Check out this After Skool video titled: Carl Jung – Love the Enemy Within (Read by Alan Watts)**
