Shadow work IS "love and light."
Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash
It's in our human nature to attach value to things. We can hardly help it. Attaching value to something is large in part responsible for our experience of what is "real" vs. what is "fake" and we do it...everywhere.
One of the disturbing aspects of this inclination is how we use our inherent compulsion to attach value to things to also pit ourselves against one another.
"You're either in my camp, or you're in someone else's camp, and if you're in someone else's camp then you're wrong, because my camp is right." (cue the righteousness)
It's so silly, and yet, here we are. My social media feeds have been FLOODED with some version of this conversation for years (and at times I've even been involved in it!), and it seems to be just getting worse.
On top of the conversations about either mainstream media or conspiracies, either masks or personal freedom, either Trump or Anybody Else, I'm seeing this one popping up now, too, which pretty much blows my mind:
Either "shadow work" or "love and light.”
Before I go on, I think it'll be helpful to roll out a relevant section of my "CV" of transformational work, which entails a riveting two years involved in an organization many consider a cult where everything was about the shadow (even the things that were actually not about it were because cult and gas-lighting).
Before you jump to conclusions, these are two years of my life I look back on fondly for how nutrient-dense they were in material for my own transformation. All of that to say, I've seen shadow work go horribly wrong firsthand in that environment, and I've also seen it catalyze incredible, foundational, healing.
It's also worth knowing that I spend most of my free time studying things from multiple angles and dimensions, going to the root and back again, and understanding how the mechanisms of transformation actually function in order to optimize the experience of it. (yes, I do this for fun)
Of the many tools I have learned and employed in my own transformational journey, there are two in particular which have proven — time and again — to be extraordinarily effective:
When I'm angry/upset/triggered by someone, I focus on my own heart, visualizing it increasing to three times its size, and then I actively send my heart energy to that person, watching it the whole way, until it lands in their chest. (I use this tool in acute circumstances) **
Meditating on things I negatively judge/hate/think are awful/find unbelievable/unjust/torturous/emotionally excruciating, etc, and simultaneously bringing in the somatic and emotional experiences of gratitude, pleasure, delight, love, and enjoyment in my own body. (I use this tool during my daily meditation practice) **
I apply these tools to all experiences of physical and emotional pain and discomfort. Through shifting my interpretation of the experience from "ow I don't want to have this experience" to "yum I love this experience" — transmutation occurs.
Because at the root of any trigger I experience is something about myself that I have yet to recognize or claim.
The thing I hate suddenly becomes a thing I either can easily be compassionate about, or otherwise neutralizes my physical and emotional experience around it immediately.
When we judge something as bad or wrong or otherwise tell ourselves that we shouldn't or don't want to be having an experience, it remains hidden (and painful).
The sole purpose of shadow work is to bring what was once hidden into the light. It is not to slosh around in the shadows and to stay there. In fact, when that occurs, there's usually a scandal or two involved (see: cult).
Healthy, effective, shadow work is the precise and explicit practice of utilizing love to cast light on something that was previously hidden or negated or perceived/judged as bad/wrong (hence: in the shadow).
You can see how it's an issue to use shadow work to make love and light wrong, I hope? It's like using the mechanism meant to get you free to keep you imprisoned. It makes no sense.
What's confusing is that the name for this necessary transformational work — which has its entire emphasis on a person becoming a more full, liberated, expression of self — puts an unnecessary focus on the word "shadow.” If I were in charge of naming things, I would call it "integrity" work, or "soul retrieval" work, or simply "LOVE." Not shadow.
Sadly, I'm not in charge of naming things, and so instead I'm writing this post. :)
If you've qualified yourself as being in the "camp" of shadow work, or somehow eschewed "love and light" and the practices that may entail, I want to invite you to investigate your own unquestioned assumptions.
There is a lot of judgment on "love and light" because this "camp" is often associated with extreme spiritual bypass.
There are many who preach love and light who are actively avoiding their humanity, acting superior, judging and shaming healing work as beneath them, refusing to entertain anything unless it feels good and comfortable in the name of transcendence and enlightenment.
But you know what? People who systematically move toward descending with a myopic focus on pain and suffering, and who deny ascension and transcendence are spiritually bypassing, too.
Neither of these representations are fully integrated (yet). Both are self-indulgent.
There is a quote that goes "To deny your divinity is arrogance." (I can't remember which sage said this)
I like to adjust that to: "To deny either your divinity or your humanity is arrogance."
The answer is to embrace both as interdependent parts of a whole. We can only ascend as high as we have descended low. And vice versa. Literally everything is about expanding your capacity to receive
All.
Of.
It.
We think shadow is the opposite of light, but it's not. Without light there is no shadow.
Anytime you're caught in either/or thinking you can pretty much guarantee that you're activated (defending yourself against a perceived threat, real or not). The last thing we need right now is to defend ourselves against the very thing that has the capacity to liberate us.
I love you. <3
**: Resources for these practices can be found in the following books: The Tools by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels (see "Active Love" and "Reversal of Desire"), Make Miracles in Forty Days by Melody Beattie (see "Negative Gratitude") ,Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl (see "Paradoxical Intention" in the appendix), and Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliott