Shadow Work

Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
A Course in Miracles

Every spiritual path traveler has a shadow for the very simple reason that we aim for the light; and every sun shine creates a shadow somewhere. The extreme version of this struggle has been told in 'The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'; in it, the innocent Dr. Jekyll was taken over by Mr. Hyde, both unaware that both personalities exist in the same person. Isn't it odd that different personalities reside in you, dependent on whether it is morning or night, whether you are in the company of good friends or annoying people, or whether you have eaten or whether you are drunk. You are probably tired of all the back and forth you have experienced; the endless discussions between your angel and your demon; you are probably sick of all the broken promises to yourself and perhaps even others.

The Tao is here to help you. The way out of the dilemma exists, yet you may not know it yet. The problem you are facing and the shadow that you own is something you should respect, perhaps even value. It will make you the person you are born to be. Let me give you a few ground-rules of how you get the two sides on talking terms. The Tao is here to help you and lead you out of the dilemma, yet the confusion is that you never really know who is speaking. Is it the devine message from 'beyond', or are those the fears speaking. Is your environment telling you what the consequences of your actions are, or are you subconsciously beating yourself up on a self-imposed guilt trip. Well, you have to find out for yourself. Schedule little experiments, see how your environment reacts to them. Take yourself time. This is a blessed period; you are taking your internal conflicts, and instead of being abused by your internal tension, you start expressing yourself creatively and design the spiritual giant you were born to be.

Never abuse anyone in your experiments. The Law of Oneness dictates that whatever you do to your environment will come back to you. This applies for love as well as violence. The trick of shadow work is to let go of existing baggage and not accumulate more in the process. But you have to stick your neck out a little in your experiments. If you go back to your 'I must only do what my True Self dictates', you are back to where you started from. A dark voice will be growling in the background. Protect both voices in you, the anticipated True Self as well as the complaining demon voice in the background. You might believe that the demon in you doesn't really exist and only your True Self is real, but the point of shadow work is to find out what exactly the demon voice wants from you; your repressed desires, your not yet accepted personas. You are not abusing your True Self with your shadow work, you are finding out your destiny instead.

Find the path that utilizes the strength of your passion while moving into the direction of the purposeful life. What is it that your demon wants? Sure, if the game plan is to obstruct your spiritual mission than you have to find a better game plan. Something the demon wants perhaps makes you stronger and more effective in your spiritual mission. I owe my demon my fitness, physical strength and my recently acquired more assertive nature. None of these attributes interfere with my ability to love - perhaps even to the contrary. How can you respect or love someone who walks right over you.

Don't get stuck experimenting with your shadow. Listen to the reports of addicted people and you will realize that they fall into a trance when they doing whatever it is that gets them high. An addiction is an escape from freedom. It is the anticipation of the pleasure that gets the ball rolling and once it is there is no stopping before the orgasmic high follows into a fall into despair. A spiritual path traveler is on the journey to freedom. Everything that glues you along the way has to be cut out. So when you run your experiments schedule a 21 to 28 day period in-between and you will see how your mental ties to this activity reduce with every day of abstinence. I know it is hard to perceive that the dark activity could not matter much to you on day 15 or 16 when you have the activity fresh in your mind, but it is. So develop the willpower to tough it out - you have no choice anyway.

The advantage of a spiritual path traveler is that the psychological movie plot becomes visible, time shrinks and the cause and effect of every action becomes immediately visible. If you can see the law of oneness at work in front of your eyes, would you ever do anything to undermine yourself? Probably not. Run your shadow experiment and see that all your actions have no real consequences. Three or our day of irritation are soon followed by blazing sun-shine. Once you have figured out what you can give your demon without undermining your spiritual birthright you will soon transcend to the next level. There is a point when your shadow work doesn't give you any insights any longer and it will bring you nothing - besides a temporary high - but plenty of interferences. That is a good day to move on. There will be a day when you leave your shadow behind like Buddha said no to sexual temptation and Jesus refused to participate in a power trip. But until that day, study, transform and take it easy.

With every year that goes by, life becomes easier for you. You will suddenly discover the benefits of cutting out all interferences. At this stage you simply become a simpleton. You are not naive, you are focused like a laser in the direction the Tao points out at you. One person comes and says 'X' to you and you take a look at his body language and it reveals the opposite so you say to yourself 'Your body language is talking so loudly, I do not hear a word of what you are saying' and then comes someone who says 'Y' and you take her word as the gospel because the Tao tells you that you should. Once you reach this stage, the simplest interference coming from your ego would drive you insane, so you adopt a kosher lifestyle in all areas of your life just because there is no alternative.

So much energy is wasted in our community because we strive to be like the Christ and the Buddha. After all, they did it, they said no to the ego so many thousand years ago, so why on earth can't we do it? The problem is that the scriptures are very explicit on the the day when they said no to the ego, but quite vague on the decades leading up to that holy moment. The point is that they struggled as much as you do. Your moment in the sun will come as well. Just stop striving my friend and see what happens. Everything that your ego has done up to this holy moment is nothing but fog as the Course in Miracle reminds us. So there is nothing to regret, just accept who you are today and define the direction you want to take from here. If you truly accept who you are, why should there be any wishful thinking involved in your spiritual mission statement? This universe was created to see your spiritual mission fulfilled. Take one step after the other and just see that the Tao will bend backwards to make you the person you were born to be. Just take your dark friend along on your targeted stroll and see how it merges with the light along the Way.

The Union of Two Opposites

Do you remember the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde? The respected member of upper London society never faced up to his dark side, so the neglected part of him ventured out at night and committed horrendous crimes and finally won the upper hand over Dr. Jekyll altogether. This story is a classic in describing the two opposing natures that can live in a person and the more proper a spiritual path traveler aspires to become, the louder the voice of the demon becomes until one finally fesses up to the other voice inside.

The union of two opposites is possible. Every marriage is a union of yin and yang, so I hope you would agree with me that with a lot of hard work and a little good karma you can bring out the best of both forces. So figure out what forces are burning deep down inside, accept and embrace them and then find out how you can unify your drives and aspirations. This is your mission statement, as a matter of fact, you assigned yourself this little puzzle long before you were born so surely a solution to your challenge exists. Be creative, be flexible and be determined that your idiosyncratic solution will be found. Have a look at the in and yang symbol below. The union of yin and yang exists - both forces live happily ever after.

Dark Matter

Aghori is the Indian yoga path of embracing what our religions consider taboo activities. Since everyone has a personal shadow, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the question is how to deal with it. Do you acknowledge the dark side in you, but ignore it, or do you embrace it and let Dr. Jekyll study the implications when Mr. Hyde is up and about? I don't have an answer for you, only you can decide what is helpful along your spiritual path. Either way, I would argue that our aghori folks have a point that you can learn a lot about your true nature by studying your shadow as well.

Becoming whole is a journey towards an equilibrium, a path towards peace. Along the way you are bombarded with countless decisions and your mind can help you only so much with them, in the end it is a feeling that lets you know what the right choices are. Becoming whole means that you can feel your way, recognize what is truly you and what is just a psychological mask. Don't beat yourself up over supposedly wrong choices along the way. As long as you can feel or realize that this persona wasn't really you, it must have been a worthwhile insight nevertheless.

I am more mind than feelings driven, so recognizing that Mr. Hyde is not my true self while he is out of hiding never really worked for me. What I have learned though, is that the activities Mr. Hyde feels exited about launch you on a path to nowhere and with every step you take the glue is getting thicker and stronger. Freedom is the opposite. When you are truly yourself then every step you take is voluntary. The Tao invites you to dance, and as you dance you completely merge with the moment and you are still free the moment after. When you enjoy aghori moments, you are less free to choose afterwards and Mr. Hyde who got you on the trip in the first place beats you up in the process. Addictions are just the end-game of all aghori activities, but you can feel the subtle psychological process already forming early in the process.

On my path I aim to cut out interferences as best I can. If I engaged in aghori activities, I would always be confronted with a voice that reminds me afterwards that I shouldn't have done so and that because of it I undermined my power supply. This may or may not be true, in fact, the voice is probably nothing but my super ego, that is, ideas that our society and religions have put into my head rather than my true self.  Either way,  a lot of manic stuff going on in your head which you can simply cut out by keeping Mr. Hyde at bay. As I said, this happens to be my choice, but there are many other paths as well. I am convinced that aghori masters have great insights into the workings of our super-ego and I am sure that they will find that no matter what you have done in the past, you will always have full access to the Tao in the now. As always, many paths lead home, so happy wandering along your Way.