“Shadow cannot be thought about, it must be experienced.”

We all have shadows, those parts of us which we hide away and deny, that inevitably come out and mess with us when we least expect it. We see red, and anger comes and leaves us wondering what happened, what possessed us, and leaves us with much apologizing to do, for example.
It is easy to marginalize parts of us, perhaps that hedonist part of you that likes to party regardless of the consequences. Or the intellectual, who if you let out would surely alienate you from all of your friends who prefer sporting banter over a pint of beer. We can hide both our bad points and our good. There is much treasure to be found in shadow.

So, for healing, it is good to delve into this shadow aspect of ourselves and bring out the riches we have put away, for whatever reason. If nothing else, all this denial saps our energy.

The tricky thing is, by their nature the things in our shadows are difficult to see. They hide in the darkness, and may only be glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. So their discovery really isn’t an intellectual exercise. You can’t just think about your shadow and expect it to appear.

Even now, as I write about it, I can’t quite get to the point of it. Shadow is elusive. All you can do is be willing to see, and wait for what comes out.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 4:22 pm and is filed under abarefootman. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.