Inner Shadow Work

Tell me what part of me you hate, and I'll tell you where you have to heal.

Shadow work is a personal mission that focuses on exploring your inner darkness. This is an internal and individual work, we do it to reveal those parts of ourselves that have been stripped, repressed, and rejected, consciously and unconsciously, as well as the origin of everything that we repudiate, reject, criticize, and that We are ashamed or terrified of ourselves.

The work of the shadows is the attempt to discover all that we reject, reject, and what makes us ashamed of ourselves.

This work leads you to explore and find those mechanisms of survival and trauma (and their triggers), to work on these towards achieving individual transformation.

Visualize for a moment a small child living in a dark corner accumulating old broken toys, toys that no longer serve him, but for some reason, he refuses to put them down. Our "Shadow I" is like that little child who lives in the shadows, is a child frightened by the outside world and who clings to these toys because the child thinks that they are the only thing that belongs to him, without realizing that the child He is already an adult and those toys to which he clings represent his wounds and old traumas that have not yet healed.

Yes, it is uncomfortable to do the work of exploring ourselves, it hurts our pride and makes us feel vulnerable, a very difficult job to do when we have spent our entire lives following what the "adults" have taught us to do, "no cry in public "," do not show weakness "," do not do this or that because others are going to make fun of you ", and perhaps the most painful of all" others are doing better than you, why don't you act like them? ".

However, doing this internal work, exploring your own shadow, being able to look at your face and in your subconscious tell yourself that you are finally in the process of being well, is an integral part of our spiritual work, it is an obligation that you have. with yourself, and it is the most beautiful thing you can do for yourself.

Those wounds and traumas that do not heal, do not heal and continue to bleed on others.

Remember, do not focus on healing the adult, the adult will not heal until you go inside and heal the child, it is the child who is crying, the injured adult is nothing more than a manifestation of the trauma of the inner child, once that you heal the child, the adult heals consciously.

The most important thing you must remember is that the shadow is there to store everything that your subconscious considers that can cause you any damage, it is like a deposit that only stores were broken and old things that can cut, burn, and hurt you.

Although it is something quite difficult to understand because the subject of shadow work is something that has been talked about a lot lately, although mostly only in a rather superficial way, (or many times just to show off that it is being done).

This is not about diving into your shadow to "hug" it, it is about diving into the cave with a small flashlight, and exploring what is there, discovering why it is still there, and finding a way to bring it out into the light. , where it belongs, where it heals and teaches us to heal others.

Facing your defense mechanisms and doing unlearning therapy is the way to reconnect and reconcile your being. And for that reason, we also appreciate those moments of shadow, since they are always caused by those minimal flashes of Light.

Do not forget, those tiny stars that you look at in the night sky, are gigantic balls of burning gas, many times they are planets even larger than ours, each tiny particle of light that you find inside you, is there to heal you, but also to teach you to heal others, and to light the way for others.

© Copyright, 2014, Elhoim Leafar.

Previously published in Spanish as "working your own shadow and embracing your own light", Dominical Magazine, Venezuela, 2014.