How do I start with shadow work

[Angelofdeath]

I really dont understand shadow work , like does it has to be written and stuff...

 

[Yazata]

Here are some people talking about it:

Folk who has done genuine shadow work, what did you do?

Lol this really sounds like a crappy reddit thread name doesn't it? Know Thyself, this is a motto for many of the practices/practictioners and there definitely is a reason to be so. To understand ones self is a most noble work, and many practitioners just repress this side to us. I am...

wizardforums.com

 

[Angelofdeath]

thank you Yazata

 

[HoldAll]

Journalling definitely helps in order to keep track of your insights, to discern patterns, and to record any methods of self-observation that have proved particularly useful. A word of warning though from an obessive journaller: don't take words too seriously. The temptation is to depict your own findings in overly dramatic and colourful terms when in actuality nothing much had happened or didn't merit such sophisticated descriptions - many insights of mine have been pretty banal and conventional. Narcissism is another hazard. Once you feel like you're the only person in the world who has such a unique and rich inner life, you've lost the plot. Everybody has dark sides, it's just that you're now making an effort to explore them intentionally, that's the only difference between you and the common herd.

Of course you can research shadow work, what Jung wrote about the shadow, etc. yourself, so I suppose you're asking for opinions and experiences, not so much for theoretical knowledge. In my opinion, there has been a certain moralistic overtone in what has been written by Jung and others. Jung had been a student of Freud's who had beein interested in the repressed urges of his bourgeois patients and the mental problems this repression caused them. Even before Freud, there was this tendency in religions to disown the 'sinful' facets of one's personality by pretending they didn't exist. In the last 100 years, however, societal norms have become much loser and individualism more dominant. As a result, I think that the emphasis of shadow work should nowadays be on exploring the unknown within oneself instead of searching for 'dark forbidden secrets' or the like.

Shadow work shouldn't be limited to ruminating in private and then journalling about it; it should include observation from daily life as well. Say the subject is aggression - on which occasions does it crop up? It's a distinct clue, for example, whenever you fell inordinately hurt by someone or something without really knowing why, and that's your shadow rearing its ugly head. I liken such aspects of myself to unexploded mines within my psyche but how you specifically wish to deal with them is up to you. You may want to clear them or explode them in a controlled manner, but for me it's enough to know that they are there so I don't step on them by accident.

Speaking for myself, the main benefit of shadow work was learning how to apply the method of investigation, not so much the fruits of my labour, i.e. new insights. Dispassionate observation coupled with ruthless sincerity is my go-to introspection tool. The 'dispassionate' part is important since any violent emotions like remorse, shame, guilt, anger, embarrassment, etc. only lead to distortions and exaggerations; you may make mountains out of molehills if you're not careful. Another result of shadow work explorations is that your self-image (and possibly your whole personality!) may become less rigid. For example, you may think of yourself as this patient, calm person but the other day you were standing in a supermarket line when the guy up front struck up a chat with the check-out girl, and you wanted to slap him for holding everybody up. Shadow work would be observing this unexpected burst of rage and modifying your self-image accordingly. Where that rage was coming from isn't so important, whether it was a childhood experience, undiagnosed claustrophobia, yada, yada. A valuable insight would be "I'm a patient and calm person except when I feel trapped and helpless." Another mine mapped, another correction to your self-image accomplished - without judging, rationalising, or justifying.

When you read some of the older texts on the subject, you'd think the aim of shadow work was to become a saint or angel, and I think even today many think of it on these terms. In my opinion, however, the crucial question is: "What is really there?", and that includes the good as well as the bad, the ugly, and the un-woke.

 

[Angelofdeath]

Journalling definitely helps in order to keep track of your insights, to discern patterns, and to record any methods of self-observation that have proved particularly useful. A word of warning though from an obessive journaller: don't take words too seriously. The temptation is to depict your own findings in overly dramatic and colourful terms when in actuality nothing much had happened or didn't merit such sophisticated descriptions - many insights of mine have been pretty banal and conventional. Narcissism is another hazard. Once you feel like you're the only person in the world who has such a unique and rich inner life, you've lost the plot. Everybody has dark sides, it's just that you're now making an effort to explore them intentionally, that's the only difference between you and the common herd.

Of course you can research shadow work, what Jung wrote about the shadow, etc. yourself, so I suppose you're asking for opinions and experiences, not so much for theoretical knowledge. In my opinion, there has been a certain moralistic overtone in what has been written by Jung and others. Jung had been a student of Freud's who had beein interested in the repressed urges of his bourgeois patients and the mental problems this repression caused them. Even before Freud, there was this tendency in religions to disown the 'sinful' facets of one's personality by pretending they didn't exist. In the last 100 years, however, societal norms have become much loser and individualism more dominant. As a result, I think that the emphasis of shadow work should nowadays be on exploring the unknown within oneself instead of searching for 'dark forbidden secrets' or the like.

Shadow work shouldn't be limited to ruminating in private and then journalling about it; it should include observation from daily life as well. Say the subject is aggression - on which occasions does it crop up? It's a distinct clue, for example, whenever you fell inordinately hurt by someone or something without really knowing why, and that's your shadow rearing its ugly head. I liken such aspects of myself to unexploded mines within my psyche but how you specifically wish to deal with them is up to you. You may want to clear them or explode them in a controlled manner, but for me it's enough to know that they are there so I don't step on them by accident.

Speaking for myself, the main benefit of shadow work was learning how to apply the method of investigation, not so much the fruits of my labour, i.e. new insights. Dispassionate observation coupled with ruthless sincerity is my go-to introspection tool. The 'dispassionate' part is important since any violent emotions like remorse, shame, guilt, anger, embarrassment, etc. only lead to distortions and exaggerations; you may make mountains out of molehills if you're not careful. Another result of shadow work explorations is that your self-image (and possibly your whole personality!) may become less rigid. For example, you may think of yourself as this patient, calm person but the other day you were standing in a supermarket line when the guy up front struck up a chat with the check-out girl, and you wanted to slap him for holding everybody up. Shadow work would be observing this unexpected burst of rage and modifying your self-image accordingly. Where that rage was coming from isn't so important, whether it was a childhood experience, undiagnosed claustrophobia, yada, yada. A valuable insight would be "I'm a patient and calm person except when I feel trapped and helpless." Another mine mapped, another correction to your self-image accomplished - without judging, rationalising, or justifying.

When you read some of the older texts on the subject, you'd think the aim of shadow work was to become a saint or angel, and I think even today many think of it on these terms. In my opinion, however, the crucial question is: "What is really there?", and that includes the good as well as the bad, the ugly, and the un-woke.

Thank you for answering. I really appreciate the time you took to explain it, and your reply helped me understand it much better.

 

[Beyond Everything]

I'll let you on a little (actually huge) secret. People doing shadow work (or any psychotherapeutic kind of modality) are working at the level of thoughts and emotions qua thoughts and emotions. But ultimately what all these things are is simply energy. Rather than getting into the weeds of the specifics of these things, you can figure out how to deal with them in a more 'generic' energetic way. Which is a lot more transformative on the esoteric level.

 

[Angelofdeath]

I'll let you on a little (actually huge) secret. People doing shadow work (or any psychotherapeutic kind of modality) are working at the level of thoughts and emotions qua thoughts and emotions. But ultimately what all these things are is simply energy. Rather than getting into the weeds of the specifics of these things, you can figure out how to deal with them in a more 'generic' energetic way. Which is a lot more transformative on the esoteric level.

Ooohh alchemyy right??

 

[FireBorn]

I'll let you on a little (actually huge) secret. People doing shadow work (or any psychotherapeutic kind of modality) are working at the level of thoughts and emotions qua thoughts and emotions. But ultimately what all these things are is simply energy. Rather than getting into the weeds of the specifics of these things, you can figure out how to deal with them in a more 'generic' energetic way. Which is a lot more transformative on the esoteric level.

Aren't the weeds the entire point of shadow work? I can see energetic work helping with emotional charge, but how is reducing it all to “energy” not a bypass? Ego and shadow originate in the psyche and lived patterns, not just the energy field. Seems backwards to me.

 

[Beyond Everything]

Aren't the weeds the entire point of shadow work? I can see energetic work helping with emotional charge, but how is reducing it all to “energy” not a bypass? Ego and shadow originate in the psyche and lived patterns, not just the energy field. Seems backwards to me.

This is the trap of labeling and reification, which -again- leaves one operating on the same plane as thoughts and emotions. It's all energy, the charge of an emotion as well as whatever underlying instinctive reactiveness and cognitive perspective is involved. What on earth do you think everything is? It's energy. The less you realize that the more you're an effect, rather than a cause.

 

[HoldAll]

Both Freud and Jung where physicians so they saw the shadow as something like a potentially dangerous affliction that had to be confronted head-on and then integrated into a harmonious whole. The danger here is harbouring preconceived notions as to what the end result of this integration process should ideally look like, which is why I advocate thoroughly taking stock first. There's even a sociological and political dimension to it, for example when the hippies in the late Sixties refused to conform to the ideas their parents and the government had about how

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. You could claim that the authorities were impatient for those long-haired bums to finally integrate their shadow according to their obsolete value system, and I'm afraid many still approach shadow work from this angle and insist on becoming this super-efficient übermensch before they've even taken the first step towards introspection. That super-efficient übermensch may just not be in the cards, and making peace with your flaws and failings might be rewarding enough in the end.

Not sure if I buy into the whole emotional alchemy thing though. It's one of the reasons I'm so loathe to use the word 'energy' in spiritual contexts. 'Energy' suggests a basically neutral force that can be channelled, manipulated at will and then exploited for any old purpose, just like electricity. Simply reverse polarity and turn your destructive urges into positive ones, that kind of thing. It's what I call the 'tinkering stage', which is when you've identified unwholesome components of your shadow and attempt to turn them into something else. Instead, I recommend using different strategies for such tinkering, if tinker you must, starting with the one you might want to leave such some horrid component well alone and e.g. refrain from trying to make your Inner Axe Murderer into the epitome of lovingkindness. Other little pieces from your dark side may be a good complementary fit for fundamentally beneficial character traits, for example when you're helpful and considerate to a fault but don't know how to put down your foot and shout "Stop, enough is enough!" I wouldn't count on such exact fits though, and the question always is how much control we have over such integration processes. Self-help books make you think you're your own head emotional engineer, 'the captain of your heart', while in truth the whole thing may not come together so easily or not at all. Some pretty ugly pieces may be of no use whatsoever, or change shape once you direct your dispassionate gaze at them - your Inner Axe Murderer may just be unacknowledged rage and frustration, not the ugly monster you took him to be at first sight.

However, I'm skeptical whether all that rage and frustration can be turned into some kind of battery you can plug into whenever you need a fresh boost of energy. Congratulations if you're able to, I'd love to have such a convenient ability myself. These days I limit my shadow work to dispassionate inquiry, the tinkering stage is a totally different ball where many different schools of thought and spirituality have developed various methods, some more effective than others, but I myself would rather go with a definition of Jung's ultimate aim of individuation I read somewhere: becoming yourself, but even more so. For me, shadow work is a lifelong process, so I don't think along the lines of 'problem => solution' anymore. I'm not a medical doctor, so I'm not looking for a 'cure'. It's a journey, and I'm not in a hurry.

 

[Beyond Everything]

Both Freud and Jung where physicians so they saw the shadow as something like a potentially dangerous affliction that had to be confronted head-on and then integrated into a harmonious whole.

First it should be pointed out Freud was a fraud who claimed cures where there were none ( the book The Unauthorized Freud contains the receipts). Jung was a creative man lost in his own imaginings without comprehension of what esotericism is really about.

We have energy patterns, clusters, and thoughtforms (these are only fingers pointing, the real things are beyond language) that prompt unwanted mental, emotional, and behavioral phenomena. The degree to which regular awareness has a read on those is variable. Reifying this into The Shadow, or anything else, is a good way to impede your own mitigation and removal of those phenomena and create unnecessary internal drama.

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btw I completely eliminated -with no outside help- severe depression going back to childhood with this approach

 

[solxyz]

I really dont understand shadow work , like does it has to be written and stuff...

There are two basic steps in shadow work: (1) become aware of your shadow, (2) "integrate" your shadow. Of the two, step one is by far the most challenging. The problem is that your whole psychology is built around not seeing it, or if you do see it then believing it is totally normal or even necessary. I recommend starting with the much more direct and specific topic of pain. What hurts in your life? When do you hurt? But also, when and how do you hurt others? You still have to look for it, because often times we dissociate from our pain in various ways, but if you keep that question in mind, you will almost certainly learn something about yourself. Then, once you've kept that question in your mind like a spotlight for a month or a year or so, you will have a very rough outline of your shadow.

 

[FireBorn]

I am definitely not an expert on this stuff, but I do have experience with shadow work. What I am very careful about is treating my experience, or what worked for me, as some universal answer. When people in the occult speak in absolutes, or when their experiences become universal truths for everyone else, I flinch. You do you.

I have crossed the Abyss once so far and spent quite a bit of time sitting with and integrating that experience with the guidance of Lilith. Take that for what it is. Later down the path, I intentionally worked on the sexual aspect of my shadow. In the last four or five months, I worked with Sitri, who taught me things on a whole different level.

All of those experiences involved shadow work for me. None of them were easy. Each wrecked me in different ways. I wrote about some of it in my journal here, so there’s no need to tear into all of that in this thread.

Integration is not easy, and it's not fun. I wish it were an active “thing” I could force when I was motivated, but that has not been my experience. For me, integration is more passive. It happens through living, observing, failing, correcting, and slowly becoming different over time. And no, I do not think it is ever really finished.

This might sound strange coming from me, but I am reticent to tell people, especially newer people, to just “go for it” with shadow work. This work can genuinely fuck you up if you run into it recklessly, especially if you have no grounding, no support, no self-observation skills, and no idea what you are stirring up.

Then there is the whole 'Are you on any medications?' thing. I'm not touching that one for obvious reasons, but yeah, absolutely something to consider here.

So what is the answer? I do not know. Not for everybody. I mean, some pathwork already has this built in. Matron/patron guidance can be helpful, but that might not be for everyone either.

I do know that most people do not start this right away. I also notice that many occultists skip this work altogether. I get it. It's a real motherfucker, and you will not be the same afterward.

I can say that I am grateful to have a matron in Lilith who presents teachers and lessons in a timely fashion. I do not pretend to know the mechanics of how all of that works. I only know that, for me, the work came when I was ready enough to survive it and integrate it.

That is why I think beginner advice should stay grounded: observe yourself, journal everything if that helps, watch your patterns, notice what hurts, notice where you react too strongly, notice what you deny or project, and be honest without turning the whole thing into theater.

Energy work may help with emotional charge. I am not denying that. But if we skip the specific weeds of psyche, behavior, repression, projection, shame, fear, desire, and self-image, then I do not understand how that remains shadow work. At that point it sounds like energy work replacing shadow work, not shadow work itself.

 

[Ohana]

To me starting with shadow work was always recognizing that beneath every person that did something horrible was a human. Then looking at others and trying to understand motivation, excuses they made for themselves and think about how that applies to you. To what excuses you make even for being a little angered why?

Trying to find that why, that shadow that hides inside your mind is something to try an do. With safety though and to make sure that if something really bothers you that you don't have to work through it now and instead watch a video of kittens or puppies. Those have been shown to reduce stress so when needing to tap out of shadow work maybe putting those on is nice.

I found for me that my shadow was that I was afraid to get sad because I felt a well of neverending grief. That well is with me day after day. Month after month. Year after year. Its a lot of sadness to process. Its almost like a full time job with this amount of shadow work.

Maybe start trying to understand others and that can lead to understanding the self and its shadows.

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I will preface though that despite looking at examples of people doing unkind things and working through what lead them to that point to understand if you yourself share any of the shadows of that. That there really isn't an excuse for it.

But also shadow work probably is different for everyone. So maybe yours means just finding parts that you hide from yourself. It might not necessarily even be a bad quality just a quality.

Writing works for some but I think you can do shadow work with your imagination too. Like maybe listening to a sad/angry song if you don't like writing. I know I have trouble journaling since I'm more rely on thinking more. Its can also be intense for me to start writing what I think so doesn't have to be just writing I don't think.

 

[HoldAll]

There's this poem in Peter J. Carroll's "Liber Kaos" which is quite apt in this connection - he called it "Liber Boomerang" (you can tell the book is about chaos magic )

A god ignored is a demon born.
Think you to hypertrophy some selves at the expense of others?
That which is denied gains power, and seeks strange and unexpected forms of manifestation.
Deny death and other forms of suicide will arise.
Deny sex and bizarre forms of its expression will torment you.
Deny love and absurd sentimentalities will disable you.
Deny aggression only to stare eventually at the bloody knife in your shaking hand.
Deny honest fear and desire only to create senseless neuroticism and avarice.
Deny laughter and the world laughs at you.
Deny magic only to become a confused robot, inexplicable even unto yourself.

It's exactly what I mean by 'unexploded mines within the psyche'. Another way of describing shadow work could be stopping to fool oneself about oneself, and by that I don't only mean your psychological makeup but also your beliefs, convictions, or how you view your own autobiographical past. Nothing should be taboo, and that's where highly moral or religious people run into trouble - they might discover some latent tendencies for a specific transgression or sin within themselves and hurriedly move on instead of investigating them further in depth.

Shadow work also has some very practical implications for magic. In chaos sigil magic, it's always advisable to do some thorough soul-searching before formulating one's Sentence of Desire. It's not only "What do I really want?" but also how it should come about. We sometimes get queries about love spells here where you get the vibe that the member in question might be an

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. They're so desperate to get laid that they're prepared to go full nuclear on all the females of this world, invoke hordes of demons, perform blood sacrifices, sell their souls, etc., and there are dozens of 'black magic' books with lurid covers out there which seek to accommodate these sorry saps. It's hard enough to make those people see reason, let alone change them, and I have this suspicion they'll subconsciously still cling to their skewed beliefs even when they've successfully lost their virginity. If they can be persuaded to try chaos magic sigils instead of the Gothic horror stuff, their Sentences of Desire would be all about breaking down apparently insurmountable barriers where in fact no such barriers exist, or not that many, and where it should be more about conjuring for mutual sexual desire anyway.

For most people, their beliefs and taboos are inviolable. It's easy to laugh about incels but ask yourself: are there vital elements of your self-image (which is in fact your identity!) that you'd rather not touch? 'Truths' that seems so self-evident that you'd never question them? Grudges you feel fully justified in holding?

Speaking of grudges - in my opinion, they do harbour a lot of power. Oddly enough, that incel will almost certainly be able to generate much more energy in his ritual than a gentle soul just looking for a nice female companion. Rage holds genuine power, that's why it's so hard to give up. Those unexploded mines do hold a charge. Alright, so how can that poor incel 'transform' his violent resentment that is causing him so much mental anguish into something more wholesome? No idea. Perhaps a succession of hot babes with an amazing sex drive could help but I wouldn't be so sure that conscious decisions alone will accomplish such a feat. I also agree with @FireBorn that integration is usually more passive than active. It may take several decades and lots of maturity to relinquish that dubious source of power.

Consciously transmuting anger into love is an advanced tantric practice of Tibetan Buddhism strictly practiced under the careful, step-by-step guidance of an experienced guru, and it's considered dangerous and risky. I'm very sceptical about attempting such transformations based solely on rational insight and 'personality trait engineering'. Apparently some people can do it but I'm not among them. Additionally, I have this paranoid fear of deceiving myself so I wouldn't trust the results if I attempted emotional alchemy and would always suspect that I was just papering over the cracks.

 

[querent k]

You ask how to begin doing shadow work. Simply take 24h off being completely alone, no social media, no television, no phone, no computer, no games, no talking with other people, no sex, no doing music or art or all of a sudden ´´need to make 6 course dinner/paint the walls/clean the whole house´´, wear earmuffs if the neighbours can be heard, etc, you get the point. Just have pencil and notebook ready, only for writing down real insights that come to you (not casual journaling or poetry/whatever). It´s brutal, but insights about your shadow sides will come to you.

 

[Beyond Everything]

Again, conceptual, verbal labels and reifications which themselves are energetic blocks are going to keep you stuck, and believing you need decades (!) to achieve substantial progress is absolutely disempowering nonsense to me. Also, some of this is being framed using outmoded terms and concepts that don't really tally with modern research on the mind and behavior (of course, I'm not saying an energy approach is anymore scientific). Real change involves an inner stance that is beyond normal thoughts and emotions and the first step is an empowering one of realizing one doesn't need to be the victim of any inner phenomenon and in fact whatever is present in your awareness is also subject to the will of your manipulation. OR you can just create energetic knots wherein influencing and manipulating such phenomena is a delicate and dangerous affair and can't possibly work because of X verbal/cognitive/emotional construct. One is a real initiated perspective, the other is chasing your own tail and essentially giving away energy that could go to your personal peace and empowerment.