Henlo Beefriends, I hope you are having a great day. :) I was inspired to write this post today because I've personally been doing a lot of shadow work of late and just this morning someone in an online group I'm in asked a question about shadow work and I made a comment in response that I thought I'd expand upon a little bit here.
because you know I like to fill my serious Pagan posts with a little humor
So, the person's question was essentially asking about if you're ever "done" with shadow work. I don't think so, at least not while you're still in body.
If you're unfamiliar with the concept of shadow work, it's basically that we all have these unconscious things driving us; maybe you experienced some trauma a long time ago that you just kind of stuffed into the back of your mind and never really dealt with, maybe you absorbed some cultural norm or prejudice that you never questioned and it effects how you interact with some people in the world, some people also believe that you can carry shadows from past lives or your ancestors that need to be worked through (even if you don't believe in past lives, the ancestors part rings pretty true for me; all you have to do is to look at how traumas can be passed from generation to generation. Some people scoff at that idea too, but let me give you an example a lot of us perhaps have personally seen: your grandparents or great-grandparents lived through the Great Depression in the 30s, and developed that "save everything, it might come in useful and you don't know if you'll be able to buy it later" mentality. They passed that ethos on to their kids, who became hoarders. See it now?). Dealing with these subconscious drivers in your life, however that works for you: magickally, energetically, meditation, therapy, healing, confronting abusers, giving or asking for forgiveness, etc., is essentially what shadow work is. You are digging deep into the dark recesses of your mind and unearthing all the stuff that is hiding back there that you generally weren't consciously aware of before.
So I don't think you are ever "done" while you're still alive (though I think it's possible you can finish and then move on from this life), and you don't know how big your shadow is or how much work you have to do in this vein until you start, if you ever figure it out at all. The metaphor I used in response to the question in the group was this:
Think of it like, you're an archaeologist excavating a site. You don't know how big the site is when you start. Sometimes you think you found everything but then someone accidentally discovers a whole new section. You might dig up one building, and then spend some time examining the things you found there and have a rest, and then go back later to dig up a different building. You can't just POOF unearth everything at once (which would be overwhelming!).
Another metaphor might be, if you've ever played a game like Civilization, where the map starts out in shadow, and you only begin to see more of it as you have your characters explore. Sometimes you come across barbarians that attack you (uncovering an unpleasant memory that hurts, perhaps), and you have to deal with them and then give yourself time to heal and recover before you move on to explore more parts of the map. Sometimes, after you defeat a barbarian camp, you get rewards (sometimes after you process the trauma, things in your life improve)! :)
The more of us that do shadow work, the more enlightened we become, the higher we can ascend, the higher our vibration ...think of it however you like, but the effect is the same: we become better people by examining our subconscious and discarding what no longer serves us. And each of us becoming lighter and more open to love and new ideas, in turn opens up society to new ways of being.
So much of our societal upheaval today is communities doing shadow work. We are realizing that so many of our systems and structures are bad ideas invented by dead men a long time ago and it's okay to discard the ones that don't work anymore. If you think about it, we even use the term "woke," whether seriously or pejoratively, to describe it: we are awakening to the truth that we can change things that no longer serve us, or perhaps never did. And all the people who are overtly and unashamedly hateful and shouting that hate from the rooftops? That hate was always there. They're just not hiding it anymore. In politics you see this a lot: the difference between a fearmonger xenophobe politician and the "kinder, gentler" politician isn't so much policies or actions, but words. The "kinder, gentler" politician often isn't any more humane, to say, immigrants: they still pass awful legislation that harms people (coughKidsAreStillInCagescough), but they say it in nicer ways, like "I just want people to come here legally" while the laws in place make that process take YEARS if someone is even eligible to do so at all. They're not doing anything to help immigrants, they're just not calling them "criminals" and whatnot. So what seems like a sudden and new (if you were sheltered from it before; various communities have always known it was there) uptick in racism and hate crimes, really isn't; it's just that the veil has been lifted and people are being made aware who could previously imagine that everything was fine (it wasn't).
This is actually my biggest beef with the neoliberal, "vote blue no matter who" type democrats (for clarity, I'm a leftist anarchist, not a democrat): so many of them go on about how Biden has "dignity" and Trump was so "crass." Like honey if your biggest problem with Trump was his mouth rather than his policies and now that your boy is in office who says pretty words you think everything is fine again, have I got news for you. Your ability to put up your blinders and go back to brunch because you're safe from whatever policy and now That Nasty Man isn't on your news feed saying mean things doesn't mean that everything is better now; it just means you're ignoring it again.
So many people want to put the demons back in the box, but Pandora's box is opened now and we're going to have to deal with it.
The question is, are you willing to face the dark parts of your Self and society, to run the gauntlet of your own unconscious, and come out the other side, wiser and stronger? Or would you rather hide under the covers with a flashlight and pretend that as long as you stay very, very still, the monster under the bed can't get you?
The monster under the bed has lifted up the bed on its shoulders and is carrying you wherever it wants to go, kids. Either you let it control the path of your life, or you come out and face it.
It's scary, but it's worth it. :)
