Our Shadow Self

In this episode of Life, Lessons, & Laughter, Glenn discusses the shadow-self. What is it? Do we transmute it? Integrate it? Is it good? Is it bad? Where does it come from and what is/was its the purpose? All these questions and more are answered.

Transcript

Welcome to Life,

Lessons and Laughter with your host,

Glenn Ambrose.

Hello,

Everybody.

Welcome to my blank space for those that are on video and the podcast Life,

Lessons and Laughter.

So,

Benjamin,

Would you please join us?

There he is.

There he is.

Again,

For the video people.

But he waved,

So you audio people just imagine it.

So,

Today we are talking about our shadow selves.

I don't know what that is.

Well,

And this should be an interesting podcast then.

It should.

It should.

Yeah,

A lot of people,

I think the term gets thrown around a lot.

I know I've heard it a lot.

Some people,

But I think the term gets thrown around with some misconceptions.

So,

Like a lot of times,

You know,

Our,

A lot of times the way it's spoken about is kind of our darker side.

So,

People,

You know,

We can assume that,

You know,

We have to accept all of ourselves and there's good and bad in this world of yang and yang.

And,

You know,

We have to accept the bad parts of ourselves as well as the good parts of ourselves.

And kind of if you go along with that mentality,

That mentality never completely clicked with me.

Like,

Not that it doesn't have its merits and stuff.

It just always felt like something was missing.

Because like if I follow that train of thought,

Then it's like,

Okay,

What's,

You know,

I mean,

I've got a temper.

So,

Like what would be an example of my shadow self?

Like,

You know,

Something happens and I lose my temper and I lash out and I yell and act like a moron.

So,

Then I go back and I go,

Okay,

Time to do some shadow work.

Like,

Well,

Glenn,

You,

You know,

You lashed out.

You have some anger inside of you.

So,

You have to accept that.

You have to accept that sometimes you're a jerk and you scream.

And it's,

You know,

That's your dark side and you have to accept that that's part of you.

And it's like,

Ahhh.

Yeah,

You know,

Kind of.

There's a little bit of truth to that,

But it just never,

Like,

I don't see the solution to it.

Like,

It kind of just seemed like a rationalization.

It's like,

So I just lash out of anger at people and I just accept that that's who I am.

Yeah.

Like,

You know,

It seemed like there was something more.

So,

The understanding that I came across that made more sense to me was that your shadow self is parts of yourself that you don't acknowledge.

So,

You know,

And a lot of it kind of goes back to the domestication process.

So,

We're born and we have these,

You know,

We know that we're perfect.

So,

You know,

I have to pick an example to explain this.

So,

I'll pick an example of not being respected.

Like,

In a perfect world,

When you're surrounded by beings that are all love,

We all would respect one another.

It's just natural.

Why wouldn't you?

You know,

We would have respect for ourselves and we would respect one another just out of sheer love.

So,

When we come into this world,

That's our true nature.

And that doesn't fit into this world.

You know,

So that gets beaten out of us real quick,

You know,

Or we just get domesticated and it's like,

No,

You aren't to be respected.

And whenever you stand up as a child demanding respect,

You're told that,

No,

That's wrong.

You shouldn't be demanding respect.

You don't deserve respect.

So,

Eventually,

At some point,

We go,

Oh,

That part of me that expects to be respected must be wrong.

And we push it down and we stuff it.

And that part of ourselves becomes part of our shadow.

We walk around with it.

It's inside of us.

It's a part of us that knows that it's right.

But we don't acknowledge it.

We don't accept it.

We don't integrate it into our being.

You know,

And of course,

Some people do as they grow older and some people don't.

So,

The people who don't reintegrate that as they get older,

That's part of their shadow.

So,

You know,

It's what does that look like?

What does it look like when you have a part of yourself that you won't acknowledge and that's been stuffed down and that affects your interactions in life?

I mean,

Obviously,

There can be frustrations that grow out of that.

So,

If people aren't respecting you,

At some point,

You get to a level where you get frustrated and you might lash out.

Or,

You know,

Depending on the person,

You might go within,

You might run away,

You might whatever your defense mechanism is,

It would trigger that.

So,

It's not if the defense mechanism is lashing out,

Then your shadow isn't the fact that you lashed out.

It's the fact that your inability to demand respect from other people has been stuffed so long that it finally get triggered.

And the energy came flying out,

Lashing out from being triggered.

So,

Once I understand like,

Oh,

Okay,

It's not me lashing out isn't my shadow self.

That was a reaction to me not being integrated as a person.

I have this part of me that I haven't acknowledged.

I haven't reintegrated with who I am and how I live my life.

And that part of me got frustrated and got triggered.

So,

What I need to do is bring that part of me back in and reintegrate it into myself so I can be a whole being with all the different parts of myself integrated into one being and I can interact with life from that space.

How do you do that?

I'm not telling.

It's gonna be a short podcast.

So,

Yeah,

So that's the shadow work.

That's our shadow selves.

And then the shadow work is integrating,

You know,

Those parts of our shadow self into our being.

Well,

Can we,

Before we do that,

Can we give an example of a piece of us that is our shadow self like what is a like a trait or a part of you that is like is buried and that you need to reintegrate?

Can you give like a specific example?

I just gave,

I just spent the last 10 minutes giving one.

I know,

But like,

Like a specific trait or something?

Not being respected,

You know,

So if you have that part of yourself that isn't being respected,

Then you need to bring that trait and say,

Okay,

I do deserve to be respected.

And I need to know now what would that look like once it's once it's integrated,

Once you bring that part of,

Okay,

I need to demand respect.

I deserve respect and I truly believe that I deserve respect because I've done the shadow work and now that's integrated with who I am as a being.

You know,

Then that might look like setting boundaries,

You know,

Externally or,

You know,

To be honest with you,

That part comes a little bit naturally.

Like once you integrate it with who you are,

Then it's actually fairly easy to stand in it,

You know,

Once it's who you are.

So I guess we are at that shadow work point,

So how do we get this stuff integrated with who we are?

And,

You know,

I mean,

Just to touch on what you said,

Like,

I mean,

You know,

There's other examples like not being good enough.

You know,

That's one of the most common ones.

We don't feel like we're good enough because as children,

We're told we're not,

You know,

We're,

No,

Do this.

If you go,

You know,

Our parents don't know what's going on inside of us and they sure as heck don't know the spiritual truth,

Most of them.

So they're not going to sit there and just feed our soul.

They're going to try to get us to fit in the society.

So that means you eat at a certain time.

That means when the teacher says something,

You answer that doesn't.

So basically you fit,

We get taught to fit into society,

Not to trust ourselves and live spiritually.

And we are spiritual beings,

So there's lots of discrepancies there.

You know,

Not being good enough,

Not being respected are a couple of the most common ones.

But you can go back into your,

You know,

So here it is.

It's the inner child work.

You know,

That's a lot of,

That's where this most,

Most of this stuff stems from.

I mean,

We can have things that become part of our shadow,

Even as adults,

If we experience something and decide to shove that part of us down.

You know,

So,

But most of the time it's inner child work.

So like some of the most common ways to do this type of work are things like EMDR,

Tapping.

Like I've done,

I used to do a spiritual encoding healing session,

You know,

Which that can help because it can go back to childhood and get parts of ourselves that aren't integrated and integrate them back in.

Guided meditations and feeling into it.

Like a lot of the stuff where,

Like I've talked about this type of stuff,

Like one way to do it or a couple of different ways to do it in other podcasts,

Because like spiritual work isn't that complicated.

You know,

So like there isn't one way or necessarily even a specific way of doing this.

There's lots of different ways.

So like going into something and going,

Okay,

Why do I feel like this?

Oh,

It started when I was a child.

Oh,

Okay.

You know,

Now I have to figure out what I do believe.

Oh,

I do believe that I am worthy of respect.

Well,

Why are you worthy of respect?

You know,

You can go through these processes with a life coach,

A spiritual teacher,

With you might be able to do it yourself.

And just go through the process and find out what your old belief system is and replace it with what you want to replace it with.

You know,

And it has to make perfect sense and you have to,

You know,

Ask yourself some questions.

So if there's any hidden triggers,

You take care of those or hidden smaller belief systems.

So you can adjust those because if you don't truly believe your new belief system,

It's not going to stick.

So if you just go,

Oh,

You know,

I'm peace love and everybody's supposed to respect me and I know that to be true.

Okay.

Yeah,

That ain't happening.

Like that's just fluff.

That sounds nice.

You need to go in and find out why you believe that to be true.

You need to give yourself reasons.

You need to go into your inner energy body and feel while you're saying these things very slowly and find out where,

Yeah,

But not when they say this.

Yeah,

But I mean,

You know,

You can't lie to yourself and expect yourself to believe it.

So it has to be really a sound thing and then you can release the emotional energy that's attached to this stuff as you're doing that.

And once you can sit there and just say your new belief system and just sit with it for,

You know,

A couple minutes and really feel into it and not feel any fear or any trepidation or any.

.

.

Yeah,

But what about this?

Once you can get to that point,

You know,

Then you're probably ready to transcend it.

Yeah.

What's sort of preventative,

Right?

So like a lot of people listening to this are probably parents who are now thinking,

You know,

And you always think like you think two things,

Right,

When you hear stuff like this.

You think,

Number one,

Oh,

Yeah,

There's a lot of stuff.

There's a lot of stuff in my childhood that could have been that could have been a trigger to something now.

And then you think,

Oh,

No,

I have kids or like I'm going to have kids or like what did I,

You know,

What happened with my kids?

What is happening with my kids?

What is there some sort of preventative work that you can do to create smaller shadows or something?

Yeah,

I mean,

There is,

You know,

It's I mean,

The first thing I think,

Especially with parents,

Is you got to let go of the fear.

You know,

That's the first thing,

Because I mean,

Kids are resilient,

Like,

You know,

And they it's not.

You know,

We think we think that we're not supposed to do any damage to them and it's good luck.

You know,

We are going to handle things wrong.

We are not living in a perfect utopia yet.

So we're going to do things wrong.

And the you know,

The beauty of it is these kids nowadays are coming in so much more spiritually open that they're they're not so swayed as previous generations.

They're just it's just like I mean,

When we B.

S.

Them,

They're just kind of like,

Yeah,

OK,

Whatever.

And they just kind of you know,

They're just kind of put it aside.

They're better at putting things aside.

And we used to stuff,

You know,

So like for us,

It was like,

Oh,

My God,

I have to bury that part of me so it doesn't exist.

Them,

They're just like,

Oh,

OK,

This person's not really comfortable with that aspect of me.

I'll just kind of I'll not lean into it around them,

You know,

So they're they're they're just more spiritual.

So it's you know,

That's one nice thing.

Plus,

I mean,

You know,

We all have to learn stuff.

So it's not if they're going to be spiritual.

They're going to go through their stuff and they're going to learn this.

You know,

Like,

I mean,

I I think,

You know,

Maybe this was why my journey looked the way it did was so I could speak to this.

You know,

I woke up very profoundly in the beginning where I understood insane amounts of spiritual information.

But then I spent the next,

You know,

15 years trying to implement it and live a life.

And that was right as I was a father.

So and my son was very little.

So I basically went through his entire life attempting to navigate this.

And,

You know,

Now he's almost 20.

And in hindsight,

I look back and I go.

You know,

I had fears of it because I knew spiritual truth and I knew that I was teaching him stuff that wasn't spiritually true.

So he could fit into society.

So I just did the best I could and I explained a lot of stuff.

You know,

Like I didn't I tried not to.

And,

You know,

I'll just speak along the lines of what we're talking to,

What we've used for examples up until this point.

So it might not be a real life example.

But along those lines,

I you know,

I used to try to tell him things like,

Hey,

Listen,

You know,

Yes,

You do deserve respect.

And yes,

Like,

You know,

You should own your space and don't let anybody let you think or make you think that you are less than yourself.

You know,

I did teach him stuff like that specifically.

You know,

Stand in your strength,

Stand in your power,

Stand in your truth.

But you're a kid and is warped as it is in this society.

Adults have all the power and sometimes it's not fair.

And you just need to learn to deal with it.

Don't take it so seriously.

You know,

If if some adult is like,

You know,

Oh,

You were wrong and you know,

You were right.

Don't get into a big knockdown drag argument,

Because that's what I did my whole life and it didn't work well.

So,

You know,

I was like,

Just don't,

You know,

Whatever,

Man,

Like,

Don't you know your truth inside of you.

That's where you need to know it.

Don't worry about if the rest of the world knows your truth.

You know,

Just let them go run around unconsciously.

It's that it's fine.

And I used to explain stuff like that to him at a very young age.

And,

You know,

And it helped,

I think.

And then,

You know,

And I told him,

I said,

Hey,

If it's a if it's a big problem,

If something is really unfair,

An adult probably isn't going to listen to you.

So you come home,

You talk to me,

Explain it to me and I'll go talk to him,

You know.

And and I did that several times and half the times I couldn't even make headway with the adults.

You know,

What can you do?

But but we're not living in a perfect world.

So if we're trying to be perfect parents and raise our children perfect,

That ain't going to happen.

So just do your best to navigate,

Teach them spiritual truths and also teach them that society isn't up to speed yet.

You know,

There's nothing wrong with you.

You're right.

You know,

In theory,

What you're thinking is right.

It's just society is messed up and we have to learn to interact with society without losing who we are,

You know.

So,

You know,

I think I think that that's the biggest way.

And I mean,

There's there's examples now of parents,

Depending on your situation.

I was divorced,

So I had no choice but to do this because my ex-wife was not raising my son along the spiritual values that I believed in.

You know,

So I had no choice.

He was going to have to fit into both worlds to some degree.

Some people just raise their kids spiritually now.

You know,

If you've got a mother and father both on board or a single parent,

That's just one way.

And you can just raise them spiritually.

I say go for it.

I mean,

There's I forgot the doctor's name,

But there's a wonderful spiritual teacher out there that does wonderful work with children and raises her kids.

With,

You know,

Spiritually encompassing some of these values that we're talking about.

Yeah,

I can't remember her name,

But I mean,

If you search,

She's been on Oprah a few times and stuff,

Sue.

If you if you Google like,

You know,

Child raising children spiritually,

Slash Oprah or something,

She'd probably pop up.

She's a pretty big name out there and she's got a lot of good information.

So but yeah,

I think I think,

You know,

You can either try to raise your kids spiritually,

You can try to raise them to to fit into society,

But stay true to themselves.

And just,

I think,

Explain things to them a lot.

You know,

I explained a lot to my son and when he was it's cool when they're young,

They actually listen.

So that's nice.

That's a benefit of the yeah.

They're like,

Really,

You know,

Like,

Because they're still open.

So really,

When they're young,

It's the best time,

You know,

Like I noticed a big difference in my son when he became a teenager up until that point.

Like,

He would take in what I was saying and implement it into his life.

And it was like,

Wow,

This is so cool.

You know,

Then he got older and was like,

Oh,

That's your stuff,

You know,

But kind of full circle.

He's coming full circle low now,

You know,

And some stuff that he likes,

He still hangs on to.

The stuff that he used that worked consistently when he was younger,

He still uses it.

And sometimes he calls it spiritual terms.

Sometimes he doesn't because he's not might not be comfortable with the spiritual term.

But oh,

My God,

He's like,

He's so much more well balanced than I was.

It's amazing.

I like it.

And it makes sense.

I,

You know,

I haven't seen Mateo in a couple of years,

But definitely seems more well balanced than you than your stories of you at 18,

19.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's like,

Yeah,

He just and it's how these kids are.

You know,

They're master manifestors.

And,

You know,

Like when I was in the D.

R.

,

I was talking to him and he's like,

Oh,

Yeah,

I just I just manifested some tools.

And I'm like,

Really?

How'd you do that?

You know,

And he tell me the story and like,

Oh,

Yeah.

And then they're just there.

And he's like,

I didn't even decide that I was definitely buying tools.

I just thought that maybe I'd start looking into buying tools.

And within two weeks they were there.

It was like,

Yep,

There you go.

You know,

You're a master manifestor.

And I,

You know,

And I feed that to him.

You know,

I try to feed whatever I see whenever he uses this stuff.

It's like reinforce it positively.

Yes.

Because,

You know darn well,

Like,

You know,

If they if they bring this side out to normal society,

They're going to be like,

Oh,

Well,

That's just a coincidence or something like no.

And the kid manifests stuff at will.

It's insane,

You know,

But it's but yeah,

The kids are a lot more natural today.

And this is like I see it in his generation.

Now,

The kids that are just being born,

The kids that,

You know,

This question was kind of how do you raise your kids like that?

Well,

My son's basically,

You know,

I mean,

He's not completely done,

But I mean,

He's grown up now.

So,

Like,

That's a whole nother generation.

And his generation is amazingly open.

They're amazing.

You know,

They don't connect a lot of times with the spiritual terms that we use per se,

Because they,

What's interesting,

And this is with that generation plus the generation coming up is even more so like this.

It's funny,

The reason that there's disconnect with our words is because they don't even it's like trying to explain water to fish.

Like,

It's just so natural to them.

They're like,

I don't know what you're talking about.

Right.

You know,

You're going,

Yeah,

But you did this and you like all you had to do was think about something once and then it appeared.

And they're like,

Well,

Yeah,

Like,

Of course it did.

Like,

What are you talking about?

Well,

You manifested.

What?

Manif- manifested.

That sounds like I did something like that.

No,

Like I just thought about it and it came.

Yeah,

That's manifesting.

Yeah,

Whatever.

You know,

Like they don't,

It's hard for them to like we have,

My generation,

It's like trying,

You know,

We're raised dysfunctionally.

Now we're trying to take this spiritual stuff and bring it into our lives and learn how to use it.

And these kids are just like,

Like,

What are you talking about?

It's just air.

It's everywhere.

It's just,

This is just how things are.

I don't know why you're making such a big deal out of everything.

And you're trying and you're,

Why don't you just live?

That's what living is.

Oh,

Okay.

You know,

And we think we're the teachers.

It's funny.

It's just,

They're just naturally spiritual.

So yeah,

I think keeping in mind that your kids,

That these generations after us are way more open and more spiritual than we can ever guess.

It's,

They'll be fine.

Give them some love and some,

You know,

Cocoa pebbles and they'll be fine.

Yeah.

I love it.

So what else?

What,

How,

How,

How do you want to sum up shadow,

Our shadow selves and shadow work?

Well,

I think it's,

You know,

It's,

It's solution based.

I mean,

If you haven't done social shadow work,

I suggest that you do.

Just like I did a ton of shadow work.

I just didn't,

I didn't always call it shadow work,

You know,

And I didn't do like most of my growth was kind of self-taught because I had opened.

So then,

Oh,

Emotions,

You know,

Like I didn't always know what I was doing.

I would just dive in and start doing it.

And with spirituality that works.

Like you can do that with spirituality.

It's,

I was explaining to somebody how to do something like last week or something.

And I was,

And I thought I kind of came across,

I think a good example of what spiritual,

Spiritual work looks like a lot of times.

And,

You know,

I reference it to,

To a,

To a sport.

So like swinging a bat and hitting a baseball or playing tennis and hitting a tennis ball.

Like you can study the physics of it and the mathematics and the angles,

And you can practice shooting pool with angles,

With sticks and balls and,

And all this stuff.

And you can know it like as much as you possibly can.

And it's still not going to happen until you go out there and do it.

And when you go do it,

You're probably going to swing and miss several times or not hit it right.

And it's going to take a while to build up that hand-eye coordination.

It's the same thing with spirituality.

You're not going to fully grasp what you're doing a lot of times when you go in and do this stuff.

Like our brain thinks we're supposed to fully comprehend what we're doing and then we do it.

And that's not how much most spiritual work is.

So you can go in there and fumble around with this stuff and you're going to make progress just from what I've said so far.

So,

Or any,

You know,

Guided meditations,

You can,

You know,

Google healing inner child,

Google,

You know,

Releasing trapped emotion or guided meditations or,

You know,

Or you can get into something a little more structured like tapping or EMDR.

There's or specifically Google how to do shadow work or,

You know,

There's courses on it.

Like there's so many,

There's so much access to so much good stuff right now that if you're the type that wants to play around with it and fumble around,

Do that.

If not research,

Find it,

You know,

Like I did a bunch of mine and then I've been getting this shadow work,

Shadow work,

Shadow work kind of popping up here and there over off and on for I don't know how long,

A couple months or something.

So a few weeks ago I went and searched and I was like,

Oh,

Okay,

You know,

Here's this person talking about it.

And from more of us,

You know,

Mine,

Like I said,

It was all inside of me.

I did it myself.

So I wanted to get a little more structure into it this time.

So I got a structured definition.

I got an outside perspective of somebody explaining it to me in a way that I liked.

And I was,

Oh,

Okay.

And then they had some free guided meditations on their website that they recommended for us.

And I did.

So I went and I listened to those free guided meditations and I sat on my couch and balled like a baby for a while and really did some excellent inner child work and some shadow work and I found it very beneficial.

So,

You know,

Do that,

Google it.

There's so many different options out there and teachers find a teacher that clicks with you,

You know,

The way that they're talking and then do their guided meditation or seek out a life coach and get some guidance through this stuff.

So,

Yeah,

I think that's it,

You know,

Really just whatever we seek we'll find.

So if you want to do some shadow work,

Start diving into shadow work.

Like Debbie Ford made a whole career out of shadow work.

I mean,

She's passed on now,

But I mean all her books and I imagine she has,

You know,

Audio and probably video out there.

I mean,

She was a big name in spirituality for many years.

So,

You know,

Debbie Ford has a lot of stuff out there.

So just seek and you'll find and,

You know,

Start dabbling around with the shadow work.

Especially if when you're listening to this podcast,

If it's clicking with you,

If it's capturing your interest and you're like,

Huh,

That sounds interesting.

Maybe I should,

If you're getting those thoughts,

Follow it,

You know,

What are you going to do?

You know,

Waste an hour of your life googling something and then doing a guided meditation.

There's worse things to be wasting an hour on,

You know,

So and if you're not getting something out of it and you're like,

Nah,

I guess maybe I don't want to do this.

Okay,

Then don't.

Or you go,

Yes,

I do want to do this,

But this isn't the right person.

Oh,

Okay.

Google more,

You know.

And of course,

Reach out to me if you need some specific,

I mean,

I can always recommend stuff that I used specifically too,

Which I don't have the name right here.

Otherwise I would.

But yeah,

I think that's pretty much it.

Seek and you shall find.

Let's talk about,

Let's talk about your,

The elephant not in the room for the video people.

You are sitting in a blank room.

I am.

And you know what I did right before we got on,

I literally went into my living room,

Grabbed the carpet and dragged it into this office room so there wouldn't be as much echo because there's nothing on the walls,

The floors,

The tile.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm moving.

I am moving to the DRBAB.

Right.

And,

Uh,

Yeah,

So this is,

I mean,

This is probably going to be like January or February when people listen to this,

But we are in the DRBAB.

We're at the Monday before Thanksgiving in the United States right now in November.

And,

Uh,

Yeah,

Man,

You're getting.

I'm going to be moving to Dominican Republic,

Uh,

Thanksgiving weekend.

So,

Yeah,

So my house is almost empty and,

Um,

If anybody wants a desk,

I'm selling one.

Just kidding.

But yeah,

So that's,

That's why this place is empty.

And next time I'll be,

I'll be speaking to you from there.

So it's exciting stuff.

Good luck,

Safe travels,

And we'll talk to you soon.

Sounds good.

All right,

Everybody.

Thanks for listening.

And,

Um,

That's going to do it.

You know,

If you're feeling the nudge to do some shadow work,

Follow that nudge and,

Um,

If I can help,

Certainly let me know.

All right.

Thank you.

Talk with you all soon.

Goodbye.

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Reviews

Thanks for this
I finally listened to a podcast that resonates with my thinking I have looked up a lot of shadow material for months now and this one podcast has given me s tool to work with in my journey many blessings to you thx

I’ve been feeling the need to do shadow work and related to both your examples of, I deserve respect and not feeling enough as a child (which continued into adulthood). Thanks, because when the student is ready the teacher will appear 🙏

Really interesting, thanks Glenn. What was the name of the woman whose talk and meditations you listened to? Good luck with your move! Love and blessings 💜 x

First and foremost—thank you for such a parent-centered podcast! As you describe navigating your spiritual journey as a parent it resonated with me in almost every aspect. The fear, the worry, the unknown etc... There is so much advice and guidance for (seemingly) childless adults, it is so good to hear from a parent perspective how messy and difficult it can be balancing it all. (I had to listen to this twice because I was interrupted so many times the first time around by said kids) LOL. Thank you endlessly🙌

Great descriptions and information about the Shadow Self!!! Much appreciated

Very interesting! Definitely worth checking out. Thank you!