Shadow Work | The 5 Tools For Embracing Your Dark Side

Hello namaste and welcome to this talk which is called the five tools for shadow work.

So let's begin by understanding what shadow work is.

And then I will talk about five tools that are really powerful.

And the most important tools for doing shadow work for embracing our shadow.

So the shadow is the disowned part of our personality.

It is a part of my personality which I maybe don't even know that exists.

It is deep down somewhere inside me.

It is my shadow.

And it is a part of my personality that I have neglected that I do not like maybe.

And that's why I have neglected it or I judge it.

For example,

Let's say that deep down I have some anger but I am unaware of it.

And this happens when I want to be a nice person.

I am going out for a social gathering.

And in this social gathering I want to be nice to people.

And I want to be nice to people around me.

So what will happen is even if somebody is passing a mean comment or saying something mean to me,

Still I will suppress that anger inside me.

I will not let it come out.

And I become so good at this that at some point of time I cannot even recognize that I have anger inside me.

Until something happens which brings it out.

Maybe someone pokes me too much or someone hurts me badly and then there is an outburst of this anger.

Now what happened with this anger was that it became my shadow.

Because I thought that it is wrong to express anger and I suppressed it.

And it became a part of my personality which was hidden.

And likewise there are many other qualities in this shadow that we think are wrong or the society thinks are wrong.

But they are actually very helpful.

They can be used in a helpful manner.

They can be used as strengths.

And this is the power of shadow work.

That if I embrace my shadow,

I can become more whole,

More complete,

More authentic.

And I can have more qualities which will be beneficial for me.

So the question is how is this shadow formed?

This shadow is mostly formed in our childhood.

That's because as a child when I was born and I was growing up,

It was okay for me to express any emotion.

And when you look at a child,

You will see that a small child can easily express their emotions.

When they are angry,

They will show that.

Maybe they will throw things here and there.

When they are sad,

They will cry.

When they are happy,

They will express that.

They can easily express all emotions.

They can be authentic,

More authentic than others.

But then what happens is as we grow up,

We go through something called social conditioning.

Which means that the society conditions us to believe that it is not okay to express certain emotions.

It is not okay to express certain qualities,

Characteristics,

And traits.

And that's when we start suppressing those qualities.

So for example,

Let's say if my parents tell me that don't cry too much.

Don't be a crybaby.

And don't be sad.

Go back to your room.

Fix yourself up.

Come back with a smile on your face.

Now when people in our childhood say such things,

We think that there is something wrong about being sad or crying.

So I need to always put a smile on my face.

And I need to hide this part of my personality which cries,

Which is sad.

And then that becomes our shadow.

Similarly,

Disobedience,

For example,

Is a major part of our shadow.

Because if in my childhood I asked too many questions,

And I always questioned the status quo,

And I was like a rebel,

I was disobedient,

Then people would judge that around me.

Especially teachers.

They say that don't ask too many questions.

Just write in the exam what we are telling you.

Just believe what we are telling you.

Don't be disobedient.

Don't be notorious.

And then what happens is that we think that it is wrong to ask questions.

Or it is wrong to be disobedient.

And that becomes our shadow.

And then as we grow up,

We become really obedient,

Submissive person.

And then we don't question things.

And that's how we become puppets.

That's how someone can control me.

Because now I think that it is wrong to ask questions and be disobedient.

So I don't ask any questions to governments,

To my partner,

To people who can easily control me.

And that's how people control others.

Because one becomes a person who submits,

The other becomes a person who dominates.

So if I think that disobedience is wrong,

To ask questions is wrong,

Then I will become a submissive person and then anyone can control me.

So then is disobedience wrong?

It is not,

Right?

It is a wonderful quality to have because that's how you can challenge the status quo.

That's how you can ask questions.

That's how you can become free,

An individual free person.

That's how you can prevent yourself from others controlling you.

And that's why even you will see that people have blind faith in others.

People don't ask questions.

People blindly believe in religions.

People blindly believe in what governments say.

People blindly believe in what their partners,

Their parents,

Anyone who has an intention to control whatever they say,

People blindly believe that and people don't question that.

And that's how we become submissive.

So once I embrace my shadow,

Once I embrace this part of my personality which has been judged,

Once I embrace all those qualities which I think are wrong or which the society thinks are wrong,

Then I can become more whole and complete.

Now that doesn't mean that I need to display inequalities which can harm others.

For example,

If I am embracing my anger,

It doesn't mean that I harm others with my anger.

It simply means that I need to channelize that anger in the right direction.

I need to use that anger in the right way.

Because it's important to express healthy anger also.

And that's when we can protect ourselves from being taken advantage of.

That's when we can also express our disappointment to someone when they are doing something hurting to us.

That's how we can draw healthy boundaries in relationships.

So once we embrace these parts of our personality which are disowned,

Which are disliked,

That is what shadow work is all about.

And that's when we become whole and complete in ourselves.

So now I will share the five tools to do shadow work.

The first tool is awareness.

The first step is to become aware of what my shadow is really.

So how to do that?

To become aware of what your shadow is,

You can do a reflection.

You can go back to your childhood.

Maybe you can do an inner child healing meditation.

Or you can just visit your childhood,

Reflect on it,

And see that what were those things that were judged about you?

What were those things which were disliked about you?

And maybe you suppress that.

You can ask this question,

What is it about me that I don't like?

And most probably and mostly you will find that all those qualities that I don't like about myself,

They might have an origin in the childhood.

Maybe it was my parents that didn't like that about me.

And that's why I don't like it about me.

But is it really necessary that it is a wrong thing to have?

As I was talking about disobedience,

I was disobedient in my childhood.

And then that was judged about me.

It became a part of my shadow because I suppressed it.

I became really obedient.

But now when I embrace my disobedience,

I have become a free individual.

Earlier I was very obedient and following everything that the society was telling me.

But now I follow my own path.

I am a free individual.

I have questioned all those things.

So what is your shadow?

What was judged about you in your childhood?

What is it that you dislike about yourself?

You can write that down.

Maybe you can make a list.

You can go back to your childhood.

You can check what was judged about you by your parents,

By others,

By your schoolmates,

By your teachers,

By the religious preacher.

Once you make a list of all those things,

Those will represent the qualities of your shadow.

Those will represent the characteristics of your shadow.

So that's the first step.

Awareness.

The second tool is projections.

Understanding projections.

What are projections?

Projections,

Once we understand them,

Are a wonderful way to know what my shadow is.

What is it that I judge about myself?

So a projection is basically a judgment that we make about others.

The things that I judge about others.

Those are what projections are.

And why it is called a projection?

Because the things I judge about others are actually the things that I judge about myself.

Those are the things that I judge about myself.

And I'm just projecting those judgments onto others.

Now let me give you an example here.

If I was someone in my childhood who was disorganized or messy or a little bit shabby,

And now when I see such a person,

I get triggered by it.

For example,

If I go to someone's house and I see that they are not very organized,

The house is not maybe that clean,

And they live in a bit disorganized manner.

So now what will happen is that I get triggered by it.

I'm judging that person.

This person is wrong.

This person has no manners.

This person is messy.

Now the very fact that I'm getting triggered by it shows that it is an unresolved issue inside me.

And it shows that this was judged about me maybe.

Maybe I was judged in my childhood.

And maybe in my childhood my parents told me that it is wrong totally to be disorganized.

It is totally wrong.

And someone who is disorganized is a wrong person.

Or maybe I was judged and I was scolded.

Or this idea was given to me that somehow being disorganized is wrong.

So this means that being unorganized,

Messy or shabby,

This is my shadow.

And because of this shadow of mine,

Because it is inside me,

I am judging the other person.

So our projections,

Whatever we judge about others,

They can tell a lot about ourselves.

What are those parts of me which are not healed?

What are those parts of me that I judge about myself?

There is a beautiful quote by Debbie Ford.

And she said that what we judge in others,

We judge in ourselves.

And what we forgive in others,

We forgive in ourselves.

So the world is like a mirror reflecting our own issues to us.

When I am judging others,

It means that there are certain qualities that I am judging about myself.

And I am just projecting them onto others.

So then what you can do is you can make a list of those judgments.

What triggers you about others?

What do we judge about others?

When you can make a list of that,

When you can see what those judgments are,

What those projections are,

This is how we understand projections.

The third step is understanding persona.

Now what is persona?

Persona is this outer personality that we create in front of others.

It is like a mask that we wear in front of others.

It is this personality of mine that I show to others.

So how does becoming aware of this personality,

This mask,

This persona can help me with shadow work?

That's the question.

To understand this,

I will talk about two types of masks that we have.

The outer mask is something which Osho calls the false positive.

And there is an inner mask which Osho calls the false negative.

So the false positive and the false negative.

Now this outer mask is this mask that I have in front of others.

This is the personality which I show to others.

Usually it is the false positive,

Which means that I show a positive personality to the outer world.

My persona is wanting to be a positive person,

A pleasing person.

So now what happens is that I go out in the world.

I go out in a social gathering.

And I am being nice to people.

I am smiling.

I am helping out others.

I have this charm on my face.

I am wearing wonderful clothes.

I have this wonderful persona.

But it's not necessary that this persona of mine is my true self.

Because what happens then is,

I go back home and now my personality is totally different.

Now what happens is that I am very different to the people who are close to me.

Or in my loneliness.

Maybe I am feeling some anger which I did not show in that social gathering.

So that others don't perceive me as someone who is angry.

Or maybe I have some disappointment.

Or maybe I am sad.

Or maybe I am stressed.

And I avoided showing that to others.

But this is the second layer of the mask that we have.

Which is called the false negative.

And this is that part of my personality which is slightly more authentic than this outer persona of positive.

This is the part of me which is angry,

Which is sad.

And I show this true self or this slightly true self of mine to just myself and my solitude.

Or to people who are very close to me.

My family or people who are living with me.

But what Osho says is that there is a third being.

There is this deeper part of our personality.

There is this pure essence of ours which is neutral.

Which is neither negative nor positive.

Which is neutral.

So where is the shadow here?

The shadow is this false negative.

This part,

This second mask that I was talking about.

Because in my home I am comfortable showing those emotions.

Being angry,

Being sad,

Being depressed,

Being stressed.

But because I feel that it is wrong to have these emotions.

I create this outer persona of false positive.

And try to hide that by being pleasing to others.

By being positive to others.

So once we understand this.

We will understand what that shadow is.

And we can start working on it.

Because now I can be more accepting.

Maybe I can tell myself that it is okay to express sadness,

Express anger.

I don't need to force this outer positive personality.

I can start becoming more authentic.

But the first step is to become aware of this persona.

How to embrace this persona,

I will talk about that in the fifth step.

But now let's come to the fourth step.

The fourth step is patterns.

Patterns are the repeating things we do.

Which can be harmful to us.

But which we might not even be aware of.

For example,

If I am very much into trying to decorate myself from the outside.

If my self-worth is dependent on my clothes.

Whenever I go out,

I always want to have the best clothes on.

Because I don't feel confident if I wear ordinary clothes.

And that's when my self-worth is dependent on my clothes.

I don't feel comfortable being myself,

Being authentic.

I try to hide that by decorating myself from the outside too much.

Then this is a pattern.

This is a pattern of mine that I keep repeating.

And this pattern is that I try to just create this persona outside every time.

The question is why do I do that?

That's because my self-worth is dependent on my clothes.

I don't feel confident about myself.

That means that there is this shadow of me.

There is a part of me which I don't like.

I don't like maybe my body.

And because I don't like my body,

I try to cover up myself with those clothes.

With those shiny clothes.

Or maybe I don't like myself as a person who I am.

Maybe I don't feel confident without wearing certain kinds of clothes.

Maybe I feel that I am not good enough.

And that's why I try to cover that up with my decoration,

Makeup,

Clothes from outside.

This is what is happening for example in social media today.

That teenagers are trying to decorate themselves,

Look the best on social media platforms.

Because they feel deep down this self-worth issue.

So once we become aware of our patterns.

We can then embrace them.

We can then understand them.

And we can break those patterns.

And we can see that what is the root of the problem.

Why am I doing this?

And then we can become aware of this shadow.

This part of me that I am trying to hide.

So how to become aware of patterns?

To become aware of patterns,

I can ask this question to myself.

What are those things in my life that keep repeating?

And that keep causing problems to me?

That's one way to recognize patterns.

The other is you can also take feedback from someone who is very close to you.

Whom you trust.

And you can ask them,

What do you think about me?

What do you think that there is a pattern inside me which is unhealthy as per you?

It's okay to take some healthy feedback from people whom you trust.

Be careful about that.

Only from people whom you trust.

So this is how we become aware of the patterns.

And our patterns can help us embrace that part of me which I am trying to hide.

And the final step is individuation.

Individuation.

Individuation is a term that was coined by Carl Jung.

He was one of the founding fathers of modern psychology.

Individuation means to integrate the light and the dark within me.

To integrate this shadow within me.

To integrate those seemingly polar opposite personalities that I have.

The light and the dark.

The light and the shadow.

Now let me explain this to you.

In society,

We have created polar opposites of everything.

It's a dualistic society.

Good and bad.

Right and wrong.

Masculine and feminine.

Democrat and Republican.

Liberal and conservative.

Fast and slow.

Successful and unsuccessful.

We have created these divisions.

These dualities.

And we kind of put people into these two categories.

We either support one category.

Or we support the other.

And if I'm supporting one category,

I will fight with the other.

And that's why we see culture wars today.

That's why we see how people on the left and right are fighting with each other.

What Carl Jung says is that we have to integrate both these polar opposites within us.

And that's what individuation is.

There is no good and evil as such.

Good and evil is a subjective thing.

It is highly subjective.

What is good for one culture will not be good for the other culture.

It is also geographical.

What is good in one part of the world is not good in the other part of the world.

What is good in the west is not good in the east.

And vice versa.

It is also temporal.

What was bad at some point of time is good today.

And it is highly subjective.

It also depends upon culture.

There are some cultures,

Some religions in the world in which music is wrong.

Sex is wrong.

But other cultures embrace them.

And it's a divine thing to listen to music and to make love.

So good and evil are highly subjective things.

We can't label things as good and evil.

Really,

In that sense.

For example,

If a child is stealing food.

Now someone can look at that and can just label that child as evil.

But if we understand that child,

Maybe that child is starving.

And if he doesn't steal that food,

He will die.

He will starve to death.

Then is stealing food wrong in that case?

So good and evil are subjective things.

And this is what Carl Jung says.

That we label certain qualities of ours as evil.

And that becomes our shadow.

But once we understand that nothing is evil in itself.

It's all about how we use things.

My anger is not evil.

I can use my anger to protect myself and to also help others from being harmed.

Disobedience is not evil.

Disobedience helps me to be free.

Boldness is not evil.

Boldness helps me to express who I am.

Good and evil are subjective things.

So once we integrate these two parts of our personality.

Which are seemingly polar opposites.

Which means that once we embrace our shadow.

That's when we have practiced individuation.

And this comes from self-acceptance.

How we can do that is by practicing self-acceptance.

This also supports the third point that I was talking about.

Persona.

Because how we can accept ourselves.

How we can gradually dissolve this persona.

Is by totally accepting ourselves.

If I totally accept myself as I am.

I will not judge myself then.

And I will not have that shadow.

Whatever qualities I have.

If I am angry,

I am angry.

There is nothing wrong about it.

If I feel sexual,

I feel sexual.

There is nothing wrong about it.

It's natural.

So when I totally accept myself as I am.

That's when I practice individuation.

That's when I embrace my shadow.

That's when I am authentic.

And this is how we do shadow work.

These were some really important tools that I shared with you.

I hope you found value in this topic.

And lots of love to you.

Take care of yourself.

I will see you soon again.