To understand what the shadow is,
There are four key terms to be understood.
The first term is Ego.
The second term is unconscious.
The third term is subconscious and the fourth term is shadow.
So what are these?
Is that part of us that we already know about.
The ego is you.
The ego is your story.
The ego is my name,
My identity,
My story and everything I know about myself.
The unconscious is that part of me that I am not aware of.
I have no idea about.
It's like.
.
.
A big anon.
Then the third term,
Which is the subconscious,
Is that part of me that is just below the surface.
I am not aware of it,
But I can easily become aware of it.
And the shadow is that deep repressed part of me that I am totally unaware of.
These are the four terms now These four terms and the shadow can be understood by this analogy.
This analogy is of a ship on the ocean.
So I want you to imagine a ship on the ocean.
Now this ship is the ego.
Whereas the entire ocean is the unconscious.
If you go a bit deeper into the ocean,
If you go below the surface of the ocean,
Then there is still light there.
If you go,
Let's say,
At the middle level of the ocean,
There is still light there.
So,
That is like the subconscious.
But if you go at the bed of the ocean,
At the bottom of the ocean It's totally dark there.
And if you have seen those documentaries of the bottom of the ocean,
You will know it's like totally dark there.
No light reaches there.
And there are these creatures in this bottom of the ocean which we don't know about.
So this bottom of the ocean,
This deep dark bottom of the ocean is like the shadow and it is deeply repressed inside of us.
What is then the shadow?
What really is this shadow?
The shadow is that part of us that is disowned,
That is rejected,
That is repressed.
When we are a child,
For example.
There are a lot of parts of us that are rejected by society,
Right?
There are parts of us that are rejected by our parents,
By the society.
This is wrong.
Don't do this.
You shouldn't do this.
You shouldn't cry.
You shouldn't be angry.
You shouldn't be too loud,
Whatever that is.
All those parts that are judged,
They get repressed and they become our shadow.
So the shadow is the disowned part of us.
And this also happens as we grow up,
Right?
The society rejects a lot of parts of us,
Starting with our parents,
Then our teachers,
Our religious preachers.
.
.
The general society rejects a lot of parts of us.
All those parts.
.
.
They become repressed and then as we grow up further,
Even our partner or our children,
They kind of reject certain parts of us and those parts become repressed and they become the shadow.
But not only that,
There are also parts of us that are totally unknown to us,
That we have no idea exist within us.
And as we integrate,
As we become aware of these parts,
We start realizing that there is so much potential inside of us.
Inside of you,
There is so much potential.
There are so many strengths that get buried with this rejection by the society.
And we can start embracing those strengths.
Yes,
There are weaknesses which we can transform or we can let go of.
But there are so many strengths in the shadow that can be embraced.
But all those strengths are buried.
With the shadow.
Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.
This is what we do unconsciously.
We also start rejecting those strengths as we reject the shadow.
There is another analogy through which we can understand.
What the shadow is.
And this analogy is a beautiful analogy that was given by one of the shadow workers,
Debbie Ford.
She's a popular publisher on shadow work.
And she said this,
She said that,
Imagine that You bought this castle.
You are hosting this housewarming party in this castle and you invite guests in the castle.
And one by one you take these guests to these different rooms.
And these guests,
They start judging these rooms.
One guest says,
I don't like this room.
I don't like the color of the paint.
The other guest says,
I don't like this another room because the structure of this room is not good.
So,
One by one,
Because of these judgments,
We start shutting the doors to these rooms,
As if we are shutting these doors permanently.
And by the time all the,
You know,
Most of the rooms are judged,
All those doors are closed now.
And by the end of it,
It's as if we stop living in those rooms and we just live in one room,
And we totally forget that,
You know,
I bought a castle and now I'm just living in one room.
So this is how the shadow functions.
Because all these rooms,
The doors that we close,
All these are those parts of us that were rejected by society and then rejected by us and we shut the doors to those parts of us.
And then we think that we just are this limited being.
But as you open those doors,
As you open those rooms,
You realize that You are Akashic,
That you are so much more than you think.
That you are infinite,
That you are unlimited.
Namaste.
