What is Shadow Work?
I was talking all things magickal with a friend who also comes from a religious background, and she told me that when she first saw "shadow worker" in my bio, she thought it sounded scary, like I work with the dark arts or something.
Shadow work is a hot topic in both witchcraft and spiritual communities, and still, a lot of people don't know exactly what it is or how to get started. And if you're new to these communities, it probably sounds a little scary. It can be, but not in the way you're thinking.
Shadow work actually has psychology roots going back to Carl Jung. I mean, the practice has been around for a long time, since people were evolved enough to be self-reflective and focused on inner healing and growth. But Jung did a lot of thinking and writing about this, so he gets special props.
Basically shadow work is reflective work. It's honest. It's deep. It involves the subconscious and the inner child. It involves the parts of us we've locked away because it's too hard to bring to the light of day. Maybe we're ashamed. Maybe we've been through trauma. Maybe we've been pretending for so long, our essence is hiding there. The roots of our problems lie in the shadows. The keys to our healing lie there too.
So I call myself a shadow worker. A light worker is someone who helps people bring their energy up, reach that high vibe, heal their energy, connect with Spirit, Source, God, Universe, etc. I do those things too. But in order to avoid spiritual bypassing by only interacting with the light, we need to balance by reaching into the murkey, earthy depths of our shadows. We can be high vibe, yes, but our high vibe is even more powerful if we've done the shadow work around feelings of unworthiness and healed it at the root. We can be love and light, but that love and light is even more powerful if we've dusted off the parts of us we've been ashamed of, grabbed her hand, and brought her to the light to be integrated into our whole self. Then we "love and light" from a deep place of true self love and self acceptance. We need both our shadows and our light, and that's why the most powerful witches and healers and gurus do their own shadow work. When the whole self is present for magick and healing and being human, THAT'S the power.
Part 2 coming soon, on how to do shadow work.
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