Shadow Alchemy
Shadow integration is a cycle of death & rebirth - and in turn, a living manifestation of Soul Alchemy
Integrating a fragmented piece of yourself means accepting death in something intrinsic to the way you live and breathe in this world.
The shadow selves are just that - they're not of the light, of yang energy or of the sun, and they're not of the dark, of yin energy or of the moon.
Shadows lie in the spaces between those powers,
often behind your back but sometimes right under your nose,
and you-
none the wiser.
To meet your shadow - I think a lot of explanations lead people to questions like
"what are the parts of myself that I don't like",
"what are the parts of myself that are hiding"
Yet many shadows - many of the deepest weeds - are those we have before boasted about, felt prided on; ideas living on the very foreground of your perceptions, like the casting of a great tree.
Instead. I'll prompt you with this self-inquiry in attuning to the art of Shadowing seeing:
"Why do I feel this way?"
Giving space for bodily responses, rather than emotional reactions, is step one.
From there - we burn.
We are perceiving beings
- through our intuition, our physical senses, through ancestral remembrances & divine downloads.
We feign perceptions from dreams, unreliable memories, even from the perceptions of others.
Through our perception our entires lives are lived -
yet,
hardly we dive into what that perception is serving.
Hiding in that perception, the shadow not only survives - but thrives: manifesting through your emotions where it plays in the perceptual -playground of your agreements.
I've agreed I don't like public singing,
I've agreed I don't need to feel 'beautiful'
I've agreed that this will be enough.
These agreements often seem like conscious decisions we've made yet a closer eye on the machine will always reveal the mechanisms.
Some people slow burn, as emotions arise and new things beat down a hatchet of perception - one by one they self inquire, search both within and without, and come to see the light of some of their shadows.
Others (for more transformative revelations) take the cauldron approach. To meet your feelings, one must start with feeling - and to no end; in every direction + without pause or second thought. Allowing these energies to flow as they see fit, whether into soothing lazy rivers, or daunting + swirling rapids: bring your vessel to the brink of understanding.
Drowning in conscious feeling quickly leads to learning how to swim.
Rage + reverence, acceptance + shame - suppressed in the monotony of daily life, of surviving instead of living, coping instead of confronting, hiding instead of opening out.
Noticing your shadow (which is really just meeting your whole self, as the Shadow is all that's unconscious) will do nothing if your first instinct is to shame it back into hiding.
Meeting your shadow should be a grand love story.
Bare naked & without bounds.
With full-body embrace of the immensity + magnitude of the parts you left for dead.
Falling for your shadow is how your break down it's walls. Loving fragments that shattered through trauma, coddling the broken glass: in these ways you remember the Self as immeasurably capable, divine yet wholly human being - without a protective mask to fog your feelings.
And though we come to the graveyard with a smoke that once held our hand - just as a cycle never ends, we never leave empty handed. Like a new born baby birthed anew from their mother's womb, so too are these parts of ourselves birthed anew - with remembrance that we never needed their grasp in the first place.
Light leads to immanence. Light leads to immanence. Light leads to immanence. Light leads.
