I’d never heard of Shadow Work until last year. The more I immersed myself in the spiritual community…and the more that Spirit gave me guidance in dreams…the more I started to understand about Shadow Work and how powerful it can be.
In the spiritual community, lots of people refer to themselves as Lightworkers. Which is cool…because most are. A Lightworker is someone who is aware that they have a higher purpose in this life to do good in the world and that their actions can have a positive impact on others. Lightworkers are awake aka their soul is awake and they are aware of their soul’s journey for a higher purpose.
The trouble with the spiritual community, however, is that some Lightworkers believe that they can only be light aka they can only be positive and high vibe. They get scared when shit comes up for them to work through, thinking that it’s not a good thing to be working on “old baggage”. And this is where I like to correct people. In order to ascend on your Lightworker journey, you have to be prepared to face whatever shit (“old baggage”) you are still carrying. Sometimes, it’s not always everything from this lifetime, it’s an accumulation of baggage from your past lives and also from your ancestors.
People can get scared of tackling this darkness (the “old baggage” aka shit LOL) because they feel like it’ll make them less positive or less high vibe. But this is the very reason why you have to go to the darkness….the shadows…because this is how you transcend the shadows into the light. This is why Shadow Work is so important…because it’s about acknowledging the parts of ourselves that we don’t like or which we hide away from. The Universe/Spirit/Source/God* (*take your pick!) only knows love. And the whole point of ascension is about love. So how can your soul ascend to a higher state of enlightenment if you aren’t willing to love yourself fully by seeing what’s in your shadows and shining a light on the darkness.
There is always an opposite. Light and dark. The sun and the moon. You can’t have one without the other. I often tell people that it’s in the darkness (the shadows) where you find your genius. The part of you that is supposed to be shared with the world but you are scared to do so because of fears, the ego…or because you don’t realise that these shadows are there.
I was always someone who held back from the world. Kept quiet. Stayed out of the way so as not to be seen or heard. A trait I’d adopted from childhood as if it wasn’t safe to be seen or heard. There was also a lot of past life energy too that kept me held back because of persecutions in other lives and being judged. But actually….my genius was there all along in in the shadows, it just needed to be unlocked. Because I understand what my soul’s purpose is and what my mission is with this life. I’m supposed to be seen and heard and I’m supposed to make an impact. That’s my genius…my voice, my passion and standing out as uniquely me in a sea of other faces.
I ended up discovering myself by making a conscious effort to go within…to understand who I am and why I was hiding myself away from the world. I was scared to have a voice, scared to have an opionion and scared to put myself out there. When I understood that these were all shadows of mine it made even more sense to put myself out there. To uncover who I truly am and who I came to this life to be.
That’s why Shadow Work is so important for everyone (even the Lightworkers who are scared of it!) because it’s about embracing yourself fully and seeing yourself in the full light. It’s about shining a light into the darkness, unearthing whatever shit you are hiding from (whether at a conscious or subconscious level) and working through it. Being ok with whatever comes up for you, understanding who you are and embracing that side of yourself.
Shadows can be anything…they can be behaviours we’ve adopted such as those adopted to protect ourselves like a survival mechanism, those personality traits we dislike about ourselves, the personality traits we don’t recognise within ourselves and also the fears of the ego that keeps us held back. These are all things that you have to ask yourself why they are in the shadows. What are you so afraid of? Why are you scared to be seen in such a way? For example, if you get feelings of jealousy around your friend who is doing well in his or her job/career/business, this is a shadow. So you ask yourself why the jealousy is coming up and work through why it’s there so that you can understand that side of yourself and work on what is asking to be acknowledge. For example, perhaps the jealousy is that you don’t feel adequate yourself so you ask yourself why you don’t feel adequate and where did those feelings of inadequacy come from and how can you overcome them.
As a Soul Catalyst, my whole purpose is to act as a catalyst for others growth. To shine a light into the darkness to awaken parts of someone that they didn’t know existed. And I love getting deep and dirty (as I like to call it!) with who someone is! I love getting under the surface of who someone is so that I can help them to understand who they truly are…aka..who their Authentic Self is. For me, that’s why Shadow Work is so important because it allows you to strip back who you are to your very core so that you can fully embrace yourself authentically with no bells and whistles…just you…at a soul level.
It’s why my energy is so perfect for Shadow Work because I bring things up in people that they didn’t realise needed to come up. It’s why people can get triggered by my very presence (without saying or doing anything) because their soul is asking for them to heal that side of themselves. It’s why people are just drawn to me and open up to me in a way that even they didn’t realise was possible – because my energy is designed to bring things to the surface in people so that they can stop hiding in the shadows. When you allow a light to be shone into your darkness, its truly how you move forwards with your soul’s ascension and enlightenment.