The Shadows We Cast

We all cast a shadow.

The parts of our unconscious mind that hover just below the surface of awareness.

We can’t see it until we shine light on it. Until we consciously choose to stop running, to stop numbing, to stop fighting and tend to the shadow.

We wake up each morning and reach for an addictive habit to fill up the space we are afraid to share with our shadow or we seek to acknowledge with less judgment and shame when we resort to habits and behaviors that dim our light.

We probably dimmed it for good reason. Because we felt vulnerable. Unprotected. Unsafe. Exposed to harm. Maybe we were harmed, physically, mentally, or emotionally.

So we hide. We hide our light in the shadows. We become so entrenched with the shadow that we begin to think it’s who we are.

That our mental illness, addiction, anger, fear, depression, or shame was who we were.

The shadow reaches for us when it seeks more light. We don’t have to feed it more darkness.

Instead, we can feed it the light and love it actually needs to be reintegrated into wholeness.

Shadow work is what a lot of us have had to do this last year, this last decade. Maybe longer.

It hasn’t been easy. Hell, it’s been trial after incessant trial. Painful. Ugly. Dark. Lonesome. Forlorn. Devastating.

And yet we have found our light again. Maybe we never thought we would. Maybe we thought we were lost forever.

But that’s not how this consciousness game works. Sure, things in the mental body and emotional body can feel so dark and so full of truth.

But there’s a deeper knowing in us that knows there is more to life than pain.

So, we start slowly to feed ourselves less pain, less judgment, less hatred. Slowly, the light returns.

The light calls to us in the darkest of spaces. This is just how it works. And we forget that when we are deep in it. Light always beckons us home.

So, we are coming home. We are walking home. Whether through foggy forests or dusty blue skies clearing.

The weather may change along the way still.

And now we know that light of our own consciousness is within our very fingertips.

Not outside us. But right here. In the heart. The deep, waking, awakened spiritual heart.