How many times have you experienced moments of unity, when you felt your deep interconnectedness not only with the people around you, but also with the planet itself and the entire universe?
How many times, after some time, did it seem to you that the entire path you had traveled was useless, because doubts, fears, and limitations that you thought you had thoroughly worked through resurfaced inside?
One moment a flight to the heavens, the next a steep nosedive… WHY?
This happens because a person simultaneously has access to different spectrums of consciousness. And depending on their inner state, they move from the highest spectrum available to them down to any level, all the way to the lowest. So it turns out that today a person is “soaring,” and tomorrow they’re flat on their face.
So what to do in this case? Is it really just to soar again and again, only to crash down like a stone?
This can be avoided. You can take and integrate the lower spectrum of consciousness into a whole, thereby rising one step higher… and next time, instead of the floor, you’ll at least be at the windowsill : )
The lower spectrum of consciousness is the space where a person’s shadow dwells: any aspects, facets, or sub-personalities that have fallen out of their field of vision over the course of life, and for various reasons have been thrown over the fence of their everyday reality. As a result, there is a certain flawed image of a person, excluding all those traits and sides of the personality whose presence within themselves they deny.
See also: How to Learn to Accept Yourself. 6 Ways
The main secret of positive change is complete self-acceptance. But how do you accept what you don’t like?
In this article, I will tell you why it is so difficult to accept yourself. You will learn the difference between acceptance and rejection and how to learn to accept yourself.
But no matter how much they try to deny them, they don’t disappear because of it. However, you can pretend that they belong to another person. The very fact of their existence is NOT disputed; it is the person’s ownership of them that is denied.
In other words, these traits are projected outward, cast into the shadow. And instead of a whole spectrum of consciousness, there is now a flawed self-image + a shadow part of the personality.
Understanding the principle of projecting unconscious parts of yourself is quite simple. But accepting them, expanding the boundaries of your “self,” is quite labor-intensive work.
After all, first you need to learn to decipher the signals that your shadow “self” sends. To learn to see them not as an external influence, but as your own impulses.
Let me give a couple of examples for clarity. Imagine that someone projects their hostility, their aggressive desire to attack others onto those around them. The projection directed outward returns to them as a feeling that these people are hostile and aggressive towards them; as a result, they become frightened and start to fear, amazed at the amount of negative energy sent to them from an external source.
But at the root of this fear lies NOT the hostility of people, but the projection of their own aggression onto others. Thus, the fear experienced is merely a signal that this person, without realizing it, is angry, aggressive, or hostile.
Something similar happens when a person experiences guilt… the shadow symptom here is resentment of another person’s demands. An internal grievance, projected outward, returns in the form of guilt; its intensity depends on the magnitude of the grievance toward others.
Every symptom includes a certain facet of the shadow—a trait, emotion, or quality cast overboard. It’s not worth ignoring, denying, or rejecting such signals. They hold the key to their own resolution.
And the first step on this path is to allow yourself to fully feel all the symptoms to the maximum, and then accept them as an unconscious part of yourself, thereby dissolving the boundary between your diminished self-image and the shadow aspects, expanding your perception so much that you embrace both what you see in yourself and what you previously projected onto others.
Read also: How to Free Yourself from a Victim Consciousness
Through symptoms, you find the shadow, and by integrating it, you find the path to expanding your consciousness and a more accurate—I would say, true—image of yourself.
Wishing you successful discoveries on the path of integrating your own shadow!
Alena Starovoitova
How to befriend your shadow and gain access to your hidden energy? You’ll learn this, and much more, at the workshop “Dance with the Shadow.”