Me and My Shadow
There is light and darkness in all of us.
Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash
There is a shadow in each of us.
Shadow work is some of the most challenging we will do in uncovering our Ikigai.
A two-sided shadow lives within each of us and consists of both positive and negative aspects.
📌 All that we hate and consider unworthy of ourselves is included in the negative shadow.
📌 All our untapped creative potential is on the positive or bright side.
Let me share a personal example.
I have a gift for seeing how to improve things. It wasn’t uncommon for me to walk into an area at work and immediately identify process failures and innovation opportunities.
Improvement opportunities jump out at me everywhere I go. That’s the upside.
The downside is I see opportunities where things need to be improved everywhere I go.
I can’t ‘not’ see it.
That can lead to frustration and, given the right circumstances, even anger if the terrible process keeps me from getting what I need.
Terrible customer service is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. It drives me crazy.
Keeping the Good while controlling the Bad
It’s not good to squash this part of me, it’s one of my gifts. I also can’t let it control me or take me to levels of frustration or anger.
Understanding this dark and light side of what makes me unique is essential.
With that understanding, I can tap into the energy while controlling the potential dark side.
Hiding the Shadow
As a child, I had to suppress my talent. The adults in my environment did not appreciate a ‘kid’ identifying solutions to problems.
As an adult, the kind of work I engaged in prized this gift and began to resurface it. Unfortunately, the dark side of frustration and early rejection surfaced as well.
It would be years later when I achieved a point of balance.
Is there a portion of your personality that has been shot down, unrealized, omitted, or condemned? Something is possibly hidden on the dark side.
Maybe it is time to take a look.
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.” ― Walt Whitman
True. It’s the dark that hides and holds all the possibilities and the visual sense we humans are endowed with are good neither to see the pure light nor impregnate the realm of dark. It has a woefully narrow range to view only somewhere in between. Its the the eyes of our inner Self that helps pierce the veil shrouding the dark and make acquaintance of pure light.