Shadow work

Eventually on your spiritual journey you will come to your shadow, or rather, it will come to you. It is not something that you really seek or plan because you don’t know what it is before it’s there.

You can’t really distinguish between insight and shadow work either, as they are intertwined. There’s insight and then shadow comes. You release shadow and then there’s insight.

That being said, a first identity shift will make shadow work easier as before this point there’s so much identification with thought. The bulk of your shadow won’t come before a shift anyways.

What is shadow? It’s literally all your conditioning. All your personal trauma, social and cultural conditioning, beliefs you have about yourself and the world.

In a broad sense I could say that most of my insight work was done during my meditation retreats and then most of my shadow work has been done on psychedelics. Although this is not really accurate either - after a while you don’t really distinguish the two, it’s just what’s happening.

In march of 2023 after reading MDMA Solo (the stuff actually about MDMA is valuable - the rest sounds more like the author’s shadow speaking). I started meditating by myself on MDMA and weed, sometimes just weed and later on ketamine and weed as well. Fast forward and I have done it for almost 3 years and counting!

Was this planned? Not at all - there was just a lot to release.

Could I have done it without the psychedelics? Nope. Does that mean that you need to or necessarily should do psychedelics? Nope.

I want to be very clear about this, since this was my particular journey. Everyone has a unique journey towards finding out who they truly are.

However, for me personally it was just way more effective to address my shadow with intense bursts while in pleasant states instead of dragging it out for long stretches of time while sober. I also just got more easily access to my unconscious as the resistance to it loosened.

This journey is all about trust, it’s about letting your intuition guide you. Trusting that wherever this journey takes you is exactly where you need to go. Trust becomes easier as each time you trust the process life becomes way better.

Everyone has a shadow, although the extent of it varies. Some have more, some have less, but we all have it, and usually way more than we ever could imagine.

Most of the shadow doesn’t really show up until after the first identity shift though, and in my case it was actually after many shifts the bulk of it came.

Why? Because an identity structure doesn’t just serve the purpose of being a someone, it keeps everything held together.

If you suddenly can’t disassociate anymore, where are you going to hide from your shadow? You can’t. You lose the ability to distract yourself and so everything will come to the surface.

The more conscious and awake you become the more you will live in your senses and so the less filtered experience will be.

This is a beautiful way to live but it also means that you will feel everything fully, all the joy but also the sorrow.

At one moment you can feel amazing and then suddenly you feel terrible for no particular reason. Then you know that shadow has crept in. Said in another way, what was once unconscious has become conscious.

You can’t hide from it, although people try and suffer the consequences by feeling depressed for extended periods of time before they address it.

It’s not something you seek either, it will come knocking at your door.

Trauma is something everyone can relate to, although I don’t think people understand the extent to their trauma (I certainly did not), because it runs extremely deep. The body stores so much from the moment you were born up to this point.

You will start to get access to childhood memories from you were 6 years old which you haven’t thought about in decades.

Screaming as a baby, being picked on in school, scenes of stage fright, heartbreaks, your dad shouting at you etc. It’s everything you can think of and then way more.

Beliefs about yourself on the other hand, is not really understood before your identity begins to unravel - because belief and identity goes hand in hand. Identity is literally constructed from the beliefs you have about yourself.

There’s surface level beliefs: I am cool, I am dumb, I’m smart, people like me, people don’t like me.

Deeper beliefs: I am 32 years old, I am a man, I’m a woman, I am my name etc.

Even deeper: I’m a human being, the world is physical, the world is based on logic, I am inside the world, I’m a separate entity, I’m the doer, I’m the body etc.

These deeper beliefs can seem so real that it seems absurd to even question them, but everything needs and will be questioned.

You need to get under the thoughts to get to them. Beliefs are held together by the combination of thought and emotion.

You will know when you get under a belief because then you can feel where the contraction is happening. The conditioning tied to that particular belief will surface as the knot unravels. For instance if it’s a belief “I’m dumb” then chances are memories of you getting a bad grade in school or someone calling you dumb will surface.

Said in another way, thoughts, visual images and emotions will surface until the original belief “I’m dumb” is seen as just another thought and not you.

The belief and identification with it is what gave it power and when that is dropped the whole thing just disappears. You suddenly can’t believe the thought no more than “I’m a green gorilla” - both are just seen as utterly ridiculous.

It’s the same principle for any belief you hold - in the end it’s seen as just another thought and upon seeing it you can’t unsee it.

Caution. When a belief is truly destroyed it’s not replaced with another one. For instance, if you see through the belief “The world is physical” you don’t replace it with “The world is not physical”.

That might be partly useful to change the first belief, as it is an antidote in a way - but it is still just another belief.

When the actual belief is dropped it isn’t replaced with anything else - it is just gone.

That is what living from unfiltered reality means, living from no perspective. Living from the unknown is both possible and enjoyable.

For more specifics of how I meditate on psychedelics: https://medium.com/@heiers-thoughts/how-to-effectively-navigate-the-mdma-psychedelic-experience-a1f76a31fe10

Conditioning is not just what you (the mind) labels as bad, it’s also the good. It’s everything you are attached to. Everything must go but at the same time nothing is lost because it’s seen to be false. It is identification based on ignorance.

The deeper the conditioning is that surfaces the more identification and resistance there will be to letting go of it. Yet, the same principles apply.

This process is progressive. In the beginning there’s surface level beliefs and traumas that are let go of, but as you become less identified, more open and free - naturally your deepest held beliefs and most suppressed trauma will also surface.

Contradictory, it’s actually hardest in the beginning and easiest towards the end, because there’s so little identification left, and likewise little resistance.

Whatever that wants to surface is just allowed and deeply accepted. What is happening is already allowed. There is no one saying “this is allowed, but this is not”. If it appears, it is already allowed.

All of this sounds kind of scary, but the reason that you actually can address your shadow is because you are ready. It wouldn’t have shown up if you weren’t.

You have become more conscious than you were, you have a surplus of energy that is no longer tied up in meaningless mind chatter.

You are granted the deepest gift life can offer by letting love flow through you - healing old wounds and clearing up ignorance.

While I was doing this work it sometimes felt so heavy, but it’s truly a blessing to be able to address your shadow. I carried so much baggage I wasn’t aware of and when it’s gone I felt so free.

Life truly becomes so joyful and effortless.