Transforming your shadows. Seeing your light.
Updated: Nov 26, 2021
Your shadows are your traumas, your unresolved wounds from the past.
When the shadows come, we tend to run and hide, seeking shelter in protective patterns of avoidance, non-feeling, lashing out onto others, etc. It seems we are not equipped with the capacity to hold our shadows. We get overwhelmed and caught in them. When the shadows take over, fear takes over. Our deepest fears come out, dragging us down into a spiral of doubt and confusion.
Your shadows are unresolved traumas. And when the shadows come and the darkness gets overwhelmingly heavy, we respond with our learned protective mechanisms.
But these protection mechanisms are only seemingly keeping us safe. There is no safety, no resolution in avoidance, in running away, in denying. In reality our protective mechanisms are keeping us hostage, they are holding us trapped in limiting beliefs. They are maintaining our past wounds and traumas which keeps us from entering fully into a loving relationship with ourselves and the people around us.
Our conditioned ways of protecting us from our shadows may work in the short run, may dissolve the shadow momentarily, but the root of the shadow remains. And out of the root of the shadow the darkness will just rise again in the next challenging situation.
When your shadows come, do you run and hide? Or do you stay and face them?
Your shadows are not to be condemned nor to be avoided. Your shadows are your past wounds that are asking you over and over again to look at them in order to heal them. Your shadows are not here to haunt you. Your shadows are here for you to grow. Your shadows are here for you to see your light.
Encounter your shadows with openness and love. Where your shadows are darkest, beneath lies the greatest potential for growth and transformation. Your shadows are your invitation to grow and to heal. They are showing you the areas of your life and your self where you have work to do. They are showing you where you have forgotten your light.
Beneath all shadows lies light. Without shadows, without darkness, how would you recognise light as light?
Without shadows, without darkness, how would you know and experience light?
You are light. Light and love are your true inner nature. That is who and what you are.
The shadows are a layer disguising your light, not allowing you to see your light. Even in the darkest hour of your shadows holding a firm grip on you, know that you are light. You are not your shadows, you are light.
Shadows are part of the equation of knowing and experiencing light. Every shadow is an opportunity. Every shadow is your chance to grow. Every shadow bears the potential for transformation and healing.
The next time your shadows come, be thankful. Say to yourself, say to your shadow:
Thank you shadow.
Thank you for asking me to grow.
Thank you for reminding me that I have healing work to do.
Thank you for being me guide on the path to heal myself. To heal myself and thereby shine this out into the world to heal everyone around me.
Thank you for guiding me to see my light.
Thank you shadow.
You can find my corresponding meditation on my YouTube channel and on the meditation app InsightTimer.