Stalking Your Inner Wild: Shadow Recovery To Reshape and Empower.

I have heard from most of my clients this past couple of years about the especially acute suffering and chaos that harsh judgment, divisiveness, and forcing a “win” can bring. This over-inflated, cancerous masculine energy of the patriarchy seems to dominate the news these days and my heart goes out for all of us. Long-term heightened anxiety all around us, along with chaotic uncertainty, delusional thinking, divisive behaviors, and the proliferation of hate, fear, and threats -  these have deleterious effects on our physical and mental well-being, our soul, the Earth, the relationships in our lives and on our creative energy precious life force. We have but one life!…We must stay diligent with our inner work, recovering our shadow, aspects in our unconscious that have been exiled in us, so that the strength of our divine feminine spirit may begin to be valued and embodied in society again. Peace will have a chance, then, with this light on balancing feminine energy. We have been too long without it.

This is where shadow recovery will help, and what this writing is about.

Sessions with me focus on stalking your inner wild shadow and recovering it through embodiment and integration, deep listening in the instinctual inner terrain, flow writing, art-making, goddess ritual, channeling, presencing and role play, tapping (EFT), somatic experiences with expressive journeys, sacred self-care, radical self-love, trauma resolution, and contacting the holy wisdom within. All to support your
inner power, balance, and awakening.

How do you contact feminine energy in yourself? Yes this is a question for men too.

To go there let’s first deepen our understanding into what shadow is.

Shadow was first coined by Carl Jung who was able to identify the play between the conscious mind and that which the personality had conveniently hidden in our unconscious mind because of pre-conditioned roles and social mores overlaid onto our primitive instincts. Yes, shadow is based on our more primitive, animal instincts! It’s why the unconscious speaks to us in pictures, sensations, gut feelings, and without “rationale” from the central nervous system.

But…our primitive instincts can be verrrry rational and practical if we pay attention to them and feed them, nurture them well. They will help take care of us. This is what I call sacred self-care. Listening to them takes great acts of kindness and courage, over and over again. This is the quality of the divine feminine - the Holy Mother - she instinctively knows to listen to and have a conversation with all aspects of her child, unconditionally. Discernment is broadened when we have information from our primitive instincts. But we have exiled that deep listening and nurturing presence, and she is screaming for attention. Looking at the world around you, does she have your attention yet?

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied (and accepted) in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser (more unconscious) it is”, Jung said. To review this again, the shadow is like a link to more primitive animal instincts, those that have been overridden in childhood by the conscious mind. Jung saw the shadow as an “unknown” dark side of the personality and, since it is instinctive and irrational (and unconscious), it’s something that’s prone to psychological projection. Projection, meaning one’s own perceived inferiority is seen as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. Criticism and threats are born from projections. Pretty big stuff right?

Take a pause here to feel your body, breathe deep and slow down. Feel your feet, your body on the Earth, move your body. Let yourself take in what you just read before you go on. Take as much time as you need! Maybe journal.

Bravery.

So, what is shadow recovery and how can it help with the strain of this exhaustive terrain of the world we are living in?

First I will start by saying that shadow - our primal, creatively-driven animal instinct - is demonized as dark or negative. This is a misconceived view in our current patriarchal culture! Shadow aspects are beautiful anime that help us in our lives! When we actually call them into our conscious realm they transform. What is recognized - “re-cognized” - will transform.

While conveniently used to drive us into roles that are “most suitable” and convenient - which by the way we need, to a degree, to structure a sane society, I get that - the importance of lovingly witnessing and approaching our shadow with kindness and compassion, like a compassionate mother feminine, has been minimized in our culture. The more we oppress the “dark”, and the more we express simply the energy of the masculine - “fix, fix, fix”, “do, do, prove it, do more more more” - the louder the unconscious becomes, resulting likely in behaviors of fear, threats, and destruction. See any parallels to our current world situation? See any parallels in your own inner terrain or outer environment? When we face and recognize the ugliness we do not wish to see about ourselves, it transforms. Joy, heart, compassion, and creativity can have their place again. The only way out is by facing through. This is brave work. Here’s a mantra you can use at your altar to help with the transformation. I use it with tapping and it has amazing results. Once again, that which we recognize, transforms. Mantra with tapping:

Even though I have all these wild, “crazy”, dark archetypes in me, and so much “darkness”, and I’m trying to hold the polarities and it’s so difficult right now, with so much pain, and I feel betrayed by the masculine; even though all this:
I choose to fully, deeply, and completely love, accept, and approve of myself.

The Shadow Can’t Be Healed. But It Can Be Helpful.

To quote a friend and colleague, “You can’t not have a shadow. No matter how ‘nice’ or ‘happy’ someone may seem, they have a shadow side like everyone else. Nor can you ‘get rid of’ or ‘heal your shadow’. It’s an essential and useful part of you.” The beautiful shadow indeed cannot be healed, and is why I personally call this inner work ‘shadow recovery’. We must “descend” to the underworld (unconscious) from our role-programmed conditioning and thinking to find that which is real in our heart of hearts, in our core, our instinctual being. Honoring the goddess within. I have seen lives change when balance begins to restore between both masculine and feminine energies, including my own. Do you have room in your life to let the feminine in? Your shadow can offer you many gifts of insight and personal power if you dare to understand it.

To take the stance of balancing the feminine, we must “eat” of her elixir, meaning, we must learn to embody listening, slowing down, settle anxiety and fear, befriend our “dark” sides, and learn how to feel safe in our bodies once again. We must be willing to contact our instinctive impulses, our “Inner Wild” so they can transform and not be destructive. Our society depends on it especially now….Dealing with finding solid footing and hope again in the face of the Covid pandemic and our planet’s global emergency is essential to our precious selves and precious planet.

Out of the shadows of oppression we are coming… I would like to think this is so, and part of a grander scheme.

Now for the work:

How do you oppress your exiled precious little ones in your own life, the places that have been wounded, left in the shadows to shrivel and fail to thrive? What is hidden in you that wants voice and to be seen and loved? Let’s start with inner work and we’ll see how the outer work will change. 

To echo the words of my dear mentor, let’s dedicate ourselves to practicing kindness and radical self-love everywhere we go… Let’s “walk that which we yearn for into our out-of-balanced world”. Let’s be the change we wish for in the world. Can’t do that without compassion and shadow!

An important footnote, the good news about the precious time I spend in sessions with clients - and with my own shadow aspects - is that I have also witnessed deep transformation and liberation as we stick with doing our inner work. Brava to all of you for your courage and heart! It’s not easy! Keep going!

Shadow is waiting for the holiness of holies, to be held, seen, heard, acknowledged, and responded to appropriately. Shadow is waiting to be held by this energy, this Holy Mother Divine Wild Seed Mystery Nature. Let us see, to be willing, to let her into our being, into our bodies, into our WAY of being with our selves, with others.

Let’s learn to hold these places in us the way a mother would hold her precious baby, with kindness, gentleness, compassion, and tender protective guardianship. Let’s walk what we wish for into our life and world. Let’s teach others to do this too. Our world is waiting. And the Earth would breathe a big sigh of relief too.

Blessings to you.

So be it and make it So.