An Introduction

to
Shadow Work
How to Accept Every Aspect of Yourself.
Learn the Immensely Powerful Technique to Empowering Yourself,
Loving Yourself and Building Permanent Self-Esteem.
 Copyright © 2015 by Glenn Smith
All Rights Reserved.
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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or

prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for
physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a
physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only
to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for
emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the
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Cover picture credit: Lightspring/shutterstock.com

 Table of Contents
Chapter One.....What is the Human Shadow?
Chapter Two.....How to Spot Your Own Shadow
Chapter Three.....Gold in the Shadow
Chapter Four.....Healing the Shadow
Chapter Five.....Shadow Work and Self-Esteem
 Chapter One.....What Is The Human Shadow?
The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) used the term
‘ shadow ’ to refer to a person ’ s dark-side, or in other words, the
part of their psyche they are not comfortable with, and do not accept
as being okay.
In order to make a distinction between the part of our self-identity
(ego) that we are familiar with and accept to a certain degree, and
the traits and characteristics that we disown and do not like, he
termed the unloved part the 'shadow-self'.
Whether you are conscious of this or not, at any point in time you
have;
1. the characteristics and traits you are unhappy to have in your self-
image identify (shadow), and
2. the characteristics and traits you are happy to hold within your
self-image (ego)
As you interact with people, work, make love, dance or go about
your life in any manner at all, you have an established and persistent
self-image that contains information about ...
- what you know you are like
- ways in which you behave
- what you think others think of you
This self-image is nothing more than an idea or a creation within
your mind that you identify as 'you'. It is not the whole you or the real
you, but nevertheless it is compelling and is convincing as being who
you are.
Maybe you even go as far as to say that this is who you think you
are in actual reality. Maybe you have never given any thought before
about who or what is the real you.
The shadow-self is whatever is left out of your idea of you, and it
also includes anything contained within this idea of you that you
would rather not be there. I will explain more as we go.
For example, we may not readily hold our hand up and say "I am
rude", but you might readily hold your hand up and say "I am
generous". In this small example ‘ generous ’ would be in your self-
identity, your accepted self-image, but 'rude' would be a
characteristic that is part of your shadow-self.
This though is the powerful piece that if you can grasp and live
(which takes much diligence and continued practice just like anything
worthwhile) allows you to have higher self-esteem, self-acceptance,
feel calmer, more in tune with the non-physical aspect of your whole
self, and have a life that works far better ...
… the reality is there is no one way that you are. There is no
absolute, particular, undeniable, concrete, indisputable way that you
are. You are plastic, an event as opposed to an object. You exist
here in relationship to other events, you do not exist as a ‘ thing ’ .
Therefore, you can be a lot less attached to how you experience
yourself in each moment.
In your mind is a creation of the way you think you are. It is
something that has been established and held onto based on
memories, teachings and experiences, and an absence of
awareness of the truth since you were young. This is the reason that
you feel stuck in a loop of frustration and probably confusion. You
don ’ t like being you most of the time because you have a whole lot
of traits and characteristics that you have decided were not okay.
It is perfectly fine that you are not one specific, particular way. You
are potentially everything in reality, you are every possible
experience, and every potential interpretation of that experience.
Who You Think You Are
Every human being holds in their mind an idea of who they think they
are. As said above, the shadow-self is everything that does not exist
within your accepted self-image. So, what can we do about it? When
I discovered this secret and did the work to move everything that I
could think of from my shadow-self to my owned self-image my life
became a whole lot calmer.
Who You Think You Are Not
As discussed above, in actuality human beings have the potential to
be anything at any time, and not stuck as one fixed way. We don ’ t
choose to stay as one way, but that is certainly the way the ego
makes us feel separate. In this way the accepted self-image and the
non-accepted shadow-self keeps you securely stuck in one way of
being. Even if it hurts there is still a feeling of being comfortable and
familiar which resists further change of behaviour or mental thought
processes. This accepted self-image means anything that you
become aware of that doesn't fit within the accepted self-image
causes you to experience some type of negative, contraction within
your mind and body.
What happens then, is when you already feel bad your mind
automatically goes to ‘ examine ’ other parts of your life that you are
not happy with, and that causes you to feel even worse about your
self. In other words, you feel bad about the self that you have
created because you seem so limited and ineffectual at life.
This will continue until such time that you realise your self-image is
simply no more than a persistent construct in your mind. It is simply
a concept created in thought and then acted out and experienced in
third dimension physical reality. The self-image is not really you, but
rather it is how you have continually thought over the term of your life
so far.
Who Are You Really?
No one can tell you who you are because we would just be
exchanging information. You can't use the mind and its functions
such as intelligence and reasoning to discover the truth of your
existence.
The task is to release attachment to being one particular way and
instead be willing to experience and be everything. This is closer to
who you are in reality rather than your self-image being real. Even if
this way you think you are was full of neat sounding traits like
intelligent, sexy, funny, lively, loving you still have the potential as a
human being to experience all the opposites. If you do experience
one of these opposite traits one day you would feel terrible because
you were attached to being the positive trait.
It is all the opposites that lie outside of your accepted self-image that
we call the human shadow.
When you accept that you can and do experience every potential
human trait you transform your experience of life. Life begins to flow
effortlessly.
Who Coined The Term Shadow?
Shadow work derived from the famous Swiss psychologist Carl Jung
who coined the term shadow to refer to the parts of the psyche that
we are unconscious of. Anything that is unconscious seemingly has
more negative influence in our lives than that which we do
consciously.
In this respect you can think of the patterns and agenda of the
unconscious like a robot in that they run automatically. This is good
for essential bodily functions like breathing for example, but not great
for psychological functions such as trying to accept old hurt or trying
to get your parent's approval. These will not stop no matter how
much time has passed.
Why Do Things Run Unconsciously?
For several reasons things run unconsciously, be it because you
experienced something that you were not able to process at the
time, or be it just because in our society the external world is more
distracting and attractive than the internal world for most people.
If something is conscious to us we have out impartial awareness
upon it. As we do this for longer periods of time, such as in
contemplation, more and more of what is taking place automatically
becomes obvious to us. Then we can choose to change it.
Unfortunately, we don't seem to widely realise that what is within
affects what we experience without. To change your experience of
the external world you must change your internal world.
What Does This Have To Do With Shadow Work?
Shadow work is a very effective, quick and powerful way to change
your experience of life quickly. When you re-own all the previously
dis-owned (unaccepted) parts of your self-identity you notice an
inner peace that wasn ’ t there before, a quietening of the inner critic
or the judging part of the mind. There is less judgement and
contraction away from others, there is less irritation towards others,
and less wishing that others would behave differently.
What this requires is self-reflection and a higher consciousness of
what is taking place within your experience. If there is something
about a person that irritates you or something that makes you feel
they are superior then what is actually happening is you are
projecting onto this other person something that you have not
accepted about yourself.
 Chapter Two.....How to Spot Your Own Shadow
Ego Defense: Shadow Projection
Shadow projection is the way in which you can easily spot what
human traits are in your shadow.
Your shadow self is that which is unconscious. As we are complete
in our potential experience, anything which we deny as being part of
us becomes unconscious.
What the ego (self-image) does is project these unconscious traits
out onto the world including specific people you come across.
This is all the work of the brilliant psychologist Carl Jung who coined
the term the shadow. Why this is particularly powerful is that you can
use this knowledge to be vigilant and responsible for all that you
experience, including the way you experience other people.
'Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an
understanding of ourselves.' Carl Jung
What the ego seems to do is take anything that we learned not to be,
such as rude and mean, and project that out onto someone or the
world as a whole. Anything that is repressed within does not go
away. The trick is to see and accept exactly where it is coming from
rather than where it appears to be coming from.
If you don't accept that a part of your potential and experience is
being rude then someone or a group of people will be burdened with
your shadow projection of this rude trait.
It happens all ways. It is tricky to see and even trickier to remember
when we are faced with another individual who grates against us.
If someone is annoying to you or you think you are so much better
than them or so much inferior then the challenge is for you to
contemplate what is it that you are projecting onto them.
What word would you use to describe them that perfectly fits why
you have this contraction away from them. Ordinarily in a perfect
world you would accept everyone as they are and experience peace
in their presence. If you are not then there is something about you
causing you to experience this absence of peace. Once you have
this word that describes what it is about them you dislike or like then
you go within and recall situations where you have been that trait.
This is no time for further ego defense but rather brutal honesty. The
type of honesty that comes from impartial watching. Just as if you
were a scientist observing the data you observe yourself and accept
that in the past there have been one or two times when you have
done the same thing, or, accept that given a certain set of
circumstances you would behave the same as the person who is the
subject of your projection.
Rather than being a certain, fixed, object it might be better to think of
yourself as potential. Given your environment and your influences
you have the potential to be anything from a thief and murderer to
the holiest saint. You are not one way. You are not an object that is
called Jane, Julie or Dave. This is why you need to accept
everything about yourself and everything that you could imagine
ANY human being doing.
Each time you move a potential trait from the darkness (unconscious
denial) to the light (conscious acceptance) it removes the need for
the ego to project this trait onto anyone else and this is the process
of healing the shadow. This allows you to experience more peace
inside and out.
Shadow projection seems to be a strategy by the ego to maintain the
illusion of being a certain way. It probably does this because you
have no awareness of being connected to the whole being that you
are.
How Do You Discover Your Shadow?
You discover your shadow self not through your mind but via
awareness. Just by watching and observing each moment and what
you feel and believe to be true about yourself and the world.
The quickest way to discover what is in your shadow is to notice the
shadow projected onto people you come in to contact with, either in
real life or celebrities, or even people you see on television shows.
When you are aware enough of your own self and notice that you
have a negative feeling towards someone then that is you projecting
your shadow onto them. This is because you are judging them to
have a certain characteristic, which they might, but your emotional
reaction is something that you are creating. This is extremely subtle.
It is the reason most everyone on the planet feel annoyed and
irritated with other people and get into conflicts and arguments. Any
aspect that does not conform with your self-identity is projected by
your ego/mind onto anyone around you. You can think of this as
being a loving message to you from your highest self. Treat negative
feelings as an opportunity to become a little more whole.
If you are sure you are never rude then rude people will show up in
your awareness. If you believe that you are stupid but don't accept
that about yourself as a potential human experience, then you will
dislike someone else because you think they are stupid. Whatever is
in your shadow shows up in the outside world.
What If The Other Person Really Is That Way?
There are a couple of ways of looking at this. You could hold it that
these people are coming into your life and showing up as they do
because you have this unconscious, unaccepted trait. Or you could
completely own that you create this person in your reality. Or you
could accept that maybe this person is really like this but your
irritation is all your doing.
For example in an ideal world you would completely accept and love
in a compassionate way even the most despicable character. Any
trait about this despicable character that you have a body felt hatred
or dislike of is your shadow.
By this I mean that person does not automatically come pre-
packaged with these feelings that you experience. They just are as
they are. Whatever you feel or interpret this person to be is your
doing. You won't be doing this automatically as a thought out
process but it will be automatically occurring unconsciously. This is
your shadow self being projected outwards and therefore holds huge
clues to your self discovery, personal and spiritual growth.
What is required is for you to look within your life and potential life
and completely accept that this trait is a reality or a possibility within
your life. This is what we mean by healing the shadow.
Chapter Three.....Discover Gold In The Shadow

What Is The Gold In The Shadow?

The gold in the shadow can be understood by seeing that just as we
protect our sense of self by denying that we possess 'bad' qualities,
we also do not fully acknowledge that we have 'good' qualities.
Your sense of self, your self-image contains certain traits and
anything that does not fit into this picture you have off yourself, or
anything you wish was not in the picture is called your shadow.
Shadow Gold Unlocks Your Potential
When you see someone who has desirable qualities, watch and
notice if you think this person is somehow more special than you. If
you feel infatuated by them or you put them up on a pedestal in your
mind then you are projecting positive qualities onto them.
You can notice if someone has positive qualities and not be
projecting. It is placing them above you in your mind that is evidence
of your shadow, as Carl Jung termed it.
What Do I Do With This?
Just the same as you would do with negative qualities you project
onto others, you need to go within and be brutally honest and find
instances or areas of your life where you have these same qualities.
They will be there it is just you will have minimized them in your
mind. You might project amazing traits onto a musician but deny the
same level of genius in your cooking ability. Cooking comes so easy
to you you think it is no big deal.
Well the musician finds it easy to play music and it is no big deal to
her either. We each are given talents and skills in different areas and
it is for you to embrace these.
Your inner peace and self-esteem will change immediately for each
trait you re-own, embrace and love. These positive traits are said to
be the shadow gold.
Chapter Four.....Healing The Shadow

Healing the shadow is probably the quickest, easiest and most

powerful way to increase self-esteem, self-acceptance and self-love.
Healing the Shadow
To heal the shadow means to welcome back these traits you
previously excluded from your self-image. Have a good, honest look
at every area of your life and find two times in your past where you
were selfish.
Without judgement accept that as a human being this interpretation
called selfish will come up from time to time. Accept that as the way
it is, then accept 'selfish' as being part of your experience of living.
The power comes when you do this because for each trait you move
from the shadow back to the self-image, you become a little bit more
whole and content and you will notice self-acceptance and an
increase in self-esteem and self-confidence.
While the shadow is full of traits it runs your life. When it is less full
you run your life as a conscious being. Each time you re-own a trait
you have experienced a little more of healing the shadow.
What Can You Do About This?
Healing the shadow is about reclaiming these traits that you project
onto others. A human is potential not fixed. You are not one way so
work to not care about being a certain way. If you were to get in with
a bad crowd who did drugs and crime and joined a gang you would
change.
What you need to do is what they call shadow work. Healing the
shadow means finding all the traits that are outside of your accepted
self-image and welcoming them back like long lost children. The
human shadow has within it huge potential for growth and getting
your life back on track.
Below is a list of personality traits and an explanation of why it is
important to accept all the possible traits of a human being.
One exercise that I have found extremely personally empowering is
accepting and embracing yourself and your interpretation of yourself
in every moment.
Denial of what you are actually experiencing creates suffering and
contributes to low self-esteem.
Further below I will tell you how I discovered what I was denying and
a simple and quick exercise to reach acceptance.
With each acceptance, old nagging worries and bits of suffering
drops away and you are left me more peaceful and with higher self-
esteem.
That isn't saying there isn't any pain, hurt or discomfort to be
experienced in your life. These things are inevitable and a fact of life
but suffering is something different to pain. The distinction we are
making is the extra suffering that you experience when your mind
tells you 'this shouldn't be happening' or 'I shouldn't be like this'.
In 2006 Debbie Ford's book The Dark Side of the Light Chasers
caught my eye on the library shelf. I read it and didn't do much with
it. Twelve months later I got it out again and this time it meant so
much more. Of course reading is one thing and won't bring change
you have to change something about your experience in order to get
change. There has to a shift in attitude or the way you think about
things.
Reading just adds more mind stuff to your long list of things you
know. When it comes to personal growth and overcoming low self-
esteem there has to be a shift from within.
It's into this inner-world you must delve and shine a spotlight.
Shining this light of awareness into the places that haven't been
seen for a long time.
Shadow Work
All human beings have displayed every trait, or they do display them
regularly or could display them given they found themselves in a
certain predicament. Blame it on the human condition.
If you can stop judging anything you do or are as bad and move to
acceptance, you are moving in an empowering direction.
To transform you need to have a shift in attitude from disliking some
things in yourself and liking others, to accepting all things.
Murderer
So an extreme one to start with is to accept that you are a murderer.
For starters see how quick and strong the denial from your own mind
is. Secondly, consider a situation where you are put in a position
where it is either you kill them or they kill you, or they kill your child.
Can you accept that you are a murderer now after considering that?
Of course it doesn't make you a murderer in the outside world but
still you have to accept that you have that potential trait within your
experience and add that to your list of personality traits.
After coming to this realization I somewhat obsessively spent one
month trawling through books writing down a list of personality traits.
I wrote down every adjective describing a human being and I worked
to own, accept and embrace that each one has been or could be in
my experience.
As you will come to realize the best teacher is your experience.
Continue to watch your thoughts and feelings from a place of non-
judgemental awareness. Whenever you have a contracted, closed,
irritated or frustrated feeling with another or yourself, contemplate
what the trait is. What is the word you would use to describe that
person you are reacting to?
Add that to your list of personality traits.
From there I would use a hash of a couple of different techniques,
which boiled down to
1. Get into a light relaxed state
2. Imagine myself walking into a lift
3. Turn and face the doors and see a whole lot of buttons
4. See the button that is clearly labeled the trait
5. See and feel myself reach out and touch the button
6. See the doors close and feel the lift go down until the doors open
automatically at a memory of when I displayed the trait
7. Accept the fact of that trait showing up in my experience
8. if I still felt resistance or through the use of a pendulum and
ideomotor questioning I found residual denial of that trait I would
redo the exercise. If still no acceptance - which was very rare - I
would use EFT (Emotional freedom Technique) for one or two
rounds.
I collated a list of personality traits that totaled about 1,000; here are
some you might want to try.
Aggressive
Angry
Arrogant
Complainer
Condescending
Controlling
Dependent
Helpless
Hopeless
Intimidating
When you collate a list of personality traits you do the exercise,
accept it within, experience more peace and less judgement.
 Chapter Five.....Shadow Work and Self-Esteem
In terms of your self-esteem and acceptance of yourself and life the
shadow-self is an extremely important aspect to consider.
From what I have discussed above you will see why it has such a
strong influence on self-esteem. After all, self-esteem is really about
self-acceptance.
The self-image is a mental construct of how you are, and your mind
holds on to this construct very tightly. Because this construct it is
what we are used to living with 24/7, we think of it as being
something fixed and solid, like it was ‘ us ’ as if we were an object
and as if we are that way in reality.
When you think of childhood and the expectation to behave in
certain ways was persistent, immense, explicit and subtle. It needs
to be quickly learned what was okay and accepted. Similarly, you
quickly became conditioned to what was never to be seen or heard
in your family or school or culture. We grow up thinking that these
are absolute rules and we conform quickly, unless you are one of the
lucky ones who saw right through what was going on, but I wasn ’ t
one of them.
The traits and characteristics and behaviours that you were
conditioned to not show don't go away, there is nowhere for them to
go. How can they go anywhere? Where would they go? They have
nowhere to go and as they can't go anywhere, all you can do is have
them appear to have gone. To do this the self that you think you are
places them discretely outside of your awareness.
This is how the self-image forms and so to the opposite, the
shadow-self.
What happens is a plethora of traits and characteristics in each
camp. Those that are acceptable to Mum and Dad, you, friends,
opposite sex, school, society, and teachers in one camp and
everything that is not acceptable is in the other camp.
Why This Is Important
This is a crucial concept for improving self-esteem because you can
try to feel better about yourself by changing some characteristics
around, making some more obvious, doing self-help to improve
some of them, working to have more people see certain aspects of
yourself or less of others.
However, because your self-image is simply an idea, it has nothing
absolutely true in reality as the Being that you are. You can attempt
to alter the self-image, and some people do for their whole miserable
life, never coming to that place of acceptance and inner peace.
In order to experience love and acceptance of your self, and of
course self-esteem you need to turn and face everything that you
were taught and decided to close off and put away in the shadow-
self. What needs to happen is you need to welcome them back like
long lost children; make it okay that they are part of the whole
‘ you ’ , embrace them, acknowledge them, see the benefit of them
being there, accept them, love them and cease judging them.
The process of raising self-esteem is simple but not necessarily
easy. Simple in the fact that all it requires is a transformation in
consciousness from denial and fear to acceptance and love.
It is not necessarily easy because the belief that you are a separate,
completely independent thing is strong and convincing.
One way of raising self-esteem is to take your belief that you are a
thing and pump up the beliefs about what that thing is like. In short
you change your self-image for a better one.
You can attempt to focus on something that you believe to be true
about yourself that makes you feel a bit more worthy and
acceptable. By the way, in doing this the parts that you don't like
about yourself don't actually disappear they just get ignored.
This might seem like a result however it will likely cause greater
problems for you at a later date in some way.
Just as if you are repairing or cleaning something and you try and do
just enough so that what is immediately visible looks OK, deep down
you feel a nagging that you haven't quite done a proper job. You
know it will have to be faced at a later date. Or you feel a false
sense of achievement that you have got a way with it. It is like you
feel clever for taking the easy way out and achieving your task.
How does it feel when you know you have really done a thorough job
and you know your repair will last? Just like rust in a car or a hole in
a sock the section needs to be completely rebuilt and reintegrated
into the whole.
So it is with the ego and the Self. The ego is who and what you think
you are. You might think you are kind and polite and this and that.
Or you might think you are stupid and pathetic and mean and cruel.
Whatever self-image you have is your ego.
Your ego is just your idea and becomes the focus of your life. It is
what you then interpret life's events through.
Just as the rust in the car would attract the eye and the attention and
make you miss seeing the car as a whole so to we end up focusing
on the self-image and miss seeing and feeling the whole
experience. By the whole experience I mean the experience of
being part of the whole, connected to all that there is, divine, Self.
The process of raising self-esteem is to bit by bit transform your
awareness from the ego to the whole. When you meditate the ego
takes a back seat. When you sit across from another person and
feel their energy and really get what they are communicating the ego
takes a back seat. There are many, many ways of accomplishing
this task of deidentifying with the ego and reidentifying with the
whole.
Why does this raise your self-esteem? Because genuine self-esteem
is a product of your awareness, acceptance and love of the truth. It is
not something you build up and pump up, it is something that comes
because you see how futile it is to continue trying to be something,
or not trying to be something. Give up trying to be a certain way.
Have nothing to defend.
Some people try to always be right, some people try never to be
rude. Some people try and be cool, other people try and never be
wrong. This is all ego and genuine self-esteem can never come
through rearranging, pumping up or resisting the ego.
How To Build Your Self-Esteem Permanently
If you are searching the web for self-esteem you are probably
coming across activities and advice like...
focus on your achievements
say your affirmations
be nice to yourself
fake it until you make it
These people mean well, but I doubt the great spiritual teachers of
the past or influential psychologists of our time would answer a
student's question about self-esteem by instructing them to focus on
aspects that reinforce your current experience of yourself.
I want to educate you on a simple way to work on your life that is
hugely rewarding, meaningful, simple and transformational. First I
want to talk a bit more about how you got in this predicament in the
first place.
Paradox
There is a paradox that to think you have to do something to change
yourself means you are missing something; are not quite complete
as the unique, one-of-a-kind human being that you are. These things
that others suggest you do to feel better about yourself may cause a
temporary change in your feelings; you might feel more positive,
more motivated or less critical of yourself for a few minutes or a
couple of hours or days depending on what is going on in your life,
but has your self-esteem really changed by thinking more positively
or doing some activity? Has your experience of yourself changed in
who or what you think you are? Probably not.
As soon as you are back in relationship with your experience of life
and another person, you are going to be the same that you have
always been. The same old defects and stuff you wished weren't
there will still be there. The same negative talk and harsh judgement
of yourself. The same denials of certain traits and denials of natural
and normal human characteristics. There needs to be a change in
the way you approach the world and yourself. There needs to be a
change in your awareness of what is really going on.
Changing the idea of who you are is really just like rearranging the
food on your plate and thinking you have something different. Trying
to block out all the bad traits you have is not going to work because
you have those traits. Ignoring them doesn't make them not exist.
Anything you don't freely admit to will hurt you. It will make you suffer
until you can become aware of yourself as having that trait, being
brutally honest and accepting that trait in your experience of life.
Understand that all human beings at some point in their lives will
display a trait or could potentially display a trait. This is crucial to how
you like yourself.
Good and Bad
In our little idea of who we are and the self-image we have, we cut
the world into two. We then agree to accept that we have the good
half and we deny and spend our lives desperately trying to avoid
anyone, including ourselves, noticing that we actually do have the
'bad' traits as well. Of course you are likely not aware that your self-
image (ego) does this denial, but somewhere in your past, most
likely to ensure being looked after and loved, you subconsciously
learned that there were certain traits that were not acceptable.
When something is not acceptable you shove that trait or the
potential for that trait to the deep, dark recesses of your experience,
hopefully never to be seen again. The problem arises because you
are whole and complete and everyone in the world will at some point
experience being rude, lazy, selfish, mean, greedy.
When you shoved these traits down the back they did not disappear.
How could they, there is no real you with which to decide not to be
something? Your self-image is an idea of who you are and who you
think you should be. It does a great job at convincing you and others
that are none-the-wiser that you are a certain way absolutely. Maybe
you like to come across a certain way - kind, nice, generous for
example - or tough and strong maybe, but that is not an absolute
reality, it is not a Truth of the way things really are in existence.
They Are Still There
These traits you decided you never wanted to be there never went
away. As you go about your life they will always be there and they
will always show up in your interpretation of how you are sooner or
later. So what do you think that does to your thoughts of yourself
when these 'bad' unacceptable traits keep coming up in your
awareness?
The solution is shadow work.
Shadow work begins with an understanding of the reality that you
are not really, really, really a certain, fixed, absolute way. You are
whole, alive, conscious and will experience every interpretation on
the scale from bad to good at some stage.
There are times you will be uglier than some but more beautiful than
others. There will be times when you will seem rude and other times
you will seem polite. Other times you will be intelligent compared to
someone else yet another time someone smarter will be in your
awareness and interpretation. Maybe you just are stupid compared
to the majority of the population. So what? If that is how it is in your
experience, so be it.
I really am talking about your brutal honesty and acceptance in your
own awareness of these traits. You could have shoved 'rude' to the
back because you were always told to be good and polite. This
rudeness, until it is accepted as being an okay part of you, will
continue to cause problems for you whenever it shows up. It will
show up in some way in your universe. It will show up in some part
of your experience of life and you will feel terrible when it does. The
trait won't stop showing up in your life as a problem until it is allowed
to be there without resistance.
It Is Okay To Be Rude
It is okay to be rude. In certain circumstances it is appropriate to
behave in a way that someone else might judge you as rude. Maybe
to get what you want or to stand up for yourself you will come across
as rude. It is only an interpretation.
My self-esteem went through the roof when I had this realisation and
worked to go through over 1,000 traits and accept that I had
displayed them or could display them all. No exceptions. Brutal
honesty and making it perfectly okay that as a human being I am
imperfect and just trying to get along. I do the best with my level of
awareness in each moment. In relation to others (compared to
others) who have different values and desires, you will behave, say
or do something that could be called 'bad'. Accept that.
I even have a little giggle to myself when I interpret myself as 'bad'
and remind myself that I am just doing my best and certainly don't
need extra judgement. When you do this, that judge will quieten
down in your head and let you simply be who you are.
Apart from this your effectiveness and ability to interact with the
world and others will sky rocket also. You will no longer have little
parts of your psyche trying to show up and sabotaging you. These
parts of your psyche will simply rest and leave you to create your
world.
As you own and accept everything about yourself you will love
yourself so much that it hurts sometimes! And how can you have low
self-esteem when you love yourself? Impossible.