Your Shadow and the Soul’s Desires

Your Shadow contains those aspects of your young self that were unacceptable to your parents, siblings, friends, teachers, what we have called, collectively, the Outer Culture. Your natural, inborn, evolving, childhood desires we have called your Inner Culture. Not every piece and part of your Inner Culture comes into conflict with the Outer Culture. But for many young people, a significant part of their Inner Culture is treated with disapproval by the Outer Culture. These may be very heartfelt aspects of the self, deep-dwelling desires, that the young self feels must be exiled in order to maintain safe, approving relations with the Outer Culture. This place of exile is the Shadow. The Shadow is a place of pain because it hurts to keep these aspects of yourself in forced hiding. But this pain is telling you something important. The Shadow can tell you what your soul desires apart from the desires you hold that are rooted in the preferences of the Outer Culture. In this way you can find your way to that more aligned self that you sense is there but are unsure of how to proceed to make it real.

Knowing your soul's desires is a necessary step on the path to actualizing your soul's desires. Bringing the Shadow into light is a powerful way to understand what your soul desires. Rooted in the teachings of Carl Jung, "Shadow Work" is a popular mode of self-exploration these days. There are any number of meditative exercises that you can make use of to meet your Shadow. When you get there, though, and face your Shadow, don't think of the Shadow's thoughts, beliefs, and ideas as things you must uncover to release. To the contrary, they are thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that you must bring into active expression. This is why your Shadow is not only your friend and ally, your Shadow is the you who you hid for safety's sake early on and who you keep hiding out of habit and fear. Talk to your Shadow. Ask your Shadow self what their dream is. You will, no doubt, be pleasantly surprised.