NitN 11 - Shadow Work Part 2 (Gentleness, Acceptance, Love)

Sufficiently brainwashed post-Shadow Work, Geoff and JT discuss the emotional phenomenology the words light and dark, the perils and rewards of being HIGH ENERGY and the caring, compassionate route out of depression and perfectionism!

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Intro!

I.

You heard the journal entry at the beginning of part one of this series on Shadow Work? If you haven’t, go back, but get your phone ready; you’re going to have a strong urge to dial WHINE-one-one and snag a WAHmbulance for that self-deprecating, self-loathing muppet.

But! Could you believe that the same emo—or at least someone who shares some percentage of their cells—has finally reincarnated better, shot-through with a brilliant plasma of worthiness?

Two different Tarot readers drew Death for me recently, one as a January 2022 theme and one as my “highest potential.” Both times, I smiled with so many teeth I’d have shocked Little Red Ridinghood into stuttering, “You’ve changed grandma…” I felt intuitively that my Chaos Shadow Work Ritual represented the end of a karmic cycle of shame. A rebirth into an ocean of emotion only describable as love.

The sensation of love was foreign to me when I first felt it for my then-girlfriend, now-wife. I grew up thinking I was meat-machine fractured fractally by causality. A psychopath incapable of expression of, identification of or empathy toward any emotion more complex than anger or anxiety.

But my wife—and her then-baby, now-badass—made me realize love wasn’t only true in fairy tales. It wasn’t meant for someone else and not for me.

And now, post-shadow work, I’m feeling it more often. Existing as love is my default mode.

And when the darkness surfaces, eventually I remember to recite “I am love through myself, word I am word” and I get to feel the fluttery warmth explode through my sternum to envelop the “what” that I am.

II.

Through years of unwelcome recollection—of “collecting again”—the gut-plummeting visceral sensations of shameful faux pas, I had built an armor of inadequacy. These memories, each accompanied by muttered “Fuck!”, have lost their venom though.

Shadow work shifts them into grayscale and shrinks them to the size of a postage stamp. This deliberate process of mining the silver from gloomy clouds has allowed me to love myself.

See, it took a while for my American Spirit to catch fire.

The pretentious cigarette that is; I spend too much time paying attention to be able to afford buying into our nation's supposed exceptionalism.

But once the tightly packed tobacco was finally burning, I would pull as much faux-organic poison through my pipes as possible.

The cloud I’d let out would linger around the porch light above me like a nebulous moth: bluish eddies framed by a silver lining.

That moment was exactly what I’d waited for.

See, this chaos ritual trained my mind to mine the silver from clouds.

Cause I've found that though clouds dissipate by nature, stripping their silver acts as a kickass catalyst.

Besides, the fire in my belly makes a great forge. I've melted the best elements of every cloud into piercings to plunge through stretched skin. I'll wear them with pride, refusing to remove them for work, showers or sleep.

I even bought a miner’s pickaxe second hand from my therapist.

He says if I could crack its head in half I could count the coats of lacquer like tree rings to see just how many geniuses have made contributions to it.

But, he adds, it's unbreakable. Deep beneath millennia of polish it's still the same tool Socrates crafted himself. It's got a point to it that can still chip away the hardest granite I take for granted. A point that could have been patented if its creator wasn't so adamant that enlightenment is a natural right.

III.

Call it a month of diligent meditation if you’re a scientific materialist or the auric bathing of banishing rituals and the subtle energy charged magickally into glasses of water if you’re unafraid of the woo, but I am doing better now.

I’m quicker to notice difficult emotions and undaunted by the vulnerable process of naming them and directly asking whoever to address their underlying psychological needs. It’s a kind of magick in itself to be forthright and secure enough to disturb the still water of someone else’s mood and expect to be buoyed into better states yourself. Setting the intention to befriend the aspects of my personality of which I’m ashamed seems to have paid outrageous dividends when it comes to being comfortable expressing feelings that were once shameful just to name.

Even going forward, when I transgress in one of the sectors denoted by that list of shadow characteristics I alchemized, I am now quick to apologize and quick to accept it if I am forgiven.

It’s as if no longer believing that I’m a part-time monster has fueled a self-acceptance. As if I’m empowered by knowing that some of my worst moments are actually just my best friends qualities bent by carelessness.

I’ve cured my perfectionism by going from feeling like I was never enough, to believing that I deserve love, just as I am. Perfectionism is really just the sense that unless you walk life’s tightrope without a single stumble, you’re unworthy of love.

Take heed!

To let go of the unattainable fallacy of never fucking up you don’t need to ”just relax“—you need to teach yourself that love is your birthright as a complex manifestation of a whole bunch of “what” from an unknowably infinite ocean of “all.”

It blew my mind.

It continues to blow my mind, although I sometimes spiral out of it and stop believing I’m magick. So far I’ve spiraled back in each time; an ascending sin curve of radical self-acceptance.

What a strange feeling to know yourself as loved.