Setbacks in Shadow Work

I've spent a lot of the past few months consumed by my shadow.  For me the shadow tends to  manifest as procrastination, over-indulgence, and self-recrimination.  This means I haven't gotten a whole lot done of late and pretty much feel like crap about it.  I've let way too many things that are important to me slide by the wayside and I mean to remedy that.  So today I'm going to talk a little about setbacks in shadow work - appropriate no?

The thing about shadow work is - it's hard.  If it's not hard you're not doing it right.  Shadow work is soul searing, gut churning, bone shakingly difficult.  Reaching into your own abyss, pulling things out, and turning them into strengths is a lot like re-breaking an improperly set bone so that it can grow straight and healthy again - absolutely necessary and worthwhile but hurts like hell.  The more it scares you and the more you try to avoid it the more important it is to face it.  Remember the movie Labyrinth?  There's a scene in the movie when the main character is trying to navigate underground tunnels and huge rock faces start shouting at her to turn around and that she's on the path to her own doom.  Then her companion tells her that the stone faces are actually "false alarms" and that the more of them there are and the louder they get the more likely they are to actually be going the right way.  Shadow work is a lot like that, the harder it is the closer you're probably getting to something important.

Setbacks in shadow work are inevitable.  Anything as difficult as proper shadow work is going to be mentally, emotionally, and magickally exhausting.  It's absolutely necessary to take a rest every once in a while or you'll burn out and probably experience some major mental backlash (I know I do when I take things too far too fast).  Every few weeks take a rest from shadow work.  Go do something that doesn't take a lot of mental prowess and that is emotionally and spiritually fulfilling.  Go for a hike, paint a picture, play some games, throw a party.  Do a ritual of thanksgiving to celebrate the bits of you that aren't covered in psychic muck of your own making.  It's easy to go myopic doing shadow work and forget that your shadow is just a small part of who you are.  You are not your shadow. 

The whole point of shadow work is to make you stronger and more whole so that your shadow becomes your ally instead of your enemy.  The shadow is not bad; it's just unacknowledged and unfulfilled and occasionally acts out like a bored child.  Sometimes it doesn't feel like it's making you stronger, but just the opposite.  As you sit in meditation, shaking with stress and fighting back tears that make no sense to your logical brain you feel anything but strong.  But here's the thing, would you rather breakdown in the safety and privacy of your circle or wait until something in the world triggers your shadow in public where who knows where the fallout will land?  And, once you've faced a particular aspect of your shadow, once you've had your shootout at high noon moment, it's never quite as bad again.  The next time it will be a little less fierce, and even less fierce the time after that, until eventually you'll wonder what the big deal was.  Of course, you'll probably have exposed more deeply buried scary bits in the mean time and have other things to worry about. 

Shadow work really does make things better.  The more you integrate your shadow the more whole you become and the strong your center becomes.  As we all know, our center is the seat of our magickal power and the stronger it is the better able we are to do just about anything and the less vulnerable we are to any kind of outside attack.  If you specialize in defensive magicks like me, strengthening the center is absolutely critical.  Shadow work seals the cracks and fissures in the aura and makes shielding little more than childsplay.  Yeah, shadow work is hard and can really suck ass some times but it's worth it.

Curses and the Aura

Yesterday I promised you a good meaty entry so here you go.

I get a lot of emails from people with subject lines like this: “HELP VOODOO BLACK MAGIC CURSE!!!!!” - except the usually have more spelling errors and random punctuation.  These folks are genuinely frightened and upset by things that are happening in their lives and they do need help.  Are they cursed?  Unlikely, but you never can tell.

Now, of the many emails I get from people who believe themselves to be cursed I’d say about 10% or less of them appear genuine.  For me, a genuine curse is focused and potent negative energy sent from one person to another with the specific intent of doing them harm in a particular way.  This almost never happens.  In order to send a proper curse someone has to have a strong will, a deep understanding of energy work (including the consequences of lobbing a curse), a certain amount of skill, and the willingness to accept the consequences.  Most people that have a deep understanding of the way energy really works don’t want to burden themselves with the consequences of cursing – it’s just not a very good idea 99.999% of the time.  Most people who want to curse someone don’t have the ability to manipulate energy very well.  Yes, the co-worker or neighbour that hates you can flood your surroundings with negative energy but that’s not a curse it’s just being a dick.

However, when you believe yourself to be cursed you can effectively curse yourself.  If you look at everything that happens to you that doesn’t fit into your plans as some kind of deliberate attack you will make it so.  The mind has power to affect the physical world –this is the basis of all forms of magick.  When you believe yourself to be surrounded by the malefic you will draw it towards yourself.  The principle of like attracts like is the basis of all sympathetic magick and that holds true to the negative as well as the positive.  The more you allow your mind to unfoundedly color your experience negatively the more negative energy you will attract.  Once you’ve stepped onto the downward spiral of negative energy - voilà, you’re cursed. 

At this point it’s time to do a hex-breaking to help break the vicious cycle of bad begetting more bad.  In my book I’ve got several different levels of hex-breaking broken down into simple, easy to follow instructions so I won’t got over them here.  Performing a hex-breaking will sever any attachments to negative energies coming from within or without (so it doesn’t matter if someone’s actually out to get you or if you’ve worried yourself into things), clean up residual negative energy, and strengthen your personal shields to help protect you in the future.  Hex-breakings are great tools, but wouldn’t it be better not to have done this to yourself in the first place?

The best protection against curses, from within or without, is a strong personal energy field.  The aura, our personal energy field, is the natural shield that distinguishes us from our surroundings.  A strong, solid aura is a natural defense against curses.  Imagine a strong aura as a perfect sphere made of solid teflon – nothing sticks to it and nothing gets through it – if negative energy has nowhere to grab a hold of us then we cannot be cursed.  Unfortunately, almost no one has that perfect an aura.  As we go through life we experience annoyances, angst, and tragedy.  Those negative experiences can scratch and mar the aura, giving external negative energy a handhold, and real trauma can even shatter it completely.  The more we’ve been through the more pockmarked and scarred our aura can be, and most adults have at least a few decent cracks that make the very core of our beings vulnerable.  Thankfully the aura can be healed and strengthened.

The goal of modern psychotherapy, ancient spirituality, and a good chunk of religions is to heal the mind and connect the self to greater powers (be it the collective unconscious, archetypal understandings, or deity).  This is also the goal of shadow work.  Working with the shadow is basically the process of looking at the cracks and craters in our sense of self and doing what is necessary to heal them.  Each time we learn to accept a fragment of our shadow we heal a part of our souls.  Each time we heal a part of our soul one of those auric craters fills in; the cracks begin to mend. 

A whole, healed aura makes us curse-proof and it’s the only thing that can do so.  All the shielding and energy work in the world will still leave you vulnerable if you’ve got a crack in your soul.  If you think you’re under psychic attack take a good look at yourself and ask just what it is about you that left you vulnerable.  Worry less about what might be coming at you from without and more about what about you lets it in.