Practical Magick – Shadow Work

What is Shadow Work? And why, when and how to do it.

What is shadow work anyway? Discover where to find your shadow, how to love it, and why it is so very important for your happiness and ultimate success.

Don’t be afraid – there’s nothing to be scared of. And shadow work usually only hurts a *little* bit (and considerably less than the disruption it causes if left unsupervised).

Unfortunately, confronting our pain and fears is a vital part of personal growth, spiritual awakening and effective magic. So let’s jump in.

In this lesson you will learn

🦋 what the shadow is
🦋 the problem with not acknowledging the shadow
🦋 how to find your shadow
🦋 how to love your shadow

VIDEOS MENTIONED
🐸 Quick and Dirty Alchemy

Prefer to read the transcript? Scroll down… ⬇️

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- Transcript -

If you keep running up against the same patterns of stuckness, being broke, unhappy at work, unlucky in love or any other repeated and tiresome scenario, you need to show your shadow some love. And I’m about to tell you how.

Before we start, my usual tip: if you are very clever with a short attention span like me, adjust the playback of this lesson to one point two five or even one point five speed. It will help you focus.

My name is Anna Bellissima. I am an extremely powerful magician, as of course are you, and I am here to awaken you to your magical power. The information I share on this channel can genuinely change your life to an overall experience of joy and bliss instead of suffering. So it is a good idea to subscribe and click the little picture of a bell so you never miss a class. We’re going to tackle the subject of shadow work in four parts.

First, we’re going to understand what the shadow is, examine how it can cause us difficulties, learn how to spot when the shadow is at work, and finally, we will explore some ways to love your shadow.

So what is the shadow? The shadow is a term coined by psychologist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung to describe the unconscious part of the personality. Of course, the unconscious part of the personality has existed for as long as we have. But Carl Jung brought this particular terminology into Western culture. There is no intimation that the shadow is in any way bad or evil, scary or anything of that nature.

He uses the description – the descriptor shadow – to describe a part of ourselves that is constantly with us, like our shadow, but which we generally pay very little or no attention to. The shadow describes our unconscious mind and is developed throughout childhood as a response to interactions we have with our primary caregivers. And the shadow develops when our parents or caregivers ideas of how to live in this world don’t match with our our own.

So as little children wanting to please our parents, we suppress or repress certain desires, wishes, behaviors, and they become our shadow. Whatever we repress in order to fit in with our family of origin becomes our shadow. As an example, say that you were a very sensitive, emotional child, but were born to parents who don’t like to acknowledge emotions, don’t understand how to interact with them, and always directly or indirectly give you the message that emotion, that your emotions are too much and you need to be more stoic, more resilient to adopt the British stiff upper lip.

You’re repeatedly being given the message that you need to be different to how you naturally are. Children don’t generally have the capacity to acknowledge that parents make mistakes or that that your parents may not, in fact, be good parents. So what we tend to do instead is outwardly accept the edicts of our parents and the shadow will be formed of the idea that we are too much and that we are sensitive and emotional. And that is somehow a flaw rather than what it actually is, which is, of course, a great strength and gift.

So we’re working with the definition that the shadow is any part of ourselves, of our mind, our personality, our soul or spirit that we do not acknowledge or accept. And finding a way to identify and communicate with the shadow is vitally important because the shadow actually holds a huge amount of power in our daily lives. Consider how often you are shopping for groceries or driving your car, but your mind, your conscious mind is actually somewhere entirely different.

Rehearsing imaginary conversations or regretting the past, worrying about the future. And meanwhile, our shadow, our unconscious mind, is making choices and is quite literally in the driving seat of the car.

So if we’re trying to manifest outcomes following the law of attraction or performing practical magic towards a specific desired outcome, it’s just not happening, then more often than not, that’s because the shadow has its own agenda of how it wants things to pan out. And it is not what your conscious mind has in store. It is not what your conscious mind desires.

The shadow is operating all the time and has a life of its own, its own magnetism and its own magic. So as much as *you* may desire a peaceful life with every thought and every fiber of your being, if your shadow enjoys drama and struggle, your shadow will usually get their way. And very effectively, shadows are indeed masters of manifestation magic.

So I’ve previously alluded to how you can spot your shadow is at work. But let’s go into a little more detail.

The first way of discovering why your shadow is at play is to observe very closely whenever you have a particularly visceral or extreme response to certain people or situations, those very strong, angry, resistant reactions are usually pointing us right directly towards our own shadows and can be a genuine gift. Pay attention to the kinds of things that people say or do that trigger a strong emotional reaction. And if you’ve watched my video on Quick and Dirty Alchemy, you’ll know that emotional triggers, painful emotions are actually a genuine gift for growing our personal power.

And we can actually come to love and appreciate being triggered as it is a route to transformation. Earlier in this video, I spoke about repeating patterns in our life, never being able to earn more than a particular amount or repeatedly ending up with shiftless and unsuitable romantic partners. That is another clear indication that the shadow is at work. And another way to find out where your shadow is, is to simply ask yourself. Take a lovely bath, enjoy a meditation journal, and ask yourself, what parts of myself do I dislike or judge or fear. Any part of you that you do not accept, any part of you that you do not love wholeheartedly, that is the shadow.

So once we’ve identified even just one aspect of our shadow, that is enough to get started on the very important work that is known as shadow integration. And the goal of shadow integration is to gradually encourage our shadow by means of letting that previously unloved, unaccepted, rejected, shunned, feared part of ourselves to come forward into the light and to release a little bit of its control over our circumstances and our fate.

The more things about ourselves we don’t love, the more control the shadow has. Which is why the work of self love, self parenting, inner child work and shadow integration is so very important because it gives us back control, gives our conscious minds back control of our lives. This work is about self love. It is imperative that you find a way to love the parts of yourself that you believe are unacceptable, the parts that you nag and judge and criticize yourself for.

I’m going to give you some methods for this in just a moment, but be vigilant about self judgement. When I was emerging from a long and torturous period of depression and anxiety, I remember reflecting upon how easy it was for me to love my children unconditionally. But somehow I couldn’t seem to muster the same grace towards myself. So I made a conscious decision. I decided to talk to myself the same way I would speak to a distressed or frustrated toddler, with love, compassion, patience and support.

Judging, criticizing, telling off or nagging your shadow only makes it stronger. And as an adjunct to that observation about treating our shadow like a toddler who we love and are responsible for, is to consider personification: to imagine your shadow as a distinct entity who has very different desires to you, but who is masterful at manifesting conditions that fulfil her desire to experience pain, frustration, struggle and so on.

Of course, there are some wonderful methods of approaching this work, including journeying with plant medicine, psychotherapy, past life regression, therapeutic hypnosis and and many more. And you can make a start by examining your childhood and making self inquiry into what aspects of your personality, what aspects of you were judged as being not acceptable to your parents. And that will give you a pretty good starting point. From my own experience, the work of Byron Katie, in conjunction with the concept of radical self acceptance, was absolutely key to recovery from severe depression and anxiety. And later on, I added in the work of Carolyn Elliott from her book, Existential Kink, and that was pivotal in learning to reframe pain as pleasure. If you are already well versed in shadow integration techniques and are looking for a shortcut when pain arises, do check out the video I previously mentioned on Quick and Dirty Alchemy.

But this is not for those making a first foray into shadow work. Remember to please that for every negative in the shadow there is a huge positive and doing this work enables us to remember and reintegrate the gifts into our lives, the gifts that came as part and parcel of the parts we were taught to reject. So perhaps you came from a family where it was frowned upon to be seen as talented, so you repressed your wild vivaciousness and creativity.

And once you beam love and acceptance on the part of you that believes you need to stay small and mean, the talents you have been hiding, then have full permission to shine. And you can answer the question, if I wasn’t scared, how would I spend my time and move forward despite the fear? And please refer to my last lesson on confidence and personal power to allow that to begin to beautifully unfold. My beloved souls, I truly hope this little lesson has helped you on your path to unstoppable magical power.

I can’t wait to see what you have in store for the world, now that your shadow knows that it is accepted, adored and admired. Thank you so much for watching. Please remember to subscribe for more life changing lessons. I love you and I will see you next time.