Shadow work as a tool for personal growth
By: Hector Murguia
Tags: Personal Growth, Evolution, Personal Development, Awakening, Awareness

Why expecting all to be good is not good at all

Where did the idea that everything in life should be perfect come from in the first place? I mean, we all want a perfect life, but does it really exist? And if it does, what defines it as perfect? My sense of perfection may not be the same as yours, so, where does that leave us?

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

Think about it… we are told every time we feel down that we have to stay cheerful, to focus on the positive aspects of life, and have empowering thoughts so we can materialize all of our dreams. And if you remain constant and disciplined maintaining this mindset, you will achieve whatever goal you set in life. Nice promise, isn’t it?

This sounds so appealing and somehow easy to achieve… until you realize it is really hard to keep up to it. At least that is what happened to me (and still happens to be honest).

In this longing to focus only on the good side of life, I found myself questioning the endless negative stories full of fear and fatalism that were constantly projected in my mind. And every time a story like that popped into it, I could clearly see the avalanche coming down, chasing me, looking to bury me on this downward emotional spiral.

And every time this happened, I questioned myself why. Why can’t I stay positive? Why does everyone seem to do it so easily, showing their best face to life while I just can’t? Could it be possible that something in my mind or my brain was just wrong? I really wanted a more balanced life, even thinking to achieve an experience in which all “bad” that happened in life could not disturb me at all. That would sound like a perfect life, wouldn’t it?

And so, for a while I went the walk of life confused, trying to find a way to overcome this hassle until I understood something that brought clarity to my experience: I am a duality. And that dual nature is what makes me precisely human, willing to experience this three-dimensional existence.

But what does this duality mean at all? On one hand, I believe we are part of a whole, a much larger oneness gar beyond our own understanding. But also, in this relative experience we live in as individuals, we are too an expression of a duality that manifests itself precisely just like that: light and darkness; up and down; everything and nothing; me and you. Even judgments we use ordinarily: good and bad.

And I guess the confusion began right there.

We all pursuit a happy life, full of great moments, of everything we like, of what we consider to be convenient for us. And that is precisely what makes us go around trying to hide (consciously or unconsciously) what we don’t like about ourselves, what bothers us. That which risks our chances to experiment only the “good” we want. That secret part of us that we consider “bad”, “insufficient”, “shameful”, “unacceptable” and, in many cases, even “defective”.

And so, since childhood, we begin to learn how that duality works: what is “bad” cannot be “good”, so we better get rid of the former. What is acceptable and what is not. And it still surprises us why, for example, it is difficult for us as men to express our emotions when we all were taught at a young age that “men don’t cry”, that men are supposed to be “strong and endure everything life may throw at”, “that men don’t break ”. And it is exactly the time you feel shattered when you start to blame yourself for feeling that way, for expressing that “unacceptable” part of you, and concluding that something really bad is going on with you.

So, at some point, we learned to hinder that. To take that part of our own existence and put it in a drawer. Deny it, hide it, ignore it at least … until somehow it finds its way back and chases us with the fury of a storm… until you decide to work on it.

This is when the process of awakening begins. It is when those shadows of our existence seem to awake as true demons within us, trying to keep pulling the string on the backstage of our life, controlling the way we operate, the way we live. For me, this was when my deepest fears, several of which I had no idea of their existence, surfaced and made me doubt my abilities, my dreams, my history. Myself.

Something I have learned in this process is that we cannot expect this path of awakening, of evolution (as I prefer to call it) to be smooth and full of happy moments like they are marketed to us. No. Much of this process involves working with that part, with those “shadows” of our own existence, realizing that in most of the cases those shadows are not more than unfounded fears, simply beliefs that were rooted in our mind and that, at some point, began to take control of our decisions, our reactions, and our lives.

Some of these fears will be overcome. Others will reduce their power to affect our life. But some others you will have to come to terms with. Accept them, see them as part of that duality that you are. Understand that they may never disappear but the moment you know you can reduce their influence, it is when they lose their power.

Learning to find that balance between light and shadow in your own life is what will allow you to move forward on your own path of evolution. Settling in any extreme, seeking everything to be “good” (and thus eliminating all “bad”), or living a life full of pessimism on the other hand, will make the road more difficult, exhausting, and way slower.

What I have discovered is that we must recognize and accept that dark part of ourselves because it is precisely then when that duality is integrated into our conscious existence. We cannot understand joy without knowing what despair feels like. We cannot experience the glory of light if we never walk in the shadows. Both are parts of life.

By understanding duality, we accept it. And by accepting it, we evolve.

Someone once told me that waking up was not easy. I lived like that for a long time. But today I understand that it is not easy nor difficult. I just haven’t understood what the game of life was about.