The Four Stages of Relationship with Your Shadow

4 Stages of Relationship With Your Shadow

Shadow work should provide a real-world impact on your life. It is the missing bridge between religion and reality. Sometimes the results are permanent; others require maintenance. Some results will be immediate, and others may take a lifetime to cultivate. But shadow work should, by its very design, bear fruit. There are four levels of relationship with your shadow. Each stage is rated on your level of consciousness and ability to respond instead of reacting out of your suffering. Think of some area of your life that you are currently experiencing resistance. Someplace where you aren’t your ideal self. 

Asleep and Trapped in Feeling

This stage was referred to in The Matrix when they talked about people being a slave to the Matrix. Morpheus said, “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.” By engaging in the practice of shadow work, you become aware of these sub-routines running in the background directing your very experience of life. These are the lies you don’t know you are telling yourself.

This is where most of the world will wake up to find they are trapped. This is where most of your shadow is trapped, in the deep-frozen tundra of your mind. These shadows have been confirmed and enforced by relationships and descriptions that proved the algorithm effective at navigating reality. This is the first layer of you, completely unconscious and reactionary. The shadow is activated as a stimulus-response. At this level, you deny entirely the suffering you are creating. You may have the subjective experience of never being able to break free of suffering. You might feel caught in a loop or a rat in a maze.  

Many times, these shadows never cross your conscious thought. The deeper shadow goes, the less you will be aware of its control over you. This allows the mind to retrieve and deliver meaning already made efficiently. This way, you can spend your energy focused on higher thoughts. Like metaphors and symbols used by the mind to navigate, you unconsciously take this shadow for granted. If it causes suffering, the strategy to alleviate that suffering goes unconscious right with it. 

Will Smith goes to the Academy Awards with a feeling of fear and powerlessness around his wife’s illness. Maybe he just watched her go through some massive moment of suffering. He sits down, hoping he and Jada will have a night free of the crushing feeling he is feeling. He ends the night by creating the very thing he was trying to avoid.

Awake to the Feeling but Still Controlled

This is the danger zone. One of the challenges with assimilating and transmuting shadow is that it is painful. The programming to avoid pain runs deep and includes emotional pain. The first step to change is awareness. You can’t find peace until you let go of suffering. You can’t let go of grief if you don’t know where you are holding onto it. As with anything, the first step is awareness. You have to stop resisting what it is that you are unconsciously avoiding. This will feel uncomfortable and could appear as if things are getting worse, not better. 

You now feel the feeling you have been avoiding but are still under its spell. Now you are conscious of your suffering. Because you just became aware of the emotion and the control, you will likely feel like you are in worse shape. As if before you were on solid ground, but now you have no place to hide. Take this as a sign that you are moving in the right direction. Take this as a sign you are going through the normal assimilation process. You can’t fix a thing you don’t know is broken.

Had Will been in this relationship, he may have reacted the same way. But he knows what he is doing. He can’t help but react out of shadow, but he knows why. He is on the path to awakening.

Awake to the Feeling and In Control

By remaining vigilant in your work, you begin to find space between yourself and your programming. You are now in control of how you show up; you are awake to the feeling. You feel the emotion and step through anyway. This is a red-letter date because you are taking back your agency. 

In our example, you find yourself angry, and your mindset may be jarred, but you keep your composure and don’t react. Maybe you mutter something under your breath or even call someone to vent right after the engagement, but you don’t add to the situation and make it worse. You are learning, thinking, and acting outside of your box.

The system that is you is now open to response instead of reaction. The situation still triggers you, but the trigger doesn’t control you. You may find it difficult to respond and not react. You may find the situation is more draining. You are fighting the war on two fronts. Keep moving forward. By not allowing the trigger to dominate you, you start to rewrite the path the mind uses to describe and make meaning of your world. You either control the mind, or it controls you. You are now in control. 

Chris comments on Jada’s hair, and the camera may pick up on the visceral feeling of anger that came over Will. But he doesn’t react. He responds. Maybe he meets Chris backstage and clears with him. Perhaps he uses it to clear with Jada, but he doesn’t create any more karma or momentum for the shadow to grow. He transmutes it in his life. Chris would have probably faced the wrath of the cancel culture, causing the blow that Will took to land on Chris. 

Freedom

You have let go of the feeling that has you stuck in suffering. You have regained your agency. Their behavior is seen as coming through them and not at you. From this vantage point, your Axis Mundi is centered, and the situation no longer triggers you. You are no longer in a relationship with others through shadow. You can better see them for who they really are. This frees up all the energy it took not to react the way your programming wanted you to. It also frees you up to respond. Remember, every action is a loving response or a cry for help. Now that you aren’t suffering, you may be able to help this person by showing them behavior that falls outside the system they are trapped in.

Chris’ ill-informed joke falls flat, and both use the situation to raise awareness for alopecia and the importance of humor in our society. Neither is impacted, and the world is better for the misunderstanding. 

This stage is rarely permanent. Your mind is powerful and has created all kinds of relationships and associations that allow you to operate in our society. Shadow presents itself in the now as an echo of the past. Faulty programming that your mind is trying to reconcile. Therefore, shadow work is a practice and not an event. You never know when you may be triggered by something in the present. I believe this is another finger pointing to the hand of God.

If you'd like support in your shadow work from a guide, we would love to hear what you're currently working on.