I’ve talked here before about shadow work, unconscious trauma, stress, and related topics. This is our unfinished business that casts a shadow over our life.
When this trauma and the resulting shadow are sustained in our experience, they’re normalized. With an identified ego, we come to see them as a part of ourselves and they becomes integrated with our identity.
As part of our self-sense, they become protected.
However, they often don’t reflect who we are, just what we were unable to process at one time.
An issue then arises if our potential or gifts come up. If they don’t match our identity, the self won’t accept them. Our gifts can become suppressed to help keep us feeling secure.
Even if we try to express them, a strong resistance will come up, and perhaps self-sabotage. Or excess criticism. Again, to protect our self-sense.
For example, we may have a gift with ceramics. Yet if we have a belief that we’re not creative, we’ll resist any tendencies to express and discover this.
This is called the golden shadow.
For a long time, due to a harsh judgment in high school, I carried a belief that I was a poor writer. Later evidence disputed this, but was ignored as it didn’t fit the narrative. The identity was protected.
Shortly before I woke up, I started writing anyway. The drive out-weighed the resistance and the old sense of self was letting go. Then I started blogging. And then began the deluge. I was cranking out over 40 articles a month.
True, my writing skills needed polishing. But the desire and ability to communicate with the written word had been there all along, even in my childhood.
As you resolve the blocks to your true nature and let go of old beliefs, your natural expression will unfold in life. This brings greater fulfilment and a blossoming of expression.
The golden shadow fades into the sunset.
Davidya
Namaste. This resonated with my experience. I was withholding my gift of teaching thinking that I was not appreciated. It is a golden shadow. What I appreciate is you share your experiences, helping us to dissolve those beliefs. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Guru
Yes, thinking we’re not being recognized or appreciated can be a golden shadow. Yet there’s the common experience that we’re not appreciated in our home town. Most of my subscribers live elsewhere, for example.
But there are other influences that may delay our expression. Karma that we may need to work through first. Or things about timing. Roles like teaching often require a maturity. I did a lot of writing in the 1970’s but I wouldn’t want to share much of that now. Traditions often had their acolytes mature for a decade or more before sending them out into the world. These days, too many teachers start prematurely. 🙂
Thanks for sharing. I still have to find my calling. I can’t determine whether I have the gift or is it just a flavor of the month kind of thing? How are you able to determine your golden shadow and have it come out?
Hi Lynette
I’d be careful with that line of thinking. Not everyone has a “calling” but we all have gifts. If it’s a gift, you’ll see hints of it throughout your life. And it will have support, if the time is ripe. In other words, efforts to express it will bear fruit. If you seek your calling from a place of the ego wanting control, you’ll just chase fantasies.
“Golden shadow” isn’t a thing, it’s a general term for resistance that hinders the expression of our gifts. Like any other resistance, it will clear when it’s seen.
When the time is ripe, the resistance will surface to be seen. Then through living life, our gifts will show themselves.
One trick to note. Our gifts can seem ordinary to us as they’ve always been there. We discover what we can do through doing, not through thinking about it.
Thank you ,David!
I have a question concerning the need to process stored dark energies or even “good” energies that overwhelmed the nervous system as stress, while unawakened and proceeding on the Spiritual path to Awaken. The Shadow work or as you refer to it in this entry, the Golden Shadow.
Do we truly have to deal with these energies consciously?
Or, can I follow the innocence of letting it release during stress release, with whatever we have chosen to “better” ourselves as a technique or process. I have chosen, in the past, the innocence and put no attention on it. Plow through, let it go the best I can. And not dwell upon the effects of the specific stress release. While, even Awake, you tell us, there comes a time where we deal with Shadows and/or its remains of the imprint.
What a topic to write about.
Personally,
I have been doing Healing with Malika. I also with her recommendation have used Stefan & Ziji. Each of them have looked into the past and even some past lives, that are having an effect now.
I have had some Joytishi’s comment on the karma in the past, this life and others, that have their influence now. Which effectively have kept us in Ignorance. Knowledge of them and their participation, fruition, in the matrix of our nervous system, has generated blocks within this nervous system is interesting.
But is it necessary to clear them one by one prior to Awakening?
Evidently, with Higher Sates of Consciousness, you comment that there are remnants to be dealt with. But isn’t it a condition of Enlightenment that the seeds of karma are burned. The effects will not germinate as fruits of those past karmas, so the binding aspect of past action has been negated. As you write about it … there still is a release of what remains . Those stresses that actively made the filter within the nervous system, the limitations, obstructions, obscurations that produced how we act, what we act upon, and what we do not act upon. While each of us are on our Spiritual path toward Self- Realization.
Big topic for consideration.
Thank you David
I apologize for the rambling.
Hi Peter
Lots of great questions!
Keep in mind, I have an analytical nature, so I go into the details more than you may have a taste for. 🙂
When we have a good practice like effortless meditation, it takes care a lot of that stuff in the deep rest and open space of the practice. Your approach has served you well, except that it can also be a way to ignore what we don’t want to see.
Because of the identity and it’s self-protective mechanisms, some of the bigger stuff has been hidden. Those vasanas are reactive, so will still burble up to the surface. Then it’s valuable to understand how we can allow it and experience it to complete it, without getting caught up in it. That’s energy healing.
And then there’s the somatic stuff hidden away in the body, what is traditionally called samskaras or impressions. It’s also described in the TM Checking, General Points. Again, a good practice is very helpful. But what unfolded here was that I was less in the physical body than I thought. Being sensitive and decades of being in a detached witness encouraged that. Yet this was impeding the full embodiment. So now, as a I move more into the body, the somatic stuff I’d not covered is surfacing. Others won’t have the same issue. You’re more grounded than I, for example. But still, knowing how to deal with samskaras has evolutionary benefit.
If it doesn’t resonate, leave it. But know it’s here to come back to later, when you need it.
I’ve got into a lot more of this stuff after awakening. As I became more clear, it became more obvious what was still a shadow and I’ve taken a more proactive approach as I’ve seen how clearing can bring new insights, open new arenas, and so forth.
I’m not suggesting you go back into your old junk and relive it – just know how to process whats arising in your experience in activity.
So no, we don’t need to make a list and check them off. Just deal with whats coming up. Occasionally, an outside perspective can help in the process, like you mention. I’ve found things like the nadi and jyotish gave me valuable perspective too. But ultimately, it’s all in God’s hands. Awakening isn’t something we do. It’s something we allow when the opportunity arises.
On karma, yes, the mountains of our karmic backlog are roasted with awakening, when the identification with the ego breaks. And we tend to stop creating new karma, although not 100%. (I mentioned in a recent article about clearing diagnosis trauma.) However, the sprouted seeds of karma that are active in this life continue to unfold, but now in the new context. This is why we still have karmic events post-awakening.
The degree of clarity required to awaken is much less than what’s needed for Brahman, for example. So the refinement and healing process progresses throughout higher stages. And as I’ve written about, the healing gradually shifts from personal to collective. Part of the reason for my Trauma studies is about healing the collective. For an apparent individual to embody Divinity, the collective has to be able to support it too. We’re in this together.
It’s also not a one by one thing. A lot of junk is entangled, so as we pull a thread, a bunch of stuff comes with it. We’ve been adding to our junk for a long time, so it’s no surprise there’s some cleanup needed.
And yes, there are also shifts in how we act as the filters fall away. For some waking up, they’re close to their dharma so not much outside changes. For others, there can be considerable change. Especially if the last threads of some karma resolve around the shift. My life changed quite a bit in the lead up to my shift. But this is only clear in retrospect. And it’s been prone to that too. 🙂
But don’t worry. You’re doing really well. You don’t have to manage any of this. The point of an article like this is not to give you something more to do. It’s to help understand what’s already happening. Not all articles will be relevant. I just share recognitions as they come up and they land for some people.
David
Thank you for the time you give everybody.
Peter
🙏
Absolutely love this! I’ve mentioned before to you that I’m not well versed/educated traditionally on these things. Rather, as I’ve woken up, things that I have always seemed to know have proved to be more true. Blogs like yours give me a better understanding of what these things are in a more formal manner. I couldn’t agree more with you. I’ve often thought and told folks that as humans we often do not “figure out”, learn or uncover who we truly are. What are our gifts are and what we can add to this life. But when one does uncover it, whether it be working with ceramics, writing, singing or whatever it may be, everything changes! In the past 5+ years so much has come to light in myself and the path that I should take, of least resistance, is more clear. When we are doing the things we are naturally are meant to do, or love, the little “I” has a much more fruitful and enjoyable life!
Sorry if this is poorly written. I could use polishing there! haha This is just the message I was meant to read today as the past few days a lightbulb has been going off and this just coincides perfectly!
Hi Lee
Right – it isn’t necessary to know anything to live an awakened life. That’s just how the tendencies are here. And yes, with the veils falling away, things get clearer and simpler.
I call that stepping into the flow. Rather than trying to control life, we learn to allow and step into life itself. Then there is least resistance – any resistance coming up usually turns out to be our own…
Thanks for sharing – you communicated just fine.