Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

Astral and paranormal experiences, dreams and visions.
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Smaragd
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

Post by Smaragd »

Nefastos wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 11:04 am
Those of us who think they have tamed the shadows are wrong, as are those who think they have avoided them, locked them away, made total peace with them, and so on. This "Old Enemy" that a Satanist tries to befriend to a point is something that is always the thing we ourselves are not. As long as we are human beings, or almost any beings at all, we cast a shadow, and that is nothing to be ashamed of. The reason of shame would be to cease working with one's shortcomings. No one is perfect, and our flaws are not made by ourselves only, but also by the universe which nurtures us with challenges.
A couple times I have made a fool of myself trying to express my devotion to the completeness of the incompleteness, but in the end it is the role of the fool to live like that and the role must be filled in some point. The chaotic sea the Tarot 0 Fool is about to fall under is the Goddess. Some very central problem behind writing about those expressive models I thought of, is to find a union between the role of the fool (who endlessly sets himself under the feet of the Black Goddess) and I guess the principle of power the Goddess herself is. There seems to loom Jovian mysteries of wielding the bolt of lightning somewhere beyond the union.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Insanus
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

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Smaragd wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 11:29 am
Insanus wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 9:11 am a) don't judge your desire
b) don't act it out in a way that harms people.
I know that it's the shadow if either one seems overwhelmingly difficult. Then it's just about being honest and compassionate about it to yourself and others.
This is very important down to earth base. But what if it is not enough? Expressing the shadow is such a delicate process because the shadow is always not wanted and difficult and it tends to involve other people. Even if one expresses it the most delicate and intentionally constructive way (ofcourse some may interpret such expression dishonest, requiring more blunt ways), it usually carries some kind of threat with it that questions, for example, the possibility of a fantasized future of a relationship or trust in the relationship and the partner. This is one facet of why I’m in my subjective experience feeling the need to start emphasizing the first option of the three ways of expressing the shadow I mentioned: processing the shadow through the expression, and doing that in quite a readily chewed way.
I don't understand, could you explain a bit more? Enough for what? What does a threat to a relationship matter? Could you give a specific example?
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Smaragd
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

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Insanus wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:01 pm I don't understand, could you explain a bit more? Enough for what?
Enough for the shadow ”matter” at hand, at any given moment, to be taken in to the conscious whole.
Insanus wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:01 pmWhat does a threat to a relationship matter? Could you give a specific example?
A threat to a relationship matters as the presence of a shadow is a challenge for the relationship to keep bumping fresh blood in the conjuction of the two souls. Otherwise the relationship would halt in to the same problems which has not been able to overcome. Dead forms repeating themselves.

A specific simplifying example (a legit example would include all sorts of connections to gods and demons and mythical arches, but let us keep this simple):

Lydia has started to feel psychicly exhausted and haunted by something she can’t quite point out (lets say it is her husbands new job which takes so much time the partners are falling out of touch with each other). In their wedding vows they have consciously taken upon themselves to form a marriage to form a dynamic pair for spiritual development. Breaking that bond would mean giving up on the challenges the bond of the two souls reveals in a chain of events. Now, Mark (the husband) has lost the sight of the balance point the relationship has been formed as, and in his individual challenges has been lured in to some career maze searching for earthly power. Lydia tries to express her feeling that is hard to verbalize, she doesn’t quite get to the clearest expression which Mark interprets as some sort of negative clinging attitude thinking: ”this is not the kind of relationship we devoted each other for”.

*Credits rolling* *Soap opera music playing*

So the shadow expressed by Lydia is seen by Mark as threat to the relationship instead of a chance to level between the partners. The shadow would be a sort of shared and would involve individual veins, but that is too complicated to embark on here.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Insanus
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

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Smaragd wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 5:18 pm
Insanus wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:01 pm I don't understand, could you explain a bit more? Enough for what?
Enough for the shadow ”matter” at hand, at any given moment, to be taken in to the conscious whole.
Insanus wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 4:01 pmWhat does a threat to a relationship matter? Could you give a specific example?
A threat to a relationship matters as the presence of a shadow is a challenge for the relationship to keep bumping fresh blood in the conjuction of the two souls. Otherwise the relationship would halt in to the same problems which has not been able to overcome. Dead forms repeating themselves.

A specific simplifying example (a legit example would include all sorts of connections to gods and demons and mythical arches, but let us keep this simple):

Lydia has started to feel psychicly exhausted and haunted by something she can’t quite point out (lets say it is her husbands new job which takes so much time the partners are falling out of touch with each other). In their wedding vows they have consciously taken upon themselves to form a marriage to form a dynamic pair for spiritual development. Breaking that bond would mean giving up on the challenges the bond of the two souls reveals in a chain of events. Now, Mark (the husband) has lost the sight of the balance point the relationship has been formed as, and in his individual challenges has been lured in to some career maze searching for earthly power. Lydia tries to express her feeling that is hard to verbalize, she doesn’t quite get to the clearest expression which Mark interprets as some sort of negative clinging attitude thinking: ”this is not the kind of relationship we devoted each other for”.

*Credits rolling* *Soap opera music playing*

So the shadow expressed by Lydia is seen by Mark as threat to the relationship instead of a chance to level between the partners. The shadow would be a sort of shared and would involve individual veins, but that is too complicated to embark on here.
If we assume these two have lost their connection and cannot find a way to recognize and communicate their true feelings to each other, giving up the bond might be a reasonable idea. It's difficult to start with desire if you don't even know what it is. It might even be the case that it is this inability to recognize the underlying wish that defines "shadow" as such. The "shadow expressed by Lydia" could then be just an expression of her (and her husband's) lack of understanding of her own needs, and not so much an expression of psychic exhaustion itself. Is this too simplistic, or did I misunderstand something?
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Smaragd
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

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Insanus wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 6:09 pm It's difficult to start with desire if you don't even know what it is.
In my experience the obscure expressions and subsequent questions gradually lures the shadow out in more and more clear form. But it is very usual in the challenges I’ve had to personally face in life that subsequent questions are not asked (although I’ve also had the priviledge to meet such beautiful souls who have the high understanding to do so). Instead the threat of the shadow is quite oftenly reacted upon and what ensues is terrible knots of individual views unable to reach each other under love and understanding; thus building distrust. This is part of the reason I’m pondering the expression of the shadow, and how careful one needs to be with it. Or I personally seem to have to be.
Insanus wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 6:09 pmThe "shadow expressed by Lydia" could then be just an expression of her (and her husband's) lack of understanding of her own needs, and not so much an expression of psychic exhaustion itself. Is this too simplistic, or did I misunderstand something?
Quite right yes. I would argue it is not only Lydias need, but the need of the entity of the marriage whose the shadow is also. The wound of the marriage is then acting out in the psyche of one half of the union – Lydias.
"Would to God that all the Lord's people were Prophets”, Numbers 11:29 as echoed by William Blake
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

Post by Angolmois »

Nefastos wrote: Sat Jun 27, 2020 11:04 am it is equally possible that a person feels amusement and thrill when he is succumbing to the lures of the shadow, that actually leads him into hell, for that hell either seems beckoning or is confused with something else totally.
This is something I recognize in myself very clearly. Whenever that snarky, sarcastic thrill arouses and I find myself smiling like the Joker it is clear I'm succumbing to my shadow, and it is without exception that the following night I experience very unpleseant dreams that point to this direction. In the last episode of my internal shadow-life this happened through some (meta-political) considerations and the following night I saw a dream that an old filling from my teeth dropped off and a large rock came out of my mouth that left my face deformed. (I interpreted the deformation as a symbol of one-sidedness and some form of hypocrisy on my part.)
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

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Boreas wrote: Tue Jun 30, 2020 9:52 pmThis is something I recognize in myself very clearly.

I consider these self-reflections maybe the most important part of one's occult study. There are many hard spots on the way, but the hardest is the first willingness to try & see where one's own fall repeatedly happens, feeling like it's a nice or just or allowed thing.

When that first feeling is then wrestled with, it will start to move, assuming forms that are in turn fiery and black and slick, and the problem does not go away for a very long time; but every step we haunt that shadow – instead of it haunting us – become major steps in the Path.

The Voice of Silence wrote:And if he fails, e'en then he does not fall in vain; the enemies he slew in the last battle will not return to life in the next birth that will be his.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
Angolmois

Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

Post by Angolmois »

Nefastos wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:03 am When that first feeling is then wrestled with, it will start to move, assuming forms that are in turn fiery and black and slick, and the problem does not go away for a very long time; but every step we haunt that shadow – instead of it haunting us – become major steps in the Path.
Funny you should mention this haunting, for a little earlier in the spring I saw a dream in which two "shadows of ancient Kings" haunted me and in this dream I managed to slay them with a sword that I had in my hand. The day before I had had these considerations between exoteric and esoteric dharma, and I decided to dedicate myself to inner spiritual growth instead of an exoteric struggle and in the same time I took advice from Tarot readings, in which the most important card denoted me "leaving the scene". It is not a surprise that the following night "the shadows attacked".
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

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Boreas wrote: Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:17 pmFunny you should mention this haunting, for a little earlier in the spring I saw a dream in which two "shadows of ancient Kings" haunted me

Now you have done it, and we cannot escape discussing the Nazgûl. ("They never stop haunting you!") The only problem of this depiction of the Shadow is that it seems almost too identifiable, alluring & strong. Something that has been great (a King) in the past has become our Shadow now when it has outlived its time. This only happens with the things whose power is from partly Egoistic (a Ring) source, though.
Faust: "Lo contempla. / Ei muove in tortuosa spire / e s'avvicina lento alla nostra volta. / Oh! se non erro, / orme di foco imprime al suol!"
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Re: Recognizing and Expressing the Shadow

Post by Angolmois »

Good point of which connection I hadn't noticed, maybe because it was too obvious!

I kabbalistic terms it could also refer to the qlippoth "where the ancient kings of Edom have fallen", meaning the unusable residues of past manvantaras.
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