Joy: The hardest shadow work of all

What no one ever talks about

Joy: 3 little bouncy letters that can carry a heavy weight

Ever notice how when you have an idea or get excited about something and then you post about it, or tell someone, every negative Nancy comes out of the woodwork giving you all the reasons you can’t or shouldn’t? It sucks, right?

In some spiritual communities, shadow work is thrown around as the adjunct to the toxic love and light, the exoteric yin-yang inversion...a broken outer shell.  They will tell you everything is your fault and every trauma you created, which is not only harmful and untrue, but the ultimate gaslight. To mistake being a victim by an outer set of circumstances inside a CO-creative reality with a mindset of victimhood and excuses...is fucked up.  

That being said, of course our choices affect where we are in life, we are responsible for how we respond and what we create within the reality that we share with others, including those who might not operate from the same set of principles.

To let people off the hook for their hurtful behavior is the same thing as telling a rape victim it's all her fault because she asked for it by the way she dressed. It's cold. It's narcissistic. It's not shadow work, it's gaslighting. People do messed up things sometimes (intentionally or not) and it can influence us, even if you have proper boundaries in place, even if you are emotionally regulated and healed, even if…

This ideology limits shadow work to:

- journal about your fears (the interwebs have plenty of journal prompts for you ...but never tell you what is beyond this, which is a practice in facing them in real life application)

-suggestions to just focus on the positive (not looking at the negative makes the negative grow, while it is good to focus on the positive, it has to come from a genuine place of a deep reverence for seeing what is, not what we hope it to be, for finding the blessings in a situation, and bringing the lessons forward with you to break a pattern...when you only focus on the positive from a place of running away or avoidance, you will be running in circles.

These practices can be useful and go much deeper...BUT, mostly this version of shadow work is about keeping you stuck in a practice, or loop, of always looking at what is wrong.  The traumas of the familiar end up rooting into you further and the trauma bonds of relationships intellectualized in the "idea" of being spiritual takes hold.

This is why it is important if you are going to do shadow work that you understand this is a place to camp, not place of permanent residence.  I have found going inward and examining ourselves, in some ways, is an everyday practice of self-awareness and reflection. There are, also, natural seasons in our evolution for diving into subconscious beliefs, patterns and seeking to discover what is hidden within us.

Many will tell you that shadow work is about acknowledging everything that is wrong with you, but I think it’s really about shifting that into recognizing that nothing is “wrong” with you, but that we all have learned behaviors, coping mechanisms and unhealthy beliefs that might not (or might) be helpful, good for us, and/or aligned with our values.

Peeling back the onion and finding the tears of joy beyond the fumes of fury is about allowing both to exist while extrapolating out with self-awareness the greater picture that both come from the same place.  Tears can flow in joy and sorrow. Awe can be both terrible and wonderful. Beauty can behold one and not another.  The directions, though seemingly opposite, always come back around and meet one another.

I've done a lot of shadow work. If there is one thing I know, it's the shadow.

I tried to commit suicide as a teenager. That's not something I ever talk about.  To write this sentence in a public form makes me want to vomit.  I’ve healed from this a long time ago, but I remember lying in the hospital thinking, damn, I'm alive. I guess I’m going to have to face all this life stuff….’cause let’s face the facts, life is weird, hard and exhausting sometimes no matter your circumstances.  

I think I went through all that I did in order to meet my shadow and its nemesis, Joy. Maybe by me sharing, you’ll realize you don’t have to go to that extreme, please don’t!  I think I had so much stored up in my brain and emotions and nowhere for it to go, no one that understood me.

I have a tendency to push myself too hard, to find the edge and teeter on it, to test my resilience to life's woes.   I dare to look where others run and I can see the terrible that hides in the shadows and the wonderful that floats in the liminal spaces above ground...the bridge between worlds often feels like my comfort zone.

Can you look in the mirror and see the Cruella de Vil that lives inside of you, the wise woman and the witch, the hero and the villain, the beauty and the ugliness...are you willing to see where you fall short, to let the mask slip off at your own gaze?

Let me repeat…the nemesis of the shadow is Joy.  If you only go into the shadow work but never look at its opposite you are missing the point. The center of the paradox requires you know both the devil and the angel, of which both have the potential for negative and positive outcomes within their interworkings and wisdom.

I got sucked into the new age version, which ultimately led me to do more of the real work.

I even wrote my own eulogy once. I highly recommend doing this, give yourself a funeral. I know it sounds morbid, but it is a perspective shift to how we waste so much damn time on things that don’t matter. Write it. Burn it. Go Live.

I also am a big advocate for worst case scenarios. When you are facing a fear or any situation that might be uncomfortable, if you are brave enough to actually examine the worst-case scenario, you’ll find yourself seeing how unlikely that is to happen and it’s all worry made up in a fantasy in your head, which is probably a form of protection from “danger” in its most primal state. Once you look at the worst-case scenario, then back up a step to the next most awful thing that could happen? Ask yourself, can you handle that? Is that really what is going to happen? Probably not. Keep going until you back up into the present moment and realize you can do it, whatever “it” is. Allowing yourself to see the worst dissipates a lot of worry and fear that ultimately was just negative imagination.

Real shadow work is not some buzz word that sounds cool, it’s a practice in real life.

It’s part of knowing yourself.

Do you know your core values? Do you really live by them? Are you able to assess objectively, without beating yourself up, when you fail and take note as to learn from the situation and not repeat it? (I struggle with this, but am grateful for the tiny improvements I’ve made…progress over perfection).

It’s easy to be negative in this world, we’re geared to it, it’s part of the programming. This is why people who watch the news are always in fear, worry, and stress.

Joy takes some cultivating, some un-doing to get to.

I began to understand how this was connected to the shadow after a series of experiences where I found people upset with me for expressing joy and vice versa.

I can certainly have my negative days too, as I think we should give ourselves permission to experience the full spectrum, but there are times in my life where I can reflect and see how agitating it is to see others in a state of joy when I’m not OR to agitate others when I’m in joy and they aren’t.

The highlight reels on the interweb paint another layer of illusion that can seed doubt into the mind and is most definitely contributing to the boom in the self-improvement industry that wants you to believe you are always broken.

I recall a time in my 20’s when I was working in an office and I would say good morning to those I passed by as I made it to my desk each day. A year after I started this job and had become friends with a woman there, she said to me, “I wanted to hate you so much, but damn you grew on me with your good mornings and attempts at connecting.”  This has stayed with me for many years. I wasn’t “people pleasing” or “playing nice,” I was just genuinely trying to get to know people and, in a place, where I was happy to have work that I was enjoying. Sometimes we just need to get to know someone…maybe it will bring some shared joy, it sure did with my friend.

This certainly wasn’t the only incident of joy irritating someone I’ve experienced and I’m grateful for the friends who shared openly with me in these times so that we could together explore the experience and perspective from where we both stood in those instances…. of the effects of moments where the effervescence of joy exuding from ones being can “help” others see where this is not present, except in longing…not as punishment, but remembrance…an opportunity to find what was lost…seems we all need this from time to time.

We must not be afraid to have joy, success and happiness, which is a fear I know many possess because deep down there is a knowing that to possess this great Divine gift available to us all, to the richness it brings, is to potentially lose those around you who are stuck in misery, in the programming of the system.

I bet, like me, you know an old curmudgeon that drives you nuts and can be hard to love but you probably still love them anyway…. but from afar or in small doses.  It’s challenging because they can suck away that joy, because they are starving for it, they are mal-nourished from positive emotions and have forgotten how to access this from within themselves. These folks got stuck in the suck.

The fact is, sometimes life does suck, and that’s ok, we need to acknowledge and embrace that…AND then there comes a time to scrape off the muck and get on with it. I try to give these people love and compassion because that’s what I would want, that’s what I’ve needed in hard times and didn’t always have, but ultimately only they can help themselves.

I know that I have both a serious, focused, and determined side, people have described me as tenacious….AND I have a silly joyful playful youthful side that is still connected to my inner-child.

It’s that inner child where joy lives and I think most people have some wounds in there, I sure do, that make it hard to nurture that part of ourselves and allow this expression to come out, usually because of a fear that it might make us look dumb, or as adults we’re supposed to only be a certain way in order to be taken seriously or we simply have numbed out through the rat race of life this purest essence of our being.

I understand why, I still have many days where joy seems like a distant mirage, where wallowing in sadness seems almost joyful, or at least I try to tell myself that in some twisted way.  The only way I can pull myself out of the gutter sometimes is to put some music on and dance around the house or jump on the trampoline or try to roller-skate, something that brings me back into my body.

This is important, the body part, because it is easy to get stuck in the mind when doing shadow work or in a dark night of the soul. Joy, being its nemesis, is where integration and coming back on-line in the physical is the key to unlocking the balance.

Finding joy in a challenging world is a type of shadow work and something that is not talked about often because if you find your way through this, suddenly, you might not want (or need) that self-help course anymore.

Recognizing and moving through the positive aspects of the shadow is like breaking free from a bind, a tether to the misery that feeds the egregore of a system that is vampiric and can only sustain if everyone feels broken, fearful and dis-empowered.

What brings out the joy in you, do you know?

How are you cultivating joy in your life and giving yourself permission to play?

The more you are willing to FEEL the depths of our existence, including the pain and suffering, the greater you can also experience JOY!

You see, sometimes in order to allow the lightness of joy to overtake us, we have to see that it is often our greatest shadow, because it’s not always easy to be joyful.

Joy is the natural state of being that is shrouded by responsibilities and pressure to live in a way acceptable to others, to keep someone else comfortable at the expense of ourselves.

It’s no wonder the stress levels are so high, mental health is rising, depression is a plague, the only real virus is one of the mind …the spiritual connection to the soul has been caged across-the-board, dreams are not fostered inside the system unless it is moving up a ladder in the corporation, and joy only peeks its head out on Holiday signs in yards-across-America once a year as if people are trying to convince their own spirit to return, as signified by a “quote” or “passage” planted in the yard next to a plastic Frosty the Snowman.

Joy waits for us to go find it by going so deep into our shadow that we eventually cannot help but see the cosmic joke, the light at the end of the tunnel, the clown world inviting us to clown around, to flip that frown upside down, to stop taking ourselves so damn seriously.

As Jung says, “Shadow work is the path of the heart warrior,” and you cannot experience joy without the heart. Thus, only diving into the psyche and the mind within the framework of the shadow limits us to the hidden parts of our consciousness that we fear, like joy.  You may think oh I don’t fear joy, but, like certain aspects of success, many do fear this because it agitates within others places, they are not being true to themselves, things they aren’t doing, but desire to, ways they aren’t being but wish they were.

Joy is permission to shine that inner light and this will repel people from you, you must be ready for this. or else you’ll put the miserable mask back on that makes others comfortable.

Stripping away the egoic consciousness that binds us to the way we should be keeps joy locked up and hidden from view…forever reaching, grasping, hoping, striving for that which is already there.

Re-discovering lost joy may be the hardest shadow work. Can you laugh at yourself? Can you remember what lights you up?

Joy can also be both a state of control and letting go.

If you aren’t Gen-X like me, you might not remember the “joy” stick used when playing video games on the ATARI. In this instance, you grab hold of something tightly and navigate it with pure fire and intent. In the game, Frogger, you wanted to make it over the highway past the zooming cars without getting smooshed, you hold on to that joy stick and operate with the fastest coordinated focus possible…a test of agility! If you made it, an exclamation of joy was sure to follow!

In the same capacity, throwing caution to the wind, putting your arms up in a state of surrender, opening up to the ecstatic bliss of the sun warming your skin on a summer day invites in states of joy that too often we only reminisce about from youth…I think it’s time we reclaim this in ourselves as adults.

Sometimes we have to stop looking for everything that is wrong, sometimes it is in accepting the shadowy parts of being that we relinquish to the Divine the heavy burdens of “adulting” and rescue ourselves from its weight so that we can find a little joy, once again, in living.

This Meme is the perfect example of the shadow of joy coming out in an upside-down way. I think it is why many people who have gone through hard times are funny. This can be a mask to pain and/or the alchemy of it.

So when you find yourself in the dark, doing your shadow work, navigating a dark night of the soul…remember, you’re really digging for joy, and it’s there with you all the way…it never left your side.

Don’t be afraid to let it out…and let it in.

Shadow work is more than healing our self-sabotage, wounds, or trauma’s, it can also be about facing what we fear letting come “out” of us …the good stuff. Giving yourself permission to let joy into your life requires moving beyond the inner shadow work and giving room for the expression of this emotion to rise up from an integrated place of lightness, sovereignty, and peace. When we trust the Divine, we can sit with the uncomfortableness often felt in our nervous system from feeling this vibrant goodness and no longer want to retreat when the joy surfaces, letting go of worry that it cannot last or is too good to be true.

The shadow of joy is not just a fantasy in our head, not just a dissociation about pleasure for the sake of leaving responsibility behind or numbing out,  but finding joy in the daily chores, the mundane, in the responsibilities and experiences and in gratitude for life as it is…laughing at ourselves, humbling ourselves to that inner child that’s always a place we can return to after every storm or time of suffering…it waits and wants to tickle you, to see your smile, to hear your laugh.

Joy is where unity lives, a bridge from suffering.

Don’t be afraid of the dark, joy is in there playing a game of hide-and-seek.

Get in touch with your senses…what does joy taste like, smell like, look like, sound like, feel like…I bet something pops in your head when you do this? What memories invoke joy? Who brings you joy? Who do you bring joy to? When was the last time you smiled or laughed?

Now go play a game of hopscotch, pet your cat (adopt a cat), skip down the street, turn a cartwheel, dance under the stars, get your feet dirty in the mud, find something that makes you laugh so hard you almost pee your pants, go stand on your head, lick a rock or something.

With love and some ‘effin joy,

~ Angela