You are full of dark energy, here's how to use it.

Integrating your Shadow energy: Part 1

Improve your life is a weekly newsletter focused on self-improvement.

I write about looking inside instead of outside and doing your own work.

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Thanks for reading and enjoy. -Ian

Reading this piece will result in:

1. Understanding your shadow side.

2. Learning How to accept and integrate your shadow energy.

3. Beginning to see your life as an intersection of light and dark energies.

LFG 😎

The shed on its last day standing.

Necessary destruction

In 2012, my wife and I purchased a farmhouse built in 1896.  The shed in the picture above was sitting on the farm, roughly fifty feet from the house.  On one of the first days on the property, I looked around the shed with my Dad, and a giant, three-foot black snake came out of a corner from under the rotten and disintegrating floorboards¹.  Feeling a little tweaked, we stepped back and let it go on its way.  I have never seen a snake that color or size in the area since that day.  That’s all the symbolism I needed to start renovating the house. 

The shed was used as a workshop, vehicle storage, and migrant worker housing, and as the years went on, I stored firewood there, stacking it in the cold late Fall air as I smoked my favorite cigars.  The roof had holes, and rain and snow would enter.  Constructed of skinned tree trunks and rough-sawn 1x lumber,  as time passed, it began to rack to one side, and it would eventually fall over.  I decided it was time for the shed to come down.  So, in the spring of 2019, I climbed up top and cut the roof deck apart with a sawzall, and then I slowly took it apart until I could push it over.  The shed fell over with a crash. It felt great.  It was a new beginning.  

The remains of the shed, post shadow work…

Understanding the shadow

I harnessed my shadow energy to dismantle the shed, directing it towards a specific task.  This may not be the conventional understanding of the term “shadow,” but I believe it is one of the most effective ways to approach it. 

By harnessing, I mean first acknowledging that you have a “shadow” and then realizing that you have the power to control this energy. 

This ever-present energy exists within you, in direct proportion to the light energy you contain.   If you feel you are exerting an energetic dark force, it’s most likely shadow energy. The key here is the realization that you are in control, that you can direct this energy towards constructive tasks.

All of this is necessary and intensely constructive and often where you will find the hidden gold of your psyche, but that’s for part two. Here is how accepting and integrating your shadow will vastly improve your life.

Dark and Light Energy

There is no light without darkness. The light side of our psyches is what we present to the world: our talents, quality relationships, love, friendships, etc.  Light is easy to identify because, for most humans, this is our default energy projection.  The shadow side of our psyche is what is behind the veil.  This is the version of ourselves that we hide from the world without choosing to do so.  It is the dark, dank cave inside of each of us.  Here are a few potent definitions of the shadow from humans who have been thinking about this much longer than me:

The Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung is the thinker most associated with the concept of the shadow. In 1917, Jung referred to the shadow as 

“the negative side of the personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide, together with the insufficiently developed functions and the content of the personal unconscious.”² 

But by far, my favorite definition of the shadow is a question posed by Jung; 

“How do you find a lion that has swallowed you?”

Robert Johnson, another Jungian analyst, wrote in his powerful book, owning your own shadow, that the shadow is 

“that part of us that we fail to see or know.”³

Robert Bly, an American writer, and poet, described the shadow: 

"Behind us, we have an invisible bag, and the part of us our parents don’t like, we, to keep our parent’s love, put it in the bag.  By the time we go to school, our bag is quite large.”⁴  

Sit with that for a bit, I dare you.

Your ever present shadow. Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash

Acceptance and Integration

Now that we have defined the shadow, the problem, and the solutions are twofold.  First, you must accept that you contain these two forces.  There is no work to do unless you have entirely accepted this fact. 

If this concept of a shadow is new to you, you will feel a weight lifted once you accept it.  

Learning to integrate and control the shadow energy is next.  That’s where all the fun is; I decide to take the down shed, harness it, and then point the energy in my chosen direction.  

This is the key to all your waking hours and relationships; how is energy, light and dark, moving around and through you? 

Wielding your light energy is what you do naturally; wielding your shadow energy is controlled demolition. 

The ah-ha moment for me was finally understanding that I would create exactly as much shadow as light.  I then slowly realized that I needed to do something with both of these energies, or they control my life. 

A perfect example of shadow energy

A perfect example of this is road rage.  Driving a car is the perfect place for most of us to let shadow energy rip out of us.  We are in a controlled and sealed environment, and the chances of suffering consequences from our actions are meager.  So we rage at other drivers.  We get that rush of fury and race on.  

An example of channeling this energy instead of letting it rip through you would be stopping at the driving range and hitting 100 golf balls, sending all your anger through the golf club and into the ball.  Even easier would be deep breaths and putting on your favorite tunes.  You direct the energy before it controls you; that’s the point.  

How will this improve my life?

Integration of the shadow brings clarity, and channeling the shadow is power. 

Integration of your shadow is understanding when a wild impulse comes over you, that you are both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but that you are in control. These impulses could be anything from a desire to build something in your woodshop to playing your favorite sport or an urge far more sinister.  It’s all shadow energy.   

Knowing which energy is flowing through you is vital. Controlling your light and dark energy is the baseline for a calm and productive life.  

Once you have integrated this knowledge, your impulses, outbursts, and desires all become logical.  You see them as expressions of light or dark, neither good nor bad. They exist. There is no judgment of their qualities. Instead, you accept this reality and gain the power to channel these energies to your benefit.  

Accept and then utilize the energy present, both light, and shadow; it will change your life. 

Next week, the shadow as the goldmine.

I welcome your comments, both dark and light.

 

1. For an excellent dive into the symbology of the snake and when and how it manifests in a human life cycle, I recommend Robert Johnson’s memoir, Balancing Heaven and Earth: A Memoir of Visions, Dreams, and Realizations

2. quote taken from “On the psychology of the unconscious” essay by Carl Jung.

3. quote taken from “Owning your own shadow” book by Robert Johnson.

4. quote taken from “The long bag we drag behind us” essay by Robert Bly from the book “Meeting the Shadow” The hidden power of the dark side of human nature”