There is a terrible misunderstanding in the spiritual community: Having compassion for Yourself means having compassion for your Shadow.
Shadow is not an integral part of you. It is a defense mechanism for survival. It is a compensation pattern for your psyche.
But since it exists within your psyche, it is incredibly tangled in your sense of who you are. And that is the lie Shadow tells to keep you “safe” and keep itself alive - it is you.
Therefore have compassion for it. Love it, accept it, integrate it. It serves you. It’s useful. It’s here because look what happened last time.
Most people are now familiar with the concept F.E.A.R. - false evidence appearing real. Shadow simultaneously IS the fear, creates its own false evidence, and feeds off that evidence to reinforce conditions for its perpetuation.
In other words, that from which Shadow pretends to “save us” originates from its own machinations deep within our unconscious.
Date different people yet seem to always end up in the same toxic relationship? Shadow.
Revert to childishness in your family’s presence despite being an adult? Shadow.
Get sick or injured right before big client presentations? Shadow.
Feel you will never be good enough because nothing seems to ever go right? Shadow.
Shadow is the perspective of the teeth to tail point of the ouroboros - blindly cannibalistic.
Unnecessary.
Necessary once. It provided an experience of World as Mirror. It stood as a wall against which we could push to understand ourselves as creative divinity.
Once open to that knowledge Shadow serves only to reproduce illusory limitations.
Integration enables these illusions, shuffling them around, many times shaping them to become even more insidious in their manifestation in your life.
Why?
Because Shadow eats itself. For as long as you hold space for it, it will have fuel to grow.
Cutting off that fuel source and reclaiming all of the energy trapped inside the fear cycle requires eliminating your Shadow.
Step 1 in that alchemy: see Shadow for what it is - an obsolete tool.
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