A shadow dynamics that hinders your authenticity

Your hidden love story with your shadow

Allowing yourself to be seen is a dance between shadow and light… and if you aren’t allowing yet your expression to be fully unleashed, it means that on some level, you trust your shadow more than you trust being in the light.

I know that this can be a very bold statement. Yet I have found this to be true for me and for the thousands I have held in facilitation at this point.

Being authentically expressed is your first nature, not the second. It is not something you develop, it is something you remember.

For that remembrance to be effective, you need to illuminate the hidden forces that unconsciously cause you to mistrust bringing your true nature to light.

One of these hidden forces is an unconscious love story and trust we have with the shadow.

As a reminder, your shadow is the storehouse of all the aspects of yourself that you have repressed or disowned. These aspects range from unresolved pain and trauma, to traits you were conditioned to reject within yourself. That even includes the brightness that you hold deeply within and that you won’t express.

Your shadow is the aspect of you that often flares up when you get triggered or reactive.

You might be wondering in what way do you have a love story with your shadow… especially since most people wish they could get rid of their shadow altogether. Can you relate?

Well, I have yet to find a human being that didn’t have this unconscious tendency to trust their shadow. Let’s dive into it.

Your unconscious trust & love story with your shadow

Let me put it this way… Every time you navigate pain that you don’t know yet how to deal with, you unconsciously say “dear shadow, hold it for me”.

That is what repression looks like.

Think about traits you have disowned within. That can include emotions you rarely allow yourself to feel or express, the most popular being anger, sadness, shame and surprisingly enough even joy. What you do with all these traits and emotions is to say “dear shadow of mine, hold these for me. I don’t know how to consciously hold them yet”.

Think about the brightness you feel unworthy of expressing. The is one often hijacked by the saboteur or impostor within you. I assume you’ve guessed it by now. At some point you’ve said “dear shadow of mine, hold this light for me”.

Where am I going with all of this…

A major collective imprint that we get to unlearn is that when we feel unsafe, we have a tendency to trust our shadow selves, more than we trust our higher selves. When we feel unsafe, our main tendency is to hide, more than it is to bring in more light. One of the highest invitations of these times is to unlearn it.

I am going to say this in other words… When we repress our fullness, our actions demonstrate that we trust the shadow more than we trust light.

How is that for a wake up call? It was for me several years ago when a mentor brought this to my attention. And I am still going through the motions of unlearning it.

I never realized how much of a love story I had with my own shadow until I decided to serve in the ways I do today.

That unconscious love story is what prevents you from bringing more of your fullness in your relationships. It’s what prevents you from expressing what you truly desire. It is what keeps you form bringing your unique gifts to the world.

Let me nuance my statement. I am saying that in all situations that feel unsafe the answer is to always show up fully expressed? No, not necessarily. There are some situations, just like the ones that involve physical threat, where the best outcome could be to hide. But here is the point… even that kind of hiding is supposed to be temporary.

You did not come here to have your true nature live eternally in a psychological hideout.

How is this sitting with you? Let me know in the comments below.

What you repressed in the dark was never meant to stay there indefinitely. Especially the gifts and the brightness you won’t allow yourself yet to fully express.

The unconditional benevolence of your shadow

One of the reasons why our trust in the shadow is so strong, is that the shadow always says “yes” to our demands for repression.

I always like to remind to people I work with of the ultimate benevolence of the shadow.

Whether you bring unresolved pain, needs you don’t know how to express or take responsibility for, desires that feel intimidating, traits that are not socially acceptable or gifts that you feel too scared to express and so much more, your shadow always says: “yes I will hold them for you”. Talk about benevolence.

It means that on some level, your shadow never really let you down. It has held everything you needed to dissociate from in order to function in a world that wasn’t welcoming of your fullness. This reinforces that love story with the shadow.

On the other side, trusting your authenticity and your brightness, probably came with many emotional bruises and disappointment. It came with the prospect of criticism, betrayal, humiliation or persecution. This is why it is easier to trust staying hidden more than it is to trust being in the light. Choosing light is challenging, yet it’s where true liberation lies.

Another form of benevolence that your shadow has… At the moment you decide that you are ready to lead with authenticity and transparency, and that you will begin to express your brightness more fully, your shadow will give to you the repressed aspects that you need to meet with fierce compassion in order to liberate yourself. Your shadow will bring to your awareness the repressed parts you need to embrace to be liberated. That too is a form of benevolence.

The issue is that it often appears like triggers, reactivity, relational conflicts, repressed pain emerging, self sabotaging tendencies or even anxiety. It is all uncomfortable, yet it is benevolence in disguise. That’s where most people are stuck.

The problem is that most people are not willing to go through that sobering awakening. Instead we often like to convince ourselves that we are afraid of being seen. Truly, what we are afraid of are the fears and ancient pain that might still be hosted in our shadow, that we need to meet fully.

Building trust with being in the light

You might be wondering now: “how do you build trust with being in the light?” or even “how do you break up with your shadow?”

I’d start with this… You don’t want to break up with your shadow. The very fact that you have a shadow self is a divine intelligent design. You just want to bring that relationship into the light. You want it to be conscious. You want to become aware of the aspects of you that your shadow is handing back to you saying: “the time has come for you to reclaim this…”

Whether it’d be ancient pain, disowned traits or repressed light… when your shadow flares up, the highest invitation is to bring the light of conscious awareness there. It is to approach with somatic curiosity and fierce compassion. It is to bring the light of your own love to the aspects you’ve been conditioned were unlovable.

This is how you start building trust with light. This is what allows you to return to your first nature and to let your authenticity call the shots in your life. This is what allows you to be seen in full transparency and to trust the intuitive unseen forces that lead you to a more empowered embodiment of who you are.

Here is a paradox: we have entered a paradigm where transparency and authenticity have become the highest currency and the strongest form of energetic boundary.

If you’ve been reading up until now, I see you as a forerunner of this paradigm.

Yes I know that allowing yourself to embrace this journey can often feel like a baptism by fire… I also keep experiencing greater degrees of liberation on the other side. I can’t help but think that this is what the earth needs now.

The blueprint to that self liberation is what I am about to dive into with the brave souls that will join me for the SEEN 6-week immersive experience. The journey starts in 5 days and the spots are nearly filled. Click HERE to join the experience.

In gratitude and reverence,

— Xavier

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