I often refer to the term Shadow when describing my work. And I have recently had several people ask me to describe what I mean. And shortly after those asks for clarification, I heard that another spiritualist I know uses the term, and uses it very differently. So I thought it was worth bringing this question forward and clarifying.

Every individual person is a combination of every experience they have ever had. When you walk down the street, you see many people walking around, interacting, and living their lives. And unless we know a person, or have clear reason to remember, they all fall into the backdrop of our day. But every one of them is a lifetime of experiences that presents as the person in front of you.

Now imagine how you would look at yourself under that light. How could you quantify the hopes, dreams, fear, anger, pride, and many decisions you wish you could undo? The downfall of being something built of so many different pieces, is that we have contradictions…

The example I use in myself is that I have a skill/trait/ability to read a person and find the one thing I could say to really hurt someone. I label this as my cruelty. While I know this is something about me, I also know that it doesn’t feel ethical to hurt people. And my taught desire to not hurt people causes me to carry my cruelty with shame. I want to hide it. When something comes up like a cruel comment, I want to hide it away so I don’t tarnish the mask I wear that identifies me as “Kind”.

As I am writing this, I think I might be able to offer a more concise definition of Shadow by saying: an aspect of yourself that you want to hide because of direct contradiction with a learned beliefs.

We all can have many Shadows, and each one further shapes who we are, and challenges who we think we should be.