isn't shadow work an ego thing?

[MarkusSweden]

Let say you had a troubled upbringing and you pushed all the negative feelings away from those experiences into your subconscious mind and never deal with them. 

Is their a residue in your body from those unresolved negative feelings even if you manage to become enlightened later in life? 

Let say you really discover that the present now is all there is, that the ego is an illusion, you find that blissful, happy and peaceful state. You become enlightened to a certain degree.

Can old traumas really get you then? It's an illusion any way, since there is no "you" that had those hurtful experiences in the past, right?

It was just painful experiences, but they didn't belong to anybody, no owner of those so to speak. Therefore, no one who has to deal with them later?

Or is there a need to work through all that from a body-mind perspective before you can concentrate fully on "your" enlightened and spiritual process? 

In short, do you have to work to create a healthy ego so to speak, before you can transcend it, or can you do a shortcut and transcend a "broken" or "failed" ego, since it's just an illusion in the first place?  

Edited February 18, 2018 by MarkusSweden

[Nahm]

The old traumas would have been released by awareness of a bigger vantage view on the path to enlightenment, and they would not resurface. What’s needed is to decide to no longer avoid or run form it, and to simply sit with it, as many times as it takes, for as long as it takes. Eventually, we see through it. 

[Timotheus]

3 hours ago, Nahm said:

 Eventually, we see through it. 

Would you say by seeing through, that there is any chance of being "stressed" or any similar sensation/emotion?

Do you just see the fear of death as illusory or does it vanish entirely? What about minor forms of fear, like nervous breakdowns, cause you have difficulties with time management?(from my experience I can already say that I don't "care" that much anymore, but never say never)

I could imagine that some reflexes remain, like a shock of the body after a sudden and loud noise for example.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Timotheus

[Nexeternity]

Do both.

You should notice benefits from doing both shadow work and enlightenment practices...

They both will kind of start blending into each other in the long run and complement each other.

Do you not want to do shadow work or do you think its a waste of time and you should just focus on enlightenment?

They are both so good.

[snowleopard]

The dispelling of subliminal egoic identities and their emotional attachments is shadow work. Bypassing that seems to often beget gurus with repressed sexual urges secretly having sex with followers. But yes, I suppose a 'healthy' egoic identity would be an improvement over ones lurking in the shadows, to keep the dreamlife from becoming dysfunctional.

[Shin]

Why secretly ?

I mean in I can understand in the east, sex is kind of demonized there. 

But in the west ? 

[snowleopard]

7 minutes ago, Shin said:

Why secretly ?

Because it's shadow stuff they don't wish to expose.

[Shin]

2 minutes ago, snowleopard said:

Because it's shadow stuff they don't wish to expose.

As in being the perfect and pure guru that only love with his awareness.

This stuff is outdated since The Buddha, stop it dudes, it doesn't work

[Faceless]

Who is the entity who’s works on its shadow??

Who is the entity who wants to become enlightened??? 

Who is the entity who participates in various practices to acheive????

Where there is a movement by the entity there will continue the movement in time/thought by the entity. ??‍♂️

 

Edited February 18, 2018 by Faceless

[Joseph Maynor]

A DESCRIPTION OF THE EGO-SHADOW DYNAMIC -- AND HOW THE EGO PARTITIONS AND JUDGES REALITY

The Shadow is the opposite of what you (the Ego) want to attach to.  It's all the traits that are part of you but you don't like to look at.  Oftentimes when we act from the Shadow we don't even see that we're doing anything wrong.  And not all traits in the Shadow are negative.  Shadow traits can be positive too.

A good example of this is when the goodie-goodie gets stressed and then acts like an asshole -- and feels justified while doing it and not even realizing they are being an asshole in the moment.  Right?  The Ego doesn't want to think of itself as being an asshole, so the behavior will occur almost unconsciously.  See how the Ego blots out bits of awareness?  That's one of the worst things that the Ego does -- it creates blind-spots to reality.  The Ego wants to repress bits of reality that it doesn't want to accept.

Or the passive person who becomes a control-freak when stressed.  Right?  The Ego turns a blind-eye in these situations.  There's not much awareness in the goodie-goodie control-freak in that moment, right?  That's not a mistake.  That's what the Ego does, it carves up reality into parts, but reality can't be divided like that.  This is a problem with the Mind not reality.  And it causes a lot of ignorance and suffering at the end of the day, the Ego does.    

That's how the Shadow comes out.  You can't hide from yourself forever.  The Shadow is always there waiting to be accepted, loved, and integrated into reality.  The Shadow is you not accepting a part of reality.  So, the Shadow always pushes to be re-integrated.  This causes a lot of our suffering in life because the Ego never lets this happen.  So, we get the attempt at reintegration, and then the Egoic shutdown every time.  That causes suffering, but no growth.  So, that's the hamster wheel-effect that the shadow-Ego oscillation causes.

Or the preacher who goes and visits a brothel and then wipes it out of his mind quickly.  He doesn't even see that he is doing anything wrong.  The Ego won't allow it.  Think of the Ego as like a fortress that only wants to allow certain traits in.  The Ego wants to partition reality into good and not-good, me and not-me.  The Shadow is all the parts of reality that the Ego doesn't like for whatever reason.  He'll rationalize it away in some way and then bury it, right?  The Ego will do everything it can to distance that part of undesired reality from acceptance.  

Everybody has Ego and everybody has Shadow.  Frankly, I see a lot of people acting from their Shadow, and I think Shadow-Work would help a lot of people re-integrate their reality and dismantle the Ego from their psyche.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_repression

These videos are good for Shadow-Work:

 

Edited February 18, 2018 by Joseph Maynor

[Faceless]

11 minutes ago, Joseph Maynor said:

Or the preacher who goes and visits a brothel and then wipes it out of his mind quickly.  He doesn't even see that he is doing anything wrong.  The Ego won't allow it.  Think of the Ego as like a fortress that only wants to allow certain traits in.  

The self takes the direction of rationalization. The center always moves in a particular direction. Be it acceptance, rationalization, or to condemn, and so on.

Edited February 18, 2018 by Faceless

[snowleopard]

38 minutes ago, Faceless said:

Who is the entity who’s works on its shadow??

It isn't actually anyone doing the work, more like it is eventually broken apart, as it is unsustainable, like some fractured facade that is worked upon by the wind in a storm.

[tsuki]

It's both.

I do the "who am I" path to enlightenment. This is the path you observe the movement of the mind. Once it breaks, the shadow is released. Once you inquire the self in the shadow it breaks as well. Do the cycle enough times and you are me.

[Faceless]

7 minutes ago, snowleopard said:

It isn't actually anyone doing the work, more like it is eventually broken apart, as it is unsustainable, like some fractured facade that is worked upon by the wind in a storm.

Every effort the self ‘the entity approaching a problem according to its conditioning’ makes is from the limitation of thought. Only the storm of attention, ‘observation void of the observer’ can clear the storm of fragmentation. ?

Edited February 18, 2018 by Faceless

[tsuki]

One person's Ego is another's Shadow.

[Faceless]

That’s one problem with thought. We don’t exaclty know when it is in operation. There are no sensory organs to indicate it’s movement. It’s only shortly after that we realize there has been a movement. And sometimes we totaly miss that movement. 

Sneaky sneaky lol

Edited February 18, 2018 by Faceless

[snowleopard]

@Faceless  Or like an ayahuasca storm ... There is a reason why psychedelics are effective in decomposing the shadow, because they circumvent the problematic self-identity. 

Edited February 18, 2018 by snowleopard

[Faceless]

1 minute ago, snowleopard said:

@Faceless  Or like a ayahuasca strom ... There is a reason why psychedelics are effective in decomposing the shadow, because they circumvent the problematic self-identity. 

?

well if you go deep enough into that u will see that it is still a movment of will/self/thought. But I don’t want to rain on any perades today.

I see that those chemicals take away that space of division/separateness momentarily, but this is because the chemical reaction in the body. This is a temporary state of experience. Therefore not a fundamental revolution of consciousness. 

I known it clears away some conditioning, but there is still demand taking place so that implies an entity/thought seeking a attainment or goal. 

Either way this is somthing that must be seen and understood yourself. Can’t really accept another’s authority on this. Especially if you participate in those activities. Got to see for yourself. 

 

 

[Joseph Maynor]

18 minutes ago, tsuki said:

One person's Ego is another's Shadow.

Yep.  Every individual has a unique Ego/Shadow fingerprint.

[snowleopard]

@Faceless  There is not yet a definitive understanding of how psychedelics work to circumvent the egoic complex. Not that it matters, as there is recent evidence in clinical trials that they are vastly more effective in curing ptsd, depression etc, than any of the conventional therapies, so much so that mdma and psilocybin may be approved for clinical use by 2021.  Not claiming that's so-called enlightenment, but if it relieves suffering, that's surely vital.