The Beauty And Power Of The Shadow

[ivankiss]

Hello loved ones.

I feel like sharing a few thoughts about The Almighty Shadow. Perhaps you'll find the information to be relevant.

I like referring to 'The Shadow' or 'Darkness' as just a 'different shade of Light'. Because it is, in fact, Light - unrecognized and unacknowledged by You.

The Shadow cannot help itself but be You. Be The Light. You cannot help yourself but be it. The Shadow's one and only job is... to maximize your ability to Love unconditionally and fearlessly. To accept and embrace fully and willingly. It's such a cleaver and powerful 'mechanism'. And in case you disagree with that; well, then you have not truly felt its claws. 

The Shadow has no more and no less power than The Light of God does. It is equally magnificent, equally intelligent and equally real. It is equally beautiful and divine.

But it does not know that. Thus it is 'The Shadow'.

It's always here, but not always active. As I said - it is just God being very cleaver and...well... a little bit gangsta.

The Shadow is patient. It has all the time in the world. It will wait and wait; until you think you've got it all figured out. And then it's going to jump out of nowhere and ruin your cute little enlightenment.

That's right. The Shadow doesn't give a flying fuck about your spirituality. It does not care about your realizations and insights. If anything; those are the very things it will objectify and use against you as a weapon in your darkest hour. There will be no mercy. No tolerance. One cannot bullshit their way out of darkness. No amount of spiritual concepts, methods or practice will save you. Darkness will swallow you whole. How willing or unwilling you are to surrender yourself to it...determines how painful, agonizing and persistent it will be.

So how do you accept The Shadow? How do you recognize it as The Truth of who You are? How do you escort it back into The Light of Perfection? 

It's simple.

Not easy. And not comfortable - at all. But simple.

The Shadow demands above and beyond all one thing, only. And that is... 

R E S P E C T 

Need I remind you just how exactly you're disrespecting The Shadow? Gladly; I will.

You are disrespecting The Shadow by hiding it. By hiding from it. By denying it. By demonizing it. By being ashamed of it. By thinking it's less than pure perfection. By acting like it's not even there. By neglecting it. By abandoning it. By putting everything that's nice and shiny before it. By surprising it. By forgetting about it. By fighting it. By silently hating it. By treating it as an enemy. By wanting nothing to do with it. By not having the balls to look right into its eyes. By judging the living crap out of it. By convincing yourself it is the reason for your failures and misfortunes. By blaming it. By resisting it. By negotiating with it. By manipulating it. By lying to it. By keeping your heart closed for it. By not inviting it in. By keeping it locked in the basement.

And if you think The Shadow is stupid enough to be fooled by your funny little games... You're in for a rude awakening.

It has the power to arise as fire and bring hell into your reality. To burn down everything in its way - including you. It has the power to annihilate everything you hold close to your heart. To take it all away from you and never give it back. To diminish you. To force you into submission. It will burn down everything until nothing but it remains. Until you finally give up and gather the courage to show it respect.

Even saying 'I don't know how to respect you the way you deserve it' is a very good first step in establishing the connection. Even saying 'I wish I could accept and include you into my heart' is enough. What matters is that you are being honest. The Shadow can smell bullshit before you even shat it. There is no way around. No negotiation. You either level with it - or you burn.

Once You earn its Trust and you become a team that operates together as One... The true innocence of your Being will start shining through. There will be no Darkness. No Shadow. Only one Being loving fearlessly whatever arises. Purity. Honesty. Courage. 

Love and Respect.

 

 

 

Edited August 16, 2020 by ivankiss

[electroBeam]

I think as a compliment to what you've described about the shadow, you can also expand what you've written to also include ignorance and arrogance. 

For example, denying or covering up your arrogance with spiritual dogma actually inflames the issue, like what you've written, to overcome your arrogance means to give it respect. 

Same with ignorance, its very tempting to cover up 'what you don't know' with spiritual concepts and dogmas, when in reality you really just don't know. And the way to overcome that ignorance is to give it respect. 

[Nemo28]

@ivankiss wow amazing read! I very much resonated with what you said. Interestingly enough I made a short animation describing my feelings on encountering a "shadow". 

If you want, please take a look - > 

 

[WaveInTheOcean]

Great read, thank you <3 
 

 

Acknowledging and integrating one's shadow should be a top goal for any human being wanting to live life sincerely.

Denying, supressing and running away from 'the projected bad sides of one self' only makes them come back 100 times stronger. 

Accept their presence, respect them, and let the light of your consciousness illuminate them in order to transcend them.

[WaveInTheOcean]

 

[SoonHei]

Denying shadow is like having a coin and claiming it has only 1 side.

Be the coin. Coin is whole. Heads and tails are fragments.

[Visionary]

Preach brother

[WaveInTheOcean]

Bumping this thread cos this little poem by ivankiss is so good.

Gotta say I got burned hard myself this winter:>

I thought I got it all figured out, but I was unconsciously and ignorantly denying and judging my shadow, and as such I got swallowed whole by it. Deepest depression yet (think I got some sort of mild genetic bipolar). But humbling experience for sure. The universe (God/Love) is always ready to teach you a lesson. 

When all seems dark, light will begin to shrine through at the end lf the tunnel.

It seems the opposite is also kind of true. When all seems like perfection, when light is shining everywhere; slowly, but surely, the dark shadow(s) will begin to emerge. 

How to love/accept both light *and* shadow?

Or how to not let the shadow completely cover all the shining light?

How to be at peace 24/7 365 days a year?? Gotta read ivankiss' scripture again ?

 

 

Edited March 26, 2021 by WaveInTheOcean

[Chris365]

@WaveInTheOcean how do you see your enlightenment now? 

You were 1 shining example of getting enlightened with 2cb.

[ivankiss]

@WaveInTheOcean Appreciate it ❤

Feeling a bit shadowy atm...can't help myself but cringe while reading the original post ?

It's true...just a bit slimy ?

[seeking_brilliance]

?

[WaveInTheOcean]

On 27.3.2021 at 5:53 PM, Chris365 said:

@WaveInTheOcean how do you see your enlightenment now? 

You were 1 shining example of getting enlightened with 2cb.

I feel there are two aspects of enlightenment.

The "knowing" aspect of it: i.e. you know about the nature of reality (that all is one) AND you ground this knowing in one of your direct experiences of you becoming it (oneness/consciousness/nothingnesss/God/Love). If you can't ground it any direct experience, it's just a a belief and not enlightenment.

The 'feeling' aspect of it. This is a state. You can go in and out of this state. I was in it for 4 months, May-August 2020, then I slowly got out of it during the fall, which eventually lead to a full-blown suicidal deep dark depression which lasted from October-February. 

Now I smoked 50 mg of changa  3 hours ago and I'm back in the "good" feeling state. All is well;) love ya all <3

Edited March 29, 2021 by WaveInTheOcean

[Chris365]

In the suicidal depression state, was your knowledge of 'all is love' intact? Did you see the depression as love as well?

Do you (still) consider yourself enlightened?

I've had states of mild depression that felt like the depression isn't "mine", it's just life expressing itself, and it  just so happens to be felt through this body 

Like the spiritual saying goes, don't get attached to pleasure, don't resist pain... was there an element of this in your depression?

Thanks.

@WaveInTheOcean

[WaveInTheOcean]

On 27.3.2021 at 5:53 PM, Chris365 said:

@WaveInTheOcean how do you see your enlightenment now? 

You were 1 shining example of getting enlightened with 2c.

[WaveInTheOcean]

Oneness is such a complex "thing" for the human mind to understand.

It isn't even a thing or a concept.

It's what reality IS. It is ONE.

Always. Whether you're aware of it or not.

Of course awareness of "it" matters in the way you feel on the inside. If you're aware of the nature of reality -- that all is one, that everything is your own creation, self-designed by you as Oneness/God/Love/Infinite Consciousness -- then you can't help but feel good. That's at least my experience.

However, this truth is also hard to swallow for the untranscended ego-person. Cos the truth unveils its illusory nature: There is no separate self, except for the mind-like-idea of there being one.

So to see it requires surrendering, letting go.

And it ain't easy to let go. 

To let go, to surrender to each present moment, is an artform that requires practice, and daily consciousness-work I'd say.

"My enlightenment" on 2cb half a year ago in a sneaky way made me feel superior, perfect, untouchable, like God/Jesus walking around in human form. I neglected my shadow, I didn't acknowledge it. I didn't even had it as a possibility that I could ever be depressed again, haha. So fucking arrogant, a bit of spiritual ego, so much unconsciousness of the greater themes playing out, yet feeling like I knew it all!

I didn't meditate on a daily basis (in fact I didn't meditate much even) and of course hubris hit me in the sense that my ego got to slowly take back control in unconscious ways. My lower self got back to work, so to speak, and this included feelings and thoughts of being a separate self that needed x,y and z go to be happy, that could truly never be fulfilled, but only be hurt and damaged.

So I got into the lowest stages of emotional development of enneagram type 5, which included self-isolation, bad sleep, no meditation, suicidal thoughts, crying a lot, feeling like everything is pointless, and myself feeling completely worthless. 

In short, my knowledge of Oneness/Love/God was hidden far away in my mind. Sure, I still knew it, but I didn't feel whole and at peace. And feelings/emotions is what truly matters, not knowledge.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good lately. Been on a regular meditation practice for some weeks now, 30min 1-2 times daily. Had a few deeply healing 2cb trips as of late, as well as my changa trip yesterday, which in a sense felt just as deep, if not deeper, than my 2cb enlightenment trip half a year ago.

Self-design on a very deep level was realized, which I sort of had realized before, but just on a deeper level this time. Such a relief. Pure healing for the soul to see that it was a conscious choice to "get into life" and that everything is going exactly as it should be (God makes no mistakes). Divine perfection. The answer and purpose always being Infinite Love.

I was at the peak infused with Cosmic (Self-) Love through my mouth into my body by some very intelligent extra dimensional beings, which I of course also knew were me/my imagination, but I nevertheless deeply thanked them.

I then for a long time was in this dimension/level of consciousness beyond ordinary life, where all the blueprints, engineering of life/physical reality is going on. It felt like pure bliss to see the perfection and intelligence behind it all. Such a relief. Such healing for the soul. I could change anything I wanted, yet I also realized nothing dramatically really needed to change. I agreed with the beings in this dimension that I'd like less OCD and more confidence in regards to my personality, and it sort of seem to have worked (early days still hehe).

It's interesting to wonder about how much one's brain's neuroplasticity is increased during such a DMT breakthrough, or any psychedelic break through for that matter. Must be a fucking lot.

An other characteristic of this "headspace"/dimension/level of consciousness, was how it felt like coming home. This is a state We are all so familiar with; I even suppose this is what deep sleep is, just without any remembering of it when you wake up. I intuitively knew I had been here many many times before, designing physical reality, life, personality, destinies. I even realized I had been here before on DMT before, also ayahuasca, also 2CB, but this was the "first time" I was "allowed" to retain deep knowledge lf it. 

This break through changa trip lasted almost an hour for me, which is 4-5 times longer than pure DMT. Pretty remarkable.

In the early stages of my depression half a year ago I had s traumatizing changa trip where I felt my soul/mind was burned, raped by the universe. Surely kickstarted the deeper depths of my depression. Made me doubt everything.

Actually, what it was, was that it was Infinite Love, but I at that time just weren't able to surrender to it/let go. 

Everything is Infinite Love, but it can feel like hell if you don't trust "it"/cant let go/are unable to surrender to it.

This time I struggled in the first few minutes, but eventually managed to let go. Dno how. Mystery. Probably relates to how conscious you are before going in, and how healthy and prepareded your body-mind is on s bothe physical and spiritual level.

Of course even not being able to let go is infinite love.

Anyway, all this depression has been extremely humbling for me. I will take better care of "myself" moving forward. I will prioritize sleep, meditation, exercise, social relations, healthy eating. 

These things are extremely important if you want to be a vessel for Love.

Just my few cents:D

Enlightenment is infinite. I dno if I consider myself enlightened, I surely did back then. Now, it seems a bit more silly to say:D

I now see the depression as Love, but I surely didn't in the midst of it; except somewhere deep in me I probably knew, just like everyone does all the time;)

I don't think I per se got attached to pleasure or pain. Or in some ways I probably did. In the beginning of my depression I'd eat lots of candy/cake to dull my depression (attached to pleasure) and in the peak of my depression with daily crying and daily suicidal thoughts I surely was attached to pain/suffering in some way.