Exploring your Sexual Shadow
Sexual shadow – The shadow refers to the unconscious parts of the mind and body – that which is outside of the light of our attention and awareness.
Deep within there is a place where we store our secret desires, forbidden feelings and shamed creative impulses.
The poet Robert Bly describes the shadow like a long bag that we drag behind us. This bag is created to stuff all the feelings that have been wronged, shamed and abandoned. The place inside that we stuff everything unwanted about us.
When we start to turn towards our blind spots, our shadow we take something out of the bag and examine it in the light of day. We face it, look all around it, exploring, enquiring, studying, rotating it, letting it go for awhile, revisit it again, and be fascinated by it until we can acknowledge it as a lost part of ourselves.
We then receive its message, align, integrate and reclaim its energy. There is a seam of sweet wisdom gained by the pressure of this lost parts journey within us. As we journey through the layers, each shadow is met the gold seam of wisdom makes all turn to light!
As a child we start to banish aspects of ourselves to look after the vulnerability created from being around adults and learning how this world works. The imprints projected on us from the people around us especially around sexuality are often strong and over time create unconscious effects on our own sexual self. As they sit in the darker recesses they build charge, forming limiting, self sabotaging behaviours.
Sexual shadow is created from many moments “ Don’t touch yourself there! “ “ Thats dirty “ “ Thats not allowed here “ “ That is a sin “ . What our parents / care givers say or don’t say ( more often ) about sex. Comments, comparisons, judgements, lack of healthy sexual information, no role models.
The shadow is active when your unconscious sabotages your conscious intentions. Some ways to tell that we need to attend to our shadow is :
• We start to project – which is when we respond intensely too traits in another by being critical, judgmental and rejecting.
• Typical emotions activated can be when we feel unacceptable, powerless, envious, angry, out of control, self-destructive, anxious, depressed, out of control, invisible, guilty, impulsive and ashamed.
• We can get stuck in destructive, repetitive fights with the ones we love. These are created by both persons un met shadow parts creating havoc in the unconscious.
When we cultivate self enquiry and self knowledge around our sexual shadows nature it helps us :
• Break cycles of pain
• Allows creativity to flow
• Communication becomes more effective
• Conscious choices stop being sabotaged
• Sexual expression expands
• We stop hurting our selves and others
Copyright Kalindi Jordan. All Rights Reserved.