Dancing in the
Shadowlands
Introduction to Shadow Work
In MotherQuest we travel down into the dark deep of our unconscious inner world so we can remember the whole truth of who we are. This is a journey of re-claimation and re-membering. Our aim is to uncover our real self, not our persona or our how we are externally defined. But our inner self, our Divine self, our self that is created from something far greater than our senses, our perception and other’s opinions.
In MotherQuest this true self - our sovereignty or soul, is described as the vast expanse of Light, and Love and Golden Awesomeness. The journey of MotherQuest is penetrating, or more rightly surrendering, into our inner darkness, the void that opens when we close our sense doors and open to the wisdom and truth of our golden soul and bring her back up to our topside world.
This unification of our bright conscious mind, with the pure gold of our soul, creates light. The soft light of awakening, the brilliant light of knowing, the unshakable light of truth grounded in universal wisdom. This is the light that heals. This is the light that transforms.
The Light that is en-lighten-ment.
Shadows are created by light, not its absence.
The brighter we become, the further we can see and the more we are able to perceive the blocks, obstructions and delusions that steal our light and create behaviours and patterns that keep us trapped in outdated stories. In MotherQuest we view our shadow as the part of our wholeness, the truth of our loveliness, that has become trapped in outdated, erroneous beliefs that keep us small, fearful and unable to operate at our full loving potential.
In simple terms, our shadow aspects, or gremlins, are our lost childlike parts that have become so hurt, angry and disowned that they have become feral, toxic and nasty. They are not the truth of who we are, they are just very believable and sneaky bad behaviours that have become habitual.
Our shadow gremlins are the pernicious, self-deprecating and debilitating voices in our head. They are also the fear-driven behaviours that occur when our clear thinking becomes skewed. Like when we entertain feelings of hatred, cruelty, revenge, cynicism, injustice and other charming messes, towards ourselves and others.
All shadow gremlins exist in the misty murky land of closed hearts and hatred. They spring to life whenever we forget that we are Love, Loved, Lovers and Loving. Our Shadowland is the fear-driven fog of lies and delusion that hides the golden loveliness of our soul. Without penetrating the fog and dissipating it, we are never able to stay in our sacred feminine power.
Shadows themselves do not exist, they are only formless shades, but they can feel VERY real. Within family systems, relationships, tribal collectives and governments they can wreak havoc. Our gremlins can feel like energetic blobs or entities and the more fear there is around them, the more powerful they can get.
They also get bigger the longer they are pushed into the dark. Why? Because Shadows feed off our fear and attention.
But why?
Because our Shadows want us to learn from them.
Your Shadow selves are actually starving for your love, and the only way they know how to get your attention is to play out in your life and take over.
However, as MotherQuest Journey Women we know how to deal with these unloved and neglected inner children.
We know that our messiness is never going to be cleaned up by ANYONE else. We also know we are strong and have decided to take a mother load or 100% responsibility, for EVERYTIME we play being a victim.
So we know exactly what to do with our Shadows. We do exactly the same thing that any sensible Queen does when she ventures down to face the monsters in the dungeon. It is the same thing mothers do when they head into a dark bedroom when their child is crying in fright -
We turn on the light!
Everyone knows monsters can only exist in the dark!
It is our sacred work to turn our conscious shadow busting light on unloved mucky creations. Once we have brought our conscious and soul filled light to our shadows, transformation and integration happens and healing occurs. Then as our skills grow and our tool building occurs, we grab our metaphorical mops, buckets, hand scrubbers and brooms and we clean up the mess in our lives. (in MotherQuest, messes are normal and denial is useless but expected.
Eventually wearing the masks of nice, tidy and perfection will get boring and the freedom of staying in your soul light far more satisfying).
Everyone is messed up somewhere. EVERYONE IS PERFECTLY IMPERFECT.
No one is more or less special in the eyes of Love – and anytime we forget that any time we play out a better-than or worse-than story, we have stepped back into the fog that denies our truth and creates our own suffering. We have succumbed to believing that the lovelessness of our ShadowLands is real.
It is not possible to grow our consciousness and ‘awaken’ without creating more Light in our lives. And it is not possible to grow in our light without creating situations that will illuminate our own shadow. Anytime we are in Self-righteousness, Self-judgement, Self-deprecation or Self-sabotage we have work, not drama, to do. It is then that the great liberation work of shadow busting begins.
Note of Clarification:
Dark Shadow Gremlins:
Are the murky places when we reject and deny another’s goodness when we desire to harm another.
It is also when we become obsessed with the desire to ruin another, where we want to destroy the hope in another, where we become deliberately misuse our power, where we selfishly desire and consume from a place of egocentric obsession without caring for the effects our consumption has on our world, we are in our dark shadow. Our Dark shadow is also where we disown our infinite capacity for violence, cruelty, revenge and hatred. As we said before, we are in our shadow whenever we disconnect from the Truth of love in our and everyone else’s hearts.
Our Golden Shadow Gremlins
Are where instead of seeing our own light and brilliance we project it outwards and shine it upon another, thus filling ourselves with feelings of unworthiness or shame.
In this place, we can never be good, or enough and the other is always better than. This sneaky aspect of shadow serves no-one, ultimately it robs everyone of equality and uniqueness, while also entrenching us in stories of jealousy, worthlessness, separation and pain.
