Defeating the Shadow – 09.16.10

Student Question: In this transition of becoming porous—so you can perceive the miraculous—won’t that porosity also permit whatever residues that remain to boil up to the surface?

“The more of this work you do, and the more serious you take it, the more you flush out the repressed unconscious traumas, resistances, egocentricity, narcissism—all of the very core, dirty truth—the hidden truth of the ego—it gets revealed. And that’s when the going gets tough, and you need to have an energy field of love that will unconditionally accept you when you feel miserable and unworthy of even being on a path like this,” reminds Shunyamurti, the founder of the Sat Yoga Institute in Costa Rica. “And that’s why it’s so important that we have a stable community that recognizes the shadow work, and that valorizes it, and that doesn’t stigmatize anyone for going through some negative period when the cloud of Maya is over their heads and you can’t even see them cause it’s so thick, but you still see the light through the cloud. . . . And we have to prepare ourselves, and each other, for the difficulty of facing the shadow—and defeating it, as a spiritual warrior.” Recorded on the evening of Thursday, September 16, 2010.