Shadow Work & Tripsitting Yourself Or Others
We are not the feelings, but the conduits for them
Shadow Work First
Many people want to meditate or use psychedelics to feel good. I’m definitely one of those people, and Buddha also said that meditation should generally feel good. On the other hand, my friend Eshwar found that shadow work—bringing the light of love and awareness to trauma-formed negative mind-states and tendencies—constituted about 99% of his path to heart-chakra awakening. For people in modern times with so much trauma (and even some in Buddha’s time), it makes sense that shadow-work and inner-child reparenting (which should be a crucial part of any authentic shadow-work) would be primary before more authentic liberation from the identity illusion can happen.
Some people might find that if they bypass shadow work in their meditations and therapy sessions, they might encounter it more in real life without understanding why. I definitely did encounter it in my first two marriages quite a lot, to my bewilderment. I wish everyone could confine shadow work to the safer realm of meditation, but sometimes, the real world smackdown is simply unavoidable for deeper learning.
How to Heal The Shadow
Peter Levine’s somatic experiencing approach to Healing Trauma is one method that has helped many people heal from deep wounds. My partner Hâle and I really love it, and she is now training in this therapy.
Biodynamic Breathwork and Trauma Release System (BBTRS) is a wonderful offshoot of Levine’s Somatic Experiencing. Here is a directory of trained and trusted BBTRS therapists. You can also find a list of other tips for trauma release on this reddit post.
EMDR therapy helped Hâle a lot during her 3 years of therapy. Now there’s a better version of it which you might even be able to do on yourself now, called Brainspotting.
A number of other alternatives to standard mental health care listed at alternativementalhealth.com
U.C. Berkeley offers a free class based partly on the experimentally validated Buddhist teachings to learn to be happy and help others to be happy.
You can get some tips on shadow work in Buddha’s teachings on the topic, summarized in this video by the monk Ajahn Jayasaro:
(Re)defining “Bad Trip”
While some people might see shadow work as a bad trip, especially if they were not planning on doing shadow work at that time, there are also other types of bad trips which do not seem related to shadow work. Of course, any type of negative experience could lead into shadow work, and there is no end to the amount of difficult experiences we could have to work with in samsara, but it does make sense to try to minimize the sources of trauma so that we can work on the stuff that’s already there.
On the other hand, a well-rounded trip should not only leave us with practical lessons, but also put us in touch with suffering as well as the freedom from suffering, lest we become “so spiritually high that we are no earthly good.” After all, "Life is (full of) Suffering" is Buddha's First Noble Truth. If we totally ignore that part of life then we are just dissociating from it (and then we start saying stuff like “Everything is Love, including violence”). So let’s work on getting our mindset and heart-set correct before anything else:
Why do bad trips tend to happen?
Here is a nice quote that explains why, when we try to focus on what we want, we instead face our blockages:
Don’t Forget Biochemistry
On the other hand, there are certain bad trips which just damage people rather than helping them deal with something that needed dealing with. Often times, these are due to not dosing the right way. Use the right recipe, start low and go slow:
What about a pointless trip?
A pointless trip is a pretty bad trip, just like a pointless day is a bad day. It’s one in which you have no new insights (usually the result of focusing on external things outside of your innermost being/non-being). Such a trip is a waste of time. Even if it felt like the best experience of your life, if you gained no insight from it, then what was the point? Furthermore, whose fault is it if you wasted your time? Look at it this way: a trip is just another experience. It might be more powerful than other experiences, but in the end, it's just another experience.
What can we learn from say, just being bored, lonely, angry, etc.?
Until you can learn from every experience, you risk wasting your time with psychedelics. And once you are able to gain insight from any experience, you won't need psychedelics. And once you have gained sufficient insight, you won't need/want to be reborn after death, nor will you feel you are really even existing during the life of this body/mind called you, except as an emission of universal peace and love.
Is a sitter necessary?
Well, depends. With a low dose of the ultimate psychedelic, probably not, unless you have some health issues that you are worried about.
With a high dose (which I don't recommend), it can be helpful to have someone not in the same room, but within earshot, in case you freak out and absolutely can't handle it, or something like that. Even better to be in a cabin in the woods where you can scream without repercussions.
What about a shaman?
Shamans are obviously a mixed bag, but if you did find a shaman that had a great reputation, then would it be worth traveling to do a ceremony with them? Depends on whether you are going for emotional healing or insight/liberation. Shamans and traditional societies in general don't have any understanding of No self, so they can't help you in that regard. But they do have a lot of experience with emotional healing, so if you don't find much benefit doing it solo, then try with a good shaman. It may be worth it. On the other hand, they are mainly experienced in helping people who already live in loving communities (their tribe), which is why I joke that “Shamans Can’t Heal White People.”
Dealing with Sorrow
At one point I felt this pamphlet was so helpful on the topic of sorrow, although it’s a bit “ultimate” and too “Advaita” for my taste. At this point, I think it is more helpful for people to focus on love rather than missing someone or something. I explored this in my video on missing my ex-wife Bee.
How to Prevent or Deal With Demonic Posession?
First of all, for practical purposes, I don’t want to debate whether demons are real or just internal mental fabrications, because the end result remains the same. Demons hook into our minds thru holes in the armor of love. If you feel hatred, shame, anger, these could themselves be called demons, or they could be seen as the portals that demons enter thru.
So before engaging in any type of practice, whether meditation, spells, drugs, etc, which opens your portals up in general, make sure that you are coming purely from a place of love, peace, and selflessness. If not, you will certainly be presented at some point with some type of force which feeds off your negativity.
On the other hand, nobody’s perfect yet, so even if we may feel quite loving and peaceful in the moment, when we open up our portals we might become aware of some “shadow stuff” which isn’t just the actual shadow cast by light, but comprises real places in ourselves that need healing. So we need to be prepared for this eventuality. We need to practice beforehand, imagining that this type of things comes up. We need to practice the universal remedy of taking the position of peaceful, loving awareness, which transforms even the most horrific demons instantaneously.
Dealing with Shadow Thoughts
When we begin trying to purify our minds, many of us find a natural and scary thing happen--the opposite of purification seems to become visible. Like Newton's Third Law of motion is at play (every action arises with an equal and opposite reaction).
Our shadow thoughts and feelings are not a problem. They are a natural co-arising which we do not need to attach to. Like the shadows of objects in the sun. But what I notice is they are also a result of too much focus, which stresses the mind, and forces the mind to seek a way out of that stress, which is most obviously going to be in the opposite direction of the focus you put it to. So, relax, unwind, unbind, and unweave the identity illusion/mind/unified experience! For more depth, check my pamphlet on already-perfect.
Note: I am not parroting the simplistic Hermetic principle of opposites required for understanding anything. I don’t think it makes sense to say you must feel hate to feel love, since babies who are hated do NOT feel love, and babies who are loved do NOT feel hate. But in the subconscious where concepts reside, there are always two sides considered.
I also have a poem here which, altho it doesn’t get past the Advaita true self illusion, it does kind of help when you are trying to get shadow thoughts into perspective:
THE JOKER
At the centre
of the spinning circle
sits the joker
with a mirror
in his hand,
reflecting all to everyone
to help them understand.
His face is fierce, yet gentle,
his eyes, they pierce you through,
you cannot escape his gaze
no matter where you go,
no matter what you do.
His smile is warm, he draws you in,
he is so calm, why are you
so confused by him?
Your thoughts are like a raging storm
between the whirling sky and sea,
nothing seems certain any more,
nothing’s how it used to be.
Once things were clear in black and white,
you thought you knew the wrong from right,
you drew the line, and cut it fine,
between the day and night;
but now your world is crumbling,
there’s nowhere you can call your own,
nothing’s solid anymore,
not even cities made of stone,
not even your own body,
not even flesh and blood,
not even skin and bone.
The sun and moon are falling on your head,
the stars are tumbling down,
flowers sing like angels,
in the winter town.
The dead are living, the living dead,
fire turns to water, water burns instead,
silence is so full of sound, time stands still,
you hear the earth turn round.
Your life flashes before you,
is that thunder, or the beating of your heart,
you don’t know if this is the end,
or something new about to start.
You don’t know if you’re dreaming
or if you are awake,
and as you go on spinning
you see the joker’s mirror
reflecting every move you make.
You show him good,
and he will show you evil;
you show him truth,
and he will show you lies;
you show him life,
and he will show you
how all that’s living dies.
You show him happiness,
and he will show you sorrow,
you show him yesterday,
and he will show you tomorrow;
you show him poverty,
and he will show you wealth;
you show him sickness
and he will show you health.
You fall as if forever, falling
spinning round and round,
tumbling into empty space,
without up or down
and thus you will go on falling
until you understand
how opposites arise mutually,
then you and the joker
will dance, hand in hand.
Then you will know the truth:
that all is of one taste;
then you and the joker
will have the same face.
- Unknown
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