Introduction
Welcome to the fifth module in the Live Your Life course. We have worked through the physical and mental aspects of magical living and now we’re going to discuss the emotional aspect. This module is going to cover three topics: shadow work, gratitude and relationships.
Shadow work
To live magically is to know yourself, inside and out. This means having a deep understanding of what motivates you. It also involves dealing with the obstacles your own subconscious mind throws up. Maybe you believe deep down that you can’t be magical. Maybe you have a jerk voice that shouts you down when you try to change. Whatever it is, you can engage in shadow work to face those fears, hesitations and self-sabotage and work through them.
Simply, shadow work is a process by which you identify your shadow self and then work to integrate it into your conscious self. The shadow self is those parts of you that you repress or deny because you don’t like them. While you try to ignore these parts of yourself, they still exert influence on you. These then manifest as low self-esteem, self-sabotaging thoughts and actions and harmful beliefs.
Engaging in shadow work has other benefits. It can help with anxiety by pinpointing aspects of your shadow self that are causing it. You will have clearer communication skills as knowing why something might be bothering you, you can clearly express the reason for it. That better communication then leads to better relationships.
Living a magical life means embracing all facets of yourself, not just the ones you are most comfortable with. You must face your shadow self so that you can begin to heal and become the most complete version of yourself. Doing shadow work has other benefits. You will gain more confidence and feel more settled in your own body. And as you work with your shadow self you can avoid the kind of pitfalls that have come up before by understanding why you do the things that sabotage your goals and desires.
So, how does one engage in shadow work? There are several tools that we’ve already gone over that you can use to start with. The first is meditation. In your meditation you reach out to your shadow self and explore what it is and how it affects your conscious life. This meditation method allows you to directly interact with your shadow self and learn about it. I’ll have a link to a guided meditation on YouTube that you can listen to that will guide you through this process.
Another way to engage in shadow work is through divination methods such as tarot cards. Use the divination method you chose previously and ask the following questions:
- “What is the nature of my shadow self?”
- “What emotions am I avoiding?”
- “What fear is holding me back?”
The answers to these questions will give you a starting point to understand what your shadow self is.
Both meditation and divination are good springboards for journaling as a way to engage in shadow work. With journaling you can make sense of the answers you got from divination and the visions you got in your meditation. For journaling, take those answers and visions and write about how those answers make you feel. How do you deal with those emotions and how might that be negatively impacting you? Identify anything that might be holding you back and expand on it. Where does it come from?
It’s not enough to identify your shadow self, then you need to incorporate it into your daily life. This is a process that will take time and can be uncomfortable so take it slowly. Again, journaling can help with this. Take time to write a few sentences about the events of the day. Pinpoint times when your shadow self might have been triggered and then write about how you could better deal with similar situations in the future. Do meditative work where you visualize your shadow self and conscious self becoming one. Or use affirmations by writing or saying to yourself, “I love my shadow self, I love my best self.” The goal is to understand your whole self, why you do what you do and why you feel the way you do.
Gratitude
The flip side to our shadow self, is our grateful self.
Gratitude gets a bad rap these days. There’s a sense that gratitude takes away from ambition, that if we are thankful for what we have that we then forfeit our right to something better. There’s also an element of toxic positivity to gratitude where one should show gratitude and ignore anything negative. I’m advocating neither of those attitudes in this course. Instead, I believe that gratitude can leave room for wanting more and does not erase the wrongs that are happening all around us.
According to the UCLA studies have shown that “practicing gratitude—15 minutes a day, five days a week—for at least six weeks can enhance mental wellness and possibly promote a lasting change in perspective.” – (Health Benefits of Gratitude by uclahealth) It can also lessen anxiety, improve sleep and relieve stress. Those benefits are reason enough to start a gratitude practice. However, there is a metaphysical aspect to gratitude, in that, like mindfulness, it gets us in touch with the present moment. Practicing gratitude opens up space for us to see the magic in our own lives.
I’m going to ask you to pause the video right now and write down five things you are grateful for in your journal. This will be the start of your gratitude box or jar which is the hands on experience portion of this chapter. Go ahead, I’ll be here when you get back.
Welcome back.
To start a gratitude practice you may have to dig deep to come up with things to be grateful for in the beginning. Our society tends to emphasize negative emotions rather than positive ones. This just means that expressing gratitude is a muscle that we need to exercise.
Begin by saying thank you. Start with thanking your body when you get up in the morning or when you get into bed at night. Thank it for what it does for you, even if its functionality is limited. If you have chronic pain, thank your body for working even though you are in pain. Or if you can’t bring yourself to thank your body yet, thank your food when you are sitting down to eat. Even if you are just having a candy bar as you hurry from one place to another, thank it for providing you with fuel to keep going.
As with mindfulness, it helps to practice gratitude at regular intervals throughout the day. When you are waiting in line or on the phone you can think about something you are grateful for. Or you can even set an alarm for various times in the day that then remind you it is time to “count your blessings”. The more you practice gratitude, the more it will become second nature to you.
In the evening, as you are falling asleep, you can go over the day and what happened that you are grateful for. Try to think of at least one thing that day that you can truly be thankful for. Add this to the list of things that bring you joy. Turn it into a nightly meditation, bringing your mind back to the list if it tries to wander off.
The point of gratitude is not to ignore reality, but to emphasize the part of reality that makes us feel good. Witches and those who live magically are always looking at the world through a different lens. And by changing your focus you can start to feel better about yourself and your life.
Relationships
Working on our shadow self and on our sense of gratitude helps not only ourselves, but it can better our relationships with others. No person is an island, and even if you are the most introverted person to have ever introverted you will have people in your life who you have relationships with. Our support systems are vitally important, especially in this day and age when society emphasizes rugged individualism over community.
You may not be able to choose who is around you, such as coworkers and family. You may have to deal with toxic people on a daily basis, which can wear you down. However, you can work magically to either better your relationship with them or to mitigate the harm they do. I’m going to share with you two ways to deal with people who are working against you and your peace.
If you have to be around someone who is toxic, especially someone who treats you unfairly, gossips about you behind your back, or otherwise is unpleasant to you, try a sweetening spell. To start you need a small jar with a tight fitting lid, a scrap of paper and pen, and then either granulated sugar or honey, enough to fill the jar. Cleanse the space you are going to be working in with your prefered method. Smoke cleansing is the most common method, but I like to use sound by ringing a bell. On the scrap of paper write the name of the person whose attitude you want to “sweeten” towards you. Fold the paper towards you three times. Place it in the jar. Then fill the jar with sugar or honey. As you do all this visualize the person becoming nicer to you, treating you with respect, and generally giving you grace and peace. Close up the jar and place it on your altar or some place where it won’t be disturbed. Once the person’s behavior has changed you can then dismantle the jar, discarding its contents by either burying them or placing them in rushing water (flushing it down the toilet does just fine).
What do you do with those people you want to just stop, rather than changing the way they treat you? That’s when you put them in the freezer. Not literally, of course, but you cast a freezer spell on them. This is a magical way of enforcing boundaries. For this spell you ideally need a photo of the person, but writing their name on a piece of paper will do in a pinch. You will also need a small ziplock bag and water. If you want to give your spell an extra boost, use water that has been set out during the dark of the moon, when everything is in stasis. Cleanse your space before you begin. Place the photo or piece of paper into the ziplock bag. Fill the bag about halfway full with water and then seal it. Place the bag down flat in your freezer so that the photo or paper are covered in water. As you do so, say, “You are frozen, you cannot harm me, you cannot move against me, you cannot cross this boundary I place on you.” Visualize a bright white boundary around yourself that the person cannot cross. They are frozen and can’t work against you any longer. Keep the bag in the freezer for as long as you need to keep the person frozen.
Remember, you are allowed to have peace in your life, and you are allowed to take measures, including magical ones, to ensure that peace. While I hope you never have need for either of these spells, I believe that the best offense is a good defense when it comes to toxic people. Add the spells to your journal and keep them on hand just in case.
Conclusion
Your emotional needs are just as important as your physical ones. Our society today has a tendency to dismiss emotions and mental health to the detriment of all. But focusing on being emotionally healthy benefits our physical health.
Take the time to fill out the self-assessment exercise at the end of this lesson and don’t skip the hands-on assignment. I’ll see you in the next lesson.
Now that you have gone through the lesson in this module it is time to work on your self-assessment work. The questions in this exercise are meant to get you thinking about how you can put the information in the lesson to work in your own life.
Turn to a blank page in your journal and answer the following questions as thoroughly as you are able. Take at least five minutes to answer each question. Don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to writing, either. You can doodle, color, sketch, and even collage and stamp your answer to the questions. Do what feels right and makes sense to you. Just make sure that you will be able to understand your entries later.
You can also print out the attached PDF document and write your answers there, if you want.
Go ahead and answer the following questions:
- Which way will you engage in shadow work (meditation, divination, journaling)? Why?
- What does gratitude mean to you? When can you incorporate it into your daily life?
Gratitude Box
As we explored in the lesson, expressing gratitude has many benefits. To this end, you are going to make a gratitude box/jar to have a physical form of gratitude that you can refer to any time you need it.
What you will need for this exercise is a jar or box with a lid, slips of paper and a pen or pencil, and your journal.
Start by listing all the things you are grateful for. You already listed five during the lesson so that can be your springboard. Come up with another five or more items. They don’t have to be deep or profound. You can be grateful for your favorite writer, book or television show. They don’t have to be physical items, either. You can list the way your dog wiggles when you say it is time for a walk, the sound of rain on your roof, the way you feel when you go for a walk. The point is that these need to be things that you are sincerely grateful for.
Now transfer your list to the slips of paper, with one item per slip. While you are writing, call up a feeling of gratitude that you can then pour into the paper and into the jar or box. Add each slip of paper to the jar/box with the words, “Thank you.”
Keep your gratitude jar/box on your altar, by your bedside, or somewhere else where you can consult it on a regular basis. Go through the slips of paper often, not just when you need a pick-me-up. Also, add to it regularly as you come across things that make you grateful. The more you interact with the contents of your jar/box, the more you will foster a sense of gratitude in your everyday life.
There are dozens of different ways to use divination tools to engage in shadow work. And the number of questions you can ask yourself as you journal for your shadow work are endless.
To help you narrow your focus and not feel overwhelmed, I have listed below four resources that you can use as you start your shadow work practice. The two web pages with information on spreads will help you with your divination. The web page with the shadow work questions will give you plenty of places to start with your journaling. And the guided meditation on YouTube will get you started on investigating your shadow self and working on integration.
Tarot Spread: Starting on Shadow Work
Six Tarot Spreads to Improve Your Shadow Work
100+ Shadow Work Questions to Ignite Self-Discovery
Healing the Shadow Self (YouTube Meditation Video)