By Amanda Rose
This painting is a look into Carl Jung’s Shadow work. The process of becoming conscious of the parts of yourself that you’ve pushed out of your everyday awareness. The impulses and traits that you’ve learned, not to identify with. This can include strong desires, fears, and capabilities that you have been using as tools for survival.
As we grow and build an identity, Jung believed that we also grew a repressed self along side that identity. This can be experienced as, “I am independent” therefore, “why would I ever need their help”.
Those places in us don’t just disappear when we ignore them. They become hidden as we try to push them away.
We may try judging ourselves, by telling ourselves that we don’t need help. Causing the need in us to build and grow just under the surface.
Then, more people and situations become frustrating, as we grow older. We may not understand why we are feeling so much irritation. What is this pattern and how can we actually let it all go?
With these habits you’re building a life that is full of pain and resentment. Sometimes creating physical pain in our bodies.
What are the movies in your head around this situation? What are you believing about it? Who are you resenting?
This cycle is how we create resistance. Causing our reactions to become more intense the next time this situation presents itself.
Blocking the life you actually want. A life full of peace and laughter. A life that focuses your attention on your strength and success. With better relationships and more money flowing in.
This art is the best representation of the healing that takes place when we do our own Shadow Work. So, how do we actually let go of the resentment and resistances?
“That which you most need will be found where you least want to look.”
-Carl Jung
Carl Jung called it integration of the shadow. It isn’t about becoming the shadow…
You have anger therefore you are an angry person. It’s about asking yourself, “what is this anger trying to tell me?”
Perhaps this anger is trying to show you where you need to lay a new boundary with someone close to you.
It’s a matter of knowing what you are experiencing. Then asking yourself, ‘why?’ around this experience. Just noticing it. Then feeling it, fully.
Instead of immediately judging yourself for what you are feeling. You can ask yourself… What part of me keeps choosing this?
Shadow Work points you to the places that you could give yourself permission. Learning what you actually value. Filling a need in you that you weren’t aware of. To find new ways of taking care of yourself.
Instead of being jealous of that successful person over there… You begin to see your own power. To see how your talents and knowledge could do something better. In your own way and in your own voice.
This art is essentially representing this new way of seeing yourself. Helping you find where you can get out of your own way.
Finding what happens when we stop being someone not worthy of love. And, start building a life that feels worthy of the person that we actually are.
This fine art is bright and warm. To represent the feeling of accepting yourself exactly as your are.
To let go of all those old patterns that are no longer working for your survival. To listen to the frustration instead of letting it build up over time. To understand why you are caught in theses patterns. Knowing that judging yourself isn’t helping the pain heal.
It gives you the space to discover something that you weren’t aware of before.
Pointing to what you really want in your life. Letting you transform your hurt into a strength. Creating better relationships… More success in your business… Or, just more efficient problem solving.
It’s the profound distinction between trying to destroy the darkness, and recognizing how your darkness is pointing to the light inside you. A fine art print that represents the brilliance in you and the ideal life that you are building for yourself.