Awakening The Sacred Masculine At The Turning Of The Ages

Shadow Lands
 
The 'Shadow' I refer to regarding men, are all the dark or destructive expressions of a his ego/personality that he is unable to consciously recognize or willingly control. By definition, the Shadow - regardless of gender - are energetic areas within a person´s psyche that are usually well hidden and repressed from the light of their conscious awareness. This energetic and emotional dark space is created from painful and traumatic experiences from our past, often originating in childhood.

Because a child’s coping skills are largely undeveloped, out of necessity the memories of these traumatic experiences are blocked out and stuffed away in their unconscious mind. Hopefully, this allows a child to maintain a semblance of emotional safety and stability. There are also significant, carryover imprints from past lives that are carried and bleed through into this life. All of these trapped and hidden energetic blockages eventually show up as conflictual, dysfunctional emotional patterns, very likely manifesting as self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors.

These blockages and patterns are the result of experiences that, at the time they occurred, were too painful or difficult to deal with, process and integrate. Even though these memories and energetic imprints are seemingly locked safely away, they eventually come bubbling up and bursting out in behaviors that, by design, are intended to get our attention. In time, the difficult situations our unconsciousness continues to create in our lives become so painful and obvious, we wake up to the fact that our Shadow is in fact, running and most often, ruining our lives.

The ´inner critic´ sub-personality is a prime example of Shadow energy. This is the voice inside that always reminds us of how bad, dumb or ugly we are and how unworthy, undeserving and  unable we must be to create fulfillment in our lives. The ´inner saboteur´ is the steroid version of our inner critic, where  we always end up destroying what we love and value the most.  

These deep seated patterns prevent us from accessing and living from our clear, conscious spiritual awareness, that in turn, prevent us from transforming, healing and releasing the pain contained within them. 

A man´s  Shadow contains and is fueled by all of our repressed and unprocessed emotions like fear, anger, shame, guilt and self-doubt. This is where all our self-worth issues live. Our addictive behaviors are indeed expressions of our Shadow. Until these patterns are transformed, they continue to stagnate, mutate and fester, creating the aggressive and abusive, overly controlling and dominating behaviors long associated with the unevolved, masculine consciousness.

Our Shadow expresses itself through the egocentric, self serving misuse and abuse of will and abuse of power patterns historically, long associated with men in and out of control. From this emotional dark space, his behaviors appear as unconscious urges that are dysfunctional in nature and often destructive in effect.

In esoteric traditions, these behaviors are expressions of our lower nature or 'lower self'. The essentially alchemical process of evolving and Awakening to our Sacred natures only occurs when we transform and raise our consciousness from the imprint patterning created when we initially separated from our God Self by individuating as Souls on Earth. 

All of our self-worth issues, emotional blockages and trauma-drama Core Wounds were created from this perceived break in our spiritual connection to our God Self. Our Core Wounds are all the energetic and emotional imprints created by us forgetting our true Divine nature.