Embracing Shadows

I wear my shadows where they're harder to see, but they follow me everywhere. I guess that should tell me I'm travelling toward light. 
-Bruce Cockburn

Around the time that I was leaving for India, a friend of mine recommended The Dark Side of the Light Chasers: Reclaiming Your Power, Brilliance, Creativity and Dreams by Debbie Ford. I ordered the book and began reading the first few weeks in India. Needless to say, this transformative book is one of the more powerful books in my current collection. 


The book demonstrates how our darkest tendencies, when embraced, can fuel our biggest dreams. It takes quite a bit of courage to read this book; you dig into the corners and crawl spaces of your past forgotten self and learn to embrace yourself entirely. The beauty of this book, you will find, are the exercises and stories that make you realize how much of your self (your shadows), have been hidden and repressed and how much fuller, if you tune those shadows, your life will be.

It is when you learn to embrace shadowed qualities that you become who you were always meant to be. It is a painful process indeed, one that stirs up emotions and memories that you have wanted to forget, but you are indeed a better person because of it. Every past is worth condemning. The past is our definition. We may strive, with good reason, to escape what is bad in it, but we will only escape it by adding something better to it. 


In addition to purchasing this book (I have the e-book), you should begin your journey (not for the faint hearted, but for those who truly want to transform themselves) with answering these few questions.

1. What quality to you love about yourself, how do you outwardly display that to others?

2. What is the opposite of this quality? Do you find yourself judging this quality in others? 


Your shadows are the keys on the chain needed to unlock your future and live your best life.