🌌 “Not believing you have a choice is what keeps you stuck in the illusion.”
Let me be brutally honest:
Shadow work saved my life… but it didn’t set me free.
For over a decade, I excavated my subconscious to integrate my shadows.
Faced ancestral wounds. Dissected limiting beliefs.
Purified layers of karma that felt like peeling an infinite onion.
And yet— When “unwanted” events kept crashing into my life (betrayals, scams, losses), I spiraled.
“I’ve done ALL the work! Why am I still stuck at this threshold?!”
Again, I wrestled with this question: “Do we have free will… or is life just a karmic script we’re forced to act out?”
I devoured every “guru’s” book (again). Begged healers for answers (though they have their limits and their explanations were insufficient).
The truth?
I’m not 100% sure, but I suspect shadow work had unearthed deeper layers of my subconscious I didn’t even know existed.
The more I healed, the more “my higher self” (“I”) magnified the remaining illusions—forcing me to confront them.
I plunged into a dark night of the soul.
Doubted everything, my perception of reality, my belief in my decade of shadow work.
“Why can’t I control this? Am I just doomed?”
Then, Mama Aya—who I’d avoided for years—demanded my surrender.
The Missing Piece Shadow Work Couldn’t Give Me
In Peru, trembling on a ceremonial mat, she hissed:
🔥 “You STILL don’t believe you have a choice, do you?”
I argued: “But shit HAPPENS! Trauma! Betrayals! How is THAT a choice?!”
Mama Aya wasn’t having it: “Why are you rebutting us? You have a choice.”
I fought with her. I raged: “But I’ve DONE the work! I’ve faced my shadows! It still stinks!”
Then she said, “Not believing you have a choice IS the prison.”
Then, here goes the somatic download that rewired me:
“Not believing you have a choice is what keeps you stuck in the “illusion.”
Then, I realized – Shadow work shows you the prison. SELF-LOVE hands you the key.
For years, I’ve done shadow work from a place of:
Control (“If I fix this, I’ll avoid pain”)
Self-hate (“This wound makes me unworthy”)
Shadow work isn’t about erasing your shadows. It’s about loving them home—so they stop running your life.
The Toxic Myth of “Completing” Shadow Work
We’re sold this half-baked idea: “Heal X trauma, and you’ll unlock your dream life!”
But here’s what they rarely tell you: The deeper you go, the more your reality will mirror to you the unhealed wounds still within you, sometimes at an accelerated rate (And, I maybe wrong here).
Those “unwanted” events? You can consider them as initiations—invitations to choose differently from love, not fear - loving those parts within me I blamed for “attracting” those events (oh this is deep! 🤔)
How to Do Shadow Work Without Self-Abandonment
STOP TRYING TO FIX YOURSELF!
Your so called “flaws” are ancient survival strategies. You have to love them to transform them.Ask: “Am I doing shadow work or any self improvement techniques to fix myself (because I believe something is wrong with me) … or in the space of self-love and curiosity?”
Why Shadow Work is STILL the Key to Unlocking Choice
Shadow work isn’t about “fixing” yourself.
It’s about rewiring your subconscious scripts played from your childhood, and ancestors. For years, I thought I was making “choices”—but really, I was replaying old patterns, old karmic patterns.
Shadow work is the key to unlocking choice, because you are no longer playing old karmic patterns. AND, in order to transform those karmic patterns, it has to be coming from a place of self love instead of self hate.
Maybe this is the 80/20 of self-mastery → Shadow work (from the space of self love) IS the 20% effort that unlocks 80% of your power.
Because when you deeply KNOW that you have a choice, then EVERY CHOICE MATTERS.
AND, once you SEE the patterns, you can OWN YOUR POWER, CHOOSE differently and consciously.
When you drag your shadows into the light, you realize: Your “karmic loops” are just unhealed wounds masquerading as fate.
Questions to Ask Yourself
⚡️Are you replaying old karmic patterns thinking that you have a choice?
⚡️Or do you think that you have no choice at all?
⚡️What if you can recode your karmic patterns and choose consciously?
P.S. Hit reply or leave a comment below. I read every email.
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