The whole area of shadow work has been coming up alot lately. Ken Wilber refers to this in his book, “Integral Spirituality” and Debbie Ford wrote an excellent book, “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers” a few years ago. More recently Caroline Myss has written “Entering the Castle: An Inner Path To God And Your Soul”, which is a more religiously oriented book of shadow and soul work.
Ken Wilber makes the point that until we all do our “shadow work” we are half done, or halfway up the mountain. He also rightly notes that this is one of the great contributions that western psychology has made to the realm of spiritual evolution.
The metaphor that is often used in doing this work, is that of a castle and exploring all the rooms, jewels and mysteries of one’s internal castle.  In our internal castle, those rooms or parts of ourselves that we have disgarded or disclaimed are kept in locked rooms. Only the good parts are acknowledged and portrayed to the external world.
What is kept in the locked rooms is often projected onto other people, so the disowned parts of ourselves becomes what bugs us about others. Debbie Ford says (page 40 “The Dark Side of the Light Chasers” ) “Projection is a fascinating phenomenon they failed to teach most of us about in school. It is an involuntary transfer of our own unconscious behavior onto others, so it appears to us that these qualities actually exist in the other people. When we have anxiety about our emotions or unacceptable parts of our personalities, we attribute these qualitites – as a defense mechanism – to external objects and other people”. This is pretty powerful!
So, what bugs you about others? Could it be that this is actually a disowned part of yourself? Hmmm, lots of potential for pondering here!
namaste,
Zoey
Zoey Ryan
coach . catalyst . shakti sage
life & business coach for women