My Anima and my Shadow

 

Edit:  

Uhg, this is so confusing.  I'm sorry I bounce around concepts and in my writing here... I am not a psycholgist or mental health professional.  This blog is a safe place for me to post my thoughts and my feelings, and hopefully someone will benefit...

I've awakened from nightmares once again.  I wake up with the song in my head, "Love me like you do" and I pay attention to the words.  I've learned that the outside world itself is messaging me through various synchronicities, urging me onwards.  I know, as I have learned to know, that these things are messages from someone close to me as of late:  My own Anima.

I'm taking a course from the school UMS on working with the Shadow.

"Think shadow = negative things you reject in others.  Anima = positive things you admire in others."

These two entities bubble up and pour out into our waking consciousness whether for good or for ill, they will not stop.  They must be worked with if there is ever going to be any change in the conscious person and in what they attract, in what they have to deal with, in what they want, in what they hate, and I have no idea what else but the point is they are POWERFUL entities within us and largely shape our reality in a metaphyscial context as well.

The shadow, as I understand him ("He, in males") is the wounded inner child, the emasculated man, the powerless adult... he who is wounded by life, by others, by society.  That's my interpretation so far.

The anima is the other half of me ("She," if you're a man), but below my consiousness.  That is how I understand them.

Edit:

My post is oversimplified and not accurate.  But I haven't done enough reading and understanding these concepts to completely grasp these two yet.  I think I'm working with my shadow and my anima at the same time.

I've opened Pandor's Box, and the only object, the only thing I am left with, as what happened with Pandora, is "Hope".

Yeah, the dreams have been rough.  That's an understatement. 

 

Edit:  I appear to working with the shadow, but am also beginning a conscious productive relationship in working with my anima at the same time.

The shadow is formed by repressing or pushing out unacceptable personality traits from the conscious ego and persona. This can include things like anger, jealousy, envy, or even creative impulses that are not aligned with societal norms.

Unconscious Content:
The shadow operates in the unconscious mind, often manifesting in dreams, fantasies, and even our interactions with others.

Personal and Collective:
Jung's concept of the shadow includes both a personal and a collective aspect. The personal shadow is the individual's repressed qualities, while the collective shadow encompasses societal values and beliefs that are repressed or ignored.

Potential for Integration:
The shadow can also be seen as a potential for growth and self-understanding. Integrating the shadow involves acknowledging and accepting these repressed aspects, allowing them to be part of a more whole and integrated self.

Edit:

"What is the meaning of anima?

soul

Jung defines anima with its Latin derivation, meaning "soul". Jung associates anima with Aphrodite, Selene, Persephone, Hecate, Minerva, and Pandora. Jung began using the term in the early 1920s to describe the inner feminine side of men. ["A]nima is the archetype of life itself,

Jung defines anima with its Latin derivation, meaning "soul". Jung associates anima with Aphrodite, Selene, Persephone, Hecate, Minerva, and Pandora. Jung began using the term in the early 1920s to describe the inner feminine side of men."

"When a man’s Anima is not integrated, it wreaks havoc in his life. The Anima possessed man is a spineless wimp who does not know when or how to take action in the world. He is moody and sulky and throws tantrums like a toddler. Although very passive, he totally overreacts to slights and confrontations. He is not appropriate in his actions, either he is paralysed and can’t find the energy to do what needs to be done, or he jumps into action when he should be thinking about it first. He is usually in a relationship with an Animus hound who knows it all and makes all the decisions in the relationship."

She.  She's in every man, has within him a feminine archetype which a bridge between the conscious and the subsonsious mind.  Mine isn't without her humor.  I dreamed of a woman who raised my arms one by one, with me completely naked, and sniffed my armpits, one by one.  "Do you have any deodorant?"  She asked playfully.  And I awoke.  Heh.  Maybe it was a succubus or another one of the spirits in my circle.  I don't know:  I'm not Jung and I don't really know what I'm doing right now.  AlI I know is that now I am stripped bare... yet...

...There's more of me now.

I have a sense of being more aware, of feeling less of the sting from past trauma.  I can remember my past, horrible times that have shaped me as if it were yesterday, yet the sting of it is nowhere to be found.  I see these things through a sense of detachment which I was unable to do before.

I'm not saying this to mean that I have mastered shadow work.  I know that it takes a long time, that it's a long process.  I've only scratched the surface but it is working.

I know that she is being gentle with me.  I know that the dreams could hurt worse than they already do. 

She is being kind and gentle with them to a degree.  They are enough to remind me of what is broken, of what I need to address.  It's still necessary for me to face what I am hiding from.  From what I have to remember since I have blocked so many of these terrible wounds out of my waking conscious experience in order to survive. 

She is showing me in what order of what and when I must face it. 

Every morning I communicate with my Anima.  It's one sided.  I let her know that I'm trying.  I let her know that I want us to be one.  Integrated.  I want to know who I really am...  that I want us to heal.

Amongst the pain, the sorrow, the little boy who wants to run away, I feel her.  She IS gentle.  The dreams, largly, are not really gentle but as I have said they could be much worse.  It hurts.  She is not the cause of the pain directly, not on purpose:  They are to show me what it is next that we must face together.  There is an emerging, of getting closer together.  Becoming one and in the process healing our wounded soul.  She's trying to reproduce the trauma I need to bring to light and that I am so taumatized that I can only see it when she shows me, for us to work through in revealing nightmares.  Through these dreams I am stripped bare.  I am not who I thought I was.  I was walking, was a walking band aid, not the self that I was meant to be.  

Yes, it's painful.  Understatement of my life...

Yet, I feel more as I am awake little by little.  I feel more whole.  Just a bit.  The "process", that strange mechanical word, lies.  I'm awakening, becoming more, both of us are working together.  I have nothing to compare it to:  It must be experienced.  

I am also feeling more "love" all around.  A lot more...

I'm happier in my waking state.  I can FEEL again.  Without living FROM my trauma.  I am no longer chained to it.  It's still early:  It's only been a week or so since I started this process... but it's bearing some fruit already.  I know I have a long way to go and have just scratched the surface.

My relationships are beginning to bloom.  Both spiritually, mentally, physically.

My relationship to the spirits around me is becoming thicker, more of substance, more in emotional intimacy.

I've opened Pandor's Box... I chased my Anima all this time to finally find her.  We're in this together now.  She is now the teacher who has come to heal me and show me what is wounded within her.  Within "us".

I know this blog has been a strange cocktail of personal thoughts related to the occult, to the happenings of my relationships with Succubi.  And a lot of other things.  It's strange... all of this seems to have culminated into this.

I feel as if they, the spirits, succubi, the Divine, knew all along what I needed to do for myself.  To fix that which was broken.  They gave me space to do so.  And it's taken so long, so long.  

I have suffered.  Friends, through the pain, through the agony, everyone can do this for themselves.

It's not easy.  It hurts.

Ever morning as I awaken I imagine myself hugging my Anima as a human woman, hand in hand... tightly, lovingly, to let her know that I am here.  I am trying.  I kiss her forehead.  I kiss her hands.  I project Reiki around us as a bubble of pure loving energy.  I imagine the bubble of energy pushing out all  the negativity that has arisen.  I clean myself with that energy.  I clean us with it.

Afterwards I light a stick of love incense as a gift to "us" for what we are going through together.

This is powerful stuff, my friends.

I love you all,

Rafe

P.S.  This stuff strips you bare down to the bone and it HURTS.

You may need counseling to help you work through these things if you decide to find your own Anima, to become one with her.  I am in no way an expert on any of this, I'm just a traveller on this Earth who likes to share things that he probably shouldn't... but to be honest it helps me and that's why I do it, that's why I write the blog.  Well, that and I hope that in some small way I touch someone's heart.  That I am useful:  That I have helped in some small way in some capacity.

If you need special help from a professional counselor who is actually trained to help people through all of this kind of thing by all means find them.  Get that special help... getting help is strength, not weakness. 

My Anima in all Her glory

https://appliedjung.com/the-archetypes-of-the-anima-and-animus/