THE SHADOW AND YOUR POTENTIAL - On your marks...

To engage in the journey that takes us from living OUTSIDE of ourselves to processing the world inside ourselves means bringing light to our shadow.

Your shadow aspects are primarily rooted in fear patterns that have more control over your behaviour than does your conscious mind. This limits your ability to make choices in which you are aware of your motivation.
Your shadow self includes emotional and psychological patterns that come from repressed feelings that you do not wish to deal with consciously for fear of the consequences. For example, rather than face the fact that your partner is having an affair or your child is using drugs, you may repress those strong, accurate instincts – possibly with disastrous results. And you may become short-tempered, angry and depressed without realizing why.

Your shadow also contains the secret reasons why you would sabotage the opportunities that come your way. People often say they have a fear of success. When asked to explain where that fear comes from, many draw a blank. They have no idea why they have that fear, they just do. Having an unknown force CONTROLLING so much of the creative expression of our lives is a shadow. Eventually we have to confront each of our shadow aspects. (Sometimes over many many lifetimes)

Your highest potential, then, is that part of you - that is not limited in its expression by the fears of the physical world and the business of living. It is what you actualise when you are willing to confront your shadow, openly acknowledge the reality of its presence within you, and then take steps to deal with it. To rely on you inner resources and to follow your inner guidance before all else is to express your HIGHEST POTENTIAL at all times. It shows you who you would be if you could live constantly within the knowledge that genuine power exists inside the self and never outside of it.

Confronting your shadow requires that you STRIKE OUT ON YOUR OWN. This isn’t to say that you can't receive help from friends or a therapist, but you will have to make choices that EXCLUDE the collective needs of your family, tribe, or group, and separate yourself from them. If you do decide to follow an inner call and its unavoidable psychic ritual of separation, you have to withdraw your spirit from the magnetic field created by the collective power of your group’s will so that you can organize your own energy, much as a mystic or seer might withdraw to hear divine promptings.
During your separation you will have to face the most narcissistic aspects of your ego, such as the Shadow CHILD, who is concerned only with its own well-being and will try to scare you back into the fold.