"Can I Raise My Vibration Without All That Shadow Work?"

By Lori Lines
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The Inescapable Call of Shadow Work:
Exploring the Necessity of Shadow Integration

Who wants to walk in the shadows when you can bask in the sun? That is how some people view shadow work. It doesn’t help their perception that they associate shadow work with encountering bad, ugly, shameful aspects of themselves. When, in fact, the shadow self doesn’t have to be the unsightly, unwanted pieces of self that one would rather forget, if we willingly commit to the shadow integration process. With a healthy approach to shadow work, the shadow is better understood as parts of oneself that become recessed and hidden from our conscious experience. Because to truly bask in the sun means being fully exposed!
 
Why We Need Shadow Work
We journey from lifetime to lifetime to ascend to the 4th and 5th levels of consciousness. This is done by consciously choosing the path of spiritual growth to achieve higher awareness, consciousness, and vibration, along with more profound compassion and unconditional love for the self and others.
 
This requires we release limiting beliefs and emotional wounds, relinquish the victim role, respond to our triggers with healing instead of reacting, and move through the world with authenticity and personal integrity. This is all made possible through reconciliation with the shadow self, making it an integral part of the journey of ascension.

Only through acknowledging, accepting, and embracing the shadow self can we rediscover self-love, higher awareness, total presence in the present, and oneness with the collective and the Divine that are the stepping stones to ascension.
 
Oneness Through Integration
Oneness with the collective and the Universe starts with oneness within. Because if we are fragmented within ourselves, how can we resonate with the unity and harmony of ascension? When we have not reconciled with the shadow self, we view ourselves as a disjointed assembly of good and evil, shadow and light, loveable and unlovable, and so on. This holds us at odds with ourselves.
 
Once you begin the process of soul integration, you will realize that you are whole, lovable, and Divine in yourself. Only then can one stop judging people based on one’s own measure of good and evil or worthy and unworthy and start seeing others as whole, lovable, Divine beings. 

Shadow work is the process by which we overcome the conditioned perspective of good and bad, better and worse, us and them, and the like. As the soul integrates, so too does the collective, making shadow work an essential toll station on the road to ascension.

Unavoidable By Design
To those who ask, why can't I be happy and high-vibing without doing shadow work? One might say, “Just try and see!” You see, by Divine design, shadow work is an inescapable process. Of course, one can put it off and avoid it, but this would lead to a stagnant, painful life during which one would encounter the same heartaches, failures, losses, and wounds in perpetuity, never learning but always hurting.
 
The shadow will keep restlessly stirring, contributing to dysfunction, cultivating crises, and reacting instead of responding to triggers, which often only worsen things. One way or another, the shadow self is determined to make itself known and be acknowledged. It will continue to rise to the surface until it is integrated and healed in preparation for ascension.
 
Not until we acknowledge, accept, love, heal, and integrate the shadow self can we be authentically “happy and high-vibing.” Until then, one is destined to keep going in circles, making the same mistakes in different contexts, and meeting the same person in different personifications.
 
Therefore, shadow work may be avoidable, but it is inherently inescapable. To ascend, we must be complete, view others as whole, and achieve unity with the collective. This can only be accomplished when we stop running and commit to becoming integrated again. Because this isn’t a new state of being for you, it is a return to how your soul has been and will be for eternity.
 
Ascension Begins Where Polarity Ends
We’re conditioned from the beginning to exist in a polarized place, and we need to move out of this to integration to achieve ascension. In the spaces between you and them, shadow and light, enlightened and unenlightened, negativity such as limiting beliefs, egoic masks, derision, and “otherness” fester. Not until we understand and manifest the continuity of energy, soul, and love between everyone and everything can we elevate to a 5th-dimensional consciousness.

In the same way that avoiding shadow work is a self-perpetuating vicious cycle, soul integration begins a self-propelling process of increasing vibrations as you release who you are not and rise toward who you truly are. Understand that shadow work is not a deviation or a delay along the journey of ascension but a stepping stone. Just as soul integration elevates your consciousness and raises your vibration, reunifying with the collective is the natural progression of shadow work and another step up on the ascent toward enlightenment.
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Final Thoughts…
Shadow work will always seem daunting, perhaps unachievable, when we look at it from a 3rd-dimensional consciousness projecting itself into the 5D. Instead, try to look at shadow work with a 5th-dimensional consciousness looking back at themselves in the 3D (as best you can).  From this higher vantage point, shadow work seems like such a small effort for such an expansive state of being. What would you do to experience the greatest joy, freedom, and love you have ever known?
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“The awakening is the purpose. The awakening of the fact that, in essence, we are light, we are love...”  - Dolores Cannon

In love and truth,
​Lori Lines