Are you the Bad Guy? {shadow work}

We think that at some point on this spiritual path, we will reach a level of self-awareness at which we are no longer surprised by the ways in which our suppressed needs roar up through the shadows of our consciousness. We should no longer be surprised how old childhood wounds make us act like a total dick as adults. 

We seem to think that the essence of spiritual growth is understanding where we were wronged or what we are not seeing in order to fix it.

This Saturn Retrograde – karma season – is telling us something different. Karma was never about figuring out who is the bad guy or who is the good guy. Human existence is too complex to fit into these two categories. 

This season is about understanding the nuances of how pain makes us become the villain. In every story the villain is the character in the most pain. Their origin story tells how they abandoned their own ethics and goodness to eradicate the pain that broke their hearts. 

The villain has to remove themselves far enough from anything that reminds them of their pain so it will stop – so they abandon their beliefs and ethics. That’s why people do bad things, not because they desire to destroy. Those are only a very small number of people. 

All of us become the villain in someone else’s story at some point. But we are so afraid to be seen as the bad guy, of being rejected, that we tell ourselves how we are good while hurting other people. It’s the crusade argument. 

That’s why it takes extraordinary bravery to look into your own darkness and not disown the monsters in you that stare back. It requires enough capacity and love to look at the monster in the mirror and say: I understand why you are hurting. The answers to our questions are always in the darkness. 

I think that’s what’s being asked of us right now. Not to pass judgement on whether you are good or bad, but to ask yourself whether you have enough capacity to look at these vile monsters and demons inside you and recognise that they have your name. 

The question that is the doorway to get us there is: 

If you stopped being the person everyone expects you to be, what part of yourself — or what truth — would you no longer be able to hide?