I spent the week tucked away in the warmth of a beloved.

They have been through it. The absolute worst of it, in fact. Since before COVID, bad decision after bad decision resulting in harm primarily to themselves, with a blast radius I don’t wish for anyone. Ya Rab sutrak.

Sidebar: In case I’ve not mentioned this before – we don’t believe in the concept of “the devil made me do it.” In Islam, the devil merely makes suggestions and we either follow suit, or we don’t. The suggestions are known as wash-washa; the closest English translation is whisperings. With every additional bad decision for which we are entirely responsible, the protection continues to diminish and the suggestions to make worse decisions come through louder and clearer.The thinner the protection, the louder the wash-washa. Prayer and du3aa, charity and good deeds are ways to elevate protection from wash-washa.

The only way to stop it is as simple as you might guess it is. It is to: stop. The volume dial is immediately turned down, and the suggestions cannot be heard as clearly. Eventually, the wash-washa no longer has an ear into which it can settle. It becomes its own black hole with no one to hear it and act on it.

Right. Back to the subject matter. My friend’s healing can only be described as an absolute inner war, and it continues to be done through very deep shadow work. For those uninitiated, shadow work is known as a descent into the darkest parts of ourselves, the most harmful of our responses and the why of these responses. It is, in essence, a look into what we perceive to be the most shameful parts of ourselves that we have traditionally tried to hide and turn away from. The who of us we deny. Except that denial doesn’t erase a thing; it makes it loom and hover, doesn’t it. More eloquently, Carl Jung wrote The more you try to suppress the shadow, the more you expose it.

Like a game of whack a mole, really. Since everything is energy, and since energy simply transmutes and shifts, but doesn’t ever disappear, when you push down any part of you, something of it, if not worse, will pop up elsewhere. It’s inevitable.

Shadow work allows us to be at the reins, rather than beneath the hooves, trampled. The work is not to erase the shadow, but rather it is to reconcile it. It’s to recognize that it’s here to stay, and so it must be welcomed; we have to see it and sit with it, identify it, name it, transform and love it into more peaceful spaces. It’s to love the parts of ourselves of which we are most ashamed; the parts of ourselves we hide from others and sometimes from ourselves until we go searching. Until we are ready to see and be seen fully.

The work is to master our shadow, rather than be slave to it. As an example, take the subconscious shadow belief that one is not worthy of love, and then see how that belief plays out and maybe result in self-sabotage. Another example – consider how viscerally you might react to a thing which to someone else might not trigger such a reaction, and then ask yourself why that reaction is triggered. What are your body and mind trying to do?

Shadow work must be done in spaces of the rawest honesty, with the intention to heal these parts of ourselves so that they never again reach for the steering wheel. (Wow. That’s the third metaphor in as many paragraphs. Welcome, sleepy brain!)

This is not easy work, and for some it can be impossible. For personalities which cannot take responsibility for their choices, or for those who refuse to point at their own behaviours which contributed to and created the ecosystems in which they live, shadow work is simply too high a mountain to climb. I’ve seen spiritual lethargy kick in, turning people instead to numbing the self with substances.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that most people would rather remain unchanged than do the work needed, in service of themselves and of creating a safer world around them where their blast radius is one of love, not harm.

I came face to face with my shadow this year, more than ever before. She is terrified of being taken advantage of, terrified of being betrayed – made a fool of. She also cuts and runs, refusing to have critical conversations. Judge, jury and executioner the minute she feels betrayed and harmed. She turns the rest of me into a machete, cutting off individuals entirely without hesitation and never looking back. She thinks this is self-preservation, but I now understand that this war machine thinking she is protecting me, is simply a very terrified little girl trying to keep herself safe. Ultimately, and without understanding it until this year, it is in fact self-sabotage.

She is this violent because I don’t harm people in the ways against which she wages war. Because I try to put so much safety into the world that the softest littlest war mongering part of me is practically incapable of handling or even facing the opposite in someone she trusted.

I have acted from my shadow self twice in my life, only. Both times, Allah has given me enough grace to recover and ensure that I immediately pivoted back to my core, so that no real harm came to anyone or to myself.

Twice in 50 years may not seem too bad. But I should have never even allowed this to happen more than once. So shadow work was done this year, to ensure there is no third time ever again ya Allah.

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Working through my beloved’s shadow and my own, we kept circling back to the same truths for both of us. I think, maybe, just perhaps, they could be universal, and I’ve written them on a piece of paper which I now carry with me everywhere I go. Maybe they can be of service to others, especially when you take each of the following and direct them at both your relationship with yourself as well as your relationships with others.

1. If we can’t centre ourselves in love, can’t move from a place rooted in love, then wait until we can.

2. Always and only lead with compassion and kindness. Even in our darkest trauma, there is always the option for greater compassion, and it can be incremental. Pushing ourselves in that direction allows the Universe to work with us.

3. A right love, and loving someone right means demanding better of ourselves and ensuring we meet a higher standard in service of this love.

I cared enough about something this year that I had to negotiate the war machine that came out to safeguard the softest part of me – the little girl inside most wounded, and in whose defence my shadow self has come to the fore twice. My choice was to either sit with my shadow or risk never looking myself squarely in the mirror ever again.

I really and truly cannot express enough how grateful I am to myself. How thankful I am that I have enough love for myself to demand I am better for Maha, and so subsequently for all others.

I pray that Allah safeguard the catalyst and protect them; that He provides suttor for their own choices so that they too sit with their shadow self, love and care for it, make friends with it so that they take care of it gently and keep it under control, rather than allowing that part of themselves to run their show possibly into the ground demanding a far greater time for recovery than otherwise. InshAllah.

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