Episode 237 - Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path

In this episode we talk about the shadow and how important it is to the spiritual path. Have you ever wondered how spiritual leaders and gurus who claim to reach high levels of consciousness can get caught up in sexual or financial scandals, or just generally misbehave in relationship with their followers? Or how independent adults can give up their own authority and give blind faith to someone else? In this episode we’ll learn about that and more. Listen to the end to learn about the separate lines of development and how we have shadow material stuck in each chakra. This is very important spiritual work!

Guest bio: Connie Zweig is a retired psychotherapist, former executive editor at Jeremy P Tarcher Publishing, former columnist for Esquire magazine and contributor to the LA times. She has been on a spiritual path, practicing and teaching meditation for more than fifty years - exploring the light and dark side of contemporary spirituality. Her award-winning book, The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul, extends her work on the Shadow into midlife and beyond and explores aging as a spiritual practice. She is a wife, stepmother, and grandmother. In all these roles, she practices the shift from role to soul. Connie’s latest book is Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path – The Dance of Darkness and Light in Our Search for Awakening. Some of the topics we discuss are:

• Our focus on the light and not the dark
• Meditation doesn’t solve our emotional problems, prayer doesn’t resolve our trauma, affirmations don’t bring us relief or awakening
• We don’t want to give up the practices but we want to expand to include the full spectrum of life
• We can’t “grow up” with spiritual practices only
• Meditation can help prepare us to meet our shadow
• If I recognize my shadow characters I can have a moment where I can make another choice – requires self-reflection and moral development
• Narrow cultural identities that are so popular today miss the spiritual identity
• Most of humanity is tribal, not yet individuated out of the group
• There are separate lines of development in us – emotional, spiritual, moral, cognitive
• There is shadow material stuck in every chakra