One of the most confusing parts about doing one's inner work is understanding what inner work actually is. To clear up the confusion, Inner Work Made Simple developed the below definition, which can also be found in our 'Inner Work 101' blog article.

'Inner work' is the regular activity the evolving human must engage in, whereby they observe, examine, and/or neutralize, the mundane occurrences and interactions in their lives, which may be impacting their ability to access, or harness, their core self.

Per the above definition, inner work has the potential to be applied across all aspects of life including the bad, and the good. Yet, whenever the conversation turns to doing one's inner work, the leading topic tends to be about doing shadow work. If humans were only shadow-based beings then perhaps it would make sense that shadow work would be their only focus when it comes to doing one's inner work. But humans are, thankfully, multi-faceted and it behooves one to incorporate all facets of themselves into their inner work. Doing this enables one to maintain a more balanced approach to their self-healing.

So, then if inner work actually encompasses shadow work alongside other aspects, what exactly is shadow work that makes it a subset of, rather than equivalent to, inner work?

'Shadow work' is the search and recovery of those aspects of ourselves which we have disregarded, disassociated from, or in any other manner discarded, with the goal to reincorporate those aspects back into ourselves with love.

Therefore, our shadow work acts as a collector of sorts, of all that we have lost about ourselves, and then our inner work helps us to bring those previously lost aspects back into alignment with our core selves.

People tend to think that shadow work is only supposed to entail looking at those dark, negative aspects of ourselves, but shadow work also includes going back to retrieve those good aspects of ourselves, that we may have set aside because either we, or the world, were not ready to receive or fully experience those aspects.

For example, there are a lot of people who left behind their gregarious nature back in their childhood because the adults around them preferred that they remained quiet. But a naturally gregarious person is the best version of themselves when they are able to share themselves with the world in their full gregarious nature. When said people do their shadow work, they would venture to go back to where they had to set aside their gregarious nature to reincorporate it back into their core selves, so they can live in their full truth.

When the naturally gregarious person has set that part of themselves to the side, they no longer function with the energy that their gregarious nature contained. Not only does their personality shift, but what would have been their full energetic contribution to the world gets truncated by the value of the gregarious nature portion of that once whole person.

So, if the gregarious nature was 30% of that person's full nature, then they will walk the rest of their life at only 70% of who they truly are. That means the world only gets 70% of what that person came here to contribute. If we extrapolate this across to the countless others who are only operating at a fraction of themselves, it is no wonder why over time we see the quality of the world's outputs diminish. If less and less of us gets put into what we create, then what we create holds an energetic value that is also diminished.

Eventually, what would be expected is that what gets created holds almost no value at all. It's like the light bulb with the dimmer switch. If you turn the knob such that less and less current is allowed to flow through to light the bulb, then the bulb's light grows dimmer and dimmer, until the light fully goes out and gets completely dark. That is the danger in continuously setting aside more and more of ourselves, for whatever reason; eventually, we have no more energy that we are giving to what we create and, therefore, what we create will go completely dark.

Just this scenario alone makes doing one's shadow work an extremely important part of their inner work regimen, and why we must not Interchange the two concepts. Due diligence is needed for all aspects of our inner work and if we have a clear understanding of what each aspect is, then we will assure that we do a complete job of doing our inner work.

In summary, though it plays an important part in a holistic inner work regimen, shadow work is but a subsegment of the multitude of facets that comprise the complex duty of doing one's inner work. At Inner Work Made Simple, we have sought to do just that - help to simplify the processes by which one engages in their inner work. We will also eventually be presenting more on the facets of inner work that have not be widely educated on. Feel free to learn more, and keep up with us, at our website at www.InnerWorkMadeSimple.com.