As I took my participants through an online Shadow-work course, I realised that most people were unaware that a narcissist was the shadow of an empath, and vice versa. So, I thought that an article was needed.
In case you’re unaware of the term, an ‘Empath‘ is a person who is highly aware of other people’s feelings, to the point of often confusing the emotions with their own feelings, and at times even picking up symptoms and illnesses from other people. While some take a balanced view, there has been a tendency in many articles to glorify empaths, whereas really it is just a term. It does not make you special, and in my experience people most commonly become empaths as a response to trauma during early childhood, and it is possible to heal and balance this aspect.
Empaths usually have a pattern of attracting narcissists especially in intimate relationships, moving from one kind of abuse to another. It may seem like empaths and narcissists are extremely different, but in reality they are two sides of the same coin.
Yes, empaths pick up emotions, but this isn’t as big a deal as it is made out to be. The feelings we pick up do not have to affect us at all.
First – how do we determine whether what we are feeling is our own emotions or someone else’s? Basically anything and everything that happens within YOU is yours. For instance, there’s a wide variety of crime that you read about, but only specific ones bother you. Why? We see all kinds of wrong-doing around us, but only specific ones bother us. Why? Because these trigger memories. Unresolved memories release pain into our systems when we are faced with similar instances.
Empaths merely suffer more because they get triggered more easily, not because they pick up other people’s feelings. If you resolve your issues, you just watch the feelings come and go, it doesn’t bother you.
Empaths attract narcissists because they have a desperate need to focus on something other than themselves- because they like fixing others as a way of avoiding their own core issues. This works very well with narcissists because they like to be the focus of all attention, and are happy to take all the energy that empaths want to give. When the empaths are ’empty’, the narcissist will usually leave.
One of the questions that came up in my 21 Days of Shadow Work journey was, “What would be the difference between caring about ourselves first and being selfish?”
Actually we’re being selfish when we’re not caring about ourselves, and not being honest.
For example if someone invited you to their wedding and you resent them, or are really not in the mood to go, but you go anyway- are you adding positivity or negativity to their environment? Are you being honest when you are pretending to enjoy yourself?
If someone asks you if they can drop in and you really aren’t in the space for this, you need time alone, and when they come you just drag and push yourself through the motions, have you been generous or just a plain liar?
If you value a relationship with someone, you’ll feel free to tell them how you feel. And if they value the relationship, they’ll value your honesty. But if you’re in transactional relationships, then it is a business deal, your well-being is of no importance and anything you do in your own interest is ‘selfish’ because it is not serving the other person.
Transactional relationships are the norm now a days, unfortunately. You can decide whether you want to fill your life with them – some do choose this, or you can decide whether you’re more interested in open, honest relationships based on love and care.
I had a long conversation with a dear cousin as he navigates through the 21 day Contemplation journey. He was happy to let me share this, even his name but I just felt like removing that any way.
When I read the chat out to a friend, she could relate to so much of it, and requested me to put this up in a blog post in case it helps other people. So here goes.
His first message is a response to a question about whether he could love himself as he was.
I’ve been on the spiritual pathway nearly all my life. And if there’s one thing the pathway shows you, it is the beauty of existence. So, this article has been a very hard one to write, but probably the message of it an even harder one to learn, it took me decades.
There are so many layers to existence, and we tend to confuse them. On one level, everything is one, and there is no good and bad. Everything is part of the same whole. And if this is where you’re at – if this is your true reality and you respond to pain the exact same way you react to pleasure, you can stop reading right here.
There is no good and bad, I do believe this, on some level I experience it too. But we also do live in a dual world. Imagine you like apples. Just imagine the joy of biting into a fresh, juicy, crunchy apple. If you now started to believe that all apples are the same, they are equally glorious, and equally enjoyable, would that be true? Would you treat a fresh apple and a rotten apple the same? Why then do we try to do this with people?
If ‘good’ people exist, then ‘bad’ people exist too. If good intentions exist, then bad intentions exist too. If people reach out and help each other, people also go out of their way to hurt others. Both sides exist – partially in the same person as parts of one personality, but also outside, there are people who will go out of their way to try not to hurt others, hurting themselves in the process. And there ARE people who will do anything for selfish gains, even if it meant others would get hurt. And there are also people who will hurt others simply for the fun of it. Undoubtedly, all of us hurt other people. But some feel bad about hurting others, while others – if they feel bad at all, feel bad because it made them look bad, or feel like a bad person.
And not only did it take me many decades to come to terms with it, but when I finally did, I realised that I had always known, deep inside. I’ve been called naive, the sort of person who only saw the good in people, I firmly believed that everyone was good deep inside and what made them ‘bad’ was the trauma they went through. It is an easy trap to fall into when you do a lot of self-work and see the wounds behind your own misdeeds.
But no, it is not trauma that separates the good and the bad. There are people who have been through the worst hell and yet emerge like butterflies, bringing joy to the world; their blood if anything, stains their wings and adds to their beauty. And there are people who use their pain as an excuse to hurt other people. They exist. And until we acknowledge that, we have no way of protecting ourselves against them.
When I woke up one day to the truth of this, I realised that I had always known, deep down, always identified the people who were comfortable hurting people and carried no remorse for this, but I let them in anyway, because I judged myself for seeing what I saw in them. ‘There are no bad people, it’s just their pain‘. No. It’s not. We feel like less spiritual people if we simply call out evil for what it is, but the real spiritual approach would be to see it for what it is, without judging or hating it. Refusing to acknowledge their existence is blindness.
What I didn’t expect was that this reflection allowed me to trust more in people who genuinely cared about me. Ignoring our gut feeling about people works against us in both ways – we trust people we shouldn’t trust, and we don’t trust enough the people we should. Ultimately in relationships, there is always scope for being wounded, but when we open our eyes, we can steer away from those who approach with negative intentions.
Of course, straight away jumping into the ‘I am a good person’ belief is also silly. Maybe what will help is taking a deep, sincere look at our own feelings and coming to terms with what lies inside. If we judge the bad behaviors or people, then we cannot identify those within ourselves and heal or transmute them either. We all have certain percentages of everything, but also we all do fit into categories too.
So, How do we deal with this then?
OK, so assuming you agree, and then proceed to run into someone who is clearly comfortable hurting other people, I believe the seeing of it itself allows us to create distance, the rest often happens on its own.
Generally speaking, I’ve learned that it is risky to associate with them, because many times they can make themselves extremely useful (or trigger us in other ways where we are drawn to win their approval to reinforce our identity), so the temptation of taking their help can over-power our warning bells, we tend to push that aside thinking ‘oh but they’re nice to me’. It’s a trap.
Practicing consciously choosing our emotional safety above all else really helps over time, to prioritize people in our lives that sincerely contribute to our well-being.
Sometimes the spiritual pathway can become one of beauty, glory and the mystical…. and nothing else. The unpleasant – and critical aspect of self-work is identifying and integrating those parts of ourselves which we don’t want to acknowledge or admit – even to ourselves.
What is this Shadow?
Growing up, certain aspects of our personality were shamed or beaten into hiding. These can be positive or negative qualities, but somewhere, subconsciously we learned that if we were to express these parts of ourselves, we will not be loved, accepted or cared for. Over time we judge these aspects in ourselves and others too, and depending on whether these are positive or negative qualities, either we come to worship these aspects in others, or despise and look down upon them.
In either case, these are abandoned aspects of ourselves, and the hardest to identify and re-integrate since we are blind to these sides of us.
Can my Shadow Hurt Me?
It always does. The aspects of you which are suppressed are always trying to come to the surface and grab your attention because deep down, you want to be whole and want to be loved for exactly who you are, warts and all.
So the shadow shows up in various ways. Either it can manifest as irrational, abusive behaviour on your part as you try to control life and situations so that your shadow remains hidden, it can manifest as addictions if this goes too far, and it also manifests as repetitive patterns in our life, where we attract over and over people who reflect our hidden aspects.
For example a person who ‘never gets angry’ might repeatedly attract friends or lovers with anger problems – here anger is the shadow and the person would need to get in touch with her own anger in order for this to heal and stop. Someone who keeps getting rejected and abandoned by loved ones over and over would need to delve deep within and face their own tendency to reject others on an emotional or energetic level.
Will I become ‘bad’ if I embrace my shadow?
One of the most common fears that come up in shadow work is ‘will I be comfortable with being a bad person?’. If I embrace my anger, will I be comfortable with shouting at people? If I embrace my desire to hurt people, will I be comfortable hurting others?
No, on the contrary, shadow work brings our darkness into the light and these tendencies lose their grip over us. When we work on ourselves properly and integrate these aspects, we can transmute them into strength and learn to channelise these aspects so that they work in our favour rather than against us.
Is it hard?
If you’ve never done shadow work before, it can certainly seem hard in the beginning. After all, most people don’t enjoy finding out that they’re two-faced, judgmental, mean, or other horrible things. Over time however, we start to see the benefit of bringing these aspects into our awareness and this work becomes exciting rather than scary because we are fully aware of the light this brings into our lives.
What do I gain through Shadow Work?
Healing and embracing our shadow shifts a lot of things around in our lives. For starters, relationships improve because healing the shadow lifts the veil from over our eyes and we can communicate more clearly and see and hear them for what they are in that moment instead of perceiving them through the filters of our past experiences. This clarity of perception also improves creativity and problem resolution skills. The continuous inner struggle to keep the shadow hidden takes up a lot of our energy, so dropping that leads to better energy and health as well.
How Do I Begin?
The most essential requirement for great inner work is the capacity to see non-judgmentally. For this I strongly recommend starting with Deep Listening.
Once we are able to see more clearly, we start slowly becoming more and more aware of our own inner motivations behind actions or inaction. This awareness slowly starts to shift the direction of our lives.
As we go deeper, we can start using the world as a mirror. We start realising that every single thing that upsets us about the world is nothing but a reflection of our own shadow. This however, is difficult for a beginner as the idea simply sounds ridiculous because one’s vision is still blurred and foggy. Once we’re at the point where this actually makes sense on a deep, fundamental level, then the work becomes much faster and easier.
This past year has been interesting. I reached a point where I felt like I didn’t have a clue what love was. After having been in a few long term relationships, that was just strange, but I felt like I didn’t have a clue. And I soon discovered that some of the most remarkable, open hearted women in my life were feeling the same way. ‘What is love?’ we kept asking each other, only able to rest in the comfort that it was OK to not know, and we weren’t alone in having all our ideas of love shattered.
And I know it is a definition that keeps changing, evolving. But it has been a journey of great discovery and I put it here hoping that it can help someone else in the world find deeper love too.
There is SO much we confuse love with. We confuse addiction with love, we confuse obligation or responsibility with love, we confuse financial security or sexual attraction with love, we confuse longevity (in relationships) with love, we confuse drama with love. And most importantly, we confuse relationships with love. Katherine Woodward Thomas lovingly said one of the most profound statements to have ever fallen on my ears –
Love is unconditional. Relationships are not.
One thing I do know about LOVE is that it is freeing, liberating and expansive. When you love someone, their presence – even if you speak once in a few years, makes you a better version of yourself. In powerful relationships this is even more obvious. Your health improves around them, you feel emotionally healthier, and you might work better, think better, live better. So that’s a big one to look for – after getting into a relationship, or around a certain person, are you a better version of yourself? Failing health, gaining/ losing weight in a bad way, or losing focus in work are all signs that something is amiss.
The second thing I’ve noticed is that in loving relationships, giving is effortless. I’ve never heard statements like ‘I do so much for you’ in loving relationships. You naturally want to do things for the other person – because doing those things make you happy. So even when you get nothing in return, it doesn’t hurt at all, since you already got the return on your ‘investment’ in the joy of doing what you did.
This is not an idealistic statement – I’ve very much seen it in action in my own as well as many other lives. Yes, sometimes there can be phases where responsibilities are extreme and the sharing of burden is not equal, creating anger and fighting, but it is still not going to create a feeling of not getting enough in return.
Love vs Abuse
It has taken me many, many years to learn that when there is love, you know.
SO many of us get into relationships where there’s attraction but no love, and then we spend months, sometimes years, stuck in relationships where nothing we do is ever enough. It’s a couple where every fight is about ‘I do this and this for you, and you do nothing for me’, it is years of trying to meet the expectations of the other person, trying to be good enough for them, trying to make them happy.
When the real problem has always been, you’ve been seeking proof of love because you know deep inside that there is none. You can go years without any proof sometimes, but when there is love, you know. You can be hurt by a person, you can be betrayed, you can be hated for a while, but when there is love, you just know.
I know from experience that there are very few things more devastating than realising that a relationship – especially a long term one, is loveless. But it is an understanding that is worth inculcating, because it allows you the space to open up to really loving, and to really being loved.
I find it fascinating, because where there is love, there can sometimes be cognitive dissonance along the lines of – ‘he clearly doesn’t love me, or he would have done this or that’ and it is confusing because you still feel loved even though you don’t see proof. In abusive relationships you’re confused and lost at why the other person – as they often claim – does so much for you and yet it is never enough.
The price to pay for a loving relationship is never too high, and you’d gladly go through all the pain for them all over again if you need to. Abusive relationships tire you out, being in the relationship overall is painful (the frequency of the ‘highs’ reduces over time) and it slowly sucks the life out of you, leaving lesser and lesser energy for other areas of your life. It’s a constant struggle, and you cannot figure out what you need to do more in order to make the relationship fulfilling.
Love vs Addiction
What IS love? To me it is this underlying thing that makes pain in a relationship worthwhile. It’s a little different from addiction though, where people confuse relief, or the high (between cycles of abuse) as love or bliss. There can be layers and layers of damaging patterns that need to be healed before people can rest in truly loving, so even when there is love, the journey is not necessarily easy.
There’s a powerful connect between two people even in addiction though and this can easily be confused with love, because this kind of ‘love’ is very blinding, since people use addictions – in relationships as well as in life – to essentially run away from their unpleasant inner reality. The other person through the pain they expose you to, helps you distract yourself from this unpleasant inner reality, which is why the addiction is so great.
A telling difference would be that in addiction, one allows for persistent violation to happen and both people are not rooted in their personal power. In love, there is no waiting for the other person to change, you love them as they are.
Love Vs. Relationships
Love enriches, regardless of the direction the relationship itself takes, because love just is. Relationships are expectation. In the total absence of expectation, like in platonic relationships, love can be a lot more free sometimes. The most powerful experience in my own life was when a friend looked deeply into my eyes as we said goodbye, with so much love that I cried the whole way to the airport and wrote a poem while still weeping.
One can have life long, love-less relationships – most people do, and one can learn to co-exist without much distress. One can be stuck in abusive, love-less relationships. One can have long-lasting, deeply loving relationships, and one can also have short-term deeply loving relationships that cannot last for a variety of practical or emotional reasons. Ultimately the harmony of a relationship depends on the maturity of both people. The depth of it depends on the love. The longevity is a matter of fate, and in case of unhappy relationships, possibly a lack of courage.
The Foundation
While love itself can be there, underlying the external drama in a relationship, to be able to co-exist peacefully in a loving relationship, one needs the foundation of powerful self-love. Learning to listen deeply, learning to self-soothe, stand in our own power and draw healthy boundaries, all form the foundation for a strong, balanced relationship. When this combines with a deep love for each other, it then becomes very powerful and empowers both people.
Love is Quiet
Except for a few highs in a romantic relationship, love is mostly quiet, almost like a substratum lying beneath the surface of our emotions. Without drama, the highs and lows disappear and with drama, this love can remain hidden. This can also cause people to walk away from actually loving relationships and into abusive ones because abuse offers a lot more excitement.
Love Goes Both Ways
Now, this is admittedly arguable and I speak from my own experience here. However, I am yet to come across one-sided love. If it is one-sided, it is usually not love at all. It can be lust, it can be addiction, it can be a lot of things. But not love.
People can also sometimes choose other things over love, since sometimes patterns of addiction and abuse can be too heavy for a person to actually break free and choose love over fear, but the love is still, undeniably there. There may be a lack of commitment, interest or acknowledgement, but the love will still be there, underneath everything.
So if you’re in a relationship thinking ‘wow, I never actually felt loved’… look carefully. Chances are that you never loved, either. It’s a hard one to digest, but it also sets you free. Some connections just are.
One of my students over time, kept asking for recommendations on what to read or watch and finally compiled a list of everything on my request. It’s not just spiritual stuff, since I’d also share anything I enjoyed, or in case of books, a couple which I hadn’t read but came highly recommended. So in case you’ve been wondering what I like to read or watch, here’s a list of stuff I enjoy, not listed in any particular order.
Books:
Spiritual Fiction/ Romance Chocolat- Joanne Harris Shantaram – Gregory Davis Roberts (not a traditionally spiritual book, this is fiction but so many powerful underlying lessons) Whip of the Wild god- Mira Prabhu (this is for you if you love Shiva) The Alchemist – Paulo Coelho The Witch of Portobello – Paulo Coelho Brida – Paulo Coelho The Forty Rules of Love- Elif Shafaq
Fiction Before We Visit the Goddess – Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (a magical book that takes you through 3 generations) Where the Crawdads Sing – Delia Owens (I lived in this book for the 3 days I read it. Real world felt like fiction) The Illicit Happiness of Other People – Manu Joseph – (an excellent book with a crazy brilliance) Perry Mason and Donald Lam series P.G. Wodehouse series
Romance The Red-Haired Woman- Orhan Pamuk Love Story – Eric Segal Acts of Faith- Eric Segal The Bridges of Madison County – Robert James Waller
Soul Journeys Destiny of Souls – Michael Newton Life Between Lives – Michael Newton Journey Of Souls – Michael Newton Memories of the afterlife – Michael Newton You have been here before – Edith Fiore Ph.D. Life afterlife, The light beyond- Dr. Raymond Moody
Spiritual The Power of Now – Eckhart Tolle A New Earth – Eckhart Tolle Tao Te Ching- Lao Tzu
Mind/ Psychology/ Self-Work Your Erroneous Zones- Dr. Wayne Dyer (This is the first book that changed my life) Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents – Lindsay C. Gibson Metaphors we live by – George Lakoff The Dark Side of the Light Chasers – Debbie Ford Nonviolent Communication – Marshall B. Rosenberg PhD The Intelligence Paradox – Satoshi Kanazawa – Very important to read if you identify with your intelligence Becoming Indian – Pavan Varma – a highly essential read for every Indian Mind to Matter – Dawson Church The Road Less Traveled – Scott Peck
Science + Spirituality Code Name God- Mani Bhaumik The Yoga of Time Travel- Alan Wolf (Truly eye opening, the science is just so easy to read) The Selfish Gene – Richard Dawkins (only buy this if you are comfortable with boring scientific language)
Healing/ Pharma Anatomy of an Illness – Norman Cousins Side Effect: Death: Confessions of a Pharma Insider – John Virapen (Download) Anatomy of an Illness – Normal Cousins (ask me for pdf) Blinded by Science (Download)
Movies:
Spiritual/ Esoteric: The Peaceful Warrior (all time favourite) Lucy Kumare (HIGHLY recommend this!) Push Soul
Magical Movies (just the energy of it) Chocolat The Book Thief The Hundred-Foot Journey August Rush Wild Target Portrait of a Lady on Fire (I blissed out for 3 days after this lol)
Intense: Interstellar Gravity Black Fashion
Other Favorites: Bridge of Spies A Beautiful Day in the neighborhood The Imitation Game Dangerous Beauty Intouchables Burlesque Karate Kid (love both versions) The Devil Wears Prada (I rarely watch movies a second time, this I’ve watched many times) The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Pocahontas
Series:
1) Lucifer (all time favorite) 2) Made in Heaven 3) The Trip 4) White Collar 5) Castle 6) Nikita 7) Proof 8) Criminal Minds 9) The Mentalist 10) Lie to me 11) Sherlock 12) Big Bang Theory 13) Young Sheldon 14) Blind Spot 15) Boston Legal 16) Modern Love 17) Alias (the first few seasons, though I don’t know if this is still available) 18) Beastmaster (also a childhood favourite, probably not available lol, but I had to put it in here)
Nothing is insignificant – a little burn on a small but critical area of my hand has limited so much movement, I would never have otherwise been grateful for these tiny muscles and the stretchiness of this part of my hand – I didn’t know that it was that central to my existence, my functioning. So while on the one hand i do believe that nobody is irreplaceable, this has taught me that nothing is really replaceable either.
And if you ever feel like you might be useless or dispensable in the world, just remember that the injury of a tiny never-thought-of muscle in one’s body can render a person quite dysfunctional sometimes. (PS: Nothing to worry, I am fine now, this happened a week ago and it has healed a lot)
The second one pertains to the good-bad people business, I just wanted to share because I know a lot of us here struggle with identifying the people in our lives that put us at some sort of risk. I realised that this had to do with my ‘good-person syndrome’. I knew that certain people were…. not good. But I judged myself for labeling them as bad, which prevented me from actually being in touch with reality, and therefore made me careless around people I should have exercised caution around.
I guess it was my own lack of understanding around the fact that nothing is replaceable, but also that not everything is ‘equal’ and interchangeable. Shit has its place – but in the garden, not on your porch. Fresh fruits belong on your plate, not as decorative items in your showcase. In the wrong place and the wrong association, everything is toxic.
This is how we allow for toxic relationships in our own lives, creating space for US becoming toxic to others – by not assessing properly if a person belongs in our lives or whether it’s a bad combination. Could be a person. Could be a habit. Could be things we ingest, like food or information. The wise thing to do is to exercise discernment and not be afraid of calling a spade a spade, while not judging it at the same time for being what it is.
One of the confusions we can sometimes have is ‘how could this person behave like this?’ – when the ‘good’ people in our life turn out to be harmful to us in some way.
This I’ve mentioned before – there are two kinds of ‘good’ people – those who are good because they genuinely care, and those who are good because they’re afraid to be bad – and almost all ‘good’ people fall under the second category. And this is the key when we get hurt by the good people in our lives, and also when we end up hurting people.
Why are the good people good and the bad people bad? It is simply conditioning, their core is both the same. The ‘good’ people learned as children that they can use people better by being nice to them, by smiling, by being kind and polite. This pattern is reinforced a lot more strongly if being sweet was a way to escape punishment or abuse. ‘Bad’ people are simply those who got their way and escape some level of abuse through a display of aggression. So we’re all just slaves to our patterns – this is why bad people find it hard to be good – because as a child when they were good, they got punished for it, and good people find it hard to be bad (as in, be aggressive in the right circumstances, stand up for themselves, etc) because that was punished and is still scary. Do you see now how we’re all exactly the same?
You’re different if your emotions don’t sway you. Look at your biggest weakness – If you feel hatred but don’t act on that hatred (and feel that hatred instead of suppressing, of course), if you get angry but choose not to act on your anger, if you feel afraid but speak up for yourself regardless… THEN you have progressed. Otherwise we are barely different from the ‘bad’ people we know.
Anyhow the insight was… we have our patterns, and we seek out people who accommodate and feed those patterns in a way that makes us comfortable. What we actually end up doing is choosing the ‘good’ people who are good due to fear. We assume goodness here, but really it’s just disguised selfishness, because the person will turn, for sure, when there is a conflict of interest. (We’re the same that’s why we attract them, no need to judge them for this). If we want to get out of this, there are two steps –
1) Learn to love ourselves more deeply. This means standing up for ourselves, and doing whatever is needed for our physical, mental and spiritual upkeep and maintenance. When we love ourselves more, we can love others more sincerely.
2) Learning to identify fear-based goodness from love-based goodness within ourselves – this helps us discern it better in others too.
I hope this also clarifies why so many teachers including Eckhart Tolle say that the ‘bad’ people are more likely to make progress on the spiritual pathway because they have more incentive to disassociate from their crap personality. The ‘good’ people love who they are and represent, so much less incentive here.
Yesterday in my Contemplation group, there was a question requesting a clarification of my statement ‘Greater love brings greater responsibility’. How, they asked.Does it mean responsibility in relationships? But I wasn’t talking about external responsibilities at all.
I have maintained for a long time, that the reason we are not better, bigger, happier individuals is because we don’t want to take on the responsibility that comes with being that better person. What responsibility am I talking about?
Do you want to be healthier? If you overeat, eat junk food, don’t exercise properly, you haven’t taken responsibility for your body.
Do you want to be happier? If you indulge in negative thinking, gossiping, social media addiction and news watching, you haven’t taken responsibility for your mind.
Do you want to be more emotionally stable? If you allow crap relationships into your life, you haven’t taken the responsibility for your emotional well-being.
Do you want to be more present? If you waste time, you haven’t taken responsibility for your existence.
Do you want to ‘have’ more? If you ignore things that need fixing, you haven’t taken responsibility for what you possess.
Do you want to be more free, spacious and expanded? If your spiritual practice is not strong, then you haven’t taken responsibility for your spiritual well-being.
Greatness lies on the other side of that responsibility we’ve been avoiding till now.
