Introduction: the other half of being
So many spiritual paths push us to climb toward the light.
But few teach us how to honor the shadow.
Yet true awakening can’t happen without this reconciliation.
Yin doesn’t exist without Yang, clarity only shows up in contrast with night.
Every human carries a bright zone and a dark zone.
To deny one is to block yourself from becoming whole.
The shadow in us: a fire out of control
Religion, social morals, and school rules taught us to reject whatever disturbs: impulses, anger, jealousy, wild sexuality, rebellion, the craving for independence.
This side gets called sin, forbidden, dangerous.
So it gets pushed down.
And the more it’s hidden, the stronger it grows, silent, destructive.
A man can preach virtue during the day, then give in to his demons at night.
A yogi can talk about unconditional love, then slip into behaviors society calls unworthy.
These aren’t contradictions, they’re the signs of a part denied for too long.
Carl Jung said: “He who looks outside, dreams. He who looks inside, awakens.”
And he added: “The shadow is that part of us we’d rather not see.”
No light grows without shadow growing too.
They always come together.
Yin and Yang.
Among those emotions that (never really) sleep in our shadow, here are a few of the dark drives in humans, often repressed, judged, but deeply human:
- Compulsive or lustful sexuality (obsessive desire, unspoken fantasies, need for domination or submission)
- Jealousy and toxic envy (can’t stand the success or happiness of others)
- Urge to manipulate or control (using emotions, words or silence to get what you want)
- Victim mindset (playing martyr to get attention or dodge responsibility)
- Destructive drive (urge to wreck things, sabotage what works, out of anger or fear)
- All kinds of addictions (alcohol, drugs, sex, food, gaming, screens) as escape from a painful inner reality)
- Contained inner rage (turning into verbal or physical aggression)
- Hidden pleasure in humiliating, putting others down (often masked with irony, sarcasm, dark humor)
- Compulsive seduction (constant need to be desired, admired, validated, even at the cost of being real)
- Uncontrollable need to be right (even at the cost of truth or peace)
- Secret thrill in watching others fail...
- Temptation of power (urge to dominate, impose your vision, feel superior)
These are natural but unconscious mechanisms, they don’t need judgment, they need to be welcomed, recognized, transformed.
They’re our old baggage, the little demons hiding in the basement of the subconscious.
They sleep during the day, but at the slightest trigger or weakness, boom, they pop out to remind us they’re still there.
And often, they grab the wheel.
It’s crucial to face them, these pajama monsters.
Not to judge them too fast, but to make them temporary roommates.
Sit with them, understand where they came from, what trauma or pain gave them birth.
And most of all, show them the exit.
With gentleness, patience… and sometimes a good energetic kick in the ass.
In my case, it took me twenty years to look one of these patterns straight in the eye:
An unconscious desire to dominate women.
Yeah, ugly.
But true.
After being emotionally abused, and for a long time, by my mother, my unconscious thought it had to “rebalance the forces.”
Except it got it backwards.
I needed to control, to seduce to dominate, to humiliate sometimes subtly to pump up a wounded ego at the base.
It took me two decades and a few broken hearts (sorry ladies) to see through my own game.
Alcohol? Oh yeah, that one.
Always there, loyal road buddy, especially when I wanted to “forget myself a bit.”
Hide the cracks, the wounds of rejection, that fuzzy feeling of being “not enough” or “too much.”
Today I still drink, but with more awareness.
Less urge to self-sabotage.
Less need to numb myself to avoid feeling.
And then came that phase, around my 40s, where I felt an urgent need to be seen.
To really be seen.
I was finally “somebody,” with success, money, achievements under my belt.
So I did what any wounded ego hungry for recognition does:
I turned myself into a Christmas tree.
A massive watch, like a grandfather clock on my wrist, rings worthy of a washed-up rapper, and a black Audi with tinted windows, just to make sure people saw I was “serious.”
Or dangerous.
Or both.
I wanted admiration.
People saying: “That guy made it.”
“He’s an alpha male, a real one.”
A few months later, the watch ended up in a drawer (then in the trash, no regrets), the rings annoyed me more than anything, and the car… sold.
I got it.
The character had played its scene, time to leave the stage.
And today?
Nothing left.
No watch, no car, no suit.
A backpack, three t-shirts, a pair of flip-flops, and me.
In Asia for three years now, living light and nomadic.
And you know what? Never felt so free and light.
Or so me.
Let your shadow breathe… with discernment
Letting your shadow side live may sound paradoxical.
You obviously can’t let your inner monsters run wild, or let your darkest drives steer your life.
Otherwise, you don’t get freer… you just turn into a mess.
“Keep doing nonsense and you’ll turn into nonsense!”
But recognizing this shadow part, listening to it, and sometimes letting it have a small, controlled outlet… that’s healthy, that’s ok.
Getting wasted with friends once in a while, why not.
Dropping a “f**k off” at the right person, that can feel damn good.
It’s like releasing steam from a pressure cooker: you keep it from blowing up.
The key is balance.
Don’t repress until you implode, but don’t feed the monster till it drives your life either.
Those too-smooth masks
Modern societies love smooth, disciplined, predictable people.
But that mask produces flat lives, no vibration.
Too much perfection creates emotional sterility.
The therapist sneaking chips in front of the TV.
The banker chain-smoking after office hours.
The yogi living a double life, eating meat, drinking wine, and sleeping around at night.
Or the cop abusing power thanks to his uniform.
None of this is condemnable.
The danger is in repression, in lying to yourself.
It’s not the vice that wounds, but the hypocrisy toward yourself.
Someone living consciously accepts their contradictions.
They learn to channel them, not suffocate them.
This shadow in us needs to live, it asks for it, it wants it, it must.
Impossible to be free and whole without it.
They were hiding mostly in the parts of myself I refused to accept.
Those sides I wanted to fix, reshape, polish… because I judged them “not enough” or “too much.”
Shadow isn’t only our demons.
It’s also our repressed light.
Like: I’ve always loved clowning around.
Making faces, dumb jokes, silly impressions.
But growing up, I thought if I wanted to be beautiful, desirable, “cool,” I had to lock that part away.
I judged myself for not being mysterious enough, not chill enough.
By bringing that side back, I relaxed.
I felt lighter.
I gave myself permission to be multidimensional.
Where I used to burn energy hiding that alive part of me, I found freedom.
I stopped fighting against what I am.
And I discovered that accepting your shadow sometimes means allowing yourself to shine with what you were ashamed to love in yourself.
Daring to embrace your humanity
To live fully is to welcome all your sides: gentleness and rage, compassion and pride, love and desire.
It’s knowing that we’re crossed by drives that can be messy, but they’re not bad as long as they’re conscious, named, and owned.
Yin and Yang.
Real maturity is the ability to look straight in the mirror of your soul without turning away.
It’s accepting to see your flaws, your shadows, your contradictions… and not running.
Because what I dislike in the other, what annoys me, hurts me or deeply disturbs me… is often the reflection of a fragment of me I haven’t yet seen, made peace with, or healed.
The other is not the problem.
The other is a projector.
A mirror.
It lights up what I hide.
What I deny.
What I judge.
So instead of rejecting, I can ask myself: “What if what I see in them… is talking about me?”
What if their anger is echoing mine?
If their arrogance wakes up the one I refuse to admit?
If their victimhood stirs my own tendency to shrink or complain?
Trying to change the world without changing what’s inside is like trying to clean a dirty mirror… by scrubbing the outside.
It doesn’t work.
If I truly want to take part in my healing and the world’s, I first have to visit my own depths.
Go there with honesty.
Watch my judgments, my wounds, my automatic patterns.
That’s where real responsibility lives.
And real freedom too.
It lets me put down everything I sometimes keep silent: thoughts, desires, judgments, emotions I sometimes blame myself for… yet they’re deeply human.
Writing gave me the freedom to release guilt, shame, all those so-called “negative” emotions.
I understood they don’t define my whole truth, only one side of me.
And denying them is denying myself.
Because if I believe I can’t love myself fully, then I reject the very idea of being human.
Nobody’s perfect.
Those who claim to be are often at war inside with what makes them human: their imperfections.
Me, I chose peace.
Peace with my contradictions, my excesses, my flaws.
And if all that were exposed, I’d still be at peace, because I know I’m only a mirror of others, just as they are a mirror of me. Deep down, we all carry the same humanity.
Sexuality: sacred turned upside down
Sex is not a weakness.
It’s a strength.
It’s the energy of creation.
All life starts in an explosion of physical and spiritual union.
But this force has been turned into a commodity.
Porn everywhere, bodies stripped of sensuality, performance instead of connection.
Sexual energy split from the soul.
And this has damaged – even more now with porn sites and social media – whole generations.
In ancient tantric traditions (India, Tibet), sex was a sacred ritual.
An art.
A prayer.
Bodies became temples.
The act, an offering.
The gaze, a portal to the invisible.
To bring that back is to give physical love its nobility again.
To find divine sensuality, humor in eroticism, the sacred play between embodied souls.
Sex can be a path to God, if it’s filled with awareness.
Urban sex or sacred sex
Why does the whole world revolve so much around sex?
More than money even, it’s the hidden king of our obsessions.
Maybe because it’s the only human activity that calls in all five senses at once.
Yeah, all five.
The sound of breath, of soft or dirty words.
The sight of curves, eyes, nakedness offered.
The touch of skin, warmth, wetness.
The smells, animal, sweet, salty, intoxicating.
And sometimes even… the taste of the other.
Find me another activity that combines that many senses at once:
The movies? Two senses.
A good meal? Three, maybe four if you eat with your hands.
Driving a car? Maybe three, if you hold the wheel with your teeth.
But sex blows the counters.
It’s multisensory, total, primitive and divine.
No wonder it became such a driver in our lives, for the best… and sometimes the hollow.
Because since the 2000s, with the rise of the internet, sexuality got digitalized, dehumanized, desensualized.
Porn invaded screens, formatted minds, numbed imagination.
Now you can “have sex” in two clicks, alone in front of a screen.
Zero emotion.
Zero presence.
Zero offering.
Just a quick release.
A selfish hit.
Like a fast-food pleasure: consume, toss, move on.
Past generations still knew the thrill of seduction, the play of glances, the mystery of the other, the art of slowness.
The younger ones, though, were often “educated” about sex through hardcore videos and algorithms, mixing up power with brutality, pleasure with performance.
The game got rigged.
And the sacred got knocked out.
Yet sexuality, at the start, is a mystical portal.
A channel of creative energy.
An act of union, healing, alchemy between two souls in flesh.
A moment when you can touch the sky… if you put in more than sweat.
It’s time to bring heart back into bodies,
Play into the sacred,
The sacred into play,
And give sex its true power again: to lift us up, not just drain us.
We’re not machines.
We’re temples.
And making love should be a prayer.
For a long time I believed “having good sex” meant copying what I saw on screen, giving what I thought the other expected from me.
I wasn’t living the moment with my senses, I was acting out a role learned by imitation, chasing validation.
This vision led me, like many of my generation, to use sex casually, as an exchange without commitment or depth.
But behind that fake freedom, I often ran into silent wounds: wounds of self-esteem, wounds of self-love.
I asked myself a thousand times: is my value just what I can give sexually?
Don’t I deserve more than being wanted for a body, a moment, a role?
Those questions broke me down, shaking even how I related to myself. But they also guided me to an awakening.
Because it’s by crossing that desert of meaning that I found another way: sexuality as sacred space.
Today I know my body is not a product to consume, but a temple.
I know my sexuality is not a bargaining chip, but an offering, a creative force, a prayer.
And anyone I let into my intimacy doesn’t just enter my flesh, but a sanctuary.
So yeah, I’m part of the generation that first learned to “play sex” before feeling, but I also belong to the generation choosing to reclaim our power, to reconnect the urban and the sacred, the drive and the heart.
Because sex, deep down, is not a performance to nail, but a truth to embody.
The comfort zone: that sweet trap that puts you to sleep
Nothing grows in soil that’s too calm.
Routine feels safe, but it puts you to sleep.
Comfort soothes, but over time, it softens you up.
A nice comfort zone is sold everywhere as the goal: a soft couch, Netflix, a full fridge, a stable job… and that’s it.
The “good life,” they say.
But ask yourself the real question: Are you growing in there?
Are you pushing yourself?
Are you vibrating?
Or are you slowly getting stuck in a life with no surprises, no shake-ups, no fire?
Because that’s the real trap.
Comfort is like lukewarm water: nice at first, but stay too long and you dissolve.
Always trying to control, predict, smooth, plan… you miss the magic.
You forget life is movement, the unexpected, the thrill.
And this obsession with comfort turns us into old people before our time.
Intolerant of everything: noise, mess, change, different opinions…
Change becomes a threat, when it should be a dance.
An unexpected event?
Panic.
A noisy neighbor?
War.
A tiny grain of sand in the routine?
Drama.
But is that really living?
Being scared of everything that shakes you?
Spending your days keeping up the balance of a life already frozen?
The truly alive take risks.
They speak when fear says “shut up.”
They love even when it makes them tremble.
They change job, city, skin, sometimes even life, because staying would be dying slowly.
They don’t wait for perfect conditions to dare.
They dive, sometimes headfirst, and so what if it splashes.
It’s in those shaky steps, those crazy choices, those “I don’t know where this goes, but I’m going” moments, that the soul blossoms.
That’s where you live.
That’s where you feel alive.
So yes, rest when you need to.
Recharge, enjoy, savor.
But don’t turn it into a prison.
Because the comfort zone is not the goal.
It’s just a stop along the way.
And if you really want to feel free, you’ll have to learn to love discomfort and surprises.
That’s where life starts again.
Hey friend… what if we talked about your coming death?
Yeah, your death.
Not some Greek philosopher’s, not a Netflix hero’s.
Yours.
Does it freak you out?
Of course.
It’s taboo.
A black hole topic in modern talks.
We chat about organic food, self-development, tantric sex, retreats in Bali, but death?
Radio silence.
Too final, too vague, too mysterious.
Yet it’s the only appointment we’re sure not to miss.
We won’t escape it!
But what if we dared to look it in the face, this damn death?
Without drama, without horror movie.
Just as a reminder.
A reminder that everything passes.
That everything is fragile, impermanent.
And that it’s exactly this fragility that makes life precious.
Thinking about death isn’t depressing.
It’s waking up.
It’s feeling every morning as a bonus.
It’s loving harder, saying “I love you” faster, quitting the bullshit.
Montaigne said: “To philosophize is to learn to die.”
The Stoics advised remembering each morning that today could be the last.
Not to sink into gloom, but to live like fireworks.
Intensely.
Authentically.
Because death might not be an end, but a passage.
Not a punishment, but a return.
A shedding.
A release.
And what if it was… the key?
The one that opens all the other doors?
The one that finally shuts the ego up, so the soul can speak?
When you think of death, superficial cravings fade,
The masks drop, priorities get crystal clear.
You know what matters.
So yes, we’re gonna die.
You, me, everyone.
And that’s exactly what makes life so vibrant.
It’s not the fear of death that should stop us,
It’s forgetting that we’re alive… here, now.
Let’s celebrate, friends,
and be grateful we get to experience matter,
before going back to the light!
(And hey, there’s a waiting line up there to incarnate here!)
He told me that every time he thought about it, he wasn’t scared.
He felt ready to leave anytime if something happened.
Of course, he has no wish to die and would never put himself in danger, but the idea itself doesn’t scare him.
While listening, a little voice in my head said: “But I never think about death.”
I tried to recall a time in my life when I’d really reflected on it… and found none.
The closest thing is my belief in “divine timing.”
I’m convinced everything happens for a reason, for you or for others.
When you’ve finished what you came to learn, seek or discover, then you leave… and start again somewhere else.
In fact I even find it beautiful when I hear about people, young or not, who had a tragic death, and their loved ones say they were full of life, always smiling, carrying beautiful values, loving deeply and inspiring those around them. That they succeeded in everything they did…
Yes, and I tell myself that’s exactly how they were meant to live, and that’s the mark they had to leave on the world, and on everyone who crossed their path.
Deconstructing fears: illusion and freedom
Fear has no real existence.
No smell, no weight, no shape.
It’s a mental creation, a sci-fi movie our mind projects in our inner cinema.
It’s an anticipation of the worst, stitched from threads of the past, wounds, traumas, endless “what ifs…”.
Not the real thing, but a hacked version of what could be real, if everything went wrong.
But 95% of the time, what we dreaded… never happens.
In real life, what we imagined doesn’t happen.
Or at least never the way we thought.
And yet we felt it in our whole body: tight throat, knotted stomach, weak legs, racing heart.
All that for what? For an illusion.
A thought.
A misread phrase.
A feeling not digested.
The mind playing tricks on us…
Fear, when really observed, starts to fade.
Because what we look at with clarity… no longer controls us.
What we name, what we welcome, already loses some power.
And what if we went further?
What if every fear was only there to show us… the way?
Because where we’re afraid to go is exactly where we must go.
It’s a sign.
This fear in me is showing me my path.
The right path.
The one we dread is often the one that frees.
Paradox: where you tremble, that’s often where you must go.
To cross a fear is to grow.
To burn an old version of yourself.
To tell the universe: “I’m ready for more.”
As Nelson Mandela said:
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”
So no, the goal isn’t to become invincible.
The goal is to become sincere.
To dare to tremble… while moving forward.
To take the first step.
Taking turns, we’d close our eyes and ask each other:
“What’s your biggest fear, the one that could really happen?”
Once we had the answer, we’d dig deeper:
“And if that happened tomorrow, what would you feel right away?”
Then: “And after feeling that, how would you feel then?”
The goal was to face that fear and keep questioning the “after” to get to the real source of the wound.
Because once you stop fearing it, you realize it’s full of meaning.
It becomes an inner compass.
Where I feel fear, I know I can grow, shed, transform, expand.
Each fear is an invitation to a bigger version of myself.
As a kid, I was terrified of being alone.
It was unbearable.
A friend recently reminded me how I’d sometimes show up at her place in the middle of the night, 3am, just not to stay alone in my apartment.
And then one day, I decided to face that fear head-on.
I started small: dinner alone, going to the movies alone, walking alone.
Then I dared the next step: traveling alone, discovering a country all by myself.
That path revealed a part of me I didn’t even know.
I saw an unconscious urge to push myself, to reach past my limits, to meet a version of me that didn’t exist yet.
And today, I thank that fear.
I thank it for guiding me to freedom.
Because now, I love my own company.
I enjoy solitude, not as an escape or a void, but as a space of joy, wholeness, and creativity.
Fear, when you dare to cross it, becomes a vehicle of transformation. It no longer locks us up.
It opens us.
It shows us who we were… and more importantly, who we’re meant to become.
Testimonies of wounded souls
How many women, how many men, live frozen in dull lives, paralyzed by old fears?
That mother, hooked on meds, running from her shadows through chemistry.
That cousin stuck in a repetitive life, until cancer came and broke everything.
That wife, deeply loved, but taken too soon, whispering on her hospital bed: “With you, I always felt safe.”
Stories like these are everywhere.
They remind us that unspoken fear kills.
That silence can be deadly.
And that only truth, even when it hurts, opens the road to healing.
Maybe it was my soul’s role, or just an unconscious replay of an old pattern.
First there was my mother.
A broken woman, trapped in a spiral of invisible pain.
She never knew how to feed her own needs, let alone mine.
She was afraid to live, afraid to feel, afraid to listen to herself.
So she handed everything over to medicine.
A pill to sleep.
Another to digest.
A third to forget.
A fourth to flush.
And one last to stop hurting at all.
Poor mom.
All her life, she ran… when the only one chasing her was herself.
I wanted to reassure her, so many times.
But she couldn’t hear me.
The meds screamed louder than my words.
Then came my cousin.
Smashed by men, rejected by her own mother, locked in a tiny life, stiff like stone.
Same job, same flat, same pain.
She was so scared life would hurt her again that she froze it before it could.
And by blocking all movement, all change, her body spoke instead.
Cancer, at 50.
Like a slow, silent implosion.
I held her in my arms many times.
But nothing got through.
Everything was locked tight.
And then there was my wife.
Full of love, but ravaged by childhood wounds, her fear of abandonment, her need for control.
She too, gone too soon.
Lightning-fast cancer.
I stayed with her till the end.
Every day, every night, through hospital silence and brutal treatments.
I’ll never forget that moment.
She was frail, bald, almost see-through.
She looked at me and whispered:
“With you, I always felt safe.”
Eight words.
But eight words that hit me straight in the heart.
Eight words that maybe gave meaning to the whole journey.
Fears.
Conclusion: becoming whole again
Awakening isn’t about running from our shadows with mantras and incense.
It’s about holding out a hand, saying:
“Ok old anger, come sit, let’s talk.”
We think we need to become light.
But no.
We need to become whole.
Not the same thing.
Because light without shadow is a fake paradise.
A white facade… where everything spilling over gets painted beige.
Becoming whole is accepting the mess.
Making peace with your inner chaos, your old files, your weird drives, your wounds never fully closed.
It’s saying: “Yeah, I’ve got darkness in me… so what? I’m human. And I’m on the way.”
And then comes that magic moment.
When you start laughing at yourself.
When you love your flaws too.
When you feel that light isn’t about shining like a neon.
It’s about vibrating real, with all that you are.
And then…
It’s more than awakening.
It’s a coming home.
To close chapter 4, let your inner souffle rest.
You just went through a sensitive, dense, sometimes uncomfortable zone.
This chapter isn’t to be read like a novel, but to be lived, digested, felt.
So don’t rush ahead.
Let the text soak into you.
Reread certain parts if they call you.
Give yourself silence, space, alone time.
Breathe, watch how your body, your mind, your heart react.
Maybe some truths disturb you, that’s a good sign.
It means they stir something that needs to be seen.
Sit with it.
The work isn’t linear.
Sometimes you need to pause for days, even weeks.
And suddenly, a phrase you’d already read becomes obvious.
That’s real reading: a conversation between the soul and the page.
Don’t be afraid.
It’s normal.
The doors of the invisible have started to open, and the membranes between dimensions are getting thinner…
You might feel the need to change jobs, end your current relationship, cut ties with certain people…
All of that is normal.
No fear, let yourself float on these new waters, this new flow.
You’re on a new path…