S01/E07: “I Am Shadow” – The Parts I Refuse to See

Introduction:

Welcome back to the Martfotai podcasts.
In our last episode, we stepped beyond illusion. We saw how grief, projection, and identity blur what’s real. And we paused—not to fix the past, but to stop being written by it.

Now, we go deeper.

Because even when we walk in presence, something unseen still moves us.
It shows up in our irritations. In the people we can’t stand. In the traits we most reject.
This is the shadow.

Not darkness in a moral sense. But the part of us we were never allowed to be, so it went underground.

This episode is not about confession. Or correction.
It’s about seeing clearly. Because what we don’t see, we project.
And what we project, we judge.

Martfotai teaches that the outer world mirrors the inner world.
But shadow work reveals a subtler truth: the sharpest reactions often point inwards.

This is not philosophy. It’s practice.

Because if we don’t see the parts we’ve buried, we’re bound by them.
We’ll keep meeting the same triggers, the same scenes, the same roles, until we realise they’re not someone else’s story.

They’re ours.

So let’s walk now. Not into shame. Not into blame.
But into wholeness.

The parts we refuse to see are still ours.
And when we bring presence to them, judgment dissolves.

Let’s begin.

Section 1 – The Mirror You Reject

You’re mid-conversation.
Nothing dramatic. A pause. A raised brow. A shift in tone.
But something flares.
A tightening in the gut. A sudden heat in the chest.
You don’t analyse it. You name it.

“She’s fake.”
“He’s a victim.”
“They’re so manipulative. Self-absorbed. Draining.”

And in that moment, it doesn’t feel like judgment.
It feels like clarity.
Like you’ve seen something real.

But pause.
What if you haven’t?

What if that sharp, self-assured reaction has little to do with them, and everything to do with you?

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, gave language to this: the shadow.

Not just the dark, the repressed, the forbidden, but any part of ourselves we were once told not to be.
Power. Boldness. Grief. Longing. Need.
Whatever didn’t match the image we thought we had to present got pushed out of sight.
Not evil. Not wrong. Just unwelcome.
And what remains unseen in you, life will show you, through others.

But not kindly.
Not directly.
It returns as discomfort.
Through their noise. Their silence. Their tears. Their pride.
It lands like provocation.

This is not the mirror you admire, nor the one you study with humility.
This is the reflection you reject.
The one that pokes. Stings. Makes you withdraw.
Because it holds a shape you once abandoned.

And here’s the twist:
That trait you recoil from?
It may still live in you.

All things are mirrors.
But not all reflections are received.

When you judge someone harshly, it often has nothing to do with their nature, and everything to do with a buried familiarity.
A forgotten likeness.
A forbidden voice.

That’s why it stings.
You only hate in others what you were never allowed to be.

That’s why it lingers.
Because your cultivated self, the one who learned to behave, to please, to be calm, composed, resilient, feels exposed by what it tried to escape.

And here is the fulcrum:
The reaction isn’t confirmation. It’s instruction.

It isn’t telling you who they are.
It’s showing you what’s unresolved in you.

The stronger the rejection, the deeper the root.
The greater the insult, the more it echoes something true, and unspoken.

This isn’t blame.
It’s an invitation.

That rising disdain?
It isn’t insight.
It’s an echo of something you’re ready to see.

The shadow doesn’t come to accuse you.
It comes to reintroduce what you exiled.
Not to shame you, but to remind you:

This too is yours.
And it has waited long enough.

Section 2 – Projection as Emotional Camouflage

What you avoid in yourself doesn’t disappear.
It relocates.

This is projection, the unconscious act of assigning to others what you refuse to feel within.

“She’s so needy.”
But you silence your own longing.

“He’s always angry.”
But you never gave your rage a voice, it only leaks through sarcasm or withdrawal.

Or:
“They’re so insecure.”
But you spent years trying to look confident while feeling the opposite.

Sometimes projection is comic:
You roll your eyes at someone’s attention-seeking, then check if anyone noticed.

Projection is judgment wearing camouflage. You’re not seeing them, you’re refusing to see you.
You dress your wound in someone else’s clothes, then attack the outfit.
Judgment is not insight. It’s a flare, your system sounding the alarm.

You call someone selfish, but maybe you were punished for wanting space.
You resent their confidence, but maybe you were told pride is arrogance, and so you swallowed your strength.
You judge someone as dramatic, but maybe your tears were once too loud for someone else’s comfort.

“You’re too much” might have pierced you once.
Now, you repeat it, through raised brows, withheld warmth, or a perfectly timed sigh. And it feels justified.

But justified doesn’t mean true.

Projection isn’t perception. It’s protection.
It’s a way of avoiding the internal conflict between who you are and who you’ve had to become.

That’s why it burns.
Because the person in front of you isn’t just them, they are a mirror of something you’ve buried.

Everything seen is a reflection.
But when the reflection disturbs you, it’s often your own disowned self, trying to be recognised.

So, next time the judgment flares, pause.
Don’t justify. Don’t narrate.

Track it.
Every accusation is a thread.
Follow it inward.

Not every reaction is projection.
But the ones that linger, that ache, that return, almost always are.

Ask:
What trait in them feels uncomfortably familiar?
What might it say about me if I have it too?
What would it cost to admit that I’ve carried the same energy?

The shadow isn’t the trait itself.
It’s the terror of what it might mean.

See that clearly, and the projection collapses.
Not by effort.
But by recognition.

Because to re-cognise anything, we have to first cognise it in ourselves. It truly does take one to know one.

Section 3 – The Formation of Shadow

Shadow doesn’t begin in darkness.
It begins in distortion, when something natural is met with rejection.
A feeling ignored. A trait mocked. A spark dimmed to keep the peace.

In childhood, we didn’t just absorb rules.
We absorbed reactions, tone, silence, glances.
And from them, we made a decision:
Who do I have to be to be safe?

If sadness led to distance, we smiled instead.
If anger led to punishment, we shut it down.
If joy made others uncomfortable, we became serious.
Not because we were wrong, but because we adapted.

To be accepted, we didn’t just adjust.
We disappeared, becoming who others could tolerate.
Polite replaced passionate.
Helpful replaced needy.
Clever replaced chaotic.

Pain taught us what not to be.
Approval taught us how to perform.

But the traits we abandoned? They didn’t vanish.
They were exiled, pushed beneath the surface,
waiting for another face to wear them.

We split.
Into the one who smiles, and the one who seethes.
Into the one who copes, and the one who longs.

And then life, being merciful and merciless, brings us reminders.
We meet someone who carries what we buried, and it unsettles us.
The loud person makes us wince, not because of them, but because we swallowed our own volume.
The confident one triggers doubt, not because they’re arrogant, but because we locked our voice away.
The expressive one irritates, not because they’re dramatic, but because emotion was once dangerous to feel.

This isn’t about good or bad.
The shadow isn’t malevolent. It’s misfiled.
Not a monster in the basement, but a memory sealed in self-protection.

Fragmentation is not a failure. It’s survival.
The mistake is not in having many selves.
It’s in pretending only one is real.

The task isn’t to banish the shadow.
It’s to welcome it back into awareness.
Not to let it run wild.
But to stop denying its existence.

You don’t need to act on every impulse.
You just need to admit they’re there.

The shadow is not a threat.
It’s ironically a spotlight, your system pointing to what’s been suppressed.

And each time you meet it without defence, something lost returns.

Integration begins not in light, but in honesty.
And the truth is simple:

You were never only the parts you kept.

Section 4 – The False Self Defends Against Shadow

Once parts of us are exiled, something synthetic forms in their place.
A mask.
A curated identity.
Not who we are, but who we had to become.

“I’m calm.”
“I’m generous.”
“I’m spiritual.”
“I’m not like them.”

“I have crossed the threshold.

“You cannot move my inner world,”

Each of these might hold truth. But often, they’re not truths lived. They’re truths performed, stitched together from the remains of what we were told or taught not to be.
This is the false self. Not evil, just engineered. You called it empathy. Strength. Growth. Impartiality. But it was self-erasure, built for approval, admiration, not truth.

A carefully constructed buffer between our image and our shadow.

The false self doesn’t deceive others, it defends us. It was built to protect us from shame.
But protection always comes with a cost.

To preserve a fixed identity, we must deny anything that contradicts it.
If you pride yourself on kindness, rudeness becomes a personal threat.
If you value humility, boldness in others starts to feel like arrogance.
If you call yourself peaceful, any spark of internal anger must be buried, or projected.

And so, you react.
Not to their behaviour, but to the threat it poses to your self-definition.

Judgment becomes your firewall.
You criticise and call it discernment.
You gossip and call it concern.
You react to others’ shadows without ever seeing your own.

But here’s the crack in the mask:

You’re not just seeing them.
You’re seeing the parts of you that you still cannot hold.

As we said in the first podcast of this series, there is no singular “I.” You are many.
The kind one lashes out.
The wise one zones out.
The peaceful one explodes under pressure.
None of these invalidate the others. But when you cling to only one, you cast the rest into shadow.

It is not shadow when you feel jealousy.
It is shadow when you deny you ever could.
It is not shadow when you make mistakes.
It is shadow when you build your identity on not making them.

The more polished the image, the more vicious the reaction when it cracks.
Because it’s not the trait that stings, it’s the mirror it holds up.

Now consider this:

If someone said, “You’re a goat with terrible green hair,” it wouldn’t faze you.
It’s absurd. It lands nowhere. It does not stick.
If someone says, “You’re a human being,” it registers, but there’s no reaction. It’s obvious.
But if someone says something part-true and part-unseen, something that grazes a buried nerve, it explodes.
Not because it’s offensive. But because it’s familiar.
Unacknowledged truth wrapped in denial is volatile. It’s matter meeting anti-matter.

The result? A psychological detonation.
A spike of shame. Rage. Outrage. Defence.
The reaction isn’t confirmation. It’s instruction.
It tells you where your self-image and buried truth collided.

And the greater the gap between who you think you are and what you can’t face, the bigger the blast.

No single role defines you. Every “I” is partial. Every identity is temporary.
What you attack in others is often the part of you that didn’t make the cut.
The trait you condemn is not foreign, it’s disowned.

So how do you undo the grip?

Not by building a better identity.
Not by chasing “authenticity” as another disguise.
But by seeing, clearly, precisely, that the self you protect is incomplete.
And the person you judge?
Might just be wearing your old face.

Section 5 – Meeting the Shadow with Light

The moment of judgment is not your enemy. It is your invitation.
Not to argue. Not to explain.
To welcome what you once refused to carry.

The trait you recoil from. From pride, need, emotion, boldness.
It isn’t knocking to take over.
It’s knocking because it wants to exist.

And now, you face it. Not in the other.
But in you.

Let it stand in the room.
Not acted out. Not buried again.
Just seen. Fully. Without disguise.

And speak to it. Not to soothe it. To meet it.

“I know why you hid.”
“You were too much for them. But not for me.”
“You don’t need to beg for space. You have it.”

This is not self-help.
It’s reunion.

The part that had to disappear has come back.
Not to dominate, but to rejoin.
Because you are strong enough now to see clearly,
without flinching, without armour, without shame.

When you reclaim what you once disowned,
the outside world stops carrying it for you.
The ones who used to trigger you lose their script.
Not because they’ve changed,
but because you’ve stopped outsourcing your shadow.

No more projection. No more leak. No more war.

Just presence, standing eye to eye
with all that was once sent away.

Section 6 – Shadow Integration Is Not Shadow Eradication

Integration isn’t an upgrade.
It’s a return to inner gravity.

The shadow doesn’t ask to be fixed.
It asks to be held in the light, without recoil.

It’s not a stain to scrub, or a flaw to conceal.
It’s a part of you left outside the door
when you were trying to become someone acceptable.

And it will keep circling the house
until you let it in.

You don’t need to correct anger.
You need to hear what it’s been guarding.
You don’t need to purge jealousy.
You need to see the ache beneath it.
You don’t need to disown need.
You need to feel how long it’s been unfed.

These energies don’t vanish with willpower.
They shapeshift.
They leak through blame, spill through tension,
bend the truth of how you relate.

But when met with presence, real, steady presence, they quiet.
They no longer contort.
They return to their natural form.

Not enemies.
Signals.

The angry one becomes your edge.
The insecure one becomes your humility.
The selfish one reminds you to stay intact.

No longer denied,
they stop hijacking your life.
They inform without overwhelming.
They speak without shouting.

This is what wholeness feels like:
Not bliss. Not brilliance.
Just inner room for everything real.

Martfotai does not ask you to purify yourself.
It asks you to become large enough
to hold all your parts.

Because what you exile,
you will meet again.

Not as punishment.
But as invitation.

And the mirror will not stop showing you
until you answer.

Not with fear.
But with seeing.

When you do,
people stop looking like threats.
Behaviours stop sounding like insults.
You stop needing enemies to keep yourself intact.

This is not peace through transcendence.
It is peace through recognition.

It is how the inner war ends.

Not by overcoming yourself,
but by finally turning inward
and calling every part back home.

Section 7 – The Return of Wholeness

Something changes when projection ends.

You no longer need others to behave a certain way for you to feel steady.
You stop scanning for flaws to protect an image.
The reflex to fix, correct, or distance begins to dissolve.

Why?

Because what was once hidden has now been acknowledged.
This isn’t perfection.
It’s presence, without inner conflict.
Not a polished identity, but a self no longer divided against itself.

You see the angry man, and instead of recoiling, you glimpse the wound beneath his fire.
You hear the complaining voice, and recognise fatigue instead of fault.
You meet the boastful friend, and remember your own moments of reaching too far to feel enough.

The casting collapses.

You stop scripting others,
No longer assigning them roles to uphold your story.
No longer needing heroes to admire or villains to reject.

Now, there is only this:
People, in process. Complex. Unfinished. Just like you.

And that realisation, that clear shift in seeing, ends the war.

Not because the world softened,
But because you stopped encountering it through the lens of your protected self.

The sharp edges no longer find raw places to pierce.
The behaviours that once triggered you no longer mirror a disowned part.

You begin to see the multiplicity in everyone.
Even those who harmed you were speaking from incomplete places.

Cruelty may be armour.
Silence, a defence.
Control, a silent plea for safety.

This isn’t excusing harm.
It’s seeing it for what it is.

Forgiveness doesn’t begin when you decide to be better.
It begins when your perception clears.

And from that clarity, compassion arises,
Not as obligation, but as natural vision.

When vision is whole, judgment ends.

To see clearly is not to condone.
It’s to exit the story.
To step beyond reaction.
To leave behind the war.

You don’t need to embrace every trait.
But you must recognise it, first in you, then in them.

And in that seeing, tension loosens.
The inner resistance fades.
Not because you’ve transcended,
But because you’ve returned to what’s real.

The world stops being your adversary.

It becomes a clear surface, no longer warped by your wounds, but true to what is.

This is the return of wholeness.

Not something gained.
Something uncovered.
Something that never left, only waited beneath denial.

And it begins the moment you stop turning away.

Section 8 – Final Reflection

Judgment isn’t clarity.
It’s camouflage.
A way of turning away from something you haven’t yet faced.

But when you turn toward it, directly, without disguise, something changes.

To see the shadow is not to collapse into it.
It’s to stop pretending you are only light.

There is nothing in you that must be erased.
Only reclaimed.

When you see clearly, judgment no longer sticks.
It dissolves.

And what remains isn’t a better version of you.
It’s freedom.

Not from flaws,
But from needing to hide them.

Not from others,
But from the need to reject what they reflect.

That freedom begins when you stop abandoning your own experience.
When you can say: “That, too, is mine.”

“I am that.”

Even the sharp parts.
Even the ones that don’t fit your image of who you’re supposed to be.

Because once reclaimed, they no longer need to play out in others.

You stop creating enemies just to stay defended.
You stop performing for praise.

You stop posting for “likes”’
You stop needing to be someone fixed.

There is no solid self to maintain.
Only presence.

Not your thoughts. Not your roles. Just the space in which they arise, and pass.

Not a host. Not a watcher.
Just the awareness behind it all,
The seeing that holds every weather.

And when that seeing steadies, a different peace arrives.
Not the absence of noise.
But the end of the internal rehearsal.

The inner war ends.
Because there is no longer anyone left to fight.

Thank you for walking into the mirror of shadow with me.

If something opened in you today, if you paused, recognised a trait, or stopped running from something once denied,
then the return has already begun.

Martfotai is not a belief system.
It is a communion of presence,
A pathless return to what is real.

We offer no dogma.
Only tools.
Practices.
Clarity you can test in your own direct experience.

To receive newsletters, guided practices, and invitations to upcoming classes and events, visit martfotai.com and subscribe.

And if this episode helped you, please share it.
Not as a message.
But as a mirror, for someone still trapped in a role they never chose.

I’m Gary Eggleton, and this is Martfotai.
Until we meet again, stay with presence.
It never left.
It was only waiting for you to see.