This morning I was watching a video of Craig Groeschel’s talk Creating Personal Spiritual Momentum at Catalyst. One of his main points in building spiritual momentum in our lives was “defeating our dark side”. Some of Groeschel’s thought’s went right along with Richard Rohr’s new book Falling Upward, which I just finished. Rohr calls our dark side our shadow self, a persona (Greek for stage mask) we’ve built to hide our real self. This persona or stage mask is not necessarily bad, just not the real you. As Rohr puts it, “Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself, and what you do not want others to see”.

Rohr says that to fully mature into the spiritual person that God intended we must do considerable shadow work. Perhaps this shadow work is what Jesus is referring to when he says we must lose our life to save it (Matthew 16:25-26).

Groeschel and Rohr agree that it can be grueling work to uncover and then face our dark side or shadow self. We must draw close to God to see ourselves as we truly are, face up to and overcome our shadow selves. The closer we are to the Light the darker our shadow will be and the more easily recognized for what it is. As Zechariah prophesied in Luke 1 God has sent “a light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Luke 1:79