Your unconscious mind isn’t a thing. It’s not a single object or concept. I want you to get this right, so here’s what I know.

I like teaching, and this is exactly what I teach.

Firstly, do you know the difference between your Shadow Territories, Shadow Entities and Shadow Behaviours?

It takes five minutes to learn this concept - let me break the theory down for you.

Earlier this week, I recommended Meeting the Shadow essay collection as your first shadow work assignment for 2025 because this book offers an accessible overview of your unconscious mind: it’s everything you need to start exploring the last 120 years of somatic, spiritual and depth psychology, but where should you start working on yourself this year?

Here’s my unique method: The Shadow Territory, Shadow Entity, and Shadow Behaviour structure; my time-tested strategy for breaking down your shadow material into neat, objectifiable components in an attempt to accelerate and simplify your self integration process.

Start with the obvious.

Think about your addictions, your vices, your moral shortcomings - I call them your Shadow Behaviours - these are the things you already know to be hurting yourself and those around you.

It's not only addiction and vice, your Shadow Behaviours are the explicitly compulsive, unthinking and degrading things you know you’re doing:

Over-consuming; under-consuming; drinking too much; scrolling too much; lying to your partner; sleeping with people you shouldn't be sleeping with; shutting down; not respond to messages; lashing out at your family; weeping fake tears to avoid the truth of taking responsibility; getting lost in fantasies which will never come true; the list goes on and on…

Your shadow is dense, but darkness is illuminated if you stop and pay attention.

Shadow Behaviours are diverse in their depth, direction and emotional valence, which means that they emerge across the spectrum of overcharged to undercharged expressions of any named behaviour, for example: you are crying too much vs you can’t cry at all; you are too dominant vs you are entirely submissive; you are overly empathic vs you cannot maintain presence in intimate moments - you get the idea.

Wrapping the theory together, I want you to remember that your Shadow Behaviours are the chronic patterns which you know to be regressive - the habits which haunt you when you’re trying to fall asleep, the daily regrets which leave you with a subtle yet lingering sense of being out of control - but you have the ability to reclaim your agency.

It’s 2025. A new year, full of hope and possibility, and I don’t want this to be the third, fourth, or fifth year in a row where your unconscious Shadow Behaviours imprison you in a low-grade-loop of shallow consciousness.

Your pain doesn’t need to persist.

Practically speaking, here’s what you can do to start healing yourself this week: once you’ve identified your destructive behaviours, you need to make the time to read books like Meeting The Shadow and subsequently devote dozens of hours to the sincere, introspective work which tracks your Shadow Behaviours back to the Shadow Entities who compulsively enact these behaviours from their toxic rooting in the Shadow Territory where the part was born.

I’ll be sharing more about the nature of your Shadow Entities and Shadow Territories throughout the month, they’re the foundational concepts which I teach and continually reinforce across nine teaching modules in my Shadow Work Library curriculum, but you don’t need to look very far to spot your Shadow Behaviours.

You know your darkness, keep going.

Illuminate your unconscious,

Jordan

P. S. I’ve got five more hyper-specific shadow work books for you. Sign up for the newsletter below. Everything you need for January, it’s right there.