Shadow Work Guide

One sheet

The four energies

Four questions. Each energy goes wrong in two ways. It runs the whole life, or it goes quiet. Most people are more than one of these, in different rooms of the same week. This is a map, not a diagnosis, and it does not score you.

SovereignNorth-west

Am I allowed to lead my own life?

When it runs the life

You are already certain, and you cannot be helped.

When it goes quiet

You say you don’t mind when you do mind.

MagicianNorth-east

Am I allowed to see clearly and trust what I see?

When it runs the life

You can explain the life in detail, and Monday looks the same.

When it goes quiet

You cannot see the pattern everyone else can name.

WarriorSouth-east

Am I allowed to take up space and protect what matters?

When it runs the life

You cannot rest.

When it goes quiet

You say yes, and the no comes out later as resentment.

LoverSouth-west

Am I allowed to feel and be felt?

When it runs the life

You disappear into the other person.

When it goes quiet

You attend your own life the way a camera attends a party.

The four-energy model is Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette’s, in King, Warrior, Magician, Lover (1990). This guide says Sovereign where they say King. The questionnaire and its key stay in the book and in the practice.