shadow

• Shadow work means, roughly speaking, a practice of noticing, loving, and integrating the parts of yourself that you've repressed (your 'shadow'), so that you become a more whole person.
• A tweet thread that still lives in my head: The money quote:
• Ultimately I think I want to be more like Elon in this comparison than like the hypothetical person doing LSD shadow work. In greening the car industry and revolutionizing the space industry, Elon has a much larger positive impact on the world than someone whose 'work' is focused on their own personal growth. Personal growth is important, but it's just an instrumental goal.
• Still, instrumental goals are often necessary. I've seen in my own life that having the wrong outlook on the world can be extremely demotivating and depressing. And what I see from NameRedacted, from Nick Cammarata, from Dan Brown, is that meditative pursuits are compatible with, and can be in support of, having great focus and energy to effect change in the world.

A more recent and measured view of this, I think, is Nick Cammarata's distinction of running on clean fuel vs dirty fuel:

Everyone has psychic baggage, which deeply constrains the ways we think and act in ways we're not fully aware of. If you're 'lucky', this psychic baggage forces you into the Titan realm and helps you do great things (like Elon) even if at great personal cost. But for many people (including me potentially), at some point the alignment between the psychic baggage and available actions runs out. Making progress demands more flexibility, and the psychic baggage doesn't allow that.

Another perspective on this is that 'shadow work' is the generalization of coming out: