Okay, let’s talk.

Why Isn’t This Working was the article detailing why some things just won’t work for you, whether or not they’ve worked before but there is one reason we didn’t cover in that article. You’re standing in your own way.

That’s both the bad and good news. It’s bad because, sometimes your results are spotty because your head isn’t in the game. It’s great news because you can stop that at any time.

That’s what this article and a few others will focus on; getting your head in the game.

Welcome to MindCraft: The Banishing Ritual For The Mind.

Let me tell you something about Shadow work, it’s nasty, messy, it sucks…and it’s absolutely necessary if you want things to work whether it’s a magickal practice such as divination or if you’re into full-scale ceremonial magickal practices, you need to clear that whole signal-to-noise ratio and you can’t do that with your attention being drawn and quartered by social media, the news and watching the world come apart at high-speed in real time on a screen, big or small.

Jung’s concept of The Shadow was that of repressed desires and the most base of desires and impulses. Jung didn’t see it as something to be separated entirely and completely but something to be integrated because The Shadow self was part of a whole and in order to be whole, you needed to control it and integrate it.

Jung was even clear about how to integrate it and it was as follows:

Jung's Three Steps of Shadow Integration:

Step 1: Acknowledge the Shadow exists. Accept that it's real and take it seriously. Not as an enemy to be defeated but as a legitimate part of the psyche. You can't integrate what you refuse to admit is there.

Step 2: Become informed about its qualities and intentions. Observe what the Shadow says, when it speaks, what triggers it, what it wants. Track patterns. Pay attention to strong emotional reactions, projections onto others, recurring impulses.

Step 3: Long and difficult negotiations. This is the core. Not defeating the Shadow. Not exorcising it. Sitting down with it and negotiating. Establishing boundaries. Making pacts. Allocating legitimate outlets for its energy — creativity, assertiveness, sexuality, sensitivity channeled into purposeful action instead of destructive expression.

Jung's exact words: "The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood. Negotiation means establishing boundaries, making pacts, and dividing up the loot."

Now, keep all of this in mind because, you can look at this and think meditation will solve it or perhaps even long, drawn-out daydreaming sessions where you actively engage with it will help but, that’s not the case.

I knew that when I had that last blow-up. I still have the article, though it’s no longer on Substack, it made the migration to RavenWulfgar.com where, I won’t lie, this was a post that got me booted from a few writer’s groups, forming friendships were now complete deserts and I sat there, thinking it all over, the damage and fallout happening while I was at work, and I said the words I must have said thousands of times in my life but never really grasped the meaning of until that night.

“I can’t keep doing this shit…”

Those were the words I said. They finally clicked. I really couldn’t keep doing that. It was eating everything around me and now it closed a whole bunch of doors at once.

Right then, I started typing. I started digging and digging. I had to find something that would help and I can’t afford a therapist so, gotta work with what I have.

Let me cut right to the chase. Armed with a notebook, a pen and a PDF document on my phone that served as a framework, I came up with N.M.E. which stood for Neutralize, Mirror, Enforce.

I didn’t just read Jung. I grabbed a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince, because I wanted to know why powerful people read that book. I wanted to know why people vilified it. I read it and found out, this guy was in the room when major negotiations happened. In some cases, he negotiated on behalf of Cesare Borgia. In his mind, Borgia was the model of what he thought a Prince should be, how he should rule effectively and concern himself with strategy, calculation and emotional resilience.

While I might have always handled situations outwardly properly, some things would absolutely eat at me. Shit like that would ruin my day, sometimes two or three. Some things would linger well after I thought I’d been done with them. Things got to me. Some things still do, I won’t lie to you on that one. A good example, Wizards of The Coast’s announcement that they were reviving Dark Sun. I made the bold prediction in a few places, “They’re not coming to revive it, they’re coming to finish it off.”

Shrink-Wrapping it and marking it as Mature, could have been just what they said but we’ve since learned they invested heavily in sensitivity readers, stripped out the slavery portion of it and ramped up the gore to basically make it Mad Max/Doom of D&D if we’re lucky. Seeing as how they defeated the purpose of shrink-wrapping it and marking it as Mature, accept my next dispassionate bold prediction of people buying that…only to be baited and switched. It’s coming, folks just don’t worry about it.

Still, it irks me to see them doing that, which is why I have Shadowsun for ShadowDark. I don’t need WoTC or any of their products.

Now, where I’d be coming up for outrage content for weeks, I kinda have other shit to do. I’ll throw WoTC a middle finger for their cruddy efforts and keep it pushing.

This is what that entry would look like, because this is where The Shadow actually spoke. This is the kind of thing you’d write down.

I have to be honest with myself, it pissed me off and at several moments. That gets written down. How badly it pissed me off, what theme it brought up, how I handled it, exactly what the Shadow side of me said (and believe me…that’s not ever going public) and then, the lesson for next time and the stack of things I did that are part of my discipline and structure.

Logging something like that takes care of the second thing Jung talked about. If you take that first step and just acknowledge that your bad days might actually be an accumulation of mental sludge, then you’re ready to take about five to fifteen minutes per night to log down a few things; What things you value that you protected, what the shadow said, what your assessment is, how it triggered you, what theme it triggered, a good lesson or take away and then your discipline wins. At the end of it, you close it definitively with something like “The Shadow spoke. I answered. I remain in control.” on the days where you walk away clean. In one, I’d become so tired of the mental sludge that I wrote directly to it.

“You keep talking. I keep answering. We both know how this fucking ends.”

It goes a little deeper than just some entries, that’s you surgically-analyzing your thoughts. If you can do it on the spot, great. If you can just jot down what The Shadow said for later, do it. You adjust that to your day and schedule and all you need is a small notebook and a reliable pen. This isn’t it, though. Don’t worry I’ll post the structure along with an example of what an entry would look like later, I really want to show you how to effectively get out of your own way, become more confident and to clear that mental sludge so you can operate more effectively.

This is where Visualization becomes your first regular exercise. Understand something, I’m only giving you what has worked for me. Like everything from here, it’s adaptable.

The Fylgia: Your Guardian Construct

What you're building here isn't imaginary. I need you to understand that before we go further. In Norse soul lore, the Fylgia is the Ancestral Guardian — a protective spirit that accompanies the practitioner. It can appear as an animal, a figure, a presence. It watches. It warns. It intervenes when the Shadow presses too hard.

You're going to build one.

Start with one character. This character is your absolute support. Whoever this is that you create, this is the friend you've always wanted. This is a friend with no conditions, loves having you around, is there at your worst helping you up off the ground. This is the friend you can call at 3am and they're already getting the keys for the car by the time they answer the phone.

If your self-talk up until now has been akin to things the Shadow has to say such as "Everyone has conditions" or "Everyone leaves in the end…you're alone" this also has to change. You're using the framework that I'll present later and adding a supportive and compassionate ear.

You should be able to close your eyes and immediately see this person. You should know them inside and out. You know when their birthday is, what they like on any given Tuesday as a snack, every…single…detail. This isn't a daydream. This is a constructed presence that you're building in your mind with deliberate intention. The more real they are to you, the more functional they become.

Your Fylgia can have conversations with your Shadow too. When the Shadow speaks, your Fylgia can answer. When the Shadow says "You're alone," your Fylgia says "No. I'm right here." When the Shadow says "Everyone leaves," your Fylgia says "I haven't left yet and I'm not going to." The Shadow has no defense against a presence that you built specifically to counter its voice.

Here's where it gets interesting. Once you have one character solid and consistent, you can build more. Each one serves a different function. One might be the protector. One might be the strategist. One might be the one who speaks hard truths when you need to hear them. They'll interact with each other, argue with each other, and occasionally collide — but they all serve the same operator. You.

Pretty soon, you start hearing the things your Fylgia says…in real life. I mean from the people around you. You'll know what those things are because from that point forward, they will completely override anything your Shadow has to say. That's because you've trained your mind to recognize supportive voices and give them primacy over destructive ones. Your Fylgia didn't replace real people. It tuned your frequency to receive what they were already saying.

The Kybalion's first principle: "THE ALL is MIND; The Universe is Mental." If everything is thought, then thought-forms are real. Your characters are thought-forms. You gave them autonomy, personality, history. They interact with you because you built them to interact. They argue because you gave them distinct perspectives. They pull together because they all serve the same source — you.

This isn't make-believe. You're building a Fylgia. A guardian you call upon when the Shadow speaks. The Norse knew this. Jung described it differently but the mechanism is identical. You're constructing an internal presence that counters the Shadow's voice with precision and authority because you designed it to do exactly that.

In short, what you're doing is engaging with The Shadow side of yourself in a zero-sum game where the rules only state one thing: If you show up and do the work, you win. If you stop when you know you shouldn't, that's when your Shadow starts winning.

My results were that in 11 days, I began to handle things more consciously. I was more intentional in the things I did, I figured out how to re-frame things that I didn’t want to do because it was a pain in the ass or it would inconvenience me. I looked at how I might use the inconvenience to raise my value a little more, see if I could stack a couple more wins than last time. I learned how to re-frame the pain in the ass as more of a potential for value. No one else was being asked to do this, that or the third, I was and there was good reason for it.

By day 30, not much was landing. Little petty comments aimed at some aspect of me were getting easier and easier to dismiss. In one instance, a man became completely hostile at me, unprovoked. I literally did nothing to the guy, don’t know him from Adam and out of nowhere he turned to me and began yelling at me. I stood there and my face just relaxed into this expression of “huh?” I just let him rant until finally he shut up and I said “Huh…right…no idea what you’re talking about” and slipped right past him only for his screaming to intensify until he was thrown out of the place for his efforts.

In the past, would have eaten at me. Now? No idea what he was ranting about. I came for Powerade and I got Powerade. Win. He’s still a raving lunatic but I’m sure the gods love him too.

In 45 days, I was struggling…hard.

I was struggling to remember anything the Shadow had said, whether it was “Why Are You Not Stripping This Fool of His Very Soul?!” to a simple “Oh FUCK all the way off!” I always had something but now, not even a simple expletive. The exercise that took 5 minutes max from memory was now taking 15 because I literally could only remember what I nailed. Whatever I didn’t just got logged as “Okay this happened, we’re gonna do this moving forward, cool.” and I’d move on. Failures were reduced to data. Insults and abusive speech flung at me meant fuck all. If that was all you had then your opinion meant dick to me. As far as I was concerned, if someone became needlessly upset at me over something that wasn’t a slight on them, then they needed to handle that and I’m protecting my energy because I know how that story ends and I’m protecting my peace, for the same exact reason.

This is where the structure of it comes into play and I’ll give you a full explanation of it.

First, we start with opening the entry. You get your notebook and pen. Top of the page you’ll write today’s date, then, give the page a title. Example 8/24/2026: Turbulence.

Now, we move on to the opening. On the next line, you write “The Shadow is Speaking.”

This opens the ritual. What you’re about to engage in has to be honest because you will begin to explore the root origins of these themes and what sets off these triggers for you.

You have to begin to identify what it is you move to protect. The Value Log does directly show you that and it also helps you to identify what you should value more and possibly protect a little more. You’re just gonna list three things, like so:

8/24/26: Turbulence

The Shadow Is Speaking…

Value Log:

-Kept calm during traffic backup. Protected Safety.

-Still a non-smoker at day 124. Protected Health.

-Didn’t answer the spam caller. Protected Peace.

So far, you can see the things that you do, despite wanting to light up, give someone the middle finger because they’re honking at you like you can do anything and you really wanted to give that stupid moron with the heavy accent claiming to be “John From The IRS” the Les Grossman treatment. Despite desires to do those things, you went with the three things you listed and now you see what they protected and why that mattered so much more than spending your energy, your health and your safety into mere moments of the 24 hours you have in a day when they didn’t deserve that power.

Next, you have to let The Shadow speak. You have to record it verbatim, no edits. Let it be raw and messy. Let it be profane, twisted and hideous. Let it talk because when it does, it tends to reveal things. You have to be ready to listen for those little revelations. It looks like this:

Shadow Check & Assessment:

“Who…In The FUCK did that bitch-tier motherfucker think he was talking to? Fuck You, Dude!” Trigger Rating: 4. Theme: Anger

Okay so this is just a short example but I’m pausing here to show you something. When you want to respond like this to someone and you have to repress that, it can get loud. If what the person said to you is eating at you, then that is something you should check out. Why would that bother you? Re-train your focus and you can begin doing deep dives into why stuff like this is there and simmering. Another theme that could have easily have been triggered was shame. Shame can set off a defensive streak that expresses all wrong and usually toward the wrong people. This is why that kind of work is important.

So now, the example appears as such:

8/24/26: Turbulence

The Shadow Is Speaking…

Value Log:

-Kept calm during traffic backup. Protected Safety.

-Still a non-smoker at day 124. Protected Health.

-Didn’t answer the spam caller. Protected Peace.

Shadow Check & Assessment:

“Who…In The FUCK did that bitch-tier motherfucker think he was talking to? Fuck You, Dude!” Trigger Rating: 4. Theme: Shame

“Honk one more time and I’ll shove that horn up your ass sideways!” Trigger Rating: 5 Theme: Anger

Assessment: In both cases I’d become annoyed by people either doing or saying something. I’m unable to control either. Both times, they had emotional reactions to something well out of my hands. Disregard. Move On.

Discipline Wins:

Non-smoker

Drove safely and defensively

Completed Manuscript ahead of schedule

Begin editing ahead of schedule

Took the 5-mile walk.

Did my push-ups.

Ate healthy.

The Shadow spoke. I answered. I remain in control.

That’s the entire thing. The rest doesn’t need explanation. By that point you’re analyzing what was said and then, you’re showing that you have control when you list your Discipline Wins.

This will begin mapping your consistency but you are still going to have to work through some things on your own. Sometimes, if you find you need to do another entry, do one.

Here’s the most important thing.

You don’t share this with anyone.

No one.

That’s the hardest part of the entire practice, not telling anyone anything at all.

Actually, re-frame it.

Machiavelli pointed out that if you have an ultimate goal in mind, it’s best to keep that to yourself and act strategically toward that goal. Think of it as threat reduction. Sure, you could share an entry with someone that you believe with your being that you can trust. The odds of what they read on that page getting out to everyone and casting you in a very negative light…slim but wouldn’t you rather they be zero?

Give this 30 days at this level. In the next article, I’m going to show you how to use the book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius to further explore some of the thoughts you have in your mind and show you how you’re following in the footsteps of an Emperor.