Book Review: "Shadows Before Dawn" by Teal Swan

Teal Swan is one of the best known modern spiritual teachers and she’s also one of the most polemic. Whole podcasts and tv specials have been devoted to her and not always in a positive way. She’s idolized by some and hated by others. She has been accused of being a cult leader and a liar, but she has also been praised for being brilliant.

I think it’s the same with any spiritual teacher: you have to read and hear them without filters in order to get what they’re about and make up your own mind.

After having watched a few videos of hers and heard some interviews, which I consider gave me a lot of interesting inputs about different topics, both spiritual and mundane, I decided to start reading her books. 

In August 2020 I read her first book The Sculptor in the Sky (2011), which I liked a lot (and which I might reread in order to review). Still, you could tell that this book was about her putting to paper everything she has learned from different sources, including a lot of Abraham Hicks. Since I’ve read all of Abraham’s books, Teal’s approach sounded quite familiar to me in that book, different to the way in which she delivers the contents of most of her videos, where she does sound more like very outspoken self. 

Now I have just finished reading her second book Shadows Before Dawn (2015). 

Again, some approaches appeared familiar to me, but I also liked this book a lot. If you’re unfamiliar with Teal’s work and you haven’t read The Sculptor in the Sky, you can still start with this one book, since she truly outpours her very soul in the first part.

But let’s go back to the primal question: What is the book about? The tagline is Finding the Light of Self-Love Through Your Darkest Times. That’s quite a title there, isn’t it? So you can tell that the book is about self-love. I admit that, from the title, I felt like this wouldn’t be a book for me, since I have a healthy degree of self-esteem. Well, think again! Teal makes a point of showing the reader many of the programmings that have been accepted as societal norms and are actually detrimental to us, leading to what she calls self-hate (strong word, but it’s the opposite of self-love).

The first part of the book is really personal. Teal tells her story about having grown up enduring abuse from a family friend for years and years. It wasn’t just sexual abuse towards a child, it was actual torture and torment in the name of twisted beliefs. It might be a hard read for many as it feels like an actual horror book, but it’s real life. The reason why she starts the book in this way is to show the reader that it’s possible to overcome the most hideous experiences and awful traumas, which had led to self-hate, and become a self-loving person who has much to give to the world. Something that could be criticised about this first part of the book is that it goes on for quite long, but then again, that’s the only way to get the reader to relate to her pain.

The second part of the book consists of 29 "tools" to self-love. To be honest, it felt to me like a whole other book when I got to this part, because suddenly all the horror was over and now here’s the practical way to get to self-love. This is where many would consider this book "self-help". That kind of genre has a bad reputation because it’s considered "cheap psychology" by many critics. Granted, it might do good to seek psychological help if you’re dealing with something like "self-hate", but fact is that if you’re dealing with stuff that is considered "normal" by most while it tears you apart (been there), somebody educated in a mainstream way might not grasp the whole magnitude of your problem. And then again, it is up to anyone to decide for themselves what to do, as long as they don’t harm themselves or others, so it’s legitimate to offer help in non-mainstream, practical ways.

The 29 tools that Teal offers remind me of the 22 Processes of Abraham in their book Ask and it is Given and some of them are well known if you’ve been reading spiritual and/or motivational literature for a while. The tools aren’t quite so esoteric, except for maybe things like "energising the water" (which actually resonated with me). This practicality is helpful for people who still feel kind of afraid to dive deep into spirituality and prefer something more easy to grasp. For example, Tool #12 consists, among other things, of seeing yourself in the mirror long enough as to recognise that your body is wonderful, regardless the programming that might make you feel ugly or out of shape. Sounds easy, but it’s not, because almost nobody in this world is 100% satisfied with their bodies and will tend to pay attention to what they feel is not beautiful about them.

I particularly liked Tool#15 "Practitioner of Play", which is about being as playful in life now as you were as a child. This hit home, because I’ve always been like that and that has kept me sane among messed up stuff I’ve had to experience in my life. That’s why I right now, at almost 45 years old, still feel like I’m in my 20s.

The tools are about different things which all lead to being nicer to yourself, hence practicing self-love: setting boundaries, accepting responsibility for your own life, forgiving of yourself and of others, working with your inner child and even cleaning up clutter. Granted, many authors have written ad infinitum about these topics, but Teal offers a compilation of them in a language that is understandable without being extremely trivial, which is something that bothers me of many authors in the spiritual world.

All in all, I liked this book and I’d give it 4,5 out of 5 stars if I had a rating system.

And for those who accuse Teal of being a cult leader, nothing in this book makes you feel like you’re reading such a person. Instead, this is what Teal herself writes about that in this very book: "To see a teacher as greater than yourself and to believe that he or she exists in a state of enlightened bliss, unaffected by the world, only works against you because it separates you from your own divinity."

Word!

Love,

Henry