38. shadow

This is a ripe time for shadow work. I was thinking, over the past two days, as I’m not on social media, how protected I am from what I generally experience in the digital space during times of collective upheaval, polarization, and witnessing of violence and harm - which is being triggered and activated by content, some of which is ‘news’ and some of which is just rage bait.

In some ways, stepping away from social media is making more space for me to actually work with my judgments, assumptions, finger-pointing and self-justification. I see less of the things that make me disgusted and angry, but more space to notice (as I hear about current events third hand) how I would react if the trigger landed in my mental space unexpectedly, repeatedly, and in a way seemingly outside my control.

In many ways, people in modern culture have lost touch with the unconscious, but we’re still constantly affected by it. We think we’re the master in our own house (our minds, emotions, actions), but that is largely a delusion delusion. We are not always in full control or awareness of our instincts, reactions and projections. We are in fact, only in charge of the ego, but the ego is not always ‘driving the bus.’ 

With this limited awareness, we tend to see fault, ego, problem, unconsciousness, in other people (pointing outward, seeing fault, casting judgment) yet struggle to see it clearly within ourselves. Often, what we are seeing or projecting onto others may be an indicator of something we aren’t looking at closely enough within ourselves.

Part of this is because scientific inquiry, rationalism, and a universalist philosophy or worldview (the idea that we can collect data and information, evaluate it mentally and gradually create a cohesive story of everything in existence) has over-emphasized the ‘light’ (visible) aspects of human experience and denied the hidden, occult, esoteric, and unknowable aspects of being.

The abandonment of animism, shedding of superstition, and rejection of non-rational and non-linear ways of knowing also creates a loss of capacity for remembering the sacred. Jung’s argument is that this leads to social organization disintegrates and people morally decay. When we strip everything of mystery and numinosity, nothing is holy any longer. To be only empirical and rational beings means sacrificing our animal nature, giving up the intelligence of instinct and separating from our nature as nature. When ‘matter’ lost connection with the Great Mother, we lost the profound emotional and spiritual meaning of the depth of our natural and spiritual connection with Earth. In reaching only for transcendence, for the light, for the sky god, we’ve become amnesiac about the wisdom and well-being that comes from honoring the dark places: the shadow, womb, and tomb.

Jung says, “Modern man does not understand how the rationalism which has destroyed his capacity to respond to numinous symbols and ideas) has put him at the mercy of the psychic underworld.” Being at the mercy of it suggests that rather than turning towards our individual and collective hard parts and making a conscious descent, we are instead dragged, kicking and screaming, into experiences of hell, torment, suffering, alienation, pain, violence, harm - as both recipients and perpetrators.

What if we choose to walk, eyes and heart wide open, into the dark, cavernous, mysterious cave of our own individual and collective soul? To do that, we have to make space for our shadow.

Jung’s theory is that the unconscious produces symbols and dreams in an effort to be in dialogue and contact with the conscious mind, as a way to come into greater wholeness, or what he calls individuate - coming into not just authenticity, but a more true expression of the Self. Self refers to the deepest essence and totality of who we are, encompassing light and shadow, conscious and unconscious. To reconnect with and witness our shadow helps us come into wholeness, connect with our heights, depths, ancestral past and illumined future.

The way towards individuation is not only becoming our unique selves, but becoming a ‘holder of the opposites’. We’re all full of contradictions, day and night, birth and death, good and evil, light and shadow, and becoming aware and able to carry and hold the tension between some of those opposites within ourselves is essential, integral, and wholly necessary to us to experience ourselves as a microcosm of All That Is.

What about this idea? If shadow did not exist as one ‘half’ of a whole, “if [duality] were not so, existence would come to an end.” This ‘battle’ of the opposites is the expansion and contraction of the universe, the day and night of Brahma, the inhalation and exhalation of God, the cycle of creation and destruction which holds All That Is in balance - including within us.

The archetypal dream of a golden age or paradise is paramount in modern culture - and maybe it always has been, but everybody has a different vision and version of what this kind of paradise looks like. We think, if only XYZ was different, we could have this perfect, beautiful, tension-free world or relationship or home or political situation.

But what if it’s not like that? What is life is full of tension and our job is to learn to hold it, even, perhaps especially, when it’s difficult?

Can we think of shadow work then as practices, tools and pathways for psychological, relational, societal and spiritual harm reduction, accountability and repair work, because what if we can never transcend or go beyond the harmful aspects of nature? If our nature, as nature, is as inherently chaotic and destructive as it is generative and creative, how can we integrate work with it in a good way? 

If we can’t fix it, or fully heal it, then perhaps our job is to learn to just be with shadow and care for it. We can explore, name what we find, and hold it with love, curiosity, and acceptance, to help us integrate our inescapable polarity.

This is lifelong, ongoing work, as what’s in the shadow is always changing. What is shadow for us now is different from what was in the shadow then. Jung said we all are everything in potential (good, bad, healthy, sick, ugly, beautiful) and as we are constantly in the process of both creation and destruction, we must continue to adjust and accommodate for what is present. Some people have more destructive and chaotic energy, and some have less. Our work then, is not to make ourselves less of whatever we think is ‘bad,’ but to make space for it - truly make space - because we cannot hold the tension or care for the fullness of our souls…

if we don’t have any space for it.

One more reason to make some space off social media, because we're gonna need a hell of a lot of shadow work (pun intended) where we're going.