The Shadow

The Shadow

by Jacquelyn Small, Eupsychia Institute

SHADOW: The Deficient or Negative Ego. The shadow represents all our disowned, despised, and repressed traits. It lives buried in the closets of our subconscious minds safe from our judgments. The shadow is our "dark side." It acts out for us all those denied emotions and urges we wish we didn't have. For instance, if we're prudish about our sexuality, it acts out our "vamp" side behind our backs. If we insist on always being kind and loving for all the world to see, it will express our other side by sometimes taking over and harshly misbehaving. It is an emotion-based self, slippery and hard to catch. And it is grounded in fear, drama, and competitiveness; it can destroy our relationships if not tamed. Its sacred purpose in our transformation is to remind us of our emotional unfinished business, of what we're trying to skip over or leave behind. Jung called it "our sparring partner," the opponent who exposes our flaws and sharpens our skills.
Whenever you repress an emotion, or deny an issue in your life–such as pretending an insult doesn't hurt, or insisting you're not having trouble with alcohol when it's obvious you're alcoholic–these repressed emotions or unresolved issues will go underground into the subconscious mind. Because it takes so much energy to repress disowned feelings, the shadow will eventually pop out and make a food of itself (you!), or in some other way bring the issue to the surface. The shadow is our awakener; it will eventually bring out of denial all our unconscious ways.

Our codependence patterns come from the shadow's fears and illusions about how to love and be loved, and until we make them conscious (recognize and own them), we are likely to act out, manipulate, or otherwise behave co-dependently through this negative, non-purified ego.

The shadow dissipates or lightens when we accept it. We may still swing from negative to positive states, but our lives will become manageable because the extremes will disappear. When our shadow does manifest, we'll know it is time to listen to its message rather than act on its impulses. We need to see that the shadow, too, can be our friend. [excerpt from AWAKENING IN TIME, pg. 19-20]

ACCEPTING YOUR SHADOW AS A CONSCIOUS COMPANION (THE SHADOW AS 'SYMBOL' OR 'SYMPTOM') The shadow is our passionate response to life, our heart's intensities borne from the suffering taken on so that we might enter fully into the human predicament. It is the first archetype we meet along our journey to wholeness, the first we make "real." It acts out so terribly, we simply have to notice. Jung believed that we meet the shadow by going through a narrow door–one that many wish to avoid entering. But it isn't possible to avoid this, for until the shadow is accessed, brought into the "light of day" and accepted with love and forgiveness, i.e., integrated, it runs–or perhaps ruins–our lives. It distorts our human interactions in ways that keep us unclear, victims of our excesses and addictions.

According to Jungian Jolande Jacobi, in psychic inner reality the archetypal Shadow is a symbol for an aspect of the self (1959). When we cannot find a way to work with our shadow through our dreams or in other ways, it becomes a symptom in our outer world.

Until it is made conscious, the shadow causes us to create emotional explosions and catastrophe or to explode in emotionalism. It stands there at the threshold of our unconscious mind, reflecting back to us our blind side. We must learn to embrace the shadow without trying to win it over. It is our teacher. Often we aren't even able to hear the more kindly offerings from our friends, so to command our attention the shadow must pop out to remind us that it exists from time to time.

The shadow is emotional in nature, not a "thing" or a certain "person" we can ever know concretely. It is often made up of our aggressive or sexual urges and promptings from the extremes, or some other "untamed" aspect of our human/animal nature. Since our rage and sexual desire are two aspects of human nature we have the hardest time integrating and respect the least, they are often the aspects of us that operate in shadowy ways.

According to Jungian Marie-Louise von Franz, the shadow takes the form of laziness, greed, envy, jealousy, the desire for prestige, aggressions, and similar "tormenting spirits". When we ignore our shadow, it is like opening a door and allowing negative powers such as wrath, envy, lechery, or faintheartedness to step in. In ancient times, these were known as demons or bad spirits.

When we try to deny the shadow it multiplies. When we choose to integrate it instead, we gain stability and expansion of consciousness, losing our one-sided self-righteousness and becoming flexible instead of defensive and rigid. If your shadow seems to you to be fairly hard to accept, or you're having trouble finding it all, you may want to ask for the help of a good therapist who is as at home in the shadow's domain as in the light, acquainted with the wilderness experience we humans must travel through if we are to realize our full potential. Jung writes:

"Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions." [excerpt from EMBODYING SPIRIT, pg. 131-133]

Your Observer Self is the tamer of your shadow side, the dark, unloved, unlived part of your nature. Your shadow is a conglomeration of the traits you deplore and prefer to notice in others but never, of course, in yourself. It consists of parts of your psyche that were damaged or didn't mature and of which you are ashamed. You have disowned these parts of yourself. Your psyche has built up defense mechanisms to keep you from knowing these aspects of your nature.

But this doesn't mean these traits disappear. When denied, they grow stronger–buried in closets of repression in your subconscious mind. This shadowy side of your nature –usually a form of aggressiveness, meanness, hysteria, or forbidden sexual fascination–hides out just below the surface of your awareness. It acts out when you are off-guard–when you have not eaten or slept enough, or when stress is making you feel frustrated or helpless. On these occasions it may burst out in an out-of-control overreaction and embarrass you. The more it is denied, the stronger its force. As though in a pressure cooker, your shadow chums with all those pent-up feelings you're denying or are too ashamed to explore in the light of day.

But to be rounded out, we must make our shadow and all the fear and rejection associated with it conscious, or we'll be at its mercy forever. To heal, the shadow has to be exposed and accepted for exactly who and what it is. Then, paradoxically, it won't need to act out so dramatically, though it may still tug at you from time to time. It will always be your dark side.

Your shadow is only the antithesis of the creative process–your "sparring partner" who makes your life exciting. It forces you to weed out anything wrong with your design and to look at what you're trying to ignore. Its sacred function is to force you to work through your dark side, so its energy can be released in appropriate ways. Then, it blesses you with its spiritual gift: it releases your elan vital. Your shadow is very much like managing and loving a hyperactive child. We learn to express our true feelings in safe settings, see them operate, forgive ourselves and others, and learn to accept it all, over and over...until all our energies are balanced and can be used for good. This is integration.

When you feel yourself moving toward an overreaction, call on your Observer Self to watch you consciously. You can either do this symbolically in your mind, or you can act it out in the outer world. But be careful about the choice of acting out your shadow; doing so can cause you more problems. If you just can't stop yourself from acting out, then you need a lesson.

In shadow work, we can learn to have an ongoing dialogue with the differing voices of the shadow, along with all the taunting images that challenge us when we're trying to stop a destructive habit. By clarifying our images and our energies, we will eventually integrate our shadow self enough so it will no longer threaten us.

[excerpt from BECOMING A PRACTICAL MYSTIC, pg. 95-97]