FACING OUR OWN SHADOW

St Gregory of Nazianzus: “That which is not acknowledged cannot be healed.”

A deformed face. The mouth opening in an oval of despair. The palms tightly covering the ears.

The deafening scream reverberating from Edvard Munch’s iconic painting reveals the shock, fear and despair man can confront.

To me, this is the scream of somebody who comes to perceive what they don’t want to know about themselves and the others shouldn’t know either.

It is the scream of somebody who faces their own “shadow.”

In order to understand what the shadow is, in A Little Book on the Human Shadow Robert Bly recommends a simple exercise of imagination. What is a child other than “a ball of energy?” The day our parents ask us, “Can’t you be still?” we understand that there are some parts of us that our parents don’t like and, in order for us not to lose their love, we tuck away that energy into an invisible bag. When we get to school, our teachers tell us, “Good children don’t get angry over such little things,” and we, longing to be good, take the anger and thrust it into the bag as well.

In time, each of us drags an increasingly longer and heavier bag whose content, as Bly points out, cannot be ignored.

Jung defines the shadow as an archetype – the hidden, dark side of our personality that includes all those tendencies, thoughts, behavior that we have unconsciously repressed since childhood in order to conform ourselves to societal norms and expectations. In Aion, Jung stresses the idea that self-knowledge can’t be achieved unless we become aware of our shadow by recognizing “the dark aspects of the personality as present and real,” an act which is usually met with “considerable resistance.”

American psychologists Lisa Marchiano, Deborah C. Stewart și Joseph R. Lee (The Jungian Life Podcast) claim that the shadow usually makes its presence felt in the second half of our life when we our personality is solid enough to allow a burdensome confrontation with it. We are of an age when we know (or at least we like to imagine we know) who we are, what we want, what we like, what role we have in society, what is right and wrong. One day, however, we wake up to realize that nothing makes sense, that everything we have “built” isn’t sufficient enough, that somebody else is responsible for our unhappiness. This crisis, which we usually consider a passing phase, doesn’t go away only because we sweep it under the rug, telling ourselves that “this is life” or using any kind of strategies to discard it. It gets deeper, boiling underneath the surface like lava only to erupt, mostly in a form and at a time we least expect.

Specialised literature shows that, except for crisis situations, we meet our shadow almost every day.

Have you ever asked yourself why you hate someone? Why do you feel humiliated by someone? Why do you regret your slip of the tongue straight away? Why do you laugh at licentious jokes? Why do you despise a mere passer-by? Why are you haunted by the same dream?

If we pay close attention, the answers may prompt recognition of our shadow, more precisely of our shadow’s projection on others.

I remember the case of a client who hated somebody so much that only the thought of him annoyed her. When I asked her, “What is it that you hate the most about him?” she mentioned an unacceptable aspect. “When did you do something unacceptable?” was my next question. After a moment’s hesitation, the client, whose face now revealed indignation, had a snappy answer: “I haven’t done anything unacceptable in my life.” With that, the subject was closed. At our next session she conceded that she had found my question absolutely ridiculous but, undeterred by how she felt, she had decided to ponder it. The introspection exercise made her remember a choice from her youth that she wasn’t necessarily proud of, but for which she had extenuating circumstances (or so she believed). Looking thoroughly into them, she became acutely aware that what she had actually done was to build a fortress of safe excuses; as the walls of lies collapsed, her scream was as deafening as Munch’s character: yes, she had done something unacceptable; yes, she had lied to herself; yes, she had judged another person lest she should judge herself.

In complete accord with Jung’s concept, James Hillman (Meeting the Shadow, ed. Zweig and Abrams) affirms that the cure of the shadow is a moral issue entailing the acknowledgement of “what we have repressed, how we perform our repressions, how we rationalize and deceive ourselves, what sort of goals we have and what we have hurt, even maimed, in the name of these goals.” Furthermore, the cure of the shadow is interwoven with our capacity to love ourselves with all our hidden, repugnant aspects: “How far can our love extend to the broken and ruined parts of ourselves, the disgusting and perverse? How much charity and compassion have we for our own weakness and sickness?” Hillman believes that the process of loving the shadow brings about a moment of revelation and “joyful acceptance” of the fact that understanding yourself means understanding the others.

The paradox as a solution to approaching the shadow is what Robert A. Johnson suggests in Owning Your Own Shadow. Alluding to the famous question, “What good could come from Nazareth?” Johnson challenges us to reflect whether there is something good in that part of ourselves that we brush aside. Surprisingly, the best can be found in that “neglected quarter.” Human existence is full of paradoxes: day makes sense only in contrast to night, masculinity is relevant only in contrast to feminity, north to south, joy to sobriety. An electric plug functions if it has access to negative and positive electrical charge. Reality cannot be understood only in one of its aspects, but in its completeness. “Personal suffering begins when we are crucified between these opposites,” when we embrace one aspect and deny or dismiss the other. This contradiction is painful, Johnson affirms, because it’s meaningless: “One can endure any suffering if it has meaning; but meaninglessness is unbearable.” If we accept and bear the brunt of dichotomies, we “embrace the paradox” – the creative way of living, a sign of spiritual strength and maturity.

It becomes obvious, I hope, that shadow work presupposes three fundamental qualities: courage, patience and perseverance.

They will help us acquire inner healing, spiritual freedom and harmony with ourselves and the others.

The original article in Romanian was published here:

Chic Elite Fata in fata cu propria umbra