While Jung lost out to Freud for the most part in the development of clinical psychology, there are a surprising number of progressive thinkers who thing that Jung covered some areas much better than Freud, and the expression of the unconscious mind is one such area. Freud seemingly couldn't get past the idea that the psyche is wholly and immutably the product of the accumulated wounds to the developing mind while Jung saw a more dynamic picture of development. Most notably, he saw that where we are most apt to attribute our darker side to external influences, it is an because we are disassociating from aspects of our nature and projecting them onto people and circumstances around us. He called this part of our psyche the shadow.
Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.
Psychology and Religion, C. G. Jung
What Jung is describing is a hidden perspective -- like the junk drawer of our consciousness -- where we stuff those aspects of ourselves that we cannot peaceably reconcile with our ideas and expectations of ourselves. This isn't simply a container for repressed memories, but for everything that we don't wish to acknowledge about ourselves; the deepest, darkest conflicts of our soul dwell here. According to Jung -- and this as I understand it is a key disagreement with Freud -- it is the projection of the shadow conflict that creates pathological behavior, not it's mere existence. Zen monk and professional mediator Diane Hamilton describes it as such:
The shadow is really the unconscious material that is no longer held in first person awareness. For whatever reason -- because it's painful, because it's distressing, because it's painful -- I can't experience something as me and so instead I have a way of unconsciously moving it out of my awareness. But it pops up in second person in you, or it may pop up in third person.
When I disassociate from some aspect of myself, I must find some way to explain the appearance of that aspect when it arises. Since I have disassociated from it I cannot claim it as my own and take responsibility for it, so I project it onto circumstances or people. This makes much more sense when you can see it in action.
I grew up in a family where there was lots of fighting. As the fourth of five children, I was quite literally stuck in the middle of things. And being of such a temperment as to be highly averse to such contention, I decided early on that I would not get angry that way. So, I don't get angry. However, sometimes something will happen that causes anger to arise in my awareness. And since "I don't get angry," it's clearly not my own anger, so it must be someone else's. So when my wife does something that I don't like, I can't understand why she is angry at me. Try untangling that knot when your ego is bound and determined to be right and you'll see how powerful the shadow really is.
Yielding Responsibility to the Shadow
The shadow is powerful for two reasons. First because of its capacity for misdirection. Most of the time we view our interior state as the result of external circumstances, and our disassociated nature -- our shadow -- is part of that exterior. In fact, every part of our experience that we do not take conscious responsibility for becomes part of the shadow. In that sense, every external force that we perceive is the shadow interpreting and acting. It is the shadow that exerts its will in those circumstances where we do not exercise our conscious will. Yet our power as conscious beings lies solely in our ability to act with awareness and intention. In this way the shadow lulls us into a fitful sleep in which we are blown about by the winds of restless dreams.
The second is that the shadow is literally an energetic component of our being. It takes a lot of energy to maintain and keep at bay the shadow; energy that we could be using to grow ourselves and help those around us. Every time we defer to the shadow we give it strength and we diminish our personal responsibility. Every time we accede to our human weakness, every time we succumb to guilt or shame, every time we turn away in fear the shadow grows until yielding to the shadow becomes the reflexive action of our default perspective. At that point we are truly victims, though victims to our own fragmented mind and not to external forces; we have no free will because we have given the stick to the automatic pilot so we can close our eyes and hope for the best. All of our power, the power of decision and presence, is fed into our unconscious pathological nature. No wonder we can act in certain ways and feel like it wasn't even ourselves acting. Have you ever found yourself describing something you did as something that "just happened?" That was your shadow acting out.
But as serious and powerful as this is, it is not a problem that enlightenment can solve. You may find the oneness of all things, but until you are whole yourself -- whole in awareness and in action -- you're enlightened awareness is only a means of obscuring the hidden part of your nature that most needs attention. There is no shortage of "Gurus Gone Wild" to prove that point. And western religion with its behavioral codes only exacerbates the problem by encouraging us to disassociate with forbidden activities as they arise in the field of thought, and to take redemptive action where we fail; all of this hinders us from taking responsibility for our life. If we are to progress in the evolution of our consciousness, we are charged not only with the expansion of our awareness of the mysteries of the universe, but also of mastering the mysteries of ourselves. Integrating the shadow is critical to development of consciousness and personal responsibility.
Discovering the Shadow
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Aion, C. G. Jung
I said at the beginning that the shadow is a hidden perspective, and just like the default perspective it is an aggregate. But where the default perspective -- or ego -- is an aggregate of those things with which we wish to identify, the shadow is an aggregate of those things from which we disassociate our identity. In order to start reconciling the shadow aspects of ourselves, we must first come face to face with the shadow. Jung paints a rather ominous picture, stating that we must recognize the "dark aspects of the personality as present and real."
This reminds me of the scene in The Empire Strikes Back, where Yoda sends Luke into the cave on Dagobah. Luke asks what's in there and Yoda replies, "Only what you take with you." What Luke finds is a vision of Darth Vader, which he kills and discovers to be himself behind the mask. In other words, his nature -- not just his blood -- was the same as Darth Vader's, and until he faced that nature (by facing the real Vader), he would not be complete.
Spirituality has taken such a feelgood tone in recent years, an understandable reaction to the judgmental rigor of traditional religion, but there is a reason religion became demanding in the first place. The spiritual path demands that we become whole, and we are only whole when we have become one with ourselves, and that means facing and accepting our darker nature. People love the mystical experiences, they love the rush of being one with the universe. But that's the easy part; who doesn't want to rest in infinite bliss? The real question is, who's ready to step into the cave and face their whole nature?
If you're ready, it's quite easy to start identifying the shadow. Diane Hamilton recommends looking around for things that disturb you emotionally, either in a positive or negative way. Whenever you feel a "disturbance in the Force," chances are you've found an area where you are projecting your shadow. There are lots of things that we find pleasant or unpleasant, that we would change or keep the same; that is not what we're looking for. We're looking for things that we have an especially strong reaction to. Like that one thing about a person -- out of everything about them that evokes no response, whether you like it or not -- that one thing that gets you wound up. That's where you're projecting.
It's important to reinforce that this reaction can be positive or negative; both point to the same thing: some aspect of ourselves that we do not wish to acknowledge or express. If I don't feel accepted by my co-workers, chances are I'm projecting my own self-judgment on them. On the other hand, someone I'm strongly attracted to likely demonstrates traits that I myself have, but am afraid to express. If I have a strong admiration for someone who is helpful and unconditional loving towards those around them, it is because I have that same capacity but I am not living it. No wonder Jesus has stuck around so long in the collective consciousness.
Ultimately this becomes an exercise in liberation, the flip-side of conscious evolution. The greater our awareness, the greater our ability to act rather than to be acted upon. And by exercising that greater capacity to act consciously, we free ourselves from the emotional weight we carry around. Have you ever met somebody whose presence felt light and completely free? This is somebody who carries very little shadow. They are typically energetic, positive, and very resilient to whatever happens around them. And they haven't simply unplugged from life; on the contrary, they tend to be the most engaged, vibrant people we encounter in our lives.
But identifying the shadow is only the first step. Once found, it must be comprehended and reintegrated. We must take ownership of the aspects of ourselves that we are projecting and we must reclaim the energy that is going into maintaining that shadow. But most of the time when we try to deal with our issues, we end up only shuffling the shadow around because we either do not become fully aware of what we're trying to integrate, or because we encounter resistance or stir up other aspects of our shadow in the process. In my next post I'm going to write about what I've been doing to explore my own shadow and the experiences I've had in my efforts to understand and reintegrate this aspect of myself.
