Befriending the Shadow
By embracing all aspects of our human nature, we become wholly human and therefore holy.
Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens. ~ Carl Jung
As a sort of final installment to the Game of Life series, this post seems a good place for a writing pause. I often recommend the power of the pause to clients as a tool that can help them in becoming more conscious and intentional about whatever is next. So too with my writing. I’ll be taking a pause from writing weekly posts to allow time and space for new intentions to emerge from my unconscious mind, which is the source of spirituality, creativity and inspiration. It is also the subject of today’s post.
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. ~ Carl Jung
Our everyday behavior is affected by desires, needs and fears of which we are unaware. Whether it’s a Freudian slip of the tongue, an irrational outburst or a flash of intuitive insight, we are subject to influences that arise from somewhere other than the conscious mind. In Divorce Trauma, we explored the emotional landmines that assemble themselves in the hidden recesses of our psyches as the result of distressing experiences. In this post, we’ll take a deep dive (pun intended) into the murky and fertile land where landmines get built.
As part and parcel of the human condition, we’re in possession of two minds, the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is the realm of rational thought, linear reasoning and logic, while the unconscious mind is the territory where intuition, emotion and dreamstates arise spontaneously and somewhat mysteriously. The conscious mind judges, analyzes and compares while the unconscious mind feels, intuits and imagines.
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people. ~ Carl Jung
The unconscious mind is also the place where we imprison the “ugly, unlovable or unacceptable” parts of ourselves and keep them well hidden in dark caves in our gray matter. Banished (and mad about it,) our shadow self conducts covert operations to earn its freedom. It tries to capture attention by acting in ways that are compensatory, unpredictable and sometimes totally over the top. Like a prisoner pleading his case for leniency, the shadow takes over our conscious mind to justify its illicit activities.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~ Carl Jung
Like a physical shadow, the shadowy part of our personality follows us wherever we go. We may try to ignore, deny or suppress it, but eventually, when conditions are just right, it will burst rudely out of the basement, kidnap our conscious mind, and hold us hostage to its irrational demands. We may be mystified or horrified when a subterranean emotional landmine unleashes our shadow on us and an unsuspecting world; we may try to shove that shadow self back down into the basement and forget all about it, but it’s no use. It will explode into awareness the next time it gets activated by similar circumstances. We remain subject to the shadow’s sneak attacks on our rational mind until we acknowledge it as an essential and valuable part of our human condition that’s enabled us to survive threatening circumstances.
All forms of self-defeating behavior are unseen and unconscious, which is why their existence is denied.~ Vernon Howard
Trying to ignore the shadow is like partying with our better nature upstairs while the unsavory parts of self sit coiled in the recesses of the mind’s basement, plotting a takeover. Those sad, mad or scared parts of us, are, well, part of us. They have a story to tell and gifts to share that we can’t access as long as we condemn them to a lonely corner of the basement, pretending they don’t exist. When we open the door to the “basement” of our unconscious mind and welcome our shadow to the party “upstairs,” we can use our conscious mind to negotiate a truce that lets us benefit from insights that arise spontaneously from the unconscious mind.
Images that emerge from the unconscious have their own vitality and present scenarios that proceed according to their own logic. ~ Carl Jung
When we accept who we are without the burden of excessive shame, we become light on our feet and can move in more desirable directions without struggle. When we shake hands with our shadow and declare a ceasefire, we quit warring endlessly with our flaws. It may seem counterintuitive, but when we accept the flawed parts of ourselves instead of judging them as shameful, bad or wrong, they will come under our conscious control more easily. When we accept that our mercurial human nature is designed for the purpose of learning and growing our soul, we can allow ourselves to let go of what we’ve outgrown and try on something new. By welcoming both the saint and the sinner in us to the party, we become whole and at peace with ourselves and the world around us.
We’re not robots. The good, the bad and the ugly parts of us are what make us most human. Since landmines are composed of suppressed, volatile and trauma-induced feelings warehoused in non-rational territory, we can’t think our way out of old pain or force ourselves to forgive. If left buried, these emotions left over from the original hurt become the collateral damage known as post-traumatic stress disorder. As long as volatile emotions remain inaccessible to our conscious mind, they’re capable of exploding into consciousness whenever provoked by outer circumstances.
If we shine a benevolent light on volatility or vulnerability, it gets defused by our acceptance. With empathy, understanding and forgiveness, we can dissolve old landmines for good, allowing us to traverse our path in safety. When we make the unconscious mind conscious and embrace it like the source of creativity that it is, we befriend ourselves in both our shadowy and our light-filled aspects. By embracing all aspects of our human nature in this heartfelt way, we become wholly human and therefore holy.
We must overcome the Western habit of dismissing as useless the inner life and its products and instead merge with the unconscious processes, so as to gain possession of them by allowing them to possess us. ~ Carl Jung
This so resonates as I often use the metaphor of “gremlins in the basement” to discuss the suppression of our uncomfortable feelings, shadow parts, and painful memories & reference “inviting them in” as Rumi does in his poem below:
The Guest House by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, translation by Coleman Barks (The Essential Rumi)
Your beautiful insights on acceptance of one's shadow make me think of an analogous situation with pain: the more we resist it, the greater the pain's intensity. When we relax, suddenly what was painful is less so. We really are here to experience it all...