One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious- Carl Jung
I write about the shadow self as I try to tame it in myself. It is the greatest battle that I have undertaken in my life. The end game I seek is to tame the beast inside. So that we can both fly.
The jury is out if I will survive. In any case,…here are my notes from the mind-field. My guru on this journey is Carl Jung. And I quote him like a giddy puppy in love with his master.
According to Carl Jung, The shadow self (or the dark side of the Self) is your animal nature that lives behind your social persona. This includes the usual suspects like our fear, anxieties, envy, lust but also positives like instinct, intuition, compassion, and spirituality. The less you know it and own it, the denser, deeper, and more unpredictable it becomes. But the more you know it and absorb it into your conscious self, the more independent and `whole’ you become.
Here is a sage preamble from Jung on the Why it’s worth `finding’ for.
It is under all circumstances an advantage to be in full procession of one’s personality, otherwise, the repressed portions of the personality will only crop up as a hindrance elsewhere, not at some unimportant point, but at the very spot where we are most sensitive: this worm always rots the core. Instead of waging war on himself, it is surely better for a man to learn to tolerate himself and to convert his inner difficulties into real experiences instead of expending them in useless fantasies. Then at least he lives and does not waste his life in fruitless struggles. — Carl Jung
Here are 7 things that shed light on the shadow.
1.The Map of the Self: I found this model on the internet the most useful way to simplify Jungian psychology and the concept of the shadow self.
At the center of this model is you. The unique you. The Self with a capital S. But this Self is like a hidden seed at the center of a layered psyche that interacts with the two worlds that we exist in — hitherto our Outer World and the Inner World. The Ego and the Persona act as shields and a bridge that filter the Self from the energy of the Outer World and the Shadow and the Anima/Animus act as the bridge and filter from our unconscious Inner World.
2. The end game of the mind is Integration. You have to learn to assimilate (tame) the conflicting parts of your psyche into a harmonic whole. Thereby growing the awareness of your true complete Self. The whole Self — made up of the Ego, the Persona, and the Shadow. Together, they create the unique You on this planet. Jung called this journey of integration- Individuation.
The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona, on the one hand, and assimilate the `gold in Shadow’ on the other. — Carl Jung
Once individuation is completed the ego is no longer at the center of the personality but a small part of a greater Self.
3. The ego and your Persona are your entire conscious self. The persona is a subset of the ego, the mask you wear in any given situation. You can have multiple personas, different masks you wear to appease the various people in your life. All of your different personas are part of your ego. For example, if you are a musician, the persona would be the part of your conscious self that you present during work (rehearsals, concerts, etc.) But you may temporarily take off the mask during your lunch break while meeting some old friend. Or if you’re having lunch with your colleagues, you may keep your musician persona while discussing the composer you are working on for the day. Or you may pull out a different mask while discussing something else altogether like the game last night.
Most people, including myself, suffer from inflation of the persona.
Meaning that they over-identify with their `social mask’ to the detriment of other important areas of the psyche. You are a son, a husband, a job title, a friend, a good citizen, etc, etc. But who are You?
A persona is a compromise. a secondary reality, in making which others often have a greater share than he. It is a social mask that each of us `wear’ in our interaction with others in society. — Carl Jung.
As you explore this topic you will realize that the persona is not the totality of their being but rather only a small component of a much larger personality. I used to joke and say, “we all have a dark side, however, mine is a deep shade of indigo.” Until I came face to face with it and realized I was wrong.
4. Underneath this persona is where one encounters the Shadow.
Jung stated the shadow to be the unknown dark side of the personality. It can include everything outside the light of consciousness and may be positive or negative.“Everyone carries a shadow,” Jung wrote, “and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”
The shadow is nothing more but the residue of the instincts and emotions and behaviors that the individual repressed to gain social acceptance.
This negative feedback and even punishment from family and society create anxiety and the individual hides these traits to gain social acceptance. These traits get pushed away from our awareness into the unconscious where they form the shadow, the dark side of one’s personality. To become aware and then integrate the shadow into one’s personality is a difficult and sometimes a heroic endeavor. But failure to do so can create chaos in one’s life.
The shadow then becomes an active undercurrent that interacts with our conscious self and constantly influences all our thoughts, emotions, and actions in a manner that is beyond conscious control. Often the shadow shows up in our life through projections. Whereby instead of seeing the disagreeable elements of the shadow in oneself — one projects these traits onto others.
[If and when] an individual makes an attempt to see his shadow, he becomes aware of (and often ashamed of) those qualities and impulses he denies in himself but can plainly see in others — such things as egotism, mental laziness, and sloppiness; unreal fantasies, schemes, and plots; carelessness and cowardice; inordinate love of money and possessions that needs a painful and lengthy work of self-education. – Marie-Louise von Franz
5. Anima/Animus:
Jung said that “the encounter with the shadow is the ‘apprentice-piece’ in the individual’s development … that with the anima is the ‘masterpiece’”
Jung identified the archetypal anima as being the unconscious feminine component of men and the archetypal animus as the unconscious masculine component in women. Jung stated that the anima and animus act as guides to the unconscious unified Self and that forming an awareness and a connection with the anima or animus is one of the most difficult and rewarding steps in psychological growth.
The encounter with the Anima represents a connection to the unconscious even deeper than that of the shadow. The shadow shows up the disdained and unwanted qualities. But the Anima is a contact with levels of the psyche which has a potential to lead in the deepest and highest…reaches that the ego can attain. Jung viewed the anima process as being one of the sources of creative ability.
In cases where the anima or animus complexes are ignored, they vie for attention by projecting itself on others. This explains, according to Jung, why we are sometimes immediately attracted to certain strangers: we see our anima or animus in them. Love, at first sight, is an example of anima and animus projection. Moreover, people who strongly identify with their gender role (e.g. a man who acts aggressively and never cries) have not actively recognized or engaged their anima or animus.
6. Merging with the shadow.
Bringing elements of the shadow into the light of consciousness is essential if one is to correct these less desirable aspects. The shadow carries in it the hidden source of nourishment that can overcome the impasse and sterile time in life. It can be a source of renewal over the established values of the ego.
How to do this (1): Look for traits in others that trigger feelings of inferiority in ourselves.
A sense of moral inferiority always indicates that the missing element is something which, to judge by this feeling towards it, really ought not to be missing, or which could be made conscious only if one took sufficient trouble…Whenever a sense of moral inferiority appears, it indicates not only a need to assimilate an unconscious component but also the possibility of such assimilation. — Carl Jung
How to do this (2): Turn your gaze outwards and take note of who were are as a collective human nature.
This advice may seem paradoxical but the point of the exercise is to learn what hides behind the lives of our peers. To expose ourselves to what occupies their unconscious. It is far easier to look beyond the persona of another person; to notice the discrepancies and cracks in their behavior than it is to recognize the same things within ourselves. Moreover, this exercise will show us the projections that we unconsciously portray onto others. This collective insight will in turn make it easier for us to accept a more complete picture of who we are. And we will come to realize as Carl Jung said, Everyone has something of the criminal, the genius, and the saint.
The impact of such “confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a standstill that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective.” Consequently, (as Jung knew from personal experience): “In this time of descent — one, three, seven years, more or less — genuine courage and strength are required,” with no certainty of emergence. Nevertheless, Jung remained of the opinion that while “no one should deny the danger of the descent…every descent is followed by an ascent … enantiodromia;” and assimilation of — rather than possession by — the shadow becomes, at last, a real possibility.
7. Assimilation of the shadow (Enantiodromia)
When things get to their extreme, they turn into their opposite.
This is a phenomenon in nature that is easily observed with water. On one hand, when heated to an extreme, it turns to gas. On the other extreme when cooled turns to solid ice.
Or when Poison becomes a potion. Like a viper’s venom, for instance, is part of a powerful anti-clotting drug that can keep blood flowing instead of clumping up.
Or the story of Siddhartha Gautama who was a noble Prince, protected from suffering by his father until he encounters it by accident. That discovery leads him to the path of enlightenment and starting a new religion, Buddhism.
“It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster’s shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.” — Stephen King
Jung adds that “this characteristic phenomenon practically always occurs when an extreme, one-sided tendency dominates conscious life; in time an equally powerful counterposition is built up which first inhibits the conscious performance and subsequently breaks through the conscious control.”
Enantiodromia launches a different perspective.
He says, “We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals…straight up.” Here the struggle is to retain awareness of the shadow, but not identification with it.
“Non-identification demands considerable moral effort [which] prevents a descent into that darkness”, and though “the conscious mind is liable to be submerged at any moment in the unconscious…understanding acts like a life-saver. It integrates the unconscious.
Coda:
If you have come this far…I think we seek the same treasure. I salute you and urge you to keep going in search of your individual Super Self. The unexplored Self is the greatest adventure.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: Christian Holzinger on Unsplash
