Shadow Work

Shadows. What are they? What are yours? 

Shadows are the often-unconscious parts of ourselves, our inner parts, that yearn for expression in the physical world. They are often thought of as negative traits. As the ghosts of a past state-of-being that haunt the basement of our inner complex and rattle the window panes, slam doors loudly and explode our kitchen cupboards in an effort to scare you.

But, in reality they should be thought of more like ‘Casper the friendly ghost’.  Rather than being scary, your shadow, like Casper, just wants to be friends with you, to be seen and interacted with. And just like Casper, if we can pause long enough to not run away from reaction and fear to its presence, it can help us. This is integration. The integration of our whole parts. 

After all, the shadow is a protection mechanism that serves a purpose and relates to our social conditioning and reaction to negative feelings in childhood. One way to think of shadow is the tension (and ultimately magnetism) between two opposing forces. What we think we should be, or some moral compass, vs our needs and desires. Examples include our unpredictable emotions like anger, jealousy, guilt, shame etc, our limiting beliefs, greed and unhealthy expressions of power, or our sexual desire. Shadow can be collective, specific to groups or nations, and could be considered the root cause of all tension within relationships, including at extremes, sexual abuse and war. 

To illustrate this tension is Victorian era fiction work, The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by R. L. Stevenson. In this classic novel, Dr. Henry Jekyll, well respected in society, devises a method for the duality of his parts, being the urges for evil that he is aware resides within him and that of the expectations within society, and his own sense of morality, to be expressed. Motivated by the tension of this urge he creates a potion that allows him to separate these two identities producing the alter-ego, Mr Hyde, who can pursue his desires free from the restraint of conscience.

Able to psychologically transform between the two identities at will, the scheme allows Mr Hyde to do evil acts without Dr Jekyll feeling directly responsible. However, this separation and the free reign that is granted Mr Hyde allows for evil to eventually become more powerful. The transformation begins to happen spontaneously and without control, leading ever closer to permanent identification with evil, eventually consuming them both when Dr Jekyll altruistically takes his own life in a bid to kill the alter-ego, Hyde.

The greater meaning and metaphor here is that within each of us resides darkness and duality. It is also reflective of society at large where the high-walled estates of Victorian aristocracy hide secrets of immorality and can often be show-cases of extreme expressions of shadow owing to the tight conventions of polite society that, like a corset, squeeze the air and life out of our true nature. Until the stitching starts to burst at the seams that is..

Ultimately then the proper path is the integration of the many parts as a whole. The awareness and acknowledgement of our shadows, and the sitting down with them as friends and allies on the journey. To do so lessens the tension between the two and reduces the polarity inherent in their manifestations. 

This is important within the sexual sphere where so much misunderstanding, abuse, and projections can create distortions and long lasting damage to the individual and collective. Look at the prevalence of people trafficking into prostitution, sexual abuse, and assault which both demand and supply, and arguably a fall into victim-hood, is the collective expression of unmet needs somewhere in our personal development. You can look at your own sexual and intimate relations and ask, where tension is, could shadow play a part in this?

Betty Martin’s ‘Wheel of Consent’ is an excellent model for showing the types of shadows that can manifest into extreme expressions if not made friends with. Note, making friends with it doesn’t necessarily mean acting them out, but an understanding of their reason for existing. In this way we see the shadow expression as its own entity or personality, not just a ‘thing’ or psychological concept. Taking this to its fullest expression means talking to, role playing, with the shadow as one would another person, literally. 

Ok, so bear with me for this explanation, and feel free to read back again..

In the Wheel of Consent, there are 4 quadrants titled ‘give’, ‘receive’, ‘take’, ‘allow’. ‘Give’ and ‘receive’ sit at opposite corners of the quadrant with giving being an act of service to the receiver who accepts the gift of that service or act. In this case the action, if going from the giver to the receiver as is the gift. In the case of a massage, the giver gives the gift of the massage to the receiver for their benefit. 

In the other two quadrants are ‘take’ and ‘allow’. A person in the ‘take’ position, does an action to the person allowing the act to happen, but the gift of the act goes to the taker, the person doing the action as opposed to receiving the action. In the same example as above, the person in the ‘take’ position, with the consent of the person sitting in the ‘allow’ position, gives a massage for the benefit of the person giving the massage, for example to feel that person's body. Note the inherent polarity or duality of these positions which represent the possibility for tension.

This all happens by agreement between the two (or more) parties within the Wheel of Consent. Anything outside of the wheel is not by agreement and could be considered shadow. These shadow aspects at their extreme could, in the case of someone who is always giving the gifts in service to the person who receives, be resentment. For someone continually sitting within the ‘receive’ position, this shadow could form into a sense of entitlement. For someone in the ‘take’ position, this could form as creepiness, assault or rape, and for someone in the ‘allow’ position, this could form as martyrdom or victim-hood if they continually allow people to take from them without there being so me form of mutual benefit or consent. 

The overall point here is that all humans have fundamental needs, including within sexuality and intimacy. This could be the need to connect, to be touched, to be seen and heard. And their shadows also need to be expressed or related to. If these needs are not consciously met, they will be sought out in other ways, perhaps unconsciously. This could manifest as infidelity, creepy or manipulative behaviour, arguments etc. Like any form of energy, it cannot be killed off, only expressed or transmuted into other forms of energy, and if left unattended could pop our vessel and burst out uncontrollably at inappropriate times. I’m sure we can all relate to this. In the extreme collective example, this could literally translate as violent conflict or war.

So if we seek to be integrated, whole, conscious, it is encouraged to do the work, to identify the blind spots and resolve them before they become your Mr Hyde.  

The name of the game in meeting the shadow is to develop a relationship with it and balance the conscious and unconscious. By shining a light on our shadows, corrects the distorted view we have of them that vilifies them while at some level accepting the innateness of them. This work is termed “shadow work”.

But, what does that mean? What does it look like?

The first port of call is an awareness of the existence of shadow, as has been discussed here, and which as a concept is deep. Second, is the trusty notepad and pen. Taking the time to identify and write down all of those taboo or dark habits, desires, thoughts etc that you feel in some form of conflict with, even if only light conflict, and write them down. Having clearly written items that may, just may, constitute a shadow for you is a basic form of creating an enduring awareness of their presence, which we begin to identify in our everyday life, in conversation, in our actions, in our thoughts. The awareness of these is the first step along the path of integrating our shadow.

When you have that list, look at each in turn and use internal processes to understand how they manifest in your life and what you feel their purpose might be. From there you can determine if there are things in your life that should be embraced, acted upon, transmuted, or simply held as an awareness for deeper inquiry. 

There are numerous tools for accessing the subconscious that you can use to inquire deeper into the shadow and its role. One great tool is called ‘aspecting’ in which a person places two cushions on the floor as opposing sitting positions and then takes turns representing both themselves as the individual Self and the shadow piece, be it a part of them, a character trait, thought process, desire, political ideology, the concept of a disease or more. The exercise of aspecting doesn’t have to be limited to the personal. 

To do the exercise, first, call in intention and drop into the practice. Sit on one cushion and look to the other cushion, at your shadow part (or other thing/entity), and ask it questions. Once you have asked, you get up, shake it off to dispel the energy of ‘you’, walk around to the opposite cushion approaching from behind, sit down and adopt the position of that particular shadow. Again, having dropped into the body, being an access point of divine consciousness, you simply start speaking without thinking, not predicting what the shadow would say, but simply speaking and see what comes out. You would be surprised at what information you didn’t think you knew that would come out of your (or the shadows) mouth. You can repeat this process of asking questions to your shadow and answering them as the shadow, shaking off each role and dropping into each role each time and simply follow the thread to see where it goes. It may take you to other personalities or entities that are not the shadow you started with. Follow the thread, go down the rabbit hole, you will find the light eventually.

Shadow work has its roots within shamanic practice and Jungian psychology. From the Jungian perspective, we all have unconscious parts of ourselves that often sit in opposition to our moral compass or societal expectations. For this reason, and from the perspective of being feared or misunderstood, they are often repressed parts of ourselves. Within any modern modality of healing or therapy, ‘repressing’ emotions or parts of the Self are not part of the treatment plan, so it stands to reason that there is utility in bringing these repressed parts out of the shadows and shining a light upon them. Alternatively this schism provides a dislocating of the personality, confusion, distraction, and sometimes worse. These shadows from the perspective of spiritual development also act as an energetic block to higher states of consciousness or spiritual growth and evolution. 

Integration of the shadow is the essence of the modern-day interpretation of the philosophical maxim, ‘Know thyself”. 

Within all of this, the intention at all times is not to shame or judge our shadows, but merely create greater awareness around them. With some exception, there is no real right or wrong, unless you deem that to be so. Of course that’s simply one perspective, but to judge or shame is often to create stronger patterns around the shadow or enforce the conditions that repressed the shadow in the first place, therefore neither transmuting nor integrating. And in reality, these parts of ourselves stem from the reality of the world and our experiences within them, so to judge our own conditioning seems pointless. 

Be compassionate to yourself. Hunt your shadow, but don’t fall into the trap of creating shadows to hunt shadows. After All there is a saying..

“The light, the dark, no difference”.