Me and My Shadow

When I was a small girl I was terrified of the dark, and it took a lot to deal with that fear. I would cling to my mother especially if we were staying overnight somewhere unfamiliar. My feet would patter behind hers and I would squeeze between her legs or grab onto her night shirt for dear life. I would seek her out when I heard her getting a glass of water or using the bathroom in the night. She would laugh, and sing, “You are my shadow...da dum dum...” I would take a great comfort in thinking of myself as my mom's shadow. Maybe that feeling of connectedness was less scary than being alone in the night. I would either wheedle my way into her bed or she would tuck me back safely in mine, the darkness at bay for a while with her words of comfort. No matter where I slept, I would make sure that the covers covered all the way to my neck, regardless of how hot it was. My stuffed animals were stalwart protectors and guardians, absolutely necessary allies in standing up to my night terrors. Whether I was a sensitive child with a big imagination, or there were really boogies in my closet and under my bed and in the vent and....it doesn't really matter. The shadow is real for all of us. Our unrealized fears are often manifestations of the very things we find unacceptable in ourselves. The shadow is both fascinating and frightening. It calls to us and repels us with the mystery of the unknown. I was not raised to be comfortable with embracing it, rather simply surviving or pushing the fear of “other” away. The messages from my upbringing and cultural background said that it is better to move past the things that are unpleasant and put my best face forward. The implicit message was not to dwell on things that made me unhappy or uncomfortable. Girl, make some lemonade with those lemons.

We live an extroverted culture. The message is to move fast, keep young, work hard and you will have good results. Our sense of beauty and self worth are sometimes sacrificed at the altar of perfection and magazine marvels. Are you married? Are you on the right career track? This lipstick or label will make it happen. With all the pressure, the nagging messages of “Be successful!” “Achieve!” “Achieve!” - how much easier is it to ignore aspects of ourselves that are difficult to examine. It is much easier to turn on the television, flip on the radio, or dive into the video game and tune out. Self examination is never easy and while it may be challenging - the rewards are worth it. What lies in the shadow can be just as illuminating as the words that have defined us for decades. To dare to know yourself fully one must examine all angles.

There is somewhere between these definitions of self that lies the truth. You first catch a glimpse of what lies just beneath, then maybe you're ready to meet it. It rears in stressful situations or in repetitive dreams. Perhaps after meeting it, you might dance with it for a while. You might coax it out more often with some patience. It is not a science or easily mapped experience. It takes more than an episode of Oprah or one self-help book - this is life work. You are going to sit with things that aren't bright, shiny, and comfortable. You will experience things about yourself that may be surprising or unsettling, and see those same things reflected back to you in others. This is reflection, and shaking hands with our own Stranger. This is radical work.

While this is a life-long struggle, the benefits are amazing and so worth the seeking. Shadow-work helps us to change self-sabatoging behaviors, expand our awareness in relationship and the workplace; it helps us achieve more authentic intimacy with ourselves and others, and sometimes find the treasures of creative talent or hidden emotion. A lawyer finds an unexamined passion for dance that was repressed due to his career and academic-oriented upbringing, or a college student uncovers her hostility towards her professor who mirrors her own bitter struggles for perfection. Why does it set you off when your husband sounds just like your father? Why does the mailman bringing the mail late send you into a tizzy? The clues are there, but it is in the deep relationship and authentic contact with ourself that these answers blossom. The shadow can help reveal patterns of unhealthy eating or workaholism. A couple might explore shadow together and realize how communicate more effectively. The possibilities are all there.

It might seem easier to leave all this stuff under the blanket, so to speak. (Lemonade and ice tea, well isn't that niiice.) Some might say, we'll just leave that door shut. Keep it nice and tidy and leave all that stuff alone! The problem in that thinking is that repressing or ignoring self allows those aspects to take on a life of their own. Shake the bottle just right, and it comes exploding forward. Mid-life crisis goes beyond a new car and into crisis. Stress at work goes beyond an ulcer and maybe to the bottle. These things that we put away can not be ignored forever. It is much easier to meet them on your terms rather than the power being in the other court.

Jung said, “How else could it have occurred to man to divide the cosmos, on the analogy of day and night, summer and winter, into a bright day-world and a dark night-world peopled with fabulous monsters, unless he had the prototype of such a division in himself.” In Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray the story illuminates a beautiful and vain man that wished to remain perfect forever, so he made a pact with the devil. His bargain was that a portrait of himself would take on all his aspects of greed, aging, and imperfections, and cruelty rather than his own face. The painting was hidden away, never to be seen by the public. Occasionally, Dorian's curiosity overtook him. He would sneak a peak at the painting that grew more and more hideous as time passed. We are all similar to this character. We want to see the best in ourselves, to put our best face forward. What lies in shadow is not what we necessarily want to share or even see for ourselves. We shove the rage, hatred, lust, and shame into the unconscious and the behaviors such as addiction, laziness, aggression and dependency. Like the hidden painting, these suppressed feeling and behaviors are there waiting to be seen.

This is the stranger, the Other. Hidden from us, these qualities are not an active part of how we view ourselves. When suppressed too long or too tightly these behaviors seem to pop out from the blue. When a normally sensitive co-worker rudely belittles a friend or the marathon runner who has been training diligently for weeks binges on potato chips secretly one night – shadow is at work. The deeper we are disconnected from our shadow, the more we cannot face it in ourselves and others. The more we are separated from this integral part of self, the more it is Other and can get out of control. It can take the form of addictions, abuse, blame, or envy. The shadow is our unlived life. A child may react to his chaotic surroundings and decide that the only way he can survive is to control or shape his environment as much as possible. In adulthood he loses a job or situations in a relationship get beyond his ability to contain and the old images and coping mechanisms don't work anymore. There may be unexpressed tenderness or the need to rebel in his shadow. This is the man that leaves corporate life to pursue a passion for painting, unleashing the talent that wasn't valued in childhood. This is the man that closes his well-scheduled life to live on the wild side for a while, unwinding his control to experience Other. Claiming shadow can be an awakening like nothing we've ever experienced. It can mean freedom, it can mean a new way of doing business or radical shifts in relationship and self image. It is when the shadow rules unseen or remains misunderstood that it looms like Mr. Jeckle in our subconscious.

Delving into a lot of reading and reflection, has led me to some uncomfortable and also some very helpful realizations. During my career assessment for ministry, I experienced some of the most intense scrutiny I've faced from a therapy standpoint. Through this intense reflection and work it became clear that I need to work on my ability to engage conflict. While this has always been apparent to me, in the fact that I have seriously avoided conflict most of my life, I had never taken the uncomfortable reflective time to sit with why this might be so. When the going got hard, what was it made me move into this panic and flight. I could stand ground for other people, and often for issues of justice and ethics. Yet, a raging person often makes me queasy with fear. Why in the world does it terrify to sit face to face with an angry person and seek resolution?

Direct conflict was not encouraged in culture of my family of origin. I think this was both a Southern value and a product of our family culture. Anger was ugly, and therefore hidden in innuendo or unseen wrangling. One didn't necessarily come right out and say things. When conflict happened, I hid in stories and writing. I disconnected and disassociated from the chaos.

As I looked more closely at these patterns in my family and also in myself, I began to understand that the thing I fear and hate the most is what is most deeply in need of expression within myself. I value appearing calm and collected. I value my ability to smoothe feathers and be a peacemaker. I have not allowed myself to rage. I have not let myself feud when I need to feud. Rather I will subdue those voices and find the easier path. My husband calls it my Water energy. While this has been a survival mechanism for the reasons I stated, and for more deeply rooted hostilities in early life – it is not the mechanism that will serve me forever. I need to engage with that scary raging woman that waits just beyond reach. Kali, the furies, the Amazon, all these things are my birthright to claim just as much as the earth mother and healer. I can be both, if I am brave enough. My life will be richer, if I can claim these gifts.

Walking this inner journey requires us to scrap the idea that only our best face forwards matters, that we must protect our projected images of self, and that we must be perfect and invulnerable. Dr. Zweig and Dr. Wolf in Romancing the Shadow state that, “The shadow is a demanding taskmaster; It requires endless patience, fine discrimination, the compassion of a Buddha. It requires one eye to be turned out toward the world of light, while the other eye is turned in toward the darkness.” Sometimes is easier to be who we project ourselves to be: the perfect daughter, the player, the saint, the rebel. We can wear these roles and social masks to work, in our relationships, and even in front of our own mirrors. We shove, sometimes unknowingly, other feelings and thoughts into the back drawer. Denying parts of one's self can be exhausting. Though, being these one-dimensional aspects can become tiring, as we are constantly shoving the “less acceptable” aspects of ourselves into the shadow. The perfect daughter finds herself in the similar patterns of pleasing her boss at work, by quelling her own thoughts or insights.
Society has a fascination with shadow that dates back to antiquity. Whether is Hera to Aphrodite, Cain to Able, Dr. Jeckle and Mr. Hyde, or Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker. It is in our literature, our spirituality, in ourselves and our communities. There is a cultural shadow, a family shadow, a relationship's shadow - it exists just as plainly as we each have our own. When the Cold War ended and our great enemy, the Soviet Union, was lost – we needed a new enemy. There was a nationalistic frenzy against the foe we found in Saddam Hussein. The McCarthy era had it and more recently there are politicians that have played on the shadow side of being fighters for freedom, creating a “You're with us” or “You're against us” mentality. In some countries the cultural shadow lies in hiding the abuse of women and children for the sake of control and stability in society. In others it can be valuing the whole at the expense of the individual, or just the reverse. Whole cultures and groups have cast their shadows on others. It happened in the Salem witch hunts, Nazi Germany, in the housing and job discrimination that persecuted people with HIV and AIDS, and it is happening now in Darfor. It is universal and pervasive. Even the word shadow has repercussions. Etymologically, whiteness is associated with heaven, innocence, purity, light and often blackness is associated with hell, evil, and the unlucky. It lies in our literature, our language – it is universal.

How people approach moral behavior also reflects in different cultural or spiritual attitudes toward the shadow. Christians, Hindus, and Buddhist may approach concepts of evil, sin, and shadow from different lens. Whether one is influenced by the view the Seven Deadly Sins, or the varied aspects of Hindu Gods, or whether shadow is viewed as a misunderstood energy of the human mind deeply affects what is seen as taboo or acceptable to integrate within ourselves. Athiest or pagan, humanist or spiritualist - there is no monolithic or simple answer to this path. You can not disregard the cultural or spiritual framework from which you spring. I was raised in South Carolina, an Episcopalian, and youngest daughter. All these things color my views and the way I engage this work.

It is somewhere between the sun and the moon that our true heart lies. It is in the play of light and shadow that beauty comes manifest. It is in the reaches of self engagement that we find the gold of understanding ourselves and others. The brave new frontier might not necessarily be space; it lies within the unconscious and in our own personal untold stories. What if you'd climbed the tree instead of being the dutiful daughter? Who says you can't climb that tree now, save a fear of heights? What would happen if you took the time to heed this critical call? What would happen if this nation found new ways to talk about its leadership in the fight for freedom and justice in the world?

It feels like a live or die moment for me. I can drift on the same currents that have pulled me along since childhood or I can strike out like Louis and Clark into my own unknown territories. What would it look like if I stood in the face of anger? Would I survive? I am anxious for the answers that await the otherside of the guantlet, if I can only take that first step.

Sheldon Kopp said, “To live without the creative potential of our own destructiveness is to be a cardboard angel.” We each have our own demons and night terrors to confront, to integrate. I no longer simply cling to my mother's night shirt and look to my stuffed animals protect me, though I certainly have reached out on occasion to my husband. We can uphold one another in this quest. There is radical work to be done within ourselves and in our communities. Shadow need not be a bad word, only the other side of the coin. This is a journey towards wholeness and beautiful authenticity.

As the 1930's famous pulp hero the Shadow said, “The Shadow Knows.” Do you?

May it be so.