“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.”
The idea of the shadow self was first conceived by Carl Jung, probably the most important
psychologist of the previous century.
Jung described the shadow as an unconscious aspect of ourselves, formed from our suppressed
desires, ideas, and instincts, — a cognitive blind spot in our psyche.
‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call
it fate.’
The use of the word shadow wasn’t chosen unintentionally.
Jung was always good at portraying complex ideas in a proper visual manner.
He used mental images in order to create associations with concepts already familiar to the human mind.
The shadow is dark and elusive.
It is impossible to catch, its size can change depending on your position in space, and it
is always there whenever light is present.
So, one can form a somewhat basic understanding of the concept without the need to delve into
complex terms.
Another crucial thing to take into account is that the shadow itself, due to the darkness
that it forms and due to the distance that it creates from the physical body of a person,
becomes something people don’t really want to confront.
And this is one of the major ideas associated with the Jungian shadow.
Although we usually see the shadow as an important part of our existence, most of us are blind
to this existence.
We can’t control what we can’t see.
Shadow work is a relatively new age concept and refers to the process of assimilating
the shadow, that is attempting to dive into the unconscious parts of our psyche and trying
to internalize them and make peace with them.
Assimilation is a lengthy process that demands mainly psychotherapy, but also hours of introspection
and constant reevaluation and recalibration of personal behaviors and beliefs.
Shadow work is challenging, therefore, when trying to assimilate the shadow, we need to
ask ourselves some challenging questions.
Most of you have heard of the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
The famous idiom is inspired by the book “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” written by
the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson in 1886.
In it, he describes the life of a man who transforms between two personae: Dr. Henry
Jekyll and Mr. Edward Hyde.
The story was so powerful and it resonated with so many people that it entered the vernacular
and whenever we encounter characters with an unpredictably dual nature, we almost immediately
refer to them as Jekyll and Hyde.
Most of us can cite events from our lives where our actions and our intent didn’t
really align.
We behaved as if we were different people.
This is because of our persona.
Persona is the image that we project to the world.
According to Jung: “The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness
and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite
impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual.”
Our dark side is concealed or camouflaged in a painful attempt to protect our persona.
The image that we adopt in order to fit in.
Through social conditioning, we come to construct a façade that can keeps the substrate of
our identity stable so that we can keep feeling safe.
Safety, however, is ill-defined in that space we inhabit.
How can we feel safe when we are constantly sacrificing our true self for our persona?
Our persona controls the way we project who we are and how we interact with the world.
A great example is social media.
This is the online manifestation of our persona.
The problem is that we are much more than the image we project to the world.
Constantly neglecting the true self for the persona can cause internal instability and
the shadow will take over.
Shadow work allows us to see beyond the persona and try to escape from it when we see that
it tyrannizes our lives.
Most of life is struggle.
We battle struggle with clarity.
In order to clarify something, you need to understand its mechanics.
Maybe something isn’t working well because a part that comprises the whole is actually
malfunctioning.
When we break down the whole in parts and carefully examine these parts, we can discover
details about systems that are usually unknown.
Then we can go back to the system itself and look at how what we discovered can improve
the performance of the system as a whole.
Clarity manifests itself in that way.
When you allow the part to discover all its nuances and all its capabilities, you end
up with a reinforced version of it that can offer more to the whole.
Humans operate that way and the dawn of the Internet made that idea more vivid.
We experience a collective awakening that can, perhaps, lead to a collective enlightenment.
Information becomes widely accessible and we can improve our error correcting mechanisms
just by asking and gathering as many views as possible.
That right there is the essence of clarity.
And its only obstacle is the shadow.
Our collective shadow is pushing us towards ignorance and ignorance reinforces our struggle.
A person who clings to outdated and ill-defined views will only reinforce the shadow and lose
themselves in a swamp of confusion.
Incessant knowledge seeking is the name of the game.
A game we should all prepare to play.
Dreams serve as a direct conduit to our subconscious mind, where the shadow resides.
They offer us a symbolic language through which our innermost thoughts, feelings, and
conflicts can surface.
By paying attention to our dreams, we can gain valuable insights into the workings of
our psyche and the aspects of ourselves we need to address.
A common practice we can follow is Dream Journaling.
By recording our dreams, we can identify patterns that repeat themselves.
As we accumulate entries in our dream journal, we can look for recurring themes, symbols,
and emotions.
Often, the shadow is represented in dreams by characters or situations that evoke fear,
discomfort, or unease.
These elements may point to aspects of ourselves that we have been neglecting or suppressing.
Once we identify potential shadow elements in our dreams, we can engage in self-reflection.
We can discuss with our therapist what these symbols or emotions mean to us personally.
We can analyze how they relate to our waking life and whether they resonate with any repressed
feelings or desires we might have.
Regardless of how hard you try and regardless of how much self-awareness you accrue over
the years, dark moments are inevitable.
Especially if you are a creative and sensitive person, your proclivity towards darkness is
going to affect your world in an intense way.
Once you recognize that, the moment of truth begins.
When you stare at the darkness, the darkness stares back at you.
It is a momentous instance in your life.
You either allow it to own you or you fight back.
There is no middle ground there.
The darkness has many forms.
It can have the form of a shadow, as Jung put it, it can have the form of mental and
physical pain, it can have the form of depression and a general disconnection from reality.
All these forms signify that one has let oneself go and surrendered to a dark reality that
was imposed on them one way or the other.
A dark reality, usually, signals a lack of purpose and an astute lack of discipline throughout
the daily grind.
Whether we like it or not, we are purpose-driven beings.
Purpose is what allows us to add more structure to our lives and eventually have control over it.
Purpose can manifest itself in many ways.
It can be an obsession with arts in an attempt to satisfy the need for self-expression.
It can be the ambition to change the world for the better.
It can be whatever the individual decides it to be.
Once you identify your purpose, live it wholeheartedly.
Create systems, processes, goals, and protocols around it.
Find other actors who have similar purposes and engage with them.
Escape the banality of abstract living that is defined by others and assemble your life
around your purpose.
Do that in a disciplined and, if the circumstance demands it, obsessed way.
That’s how you overcome darkness.