In every story, there is a hero and a villain. In your story, you are both.
All the bright aspects and all the dark aspects of your self orchestrate the melody of your song.
A song that you need to hear first, before anyone else.
But in order to hear it, you have to learn to listen.
To listen not only to what you want but also to what you are afraid of.
Your fears and your darkness aren’t detached from you. Do not eschew them.
Face them, analyze them, internalize them. The shadow is always there and it will always be.
But the shadow can look big or it can look small, depending on the angle
from which the light caresses you. What is the size of your shadow?
Carl Gustav Jung was one of the most important psychologists of the previous century. He is also
one of my biggest influencers since he is one of the few that have attempted to bridge the notions
of psychology and spirituality in an effort to discover ways to transcend the human condition.
Jung’s work was constantly evolving and it was this evolution that produced
comprehensive analyses of concepts like the ego, the shadow, the archetypes,
the collective unconscious, and the anima and animus.
Especially the shadow has always been an intriguing topic among people and
with regards to it, Jung has stated in Aion: 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 use of the word shadow wasn’t chosen unintentionally. Jung was always good at
portraying complex ideas in an assimilable visual manner. He used mental imagery in
order to create anchors with concepts already familiar to human cognition.
The shadow is dark and elusive. It is impossible to catch, its size can alter
depending on your position in space, and it is ubiquitous whenever light is present.
Ergo, one can form a somewhat basic understanding of the concept
without the need to delve into arcane terms. Another crucial thing to ponder 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 not so many people are eager to confront.
And this is one of the major ideas associated with the Jungian shadow. Although we usually see
the shadow as an integral part of our existence, most of us are willfully blind to this existence.
Our dark side is concealed or camouflaged in a painful attempt to protect an image that
fits the narrative we decide to espouse. Through social conditioning, we come to construct a façade
that can keep the substrate of our constructed identity stable so that we can keep feeling safe.
Safety, however, is ill-defined in that space we inhabit. How can one feel safe when
there is so much unknown territory out there that can at any given point in time convulse
the foundations of our fragile constitution? A person is as free as their mind allows and
if the mind creates barriers between the reality of the person and the reality of the rest of the
world, delusion and neurosis could take over. When you see people operate in a state of
enforced ignorance that attempts to preserve a certain status quo, then the shadow can
only grow bigger. Enforced ignorance entitles the shadow to take over since the individual
is incapable of controlling it because he or she is not even aware of its existence.
We can’t control what we don’t understand. Every aspect of one’s unconscious that cannot
morph into conscious judgment will perpetually impede one’s progress, for it is creating a
fantastic world that cannot synchronize with the frequencies of the real world. In such a
landscape, the real world, or at least whatever we can understand of it, becomes an egotistical
battleground that leads to collision and madness. That is not how our perceptions should meet.
The world should be a forum for dialogue and constant experimentation where we
strive to refine the moral imperatives that could alleviate our suffering. Everything beyond that
should be viewed with skepticism. If that seems unclear to some people,
it is clearly because the shadow element hasn’t been dealt with effectively.
Regardless of the idiosyncratic nature of one’s shadow, the process of assimilation
has always been universal and it is represented by the following sequence.
Evidently, assimilation can’t occur if the stages of encounter and merger don’t take place first.
That is certainly a heroic act, for the angst entailed in this process is immense.
There is nothing scarier than facing the deepest realms of your self. But there is
also nothing more rewarding than that. Assimilation is a lengthy process that
demands mainly psychotherapy, but also hours of introspection and constant reevaluation and
recalibration of personal behaviors and beliefs. Our cerebral makeup is quite malleable, but
its malleability is predicated upon our ability to showcase
discipline and tenacity. We can’t just expect a divine force to rescue us from our suffering. We
are our only chance for redemption and catharsis. The shadow has a challenging nature, therefore,
the process of assimilation requires one to ask oneself 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
recall the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. 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.
That’s a result of a plethora of factors that can affect our behavior and can result in lack
of congruence in what we think, feel, and do. Social conditioning, latent desires,
mental fatigue, and many more reasons can come to mind. The truth, however, is that our
ability to fight them is within our control. There are times in my life where I feel that
I will go crazy due to over-analysis of certain instances in my paradigm.
I am not sure how to deal with specific scenarios and, more often than not,
I tend to question the reality of those scenarios. My perception might be prone to certain biases and
prejudices that cloud my judgment, so I tend to question the basis of every claim that I make.
Despite how awkward this process might seem it is a process that can yield
tremendous benefits in one’s journey to assimilate the shadow. Your shadow, due to its dark nature,
is constantly forming a cloud over your judgment. This cloud can never disappear,
but it can certainly abate through meticulous introspection and cultivation of wisdom.
I never believed in moral relativism and I never thought that
our moral problems could not be solved. By some strange technological and philosophical osmosis,
we can create a universal moral framework that can be accepted by every soul on this planet.
This might sound ambitious, but, trust me, it is not.
Humans have always found ways to co-exist and respect each other because the notion
of co-existence is central to our survival. Our evolution has created
countless iterations of our species, but our bedrock is, more or less, the same.
What does not allow us to behave constantly in a respectful and mutually beneficial way
is the shadow. When the shadow takes over, any discussion for a universal
moral framework cannot find fruitful ground. We negotiate and debate and exchange verbal
tantrums in an attempt to defend our point of view and our position in the
dominance hierarchy of society. Some people do that in a more ethical way and
in order to defend goodness, but most just keep perpetuating banal attitudes and approaches.
And it is the banality and triviality of existence that needs to be dealt with in order to identify
what is morally good. Actually, it is the combination of this and the ability to showcase
common sense in the face of trivial matters. With common sense, the discovery of a solution
to most of our problems could be accelerated dramatically. Life might be an amalgamation of
complex instances but our cognitive apparatus is more than capable of making sense of them.
All it takes is to offer clarity to our judgment and common sense is imperative in that respect.
Especially when it comes to orienting ourselves towards what is morally good.
Most of life is struggle and unless we don’t voluntarily accept this as a fact, struggle
will keep manifesting itself in every facet of our existence. I like this idea a lot because
it reminds me of how important clarity is when it comes to the betterment of our living conditions.
In order to ameliorate 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 fastidiously examine these parts,
we can discover details about systems that are usually obscure. 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.
A systems approach is always more effective and usually more
meritocratic, thus empowering the parts to work synergistically for a common cause.
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 like that 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. A person who clings to outdated and
ill-defined views will only reinforce the shadow and stagnate in a swamp of confusion.
Incessant knowledge seeking is the name of the game. A game we should all prepare to play.
I want to conclude this video with a passage from the Red Book,
probably Carl Jung’s most important work.
Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed
that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your
madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness
too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be
despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life…If you want to find paths,
you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature…Be
glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special
form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since
life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason
only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its
unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.
There is not much to say after you read these words.
Only that there is so much madness in life. But there is also so much truth in madness.