The Shadow.
THE Shadow.
“What the hell is the shadow when you capitalise the THE and what does that have to do with me?” I hear you begrudgingly ask, Nance.
Its just a thing that the light gives me, because a part of me blocks the light… Surely?... No?
Read into that last sentence a little deeper. Go on, future me will wait.
Good. So, what did you make of it?
You blocking light so there’s a dark patch that’s obscured? Off to a flyer, guys. Nice.
Brace yourselves guys, this isn’t the usual light-hearted stuff I talk about that almost always devolves into everything being our fault. I mean, this is still true of THE Shadow, but it’s got so much deeper implications that trivial topics like misery and frustration and how that’s your responsibility.
Yes yes, I know I’m being melodramatic. Indulge me.
When we consider the Self (told you to brace yourself guys), we are talking about everything that is a part of you in the physical, mental and spiritual aspects that contribute to you being you. With all your strengths and weaknesses, victories and failures, traits and baggage.
Weird bit about that? Our consciousness is just not capable of knowing ourselves to that extent. Our ego just won’t let us, assuming it was ever able to. But we’ll get to that in a second…
Carl Jung (personal hero of mine) conceptualised that the Self, in a psychological sense at least, was comprised of 3 parts. There’s the Persona, which is effectively the mask you were in terms of how you present and carry yourself to the rest of the world. Think about how people’s lives look on social media, compared to what is actually going on, and this will probably make a bit more sense. No one really puts all the horrible nasty, mundane boring REAL shit that goes on for them on there, because the vast majority of people are scared to…
And that is because of… The Ego. This is the part of our sense of Self that we consciously use to self-identify. It’s the bit that tells us who we think we are. Notice I used the word think. I meant that. Our ego isn’t simply the bit of use that inflates us into the alpha male douchebag/up herself insta influencer. It’s the bit that tries to tell us who we are, based on a few other’s things. But we’ll get to that in a second too. In essence, the Ego is the bit of our conscious mind that tried to make sense of the world by throwing labels and judgement on everything so that the world runs smoother and that our core beliefs (remember those?...) aren’t messed up and lead to an existential crisis every time we walk out the door.
With me so far?
No, Helen, you don’t have to stay till the end. I can tell by the look on your face that you’re already feeling a bit awkward after the social media example. You aren’t going to like much from here on in. Sorry in advance…
Lastly, we have the subconscious. This is where the genuinely cool shit happens. I say cool, some of its good, some of it is… less so. Its all perspective, if you need me to placate it a little.
This is where the shadow lives. Or is the shadow, if you want to look at it in a certain way. This is basically the bit of Self that has all the stuff that you aren’t consciously aware of going on. Honestly, our consciousness, our train of thought, frankly just doesn’t have the processing power the be in the same league as our subconscious. Sit your current mobile phone next to, say, a regular calculator. THAT’S the comparison. Even then, I’m probably being generous to the calculator.
It’s absorbing environmental cues, peoples body language, calculating vectors and force applications and using clairvoyancy (or so it seems…) to make sure that when the bloke at the bar has finally had enough of you rubbishing his favourite footy team around his fellow supporters, you can tell when the punch is coming and you know how much its going to hurt if you don’t get out of the way. And the subconscious JUST DOES THIS BECAUSE ITS AWESOME!!!
Seriously, look after your brain and the meat popsicle that it piolets around, it’s the most sophisticated piece of equipment you will ever own and you want that running at best function possible. Just trust me on that.
Anyway, enough about the bar fights I keep warning you against…
Those are just a couple of the things going on in the background. If you’ve ever seen the Sherlock Holmes movies where Ironman is explaining all the mental arithmetic and calculating he’s doing mid-sleuth/fight. You have some idea of what your subconscious is doing all the time forever. Can we start to see why there is no way in hell our conscious stream of thought could keep up with that?...
“So, what the hell does THE Shadow have to do with this?” I hear you mutter aloud, just loud enough for me to hear.
Well, if there’s all this calculating going on in the subconscious, that the conscious ego has basically handballed to the subconscious, there’s probably a few other things it’s handed off too. And maybe some of those things are handed over, under the table, to be buried and forgotten. Concrete boots, sleeping with the fishes kind of under the table. Makes sense to bury that stuff in the darkest and most unlikely-to-see-even-with-a-good-look places of your mind, right? So the shadow is formed, like a graveyard for things you’d rather forget. But they’re still there, lurking. Like a creepy Salad Fingers (If you don’t know who that is, look it up on YouTube. You’ll regret it) stalker, that you are INTENTIONALLY pretending isn’t there…
This is where it gets messy…
Consider all those things you were told as a child, as an adult even, about what a “good” person is. And does. And treats others like. And says. And thinks.
You want to be a good person, right? If you’re not a good person, you’ll go to hell, have no friends, be alone, be eaten by all your cats when you eventually die alone before going to hell.
What if you think or do things that aren’t what a “good person” would do?...
Well, you have an argument with yourself about what is more important. You, thinking and doing the things that make sense to you? Or being that “good person” who doesn’t think or do any of that shit?
Well, your Mum/Dad/Sibling/Teacher/Best Friend/Priest/Politician/Constable/God wouldn’t tell you how to act and behave in a way that wasn’t good for you would they?...
So you get your rules about who you should be set in your head. And because we’re usually pretty young at that point, we aren’t sophisticated or mature enough to decide of we agree with this stuff or not. And this is just us now. Your subconscious just takes these as law now, and runs that programming from then on, usually with no small amount of social conditioning to “help” those lessons sink in…
Cool, now we have a set of standards that may have nothing to do with what we genuinely think, who we are, what we’re really about.
What happens when we do or think something that contravenes those rules we’ve been given? Do we have that argument in our head about what is really more important, what’s really going on here? Or keep believing what we’re told by those figures of authority? (who got told the same stuff when they were young too, it’s not really their fault…)
Most people, rather than have the argument with themselves, handball that shit to their subconscious. And what does your subconscious do with the conflicting things that have just landed in its lap do?
Sometimes, it resolves it. Even woken up from a decent night’s sleep feeling calm and resolved about some tumultuous emotional event the day before, happier with the outcome? Good old Subconscious, always has your back!
Sometimes, it buries it. Ever tried to sleep and failed after a tumultuous emotional event the day before and not felt any better about it at all? And that happens for a few nights? And eventually you forget about the event but are still left with the emotional tumult? That’s right, Omar, buried and repressed in THE Shadow. Good old Subconscious, always has your back…
What have we just heard? Hopefully, that if we don’t successfully come to terms with and integrate the parts of ourselves that we label as “bad” because that’s what we’re taught, things get a little dicey. And better yet, because those thoughts/feelings/behaviours are “bad” we start to quite literally hate them AND ourselves for having them.
Because your ego doesn’t what to even consider the possibility that you might be a “bad” person (based on those external opinions that have been seared in…) we’d rather ignore those thoughts or feelings that are “bad” and pretend they don’t exist. The shadow comes to the rescue to bury those thoughts, and the conflict you’re having with yourself.
But, what you’ve effectively done is created a blind spot in your Ego’s self-awareness about those thoughts, those feelings, those behaviours that are still a part of you. The real problem there though? That argument is still going on in you. So is the reason you have this hate for them, and for yourself. Its just that you can’t consciously see why anymore…
That emotional turmoil you felt when this conflict arose? Its still there, still going on… Its less so and muted, because its buried under layers of protective shadow and subconscious, but it still manifests in behaviours, and even physiological and unrecognised emotional stress.
How’s that likely to work out?...
Have you ever met someone who just, for some reason you can’t quite put a finger on, pisses you off beyond all reasonable measure?... You just plain find them detestable, and you barely even know them?
Remember when I said the subconscious is a calculating monster that is absorbing waaaay more than we can ever really be aware of? Well, your subconscious has weighed that person up in moments and decided they suck. But why do they suck, in your opinion? Typically, its because they do things you don’t agree with. Sometimes, though, its because you can see those behaviours your subconscious (in all its calculating glory) can recognise in them that you have come to hate in you.
This is typically called projection.
Your Ego doesn’t want to think of you as bad. It doesn’t want to not like and hurt itself with hate and loathing either. So, guess who cops it when the subconscious and shadow has a chance to take the pressure off itself? “Ugh, I hate that guy David. He is SUCH a smug wanker… I’D never be like that. I wouldn’t cheapen myself by thinking I’m better than someone else”…
Can you hear it?
Sorry guys, we’ve all done it.
Pretending like you haven’t is part of the problem. That’s how you stuff things into that shadow even harder, so it starts to create more turmoil and push back. Using the example, we know it’s not right to judge people we barely know. But instead of considering this as something we lie to ourselves about, which makes us dislike ourselves more and hate the reason why we’re judging them in the first place (which is a reminder of what we find detestable in ourselves again), we justify it because it lessens our internal pain momentarily, which again comes back to us harder courtesy of our subconscious later…
Fun little vicious cycle we make for ourselves, huh?…
Before I go much further, I want to point out that there are some things you probably don’t want to normalise and may want to repress at least a little bit. Becoming the next Charles Manson or Ted Bundy, for example. That would probably not be a good thing. But then, some people have to find out the hard way don’t they…
The next question is though is very fair Tyreek. “What do we do about this shit we’ve stuffed in the shadow that’s slowly killing us so that we don’t kill other people?” Well, sorry guys, that’s kind of complicated…
The nutshell version is be brave enough to start to increase your self-awareness. Actively and as objectively as possible look and what you do, what you think, ow you feel. You will learn some things about yourself you probably didn’t want to know. And that’s rarely fun for your Ego. Shitty even. But the more you recognise that these things you may not like is part of who you actually are, the more you can come to terms with them and own them as something to work with rather than fight against or hide away. To do that, we start to dissolve the Ego. Which is a whole other blog post, possibly even a couple.
Recognise that your Ego isn’t really you. Its a part of you, but it’s just more likely who you THINK you are. That all this conflict comes from there being significant differences between who you think you versus who you really are. That owning your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and who you really are (good, bad, violent, passive, whatever label means anything), means that you can be honest and conscious about what you want to do with who you are.
The shadow only exists because you’re pretending to be something you’re not. To yourself, let alone anyone else. Owning this darker side to yourself is how we become whole. That dark part of us is supposed to be there, and it does most definitely serve us. We just need to figure out how.
Same old cliché’ question time sorry guys.
Who are you, really?
Who do you want to be?
Someone at odds with themselves?
Or someone who knows themselves well enough to make some genuine decisions FOR their known and whole self?
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.” C.G. Jung
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