The shadow..

Is one of several Jungian terms that have made their way into film, song, and literature where it plays the role of the Punch and Judy crocodile- a lurking force forever waiting to drag the sausages or you, down.

Or the shadow is the mysterious other you, the lost sibling, the face in the mirror, or Dwayne Dibbly.

Or Ace Rimmer?

Nice to think that one's shadow is the better version..that if only you could integrate your shadow then you would become whole, powerful, effective.

Contemporary New Age 'mythology' remains resolutely Manichean in its outlook when it describes the shadow as everything in us that we do not wish to see. Though I think that people mean well when they start telling others that no one is perfect, New Age often ends up being the same old repent and be saved, doctrine.

A statement such as:

'when we choose not to take ownership of our own ugliness, selfishness, greediness or laziness, we project these qualities onto others in the form of judgment.'

is a typical translation of the use and function of this archetype.

The function, in this case, is to make you feel bad.

I know it is supposed to make you into a better person by realising that you are as worthless as the next person, or which ever serial killer you can name, but somehow I think it's asking a bit much of people who probably are not that greedy or selfish or even that ugly.

Instead of fasting and prayer, or even sack cloth and ashes time, New Age remains *mind only* assuming that the only thing you can do is to think and understand yourself into a better person.

There seems to be something cruel about this.

It takes from the Methodist 'Method' of keeping diaries and conversations with others about how to be a better servant of god (or good) but it is also without the real work of doing something physical.

Also there is no real way to measure progress.

Fasting for a day or an hour has boundaries, penance is limited.

The logic behind the mind-only penance, rests on a belief in a new original sin- the sin of projection. Only enlightened beings do not project on to others their faults. You are not enlightened. To become enlightened you must act as if you were,  so you must take back all the sins of the world and at the very least see yourself as: ugly, selfish, greedy and lazy!

How exactly does feeling bad makes you good?
The trick is to feel good about feeling bad.

I think that the Opus Dei spike or what ever it was (a device warn to cause a niggling discomfort) differs from the mind-only approach in that it is a ritualized behaviour- it has a beginning (putting the thing on) a middle, and an end. Just getting into blaming yourself for anything bad too often becomes believing that no one has the right to blame you...which is odd.

After projection, what's next?

The New Age shadow theory continues:

It is much easier to play the blame and shame game than it is to face our own shadow.

The New Age concept of games came via Hippy-speak from a theory called transactional analysis created by Dr Eric Berne in his book: the book Games People Play.

Games, so runs the New Age theory, are what people do to avoid 'seeing the truth'. This rests on a naive assumption that authenticity is always more valuable than deception, including self-deception.

The value of being 100% authentic 100% of the time is, in my experience, hard to prove...

But, back to Jung the Gnostic, a person for whom knowledge and transcendence (individuation) were prime motivators. Jung dreamt that he saw his own shadow whilst walking in the mountains and realised that it was the perfect metaphor for the stuff in his mind that he could not easily see.

...I had a dream which both frightened and encouraged me. It was night in some unknown place, and I was making slow and painful headway against a mighty wind. Dense fog was flying along everywhere. I had my hands cupped around a tiny light which threatened to go out at any moment... Suddenly I had the feeling that something was coming up behind me. I looked back, and saw a gigantic black figure following me... When I awoke I realized at once that the figure was a "specter of the Brocken," my own shadow on the swirling mists, brought into being by the little light I was carrying

His metaphor is that the light of the mind casts shadows, and the metaphor works because he believed that repressed  'shadow' material is  projected in deeds and actions, words and thoughts that seem to come from elsewhere. They seem other, not the self but the dream showed Jung that the specter is cast by the self.

The Brocken Spectre was first described by the theologian and natural scientist Johann Silberschlag in 1780. The Brocken is also the place where on Walpurgisnacht, witches are said to congregate in high numbers'.

The shadow has maintained its semi-occult status ever since.

Both Jungian and the New Age theories agree that there is a process of  repression, but they differ over the mechanism.

The New Age theory makes it clear than repression occurs because people are unwilling to face themselves (and the human soul, having been abandoned and left to run wild is a mess 'down there').

Jung didn't describe ignorance of the shadow as a willful choice.

He saw the problem as primarily one of language. Much shadow thought comes from what used to be called the more primitive parts (muscle memory, and the gut) of the brain. Rather than unwillingness, the problem is that the 'civilised' mind doesn't have a language with grammar and syntax to speak to this older kind of thought  The shadow tries to be more direct, it tries to speak in action, art and music, dream content are all ways to access the shadow, but shadow-stuff is projected when a person fails to use the right filters (words and concepts, degree of attention to ones own voice).

Shadow is made of the things that have no tags- no words, no images, nothing, nada. It must draw words and images from where you are. From the Jungian point of view, look obliquely and sense it, don't try to grasp. Let is speak...don't expect it to use words, unless they are poetry...

The New Age 'solution' is to look to more 'primitive people to show them the way into the original mind. Or to borrow  from Berne (Games People Play) and tell people how to take care of one's inner child.

The purpose of integrating the shadow is wholeness, integration with the psychic twin, gaining access to everything that you are- but are not.

Do I believe it?
Yes, it is important to take account of what ever my feelings are, my hopes and fears. Bringing things into readable thought is sensible.

But at this point I have to tell you that I don't believe in integration or individuation as a kind of  'The Wishing Room' (read Roadside Picnic) a psychic state that opens up all possibilities of getting what I want. Nor do I believe in enlightenment. I fail absolutely as a Gnostic. I don't even believe in 'wholeness' or even 'wellness'- *you is what you is*  seems more accurate, than any concept that you should be other.


Or better!


I think Maynard gets it just about right, asking the shadow is the best way to approach it..



The important thing for me is that Jung described something, that now really does have a life of its own. And that I'm happy to see myself as a Сталкер and the shadow as an artifact made up of  images and ideas strung together in a certain way in order to induce a certain flavor of experience.