Shadow play: where does shadow come from?

Ooh goody,  another shadow post. Shadow is actually one of my favorite subjects. I love the mystery, power and reservoir of creativity it holds. One of the best books I've found on the origins of shadow and how to befriend it is Owning Your Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche, by Robert A. Johnson.
The author and father of the men's movement, Robert Bly described shadow as a bag we drag around with us. He said we spend the first half of our lives putting things in the bag and the second half taking them back out. So how does shadow get created? Where does it come from?
     The simple answer is we live on a planet where polarity is inherent. Nothing one-sided can exist here. Shadow is the compliment to persona, the face we show the world. We need a place in our psyche to hold the primitive and all else that exists outside the bounds of what is acceptable. What's acceptable becomes part of our conscious persona. The unacceptable is disowned into shadow.
     So who decides what is acceptable and unacceptable? Our shadows are multi-layered. Shadow contains both personal and transpersonal aspects. Personal pieces of shadow generally come from firsthand experience. When we express a characteristic or part of ourselves that results in a painful experience, that characteristic often gets disowned into shadow.
    Transpersonal shadow is largely comprised of second hand experience. The transpersonal relates to shared experience that is larger than a single human being, like the experience of a group. In this context the group can be a family, culture, society, city, corporation, economic class or even the entire human race.
     Transpersonal shadow can be thought of as inherited shadow. Rather than rejecting a characteristic based on direct personal experience, we disown it based on the value system of a group we are part of. The group decides that characteristic or form of expression is unacceptable. We take that on because we are part of the group.
     Inherited shadow can be challenging to even get a look at. There isn’t usually a personal experience we can point to as the place where we decided that characteristic was unacceptable. Often the decision wasn’t one we made consciously. Inherited shadow is embedded in the framework of how we live; in the places where we just do what we do because that’s the way it’s done. Most of the time these pieces of inherited shadow are so ingrained it doesn’t even occur to us to question them.
    We begin creating and taking on shadow in childhood. Children naturally adopt the beliefs and characteristics that are rewarded. The reward can be praise, love, acceptance or a sense of belonging. The source of the reward can be a parent, teacher, religious authority, peer group or society in general.
     As children, aligning ourselves with what is acceptable to our group or tribe is a natural survival mechanism. We know we need the group to survive. If we don’t adopt what the group deems acceptable, we risk being ostracized which threatens our survival. Children don’t have the ability to reason with their survival instinct, nor are they able to examine what the group deems acceptable and decide if it really fits for them. If as adults we continue to leave what’s on the “unacceptable” list unexamined, our childhood survival mechanism becomes a liability.
     When we continue to act on beliefs about what is and is not acceptable that don’t truly fit for us, we limit our ability to be who we are. Feeling like you are doing something out of obligation is a clue to the places where you’re acting on a belief that’s not really yours.
     Transpersonal shadow also includes what Carl Jung called archetypal shadow and projected shadow. An archetype can be thought of as an inherited predisposition to respond to the world in certain ways. Often archetypes are represented as a being, like a god, goddess or mythological figure, which embodies that predisposition. Archetypes are mythical structures that make up the primordial inheritance of the human race. Mother, father and child are all archetypes. The mother-child bond is an archetypal relationship. We all carry pieces of archetypal shadow.
     Shadow projection is the process where we project our shadow(s) onto something external so we see that shadow piece as belonging to someone or something else. When we project shadow onto someone or something else it doesn’t mean that characteristic isn’t there. However our filters, created by our desire to reject that shadow aspect in us, intensifies our perception of it externally.
     Projecting shadow allows us to deny it in ourselves in order to maintain our persona or self-image. Shadow projection can be an individual or collective process. When a nation or group makes another country or group the “bad guy”, that’s shadow projection. Scapegoating and hero worship are also forms of shadow projection.
    In hero worship we take what is best in us and project it onto someone else. This is one of the ways we disown our strengths. In scapegoating a single person becomes the carrier of the collective shadow of a family or other group.
    Shadow, as the container for all those disowned and unacceptable parts of self, is also the seat of individuation. By examining what’s in the unacceptable pile and deciding what really fits for us, we become unique individuals with something to contribute to the collective rather than shrinking ourselves into compulsive conformity.
    Meeting the shadow requires the humility to let go of persona. We have to be willing to let go of who we imagine ourselves to be and meet who we really are before we can consciously create ourselves as who we want to be.

P.S. Apologies for formating glitches, etc. I'm using a new blogger app and haven't quite got it figured out yet.

Shadow play: our obsession with light

   A few weeks ago my friend Pam and I went to Santa Fe to visit a used bookstore. Driving into Santa Fe I noticed a new healing center named, not surprisingly, “Love & Light.” After seeing their sign, I told Pam if I ever open a healing center I want to name it either “Get Real” or “Get Over Your Bliss.”
     Yes, I was being a bit snarky. But what is up with our ongoing obsession with light?
     The word “light” is everywhere – staying in the light, lightworkers, bringing in the light, ad nauseam. Over the ten years that Pam and I have worked together I’ve lost count of how many healers and clients I’ve encountered who “only work with the light.”
     I understand the attraction. So much of what we see in the world around us is shadow: war, hunger, school shootings, displaced and broken families, etc. In response we’ve become enamored with the light. But what if the darkness we see in the world is a manifestation of our personal and collective shadow?
     We live on a dualistic planet. Even in nature, this polarity is inherent: day/night, summer/winter. Everything here, human beings included, has at least two interdependent sides. Even our physical senses operate on the principle of duality. We know what cold is because we’ve experienced hot.
    Rather than living with these dualistic pairs as little paradoxes, we split them. We judge them and set them in opposition to each other. The most enduring and damaging example of this is the polarity around good vs. evil and light vs. shadow. We equate light with good and dark or shadow with evil. We humans have pondered the good and evil paradox for as long as our species has existed. Many of us continue to turn to religion or some other external authority to define good and evil for us.
    Isn’t our ongoing obsession with light just a New Age way of reinforcing the same old duality?
    Along with our light obsession we’re talking a lot about wholeness. Wholeness is inclusion, not derision. Wholeness means having it all: joy, fear, day, and night, light and dark. Wholeness includes the principle of balance. When we cling to light while talking about wholeness, we put ourselves at cross-purposes. Our obsession with light is way out of balance.
     Both complete darkness and pure light are equally blinding. Just as day and night serve each other, so do darkness and light. Even our ability to see the world around us is dependent on the interplay of light and shadow.
     We each carry a capacity for love equal to our capacity for fear. Love and fear are interdependent, like day and night.  When we keep turning to the light because we want more of it, we push the shadow away. Cutting off shadow equally restricts our capacity for light. The way to more light is through the shadows.
     Many people associate personal shadow with “all the things I don’t like about myself”, i.e., shortcomings and flaws. That’s only half the story. Shadow is comprised of disowned parts of self. Many of us are just as quick, if not quicker, to disown our strengths as we are to push away our flaws.
    If that doesn’t make sense, think about how you respond to being complimented. Do you say “thank you”? Do you deny or refute what’s being said? Do you both try to both deny and accept by saying “thank you, but…”?
    Your response to compliments is a simple way to gauge your relationship with your shadow. Pushing a compliment away can be a largely unconscious reflex. When you deny a compliment you: a) disown the strength the other person is reflecting back to you and push it into your shadow, b)disown your ability to receive and c) deny the other persons experience of seeing something s/he liked in you.
    Whether or not you agree with what’s being said is irrelevant. A compliment comes from another person’s experience with and perception of you. It belongs the other person, not to you. It’s not yours to deny. Being complimented is an exercise in receiving.
     The reasons why we disown our strengths can be complex. You may believe that denying your strengths prevents you from being boastful and keeps you out of ego. You may be holding some fear around what others might think if own your strength. You might be afraid of the responsibility that comes with claiming your strength.
    Regardless of the reason, denying your strengths is a movement away from wholeness…and authenticity. Authenticity asks us to be who we are. That includes claiming our strengths.
     Far from being a black hole, your shadow is your personal gold mine. Your shadow contains reservoir of power and creativity that can be accessed by forming a conscious relationship with it. In its unconscious state, the shadow is both a harsh critic and a vehicle of self-sabotage.
    The energy you put in to rejecting your shadow actually feeds it. If you give your shadow enough energy, it can take on a life of its own. A disconnected shadow often manifests as explosions of emotion and behavior that can feel like you’ve been taken over by an external force.
    Your shadow is part of who you are. You can’t remove it. You can’t completely hide or disguise it any more than you can hide the way you smile or the color of your eyes. If you don’t relate to your shadow directly, it will come out sideways.
     Your shadow is also your greatest resource for growth. If you want to sprout a seed, you don’t put on the sunniest window sill in the house. You bury it in the dirt. The seed germinates in darkness with the sun doing its part from the outside. We human beings are also born from shadow. We spend nine months in the darkness of the womb before emerging into a world that includes light.      
  That fecund darkness is still there, waiting to be used. The true source of the light so many of us are enamored with is the darkness. As Jung said  "One does not become enlighted by imaging figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."

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The power of "so what"

     I saw a ghost for the first time when I was five years old. I was in the hospital recovering from a head injury. I don’t remember knowing that what I saw was a ghost. I called them the invisible people. I did somehow know that not everyone could see them. At night I’d ask the nurses to leave the door to my room open so I could watch them. Sometimes they’d come into my room and smile at me.

    The invisible people didn’t scare me. I liked them. I felt like I’d been let in on a secret: as though some corner of the Universe had peeled back and I got to look inside.

     Five months into an experiment I’ve been doing with myself, I have the same sense of amazement and being let in on a secret. Living as gypsy has opened to me to new clarity about my own thought patterns. For the first I can both see and feel what giving my power away to worry, lack and circumstances does to me.

     In January I experienced some serious financial issues. I felt as though my life was controlled by lack of money. I didn’t like that feeling. In the world I see money misused as means of power and control so often. I realized all the time and energy I gave to focusing on my lack of money was recreating the same money = power and control scenario over and over in my life.

     I began the experiment by asking myself how I could meet my money worries in way that short circuited them. I tried getting busy with something every time I caught myself back in the money worry rut. That didn’t work very well. Now I understand why. Getting busy was a way to temporarily distract myself, but did nothing to change my thought pattern. I tried a couple other things with limited success.

    One night as I was falling asleep the idea of meeting the money worry with gratitude dropped in. So I started a new gratitude practice. Each time I caught myself back in the worry rut; I stopped and thanked the Universe for something. Grabbing the easy stuff like “I’m grateful to be alive” doesn’t work.

    I have to find something that engages me in the moment…and it works. It’s a very simple practice. I’m stunned at how powerful it is. My mind found its way right back the money worry rut at first. For a few weeks I found myself stopping to express gratitude a dozen times a day.

     As the weeks flowed into months the money worry began to fade. It became more a part of the ongoing stream of things that run through my head during the day rather than the thing that repeatedly held my attention hostage. My practice has the wonderful side effect of bringing me more fully into the present moment. That also impacted my worry rut. Worry is an exercise in projection. The more present I was, the more I aware I was that right now everything is okay.

   I started to see other places in my life where my focus on lack and circumstances was reinforcing and recreating that for me. So I expanded my gratitude practice into those places.

   It took a few months for me to how deeply my practice was changing me. I didn’t start the experiment with the intention to change my personal reality. I hadn’t thought of it as stepping into a new level of responsibility for creating my reality. I actually didn’t pick that piece up until I talked to friend who pointed out that in my relationship to circumstances I was moving from victim to creator.

    For years I’ve heard that thing about “you create your own reality.” Most of the sources for that information seemed to be focused on affecting the external physical world by manifesting money or a dream job or changing situations and circumstances. I’ve questioned this because it sounds a lot like “here’s a way to be in control of your life and have anything your personality wants.” Control is an illusion. I’ve had numerous experiences where not getting what my personality wanted served me better than getting what I wanted.

    Now I get it. I’ve used phrases like “that’s the physical reality of the situation” as an excuse not to be conscious of what goes in my personal reality. Crap happens. The crap that happens involves external things over which I have no control. I can’t change that. But….here’s the secret…I can change my relationship to what happens.

     Shifting circumstances and lack of money are external things; part of “objective’ physical reality. I used the quotes because scientists are still debating whether objective physical reality exists. Regardless, that objective reality is not where I live.

     I live in my personal reality. Personal reality is my container of beliefs, experiences and wounding that creates my relationship to the external world. I create my personal reality moment to moment. If I don’t like it, I can create something else.

     I’m a curious person. I like to know how things work. As I’m watching this ongoing change in me I wanted to what was s happening and how this was working. This week I listened to a Sounds True podcast, The Creative Observer. In the podcast, Lynne McTaggart talks about the quantum physics behind creating your own reality.

     I like quantum physics. It’s an amazing confluence of energy, spirit and science. Lynne McTaggart talked about creating your own reality being an action of the observer effect. The observer effect is a quantum physics principle that states the act of observing something changes it. That I already knew…but there’s more.

    From a quantum perspective reality isn’t fixed. It’s unfinished, existing in a state where all possibilities are present. The act of observing these possibilities fixes reality by making one of the possibilities into tangible experience. So the act of observing doesn’t just change reality, it creates it. Attention = creation.

     My ongoing experiment hasn’t caused a million dollars to magically appear on my pillow. It’s give me something much more valuable, a way to actively consciously change and create my personal reality. It also showed me the power of “so what.”  I don’t have as much money as I’d like to. So what. Who am I going to be in relation to that? 

     I set myself up to be controlled by circumstance when I allow the circumstances to control my personal reality. Right now I feel pretty done with that.

Demystifying Psychic: Questions about Questions

    A couple weeks ago I stumbled across a website with a list of criteria for determining whether or not a psychic is a fake. I found the same criteria on numerous other web sites; including several that offered the list as a way to determine if a healer is a fraud.

    I was a bit dismayed that the most common criteria listed for declaring a psychic to be a fake was whether or not s/he asked questions. A “real” psychic should be able to give you information without asking any questions. A “real” healer should be able to work with a client without asking questions. Following this logic, if I go to a doctor and he isn’t able to diagnose me without asking about my symptoms he’s not a real doctor.

    Doing a cold reading, without no information about the person, is basically psychic improv. Just as all comedians aren’t adept at improv, neither are all psychics. Some comedians are gifted with creating material on the spot based on a prompt from the audience. Other comedian’s strength lies in writing and crafting material ahead of time. Not excelling at psychic improv does not mean a psychic is a fake.

    When a healer works with a client, how the client feels about an issue and his perception of the issue is just as important as the issue itself. Getting a more comprehensive picture that includes how the client feels and how he sees the issue usually requires asking some questions. Having a more complete picture allows for a deeper healing session.

    The supposition that asking questions makes someone a fake psychic or healer is based on a couple faulty premises:

            1. If a psychic asks questions, she’s asking because she’s not getting any real information.

            2. The gifts and intuition that psychics use all works the same way.

     Yes, there are people working as psychics who rely solely on body language, vocal cues and other observations. If a psychic asks questions it’s possible he is looking for information so he can rephrase it and feed it back to the client. It’s also possible the psychic is asking questions because she’s receiving an overload of information and needs a way to narrow it down.

    Imagine walking into a three bedroom house inhabited by a family of four. You don’t know the family. You haven’t been in the house before. You’re asked to go into the house and find the straight pin with the orange head.

    The house is large; filled with furniture and personal belongings. You don’t know who last used the straight pins or in which room. If you find the pin, it’ll probably take hours and hours of searching. If someone tells you the pins were last used in the garage, chances are you’ll find the pin much faster.

     In terms of size and scope, the human psyche (emotional, spiritual and energetic landscape) is more like a multi-million dollar mansion than a three bedroom house. Each person’s psyche is filled with biographical wounding and experience, unresolved pieces from other lifetimes, current personality conflicts and the item that got left off last week’s grocery list. Some of this information is relevant to what’s going on now, some isn’t.

     There’s also a huge variance in how energetically loud people are. Some people tend to broadcast most of what’s going on with them. Others broadcast very little unless they are upset or broadcast only their immediate concerns.

    People who broadcast more can be challenging to read. Asking questions to find out what the person is most concerned with is vital in sorting out the information s/he presents.

     People who broadcast very little are also challenging to read. It’s easy to assume that if someone doesn’t broadcast much, whatever info he presents must be the most important. Actually the exact opposite is often true. When a person seeks help with something he feels shame or fear around, he may bury the issue so it’s easier to carry and others don’t pick up on it. Unconsciously he may broadcast irrelevant information to keep the issue hidden.

     Many people, as soon as they hear psychic, envision a fortune teller who makes predictions. There are psychics who are gifted in sensing and sorting out possibilities related to a situation. Just as not all carpenters can build a beautiful kitchen cabinet, not all psychics have a gift for prediction.

   Not all psychics and healers work the same way. Actually how they receive information and what information they get is very individual. Well over 100 different intuitive gifts have been identified. One of the more commonly known is clairvoyance – the ability to receive information via images, visions or some other form of seeing.

     Many people assume a psychic or healer who is clairvoyant sees visions inside his or her own mind. That’s not always the case. Some clairvoyants do see images or visions internally. Others see them externally. Some see and read people’s energy fields. Other clairvoyants see and communicate with ghosts, spirits, guides, etc.

    Just as different people notice different things the first time they walk in to a house, different clairvoyants pick up different kinds of information. Some pick up future possibilities while others are more attuned the past. Other clairvoyants resonate more with current emotions and concerns. Additionally some clairvoyants can chose what they see and what information they tune in to, others can’t.

    The same variance exists in every other intuitive gift. Simply knowing what a psychic or healers primary gift is doesn’t tell you much about how they receive information or what kinds of information they pick up.

         The first piece of information a psychic or healer receives could be a nudge to ask the client a specific question. I’ve had that experience many times. When the client answers I both listen to what she says and read her energy field as she speaks. Our energy fields shift in response to what we say. Even if a client is unaware of feeling fear, anxiety or resistance, those emotions will show up in her field when she talks about the issue. That gives me more to work with. The more I know, the better I can serve a client. 

    I know from experience having intuitive gifts doesn’t prevent a psychic or healer from making assumptions. Psychic or not, assumptions are more likely when questions go unasked.