Meeting the shadow

This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine. ~William Shakespeare

I just started reading Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature. So far it's incredibly interesting. It reminds me of my I-Group leader last year who was fascinated by light and shadow, fascinated by the polarities that we must manage and embrace in our lives and relationships. I think it will be a very good book for me to read.

“Everything with substance casts a shadow. The ego stands to shadow as light to shade. This is the quality that makes us human. Much as we would like to deny it, we are imperfect. And perhaps it is in what we don’t accept about ourselves—our aggression and shame, or guilt and pain—that we discover our humanity.

The shadow goes by many familiar names: the disowned self, the lower self, the dark twin or double in bible and myth, the double, repressed self, alter ego, id. When we come face to face with our darker side, we use metaphors to describe these shadow encounters: meeting our demons, wrestling with the devil, descent to the underworld, the dark night of the soul, midlife crisis.

We all have a shadow. Or, does our shadow have us? “

In the introduction, there is also a passage that speaks to projective identification, something that I find intriguing. “We see the shadow mostly indirectly, in the distasteful trails and actions of other people, out there where it is safer to observe it. When we react intensely to a quality in an individual or group—such as laziness or stupidity, sensuality, or spirituality—and our reaction overtakes us with great loathing or admiration, this may be our shadow showing. We project by attributing this quality to the other person in an unconscious effort to banish it from ourselves, to keep ourselves from seeing it within.

Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz suggests that projection is like shooting a magic arrow. If the receiver has a soft spot to receive the projection, it sticks. …From then on the sender and the receiver are linked in a mysterious alliance, like falling in love, discovering a perfect hero, or a perfect villain.”

I have begun to encounter parts of my shadow since entering LIOS, sometimes with great pain and difficulty. I’m also learning a great deal by efforts to explore these hidden parts of myself so that I may bring them to light and decrease their strength. I have had experiences with dear friends in that by acknowledging our shadows, the formerly disavowed parts of ourselves and our unconscious patterns, we have been able to grow and develop deeper layers of trust, understanding, and acceptance of ourselves and others.

I’m looking forward to taking this book with me on “vacation” even though it is not one of the first ones that I need to read for school. I believe that all books really come to us at the right times. And, I look forward to stepping in to meet my own shadow, to learning more about myself. “Meeting the shadow calls for slowing the pace of life. listening to the body’s cues, and allowing ourselves time to be alone in order to digest the cryptic messages from the hidden world.”