November 2023 Soul Notes
Photo by Gabriel Meinert on Unsplash
Since 7 October, our gaze has been directed towards Israel and Gaza. From 24 February 2022 until 6 October 2023, the spotlight was on Ukraine. We speak of being in “dark times”. Right now, there are approximately 13 active wars going on according to the Global Conflict Tracker and around 27 major conflicts simmering around the world. In 2022, 237,000 people died as a result of these conflicts. People fighting and dying every single day.
And whilst it may feel particularly dark, these times are not unusual. In the middle of WWII, author C.S. Lewis spoke to an audience of scholars wondering what use they might be in a world at war.
“The war creates no absolutely new situation; it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal.”
Here he points to life going on in spite of war – the possibility of light and dark co-existing. I’ve been thoughtful (and heartful) about this as I’ve experienced, alongside many of us, the paralysing effect of the shadow projections erupting on social media, traditional media and in many of the spaces I’ve found myself in, both real and virtual. It has often felt impossible to say anything, even the most basic of utterances, never mind something beautiful, creative or meaningful, for fear of becoming the object of the projection. And yet it feels so important to be able to find my and our voices; to be able to continue to live and create in the face of the horrors. As Toni Morrison writes:
“I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.”
Carl Jung believed that the outer world is a manifestation of our own inner world:
“Unless you learn to face your own shadows, you will continue to see them in others, because the world outside you is only a reflection of the world inside us.”
He was the first to be interested in the shadow as an aspect of our psyche. Complementary to his idea of our persona, which is “what oneself as well as others thinks one is”, the “shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors” (Collected Works of C.J.Jung). Essentially, it comprises of those aspects of our nature that cause us to suffer; aspects, often deep in our unconscious that we don’t accept about ourselves, because we believe that these parts make us unacceptable to others.
What lies in the shadow depends on what lies in the persona. If you believe yourself to be competent, kind, compassionate, etc., then your shadow is the part of you who sometimes doesn’t know, is unkind and lacks compassion. What makes it shadow is that you keep this from yourself because it doesn’t match up with your self-image. These parts are split off and often projected onto others. I have a client who regularly tells me that she is “not that person” who speaks badly of people, right before she proceeds to tell me all the things she detests about a number of people. She is genuinely unaware of the part of her that hates, and also unaware that what she hates in them, is what she cannot accept in herself.
Shadow aspects can differ culturally but some typical features are around lying, stealing, cheating, acts of aggression or excess. However, and perhaps more surprisingly, there are also aspects of the shadow that are connected to our greatness; to our creativity; to our divinity. For women especially, the shadow may contain ways of being that are not supported by the culture as Jungian analyst, Dr Estés reminds us:
“At the bottom of the well in the psyches of too many women lies the visionary creator, the astute truth-teller, the far-seer, the one who can speak well of herself without denigration, who can face herself without cringing, who works to perfect her craft. The positive impulses in shadow for women in our culture most often revolve around permission for the creation of a handmade life.” Women Who Run with the Wolves
A few times a year I come back to the fairytale, The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen which illustrates this. It is a cautionary tale about a young girl who is enthralled by a pair of red shoes. She gives up her own handmade shoes for the shiny red ones, not knowing that they are cursed. The red shoes dance the one who wears them, and ultimately dance the little girl to her death. A brutal story, as the old tales often are. What fascinates me, is that it so vividly tells the story of what it means to live a “hand-crafted” life - a life where you follow your true nature rather than follow the pre-determined pathways of the dominant culture, seduced by the “shiny” offerings.
What this story also instructs us in, is the nature and power of our shadow.
In her analysis of this story, Dr Estés writes of the shadow as something that “sneaks” up on us; something that bursts out under the pressure of being pushed down into the unconscious realm. We almost don’t know that it is there for “Shadowing means to have such a light touch, such a light tread, that one can move freely through the forest, observing without being observed.” Women Who Run with the Wolves
The little girl in the story stops believing in her creative ability when she trades her handmade shoes in for the new ones. Dr Estés writes that the shadow life begins when we stop doing what we love. There are many reasons why that happens; we get busy, we fear others’ judgment; we don’t like what we’re creating. When we stop, then that creative energy has to go somewhere and so it burrows down underground. If we feel stymied, and begin to “sneak” in our pleasure – snatched moments here and there, then we deny ourselves the true support that would allow us to fully live and flow and blossom in our creativity. We live as though it isn’t important to us, when it is in fact what we most treasure. She asks: “What is it in our culture that forces us to grovel for the life that is our own?”
The Celtic festival of Samhain at the beginning of November celebrates the end of the harvest and entry into the dark part of the year. According to tradition, the trial of this season is to not look away; to feel what is here; to stay open; to not split but instead, to make room for it all. This perfectly describes shadow work.
Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman speaks of the split as one of spirit and matter in her talk Holding the Tension of the Opposites. She argues that we need to build an ego container strong enough and loving enough to hold both our spirit, which longs for great things, and our matter/body, which the spirit judges as “not good enough” and often tries to escape from. The shadow energy is held in our bodies. For as long as it remains unconscious, it is energy that is lost to us. We need to come into our bodies so that we may connect with it. We need to go down into our inner life and turn towards that which is shadowing us in order to engage with its elements; to know our own mess and to forgive ourselves. When we can do that, we pull in new energy and build a bridge between spirit and matter, healing ourselves and becoming more sensitive to others.
Poet David Whyte writes in Consolations:
“To live with our shadow is to understand how human beings live at a frontier between light and dark; and to approach the central difficulty, that there is no possibility of a lighted perfection in this life; that the attempt to create it is often the attempt to be held unaccountable; to be the exception, to be the one who does not have to be present or participate, and therefore does not have to hurt or get hurt.”
This is such a big part of my work - to support people to live with their shadow – to embody it; to come to know it; to soften into it and accept it so that we may embrace the darkness and the light of our human existence. Whilst at the same time, coming to know my own shadow, feeling her there, treading softly but ever so elusively.
Our shadow is something we must each reckon with, now more than ever. I wonder how your shadow might be sneaking up on you? What is disturbing to you at the deepest level? And how might you face towards it, with love and compassion and care?
With love always,
