by Connie Zweig
Take these moments of disquietude as an opportunity to slow down, gently nudge aside your denial, and begin an honest conversation with yourself. You may wish to use a journal to record your thoughts and feelings, draw your own images, or track your dreams. Throughout the book, you will find soulful writing by clients who used their journals to do shadow-work.
If, as you read, you feel startled or grow too uncomfortable, stop; put down the book. You are meeting your shadow. Be reassured that this material may be difficult for many people. It is slippery and evasive, charged and even frightening. But stay with it, moving at your own pace; eventually, as your self-knowledge grows, so will your compassion for yourself.
Take these moments as opportunities for self-reflection. In “A Shadow-Work Handbook,” found in the back of the book, we offer a breathing exercise for centering, which can help you to gain a vantage point for self-observation while you read. With regular practice, this can enable you to witness your shadow characters, watching your emotions without identifying with them. You may wish at this time to turn to the Handbook and read that section, or you may wish to wait until you have read how our many clients used this practice throughout the book.
As you continue to read and begin to imagine your life more archetypally, you might ask yourself which god or goddess in you is. reading the text. If it’s Athena, then as the goddess of weaving she may be knitting together ideas from various aspects of your life, so that patterns emerge that you may not have seen before. If it’s Hermes, then as the god who steals he may be taking ideas from here and there to be used elsewhere, appropriating them for his own ends. If it’s Apollo, then as a rational and aloof figure he may be standing apart and examining the text for errors, so that you miss its immediate, emotional impact. If it’s Demeter, then as a maternal goddess she may be exploring how to use shadow-work to nurture and heal her friends and loved ones.
In addition, as you read through the book you will want to know the meanings of the terms we use. The psychology/spirituality literature has become a Tower of Babel. Many terms, such as ego and self, are used vaguely and interchangeably, thus losing their clarity and potency. Others are used with such specificity that their applications are rare. In this section we will make our meanings explicit so you can share our assumptions. As a result, our larger framework will become clear as well, containing and clarifying our case anecdotes.
In the tradition of Jung, we view the shadow as an archetype or universal blueprint in the human soul. At the center of every psychological complex, or emotionally charged group of unconscious images and ideals, lies an archetype, which holds these personal patterns in a larger story. For example, at the center of the mother complex, which forms a miniature world of images and feelings about mother, lies the Great Mother archetype, which connects the complex to collective, timeless images of her. At the center of the puer complex, within the boy or girl who will not grow up, lies the archetype of Eternal Youth, which connects us to spiritual possibilities. At the heart of the seducer/lover sits Aphrodite, the archetype of beauty, passion, and seduction. And at the core of the tyrant/ruler stands Zeus, the archetypal king of Olympus.
Like Jung, we might ask which comes first: Do we live in the archetypes, or do they live in us? As you contemplate this question, you may uncover its truths from various points of view.
Following in the footsteps of Jung, for us the term “Self” denotes the “God within,” the transpersonal realm within the personal life. The Self contains the potential for the totality of personality, including the shadow. An experience of the Self brings purpose and meaning to life, a connection to something larger than the individual ego. The goal of individuation, as Jung defined it, could be called reconciliation with the Self. When one can hear the voice of the Self and learn to obey it, one walks and talks with authenticity.
The Self also has an ethical dimension, which ties it to the shadow. Freud pointed out in his work on superego that collective morality, which stems from society, religion, and parents, results in feelings of guilt and conscience. This might be imagined as the eye of god that, after Cain killed his brother Abel, follows the murderer everywhere he goes. But Jung suggested that there exists a personal moral urge as well, which he sometimes called the two-million-year-old man within us. It is this voice of the Self that dictates right action with a certain conviction, even when it appears to conflict with collective codes, such as Krishna telling Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita to kill his brothers, or God telling Abraham to sacrifice his son. In the spiritual literature, this reconciling with the Self has been called aligning with the Tao, living one’s dharma, or being in the flow of life.
We use the term “ego” to signify the inauthentic “I” or self (with a small “s”) that develops to survive in difficult environments and to become acceptable to the conventional world. We view ego as the result of many inevitable adaptations to forces that cannot tolerate the authentic expressions of the Self—helplessness in a small boy develops into overcompetence; rage in a pretty girl eventually becomes social demureness; sensuality in a young teen slowly turns into rigidity; and depression in one member of a so-called happy family emerges as an insidious addiction. In each case, the intolerable feeling is banished into the shadow, turning into its opposite in a persona mask, with which the ego quickly identifies. The proper role of this inauthentic ego, then, is to protect the authentic soul by attempting to ensure that the child will be loved and accepted while he or she learns to adapt and survive in social settings.
There are many aspects of this authentic Self that are unacceptable to the ego ideal. Like old family heirlooms, they are stuffed into a trunk in the cellar. The trunk is like the personal “shadow,” a container that holds the dusty old heirlooms or lost and neglected shadow contents. The personal shadow is that portion of the whole unconscious that is closest to consciousness. It is shaped by a confluence of forces: the collective or cultural shadow, which forms the sea of moral and social values in which we swim; the family shadow, which forms the vessel in which we grow; and the parents’ shadows, which form a legacy of abuse and betrayal.
The personal shadow can contain anything that is forbidden, shamed, or taboo, depending on the cultural, familial, and parental training. For example, while proponents of a culture at large may praise accumulating wealth and a particular family worships the idol of money, another family may scorn any display of greed. So, money comes to carry numinous value for some, immoral or shameful value for others. This difference has vast implications for how people invest their time, find work, seek partnership, and experience their own self-worth.
Similarly, in a family that frowns upon athletic ability, a natural athlete may feel forced to go to law school, thus banishing his giftedness into the shadow. In a family that disdains the arts as child’s play, a gifted painter or poet may feel coerced to become a businessperson or scientist. In these ways, authentic feelings and behaviors, both positive and negative, are banished into the darkness, only to reappear later in distorted forms, such as rage, addiction, depression, abuse, or envy, which tear apart the fabric of our precious relationships. Consciously, of course, an addict does not know why he craves his drug; an abusive mother does not know why she beats her child. But unconsciously, the shadow knows its purpose: It seeks to make the unconscious conscious; it tries to tell its secret. Through repeated patterns of addictive or abusive behavior, through choosing the wrong person to love again and again, the shadow tells its tale. The aim of this book is to learn how to listen and to discover your shadow’s purpose.
We are using the term “shadow” in three ways: First, the shadow is the darkroom in which our images and dreams lie dormant. Shadow-work is the process of development in which our images and dreams come back to life.
Second, it refers to the contents themselves, those archetypal images that are immediately, intuitively recognizable as a troubling part of us: a witch, sadist, saboteur, liar, victim, addict. In addition, we are calling those
latent talents and positive impulses shadow content that were banished in childhood, such as musical, poetic, or athletic talents.
Finally, used as an adjective, the term refers to the shadow aspect or dark side of a person or archetype, such as the dark side of one’s mother or the dark side of the Great Mother. Because most of us are trained as children to split off God from Satan and good from evil, we cannot hold the tension of these opposites: light side and dark side. Instead, we tend to seek out untarnished, idealized heroes in an attempt to remain optimistic and hopeful. Or another part of us, which is jaded and cynical, expects the worst of others.
As an alternative to this kind of splitting, romancing the shadow is a way of seeing that is simultaneously a way of knowing. When a shadow-worker directs the attention to a person or object, he or she sees both its light side and its dark side. To practice light side/dark side thinking is to practice holding opposites, a subversive act in our either/or culture. For Jung, this act is a developmental step, the end of a naïve all-good view or a cynical all-bad view, which results in a more nuanced perception of reality and a capacity to tolerate paradox and ambiguity. This, too, is one of the promises of shadow-work.
We have extended an old Sufi story that portrays the development of human consciousness via shadow-work. The Master of a large household needs to go abroad for an indeterminate length of time. He decides to leave his trusted, capable Butler in charge of his affairs. After many years the Master returns, only to discover that the Butler no longer recognizes him; the Butler believes that it is Master of the house.
Early in our development, the Self goes dormant and the ego takes control of our conscious lives. It runs the house like an efficient servant and eventually forgets that the Master is gone. The Butler says: “I’m in charge. I have my own priorities. I have power over people. But the people don’t know who I really am, so I have to hide.” Eventually, the Butler hides so well that it forgets how it got the job in the first place. Its range of feeling narrows as it becomes nice, polite, unthreatening; its range of thinking narrows as it becomes proper, moral, appropriate. And all of its power is aimed at maintaining its position and proving that it is worthy of love and acceptance—or faking it.
In fact, the Butler has become so entrenched in its assumed identity that it becomes unwilling to relinquish control. So the Master needs to send in his Henchmen. They appear to the Butler as obstacles to its work: moods, such as anger or depression and feelings of futility; fears of inadequacy or of losing control; projections onto others, making them the source of its problems. The Butler now feels afraid all the time: afraid it will be found out, afraid it won’t have enough, afraid it will be left alone. Soon the Butler may dream of being attacked or killed by unseen enemies.
Eventually, by facing the Henchmen and undergoing many experiences of great pain and struggle, the Butler is humbled and forced to surrender to the Master’s greater power—that is, to the voice of the authentic Self. The false ego can no longer reign supreme in the household; the call of the Self must be heard. And the Shadow, via the Henchmen, provides the means by which the ego is humbled, seeing its own limitations and reluctantly bowing to the greater wisdom. Jung articulated this point when he said, “the experience of the Self is always a defeat for the ego.”
Finally, we use the term “soul” to denote our immanent human value. Unlike Self, which denotes a connection to transcendent spirituality, soul implies relatedness, complexity, and vulnerability. Frequently, we are forced as children to abandon the tender, authentic needs of our souls. As James Hillman has pointed out, soul offers an approach to life as sacred, an orientation toward depth. It brings a quality of awareness that is reflective, imaginative, and downward, engaged with the dailiness of things.
Today, through the democratization of spiritual teachings, more and more people appear to be remembering the Self, the divine essence. We sense that a limited identity that used to be comfortable is no longer enough; we feel a dissonance between who we are and who we could become. We are beginning to hear the whispering voice of the Self.
This is the first clue that the journey of spiritual ascent has begun. However, there are few warning signs of the risks of a flight into spirituality. Like Icarus, many young seekers, flying unbound by attachment to this world, whether through meditation or psychedelics, have burned their wings and fallen to the valley below. And some holy men, who seemed immune to the frailties of the rest of us, have grown inflated by identification with the Self, losing contact with their own shadows and inflicting great pain on their loving but perhaps naïve students.
Conversely, the descent to soul, untouched by the rarified air of the Self, holds different risks: Like Hades, lord of the underworld, we can remain bound in the darkness of depression or overly attached to the ephemeral things of this world, ruled by fears of abandonment or feelings of isolation.
Thus, when the Self, in its expansion to the heights, denies the needs of the soul, something essential is lost. And when the soul, in its extension to the depths, denies the needs of the Self, something essential is lost. This book attempts to build a bridge between the Self’s upward longing and the soul’s downward dive through shadow-work. Romancing the Shadow teaches you to honor the call of the Self, deepen and widen the range of awareness, and enjoy the moment-to-moment personal life of the soul.
THE PROMISE OF OUR BOOK
By reading this book—a comprehensive look at the appearance of the shadow in all areas of life—you will discover that the consequences of romancing the shadow can be transformative:
Individuals can find the sources of their deep-seated feelings of fraudulence or self-hate and come to know a deeper authenticity. You can uncover the roots of your own self-sabotage and begin to untangle the shadow’s hidden purpose in seemingly destructive behaviors, thereby becoming more self-directed. You can storm the walls of denial and learn to see yourself and others with greater clarity and compassion. Eventually, you can turn self-hate into self-acceptance and shame into pride (see Chapter 1).
Family members who seek deeper reconciliation and greater authenticity with parents, children, or siblings can reduce family persona by opening family secrets, exploring family sins, and learning to break this dark legacy to the next generation (Chapter 2).
Next we examine four potential patterns of development that result from a parent’s betrayal of a child’s soul: father’s son, father’s daughter, mother’s son, and mother’s daughter. By becoming aware of these unconscious patterns and examining each parent’s light side and dark side, you can reclaim masculine and feminine soul (Chapter 3).
Single people who suffer with the shame of dating as a series of rejections and failures can find a way to use dating to gain self-knowledge, break old relationship habits, and move toward intimacy with a partner (Chapter 4).
In this climate of epidemic divorce, couples can learn to defuse negative emotions and step off the roller-coaster ride of seemingly purposeless, painful, repetitive fights. You can break long-term patterns of pursuing and distancing, criticizing and punishing, and move toward conscious partnership. By understanding how your projections color your perceptions of others, you can resolve longstanding shadow issues around sex, power, and money and learn to know one another more deeply (Chapter 5).
Committed couples can move from shadow-boxing to shadow-dancing, from illusion to authenticity in a committed relationship. You can learn to honor and care for the Third Body, the soul of the relationship, which in turn nurtures and sustains you. And you can create a shadow marriage, vowing to sustain and support each other’s full range of potentialities (Chapter 6).
Friends can deepen feelings of safety and intimacy with one another by learning how to use shadow-work to explore feelings of anger, envy, and competition, thereby healing your sense of isolation and finding places where you don’t have to hide (Chapter 7).
Anyone who works can reimagine the purpose and meaning of their work. With shadow-work, even tedious a
ctivities can become soulful, an opportunity to deepen self-awareness, which can lead to greater authenticity on the job, an entrepreneurial or creative venture, or a separation of employment from soulful work. In addition, the search for soul on the job can become a way to break old patterns and deepen self-knowledge (Chapter 8).
People in midlife who awaken suddenly to the loss of their unlived lives can learn to break free of the constraints of their well-trodden paths, becoming reinspired to live the mystery more deeply. Midlife depression can become descent, and ascent brings the resurrection of lost gods (Chapter 9).
Most people, regardless of beliefs, can begin to make sense of their suffering by learning how to turn their most painful experiences into wisdom—by turning their baser elements into gold. By seeing the shadow’s patterns and purpose at work in your relationships, you will uncover an order in apparent chaos, a deeper meaning that ties together individual, family, and cultural stories. In effect, you will make room for soul.
Although highly practical in its approach, Romancing the Shadow offers no easy answers. We believe that, in dealing with the unconscious, there are none. One simple experience of telling a patient what to do leads any therapist to discover unconscious resistances. So, instead, we pose questions of a certain kind, questions that lead the reader down into a contemplative state of mind, down toward soul. We use questions like meditation objects to uncover precious shadow material. We use questions like koans, to open the imagination to the mystery.
Turning the questions around, we discover that everything with substance casts a shadow. This book teaches you how to look at what is hidden, how to live with light side/dark side awareness, which means learning to live with ambiguity, paradox, and complexity. In fact, living with shadow awareness by definition precludes easy answers; it demands holding the tension of opposites, which Carl Jung viewed as a sign of developing consciousness.