Any person is born whole. Life, family, society and just the process of growing up split the person into so many parts. First, is the persona which is the image one projects to those around him. Then, there is the ego which is the part of your personality of which you are fully aware. Lastly, the shadow which is the unexplored part of your brain.
The designations above were made by Dr. Carl Jung, the famous psychologist. However, I am not sure what exactly is the shadow? Is it my subconscious? Is it my second brain that Mark Manson described as the source of all ideas and thoughts which you one doesn’t know where they come from. After reading the book “Owning your own shadow” by Robert A. Johnson, i started to think it might be much more than that.
It seems to me that through our times growing up we get negative feedback towards a lot of what we do, towards any ideas or actions out of the normal. When this happens enough times, we cut pieces of our souls and hide it away in the dark. We get rid of our crazy ideas, our impulses, anything that can make us stand out. If we get hurt when we get angry, we learn to suppress our anger into the shadow. If we get ridiculed when we come up with new ideas, we learn to ignore our ideas into the shadow. If we get punished, we learn to lock our impulses and our desires into the shadow.
Through time, shadow becomes this dark unexplored place filled with violence, screams, and hate. It could also be filled with creative ideas and wild dreams. The shadow causes us to do acts that we can’t explain. We project our anxieties and biases onto people. We get attracted to what we lack and miss because it is locked away in the shadow. We get overwhelmed with feelings that you can’t describe, that we can’t know where they came from.
The most important thing we can do in our lives is to explore the shadow, to discover ourselves. To reach a point where anything we do we do intentionally, not compelled by unseen forces, not following others like sheep.
Shadow work requires a lot of courage. We don’t know what are we going to see over there. We don’t know what consequences we might face if we try to change because of what we discover. Yet, we need to be more curious than afraid. We need to reflect all the time and keep investigating why do we do what we do. Why do we feel what we feel. Can we understand why do we procrastinate? Why do we waste time watching YouTube? Why do we bite our nails?
Can we face our fears? Can we confront in our mind’s eye the violent people, the evil people, the sophists, those who ridicule and insult? If we do this long enough, If we write this down in journals, we can see patterns in ourselves and in others. We can reverse engineer what we do or what others do to understand why they are done and to gain insights into people and into ourselves. If we do this long enough, we can explore our crafts beyond the limits of the mundane. We can be creative.
Meditation and journaling are very important. Breathing meditation can help me remove myself from my emotions and explore the darkness unclouded by fear.