Shadow Work: How Do We Make the Unconscious Conscious?
The dynamics of seeing, embracing and upgrading a shadow pattern (Shadow Work, part 1)
You guys, I’m SO thankful for subscribing! I've been thrilled to see your subscriptions coming in. For now, you are a beautiful group of 20 people - who surely all share the karmic reward I mentioned in my intro essay. Knowing that there is someone out there receiving these words, makes me really happy! And it also helps shape my letters, as I sort of visualize you now, as I write.
I will focus on sexuality, shadow work and conscious relating in these letters. And today I'm gonna introduce you to my take on shadow work, and to the art of making the unconscious: conscious.
If you like to read more about my background with shadow work, and why I'm so passionate about it, here is an essay about that. And - if you’d like to LISTEN to this essay instead of reading it, click here and I'll read it for you.
In analytical psychology, the shadow (also known as id, shadow aspect, or shadow archetype) is either an unconscious aspect of the personality that the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or the entirety of the unconscious; that is, everything of which a person is not fully conscious.
Some people speak of our unconscious material as something that is forever hidden to us, as there was an absolute border between our conscious and subconscious mind or spheres, that cannot be crossed.
But of course, that’s not true. Just think about dreams, which are great examples of subconscious material floating into consciousness.
The most important thing I learnt from my years of personal work in the tantric field, was that its fully possible - and not even hard, except for the ego pain of it - to bring our unconscious patterns into light. And in this series, I will investigate some of the dynamics involved in courageous shadow work.
Why is a shadow a shadow?
When we are concerned with bringing our shadows into light, we first need to ask ourselves: what is the reason for our shadows existing outside our conscious sight?
In other words: WHY is it that we don’t we want to see our shadows?
Can you guess the answer?
Actually, the answer resides in the definition above: A shadow is “an unconscious aspect of the personality that the conscious ego does not identify in itself”. Basically, shadows are aspects of ourselves that we (our superego) have labelled too “bad” to own as part of ourselves.
A personality quality, an idea, an instinct, a weakness, a feeling or an impulse turn into a shadow when we deem it as unacceptable to our personal values. Refusing to accept unwanted parts of ourselves, we push them out of our conscious sight and hope that will make them disappear.
Typically, it’s the least desirable aspects of our personality that turn into shadows:
Anger
Fear
Jealousy
Hostility
Laziness
Competitiveness
Cowardice
Greed
Etc etc
It is US who push these parts of ourselves into the dark. Before we did that, those aspects were just natural parts of our human complexity, primal impulses we needed to find a way to deal with.
The real irony about shadows is, that once we have pushed these unwanted parts of ourselves out of sight, they create much more havoc for us than they would have if we had managed to own them. Actually, the very REASON why our shadow sides are problematic, is because we refuse to claim them as part of ourselves!
When hidden away from our conscious sight, we become completely powerless in how to respond to these parts of us. For example, if I am competitive, that competitiveness won’t go away just because I refuse to admit it. Rather, when my competitiveness arises - and I can’t acknowledge that competitiveness as part of me - I will just respond unconsciously (you could even say automatically) to it.
And it’s that unconscious response, rather than the competitiveness itself, that is our real problem!
The moment we SEE our shadows, they… cease being shadows. Consequently, our aim with shadow work is to invite our shadows back into the light, by accepting them as part of us.
Making the unconscious conscious: The-worst-thing-I-could-think-of–game
When we dream, it’s our relaxation that enables material from our subconscious to bubble into the light of our consciousness. We want to create that relaxation in our shadow work too, and to do that, we need to allow our guard (= our superego) to step aside.
How to? One method I've found personally very useful, is to prepare myself for the fact that I think and do and dream of far darker and dirtier and meaner things than my ego would prefer me to do – and promise myself to acknowledge whatever arises.
When something´s going on in my subconsciousness that won’t leave me alone, I play a little game: what is the WORST thing I could be thinking of right now? This is a surprisingly enjoyable game, and quite often, through scanning my worst possible thoughts (I want to murder someone, I'm considering to steal something, I don’t wish that person well at all), I come across the end of a thread that takes me to whatever is bothering me.
That moment of hitting my core, often feels like falling down a black hole. That fall is surprisingly comfortable: it’s a sense of deep accept there, a knowing that I'm strong enough to acknowledge the vast depths of primal forces existing within me. Sometimes, these shadow acknowledgements even turn into profoundly spiritual experiences.
Shadow work is a lot about: Accept. Accepting our human complexity, and our far more than “good” personalities. In my experience, the more of our complexity we can accept and own, the easier it is for our shadows to float into our conscious sight. And really, keeping those shadows where we can see them, (and acting consciously on them) is the true path to «goodness”!
I will write more about accept, self-forgiveness and the power of embracing our oh-so-challenging-human-complexity in my next letter, coming in a month or a fortnight (let’s see).
All the best,
Ida