Love your Shadow - by Claudia Davidson

We all know what a shadow looks like – a patch of darkness in the shape of whatever is standing between it and the light coming from behind. They are simply there and we give very little thought to them unless they lie across our putting line on the golf course, fall across what we are trying to photograph or make it difficult to read a book.

We really only become conscious of shadows when they block out the light we need to complete a task. When that happens we have a number of choices – we can switch on or create light, we can move to where the light is brighter or we can postpone our task until there is better light available; sometimes we can also choose to muddle on anyway and just hope for the best.

This is also true of our inner growth. Each of us will often have encountered a person, a situation or a set of circumstances that hinders us, blocks us, and/or frustrates us. Most often it is a person – a boss, a colleague, an acquaintance, even a family member. Just the thought of that person is enough to make our hackles rise, our blood pressure shoot up and heated words to flood into our minds and mouths! And no matter how hard we try to get round this, work through it or simply try and ignore it, we find we cannot.

Carl Jung shed some very interesting light on this phenomenon (pun intended! J). According to Jungian psychology we all have within us a Shadow made up of those parts of ourselves that we don’t wish to acknowledge as being part of who we are. Sometimes we are aware of our attempts to block those aspects of ourselves – and so we decide to make a concerted effort to be more understanding, or be more patient, or to be more tolerant. We strive to control our temper, to be less critical or to act more calmly. We seldom succeed by will power alone. Despite our best efforts, there comes a time when we “lose it” and find ourselves back at square one!

And that’s just the Shadow we are aware of.

More challenging is the Shadow we are unaware of – more commonly referred to as our blind spot or the log in our eye compared to the splinter in our brother’s eye. Both references allude to a blockage, a hindrance that is there; that no matter how well we look, we just cannot see. We can clearly see the blind spots in others, and the splinters in their eyes, while being totally oblivious to our own.

“But why even bother with all this?” you may ask. “Shadows do no harm. I can just learn to live with them - I’ve managed all right so far.”

Yes, that is true. We can simply resign ourselves to living with our shadows - but then we also settle for spending our lives in a twilight zone of half-light – a place where our relationships with those around us are unfulfilling, disappointing, and often hurtful.  We sit in the shadows and watch others playing in the sunlight, and tell ourselves we were not born for sunshine.

Not so, says Jung. We are all born with the potential to live fully in the light. We all have within us the Golden Child, the one filled with and surrounded by the glow of the Divine. However, for most of us, while we may enter life “trailing clouds of glory” as Wordsworth described it, we soon find ourselves shattered and fragmented by people, circumstances, and life experiences. And if not shattered then definitely reshaped and reconfigured so that we “fit in” with the expectations of others.  However, there is that within us that which will always strive to be whole and complete again to reclaim and reintegrate the fragments of ourselves that got lost along the way.

Except these fragments now lie in the hands of the Shadow self – in that part of our inner selves that is unknown, unacknowledged and unrecognised.

How do we go about reclaiming these missing or lost aspects of our being? Especially when we sometimes don’t even know what we’re looking for or can’t see it even if it lies right in our eye line. Easy - remember how a shadow reflects the shape of the thing standing between it and the sun? Well, and here’s the really scary part – those people who come into our lives that irritate, frustrate and drive us to distraction – they carry one of the parts we are missing!! The very thing about them that rubs us up the wrong way is the shadow of the quality we are missing or disowning in ourselves!

So the solution is really quite simple – identify that quality, acknowledge it also resides in you, sit with that thought for a bit until you become comfortable with it, see how it has shaped your responses to people or the lack of it has hampered you in your life’s journey and take from this exercise the gift the Shadow has given you in the form of the person you found so very objectionable.

Much easier said than done!!The process itself is challenging and sometimes painful – which is why we sometimes prefer to live in the dark! But the rewards of finally living in the light make it more than worthwhile.

I still remember my first true encounter with the Shadow Self quite vividly. A young girl was visiting in my house – and the moment she walked in my hackles rose. I found her bold and brash and – here’s the rub – greedy - first at the supper table, piling her plate high with complete disregard for anyone else and clearly relishing every mouthful. I was horrified, appalled, disgusted and seething with unexpressed anger. For a while I justified these reactions – after all, I was kind, generous, and gracious – and her behaviour was just so opposite to all that.

 Long after she’d left, I was still sitting with all these emotions – until one day I realised she’d been sent to show me something. I realised that I objected to her “greed” so vehemently because meeting your own needs was so far from my own experience. I’d grown up in a dysfunctional home and learned co-dependent behaviour before I’d learned the alphabet. I knew all about meeting the needs of others – always and even to my own detriment. And this young girl came into my life when my marriage to an alcoholic was at its most dysfunctional. No wonder I was so outraged by this person who so unashamedly took steps to fill her own hunger.

Recognising my own hunger, and then discovering ways of meeting my needs in a healthy way was the beginning of my own journey to wholeness and healing from the debilitating shadow life of co-dependency – but the catalyst was a young girl who made me so very, very, very angry!!!

I know now that was only because I had not yet learned that those who trigger my rage or fear are simply bringing me a gift – those parts of myself that have been held by the Shadow Self. I now know better – and find that such people don’t have to stay around that long anymore before I get it! That alone is reward enough for learning to love my shadow!!

By Claudia Davidson