The Shadow

The word “shadow” in this context, was what analytical psychologist Carl Jung defined as the suppressed parts of ourselves in our unconscious. The part that is largely running the show in our day to day lives, and what we tend to call “fate”.

The shadow part of ourselves forms in early childhood through parental and societal disapproval and conforming to what is accepted. The inherent and authentic parts of ourselves (the negative and positive parts) that weren’t accepted, we then pushed away out of our awareness into our unconscious “shadow”.

That’s were our authentic being would become fragmented as we only start operating with the aspects of ourselves that we perceive as acceptable. Once we enter adulthood (or sooner) this may start to become noticeable, through a feeling of discontentment, confusion and not being able to find a meaningful direction in life as we may not truly know who we are at our core being, if that may even be in our awareness. I believe that when this feeling is disregarded and only seen as simply a part of life, we are letting external circumstances and situations take the charge of our life and from a holistic perspective, this may then often cause dis-ease within our bodies, that we then once again try to fix with external methods that only address the symptoms and not the root cause.

As children we may have felt the need to suppress emotions such as frustration, anger or sadness as they seemed to cause reactivity in our parents or caregivers and/or was frowned upon by society. Even assertiveness, something that is now highly praised in the professional world, is a behavior many children may have not been allowed to express especially when they were raised in the traditional “hierarchical” ways. And thus suppressed this part of themselves and then started living life the exact opposite way of assertive; submissive or complaisant.

Traumatic events can also cause parts of ourselves to be suppressed and pushed into our shadow. An aspect of our self that we may have seen as the reason we experienced a traumatic event, may then be viewed as a part we should not express anymore as that may be considered “unsafe’.

So in essence, our conforming to our parental and societal norms and values as well as negative life experiences can all push parts of our authentic being into the shadow and cause a disconnect within our whole being.

When we feel triggered by someone or something and we express an out of proportion reactivity to that, it is showing us the parts of ourselves that is in our shadow, through the situation, behavior or even appearance someone may have that is acting like a mirror for us to bring it into our awareness.

I believe we also get a glimpse of the shadow in others through observation of intoxication by alcohol for example. We may all know the saying that those who are drunk speak their truth. And certain risky behaviors are noticed too, that would not be expressed or rather be suppressed in a sober state.

If we can become aware of those parts in our shadow, with full acceptance, no judgement and unconditional love, we are able to integrate it back into our essence of self and healing of our entire being follows.

A Spiritual Awakening is the sudden realization something doesn’t seem quite right in our life, followed by a crumbling of the perceived identity or “Ego” and the search for the True Self, which also requires exploration, acceptance and integration of the Shadow parts. Often when one goes through such an awakening, only positivity is sought and the shadow remains untouched, which does not offer true enlightenment.

When we are able to accept and love every part of ourselves and therefore lighten our shadow, then the authentic expressions our children will have that also include the less joyful expressions, wouldn’t threaten us and send us into a defensive mode anymore (which would otherwise then be the cause of our children creating their shadow parts as they will stop expressing themselves as their whole authentic being and just express that what you as their parent approve of, which is the pattern we need to break.) and then we can start parenting our children consciously.