What the Internet Gets Wrong About the Shadow

Perhaps befitting of the fact that the Shadow archetype is related to all the parts of ourselves that we can’t see clearly, there is often a tendency in the New Age interwebs to mystify and even pathologize this unlikely friend of our inner landscape. Yes, I said friend.

Our Shadow is not a nefarious force that's out to get us, delighting in mucking up our lives. It's a misunderstood part of our psyche that greatly wants to help us. However, the Shadow's nature is that it is, well, hard to see. In the slippery, half-lit realm of the unconscious, it is easy to see things that aren't there, or misinterpret them, or melodramatize - not to mention, our emotions can get in there and snarl things up a bit. Thus we have a lot of language and ideas floating around that encourage a somewhat limited understanding of the Shadow, reducing it to a tricky, rather goth, two-dimensional stereotype of itself. 

Too, it is very common for folks raised in a Puritan-influenced culture that is overly focused on what is sunny, positive, "pure," and "good" to relate to "shadow work" as if it is all about confronting Shadow for the sake of transmuting and conquering it. But this obsession with "transcending" the Shadow speaks to a profound misunderstanding about the Shadow's role in the Hero's Journey - the Hero does not set out on a journey to go around conquering everything in the landscape; the Hero is profoundly changed and reshaped by the landscape, and all the archetypal or mythological figures and challenges encountered therein.

The Shadow, in fact, is the "apprenticeship-piece" archetype, in the words of C.G. Jung (father of analytical psychology who established our modern understanding of the Shadow). In order to pass safely and capably into the realm of the unconscious, and be transformed by its challenges, we must meet the Shadow. We can't make it through the Hero's Journey without the Shadow. 

The Shadow is our Inner Twin, our personal slice of the collective Shadow archetype. This Inner Twin developed as an opposing inner force in our early formative years to keep our psyche and our understanding of the world, and ourselves in relation to others, organized and coherent. "This is me, that's not me. Self, Other." And so forth. But as time goes on as we mature, we can bring this shadowed inner dimension into the light. We need to bring our Shadow to light so that we can know ourselves in healthy relation to others.

The Shadow's job is to mirror us, but because we can’t see it (because it is shadowed, after all) we tend to only find our mirroring through other people. The Shadow rules the phenomenon of projection itself, and it hovers opposite our conscious mind, presiding over the way in which our relationship to our own inner "partner" colors how we navigate the outer world through the function of relationships with other people. 

"Shadow projection" only happens because we have not owned or recognized all the dispossessed parts our Shadow carries around for us as us. When we react with intense rejection or idealization to others who stimulate our Shadow, it's not that our Shadow is projecting. Our ego is projecting. Our "issues with our shadow" are better understood as issues with our ego! 

Make no mistake; the issue lies not with the Shadow, but with the ego's limited worldview. Our Shadow is alerting us to these missing pieces in us and helping us cultivate some equanimity when confronted with the storm of our projections, encouraging us to reclaim, resurrect, or reconfigure something that has gone off-track within us. To cultivate the principle of balance within ourselves.

Though there might be some instances of projection where we have "disowned" a quality or behavior and we're picking on another person for embodying it, we make a mistake when we assume that we get triggered only by things we're "guilty" of. It's our collective Catholic schoolgirl guilt complex, shaming us out of seeing what the Shadow is actually trying to help us with!

In the Soul Figures mini-course, Your Other Half: Inner Twin Shadow Remedy, we give you a taste of the Soul Figures approach to "shadow work." Though there is a more formal meditation with this important "apprenticeship-piece" of the psyche in the full Soul Figures Method, the mini-course gives you a little taste. We practice a very gentle, Venusian-toned, lovey-dovey type of "shadow work" that is all about cultivating a loving embrace of your Inner Twin. There is no neutralizing, conquering, or trying to transmute your Shadow. Instead, it is about rectifying your Shadow to its rightful place as a long-serving member of your inner "Board of Directors," a figure who greatly wants your happiness and fulfillment and has in fact been working tirelessly your whole life to try to bring it about. Once we unlock the Shadow as the dear inner friend it really is, then we're ready to confront the bigger, somewhat more intimidating, even scary, realm of the transpersonal archetypes. 

Join us! 

The Inner Twin Shadow Remedy Mini-Course

The Soul Figures Self-Guided Online Course (which comes with your personal natal chart reading, a translation of your natal chart into archetypes)