Me and My Shadow
There is an old Sufi story about two friends coming across a companion on a dark street.
Their companion is looking upon the ground, anxiously searching for something. He tells them he has dropped his key somewhere and can't find it. They ask him when he last saw the key and he replies that it was in his house. They ask if he has searched there, and he says he has not because it is dark there and he is afraid.
The story illustrates the problem of the Shadow. Jung was of the opinion that all we deny about ourselves, the emotions we would not acknowledge, the desires and fears we could not face, and the actions we could not own up to create the shadow. There is also a collective shadow that nations and societies create too. In the UK, the denial of mass slaughter in the former empire, the creation of the concentration camps for the Boers, and the Indian famine of 1943 meant that the British Empire was as guilty of racial slaughter as were the Nazis. Churchill suggested poison gas for the Bangladeshis and we all know the denial of the slave trade and its introduction into North America. In the USA, the shadow is fed by the legacy of the Slave Trade and the smallpox-laced blankets given to the Native Americans. The fear of BLM and #MeToo stems from this. In the shadows of the Pilgrim Fathers and fear of the other, of sexuality and creativity, comes the shadow’s sustenance. Christianity as a whole, invented by Paul and Augustine, created the myth of original sin and built the image and role of the Devil. All that we deny comes back to us in the return of the repressed, and unless we romance the shadow and integrate it through awareness, we project or displace it all upon others and ourselves. It explains the savage desire "to take back control" when we never lost it in the first place. Farage and Le Pen are all representatives of the collective shadow and can only be dealt with by acknowledging its roots. As a Jungian, I battle with my shadow and create a persona of the Psychotherapist, the philosopher, and the "eccentric academic." I have the political activist and campaigner who takes no prisoners and who remembers who has crossed me and when, and I do not forget. I am the antiracist searching for the fascist and racist, and I never forget here.
I choose a Jungian therapeutic approach, a spirituality which is neo-Pagan, propelling me to an eco-socialism that is feminist, pantheist, and radical. I am legion in my identities but know them in their perfect imperfections and flaws. It often strikes me that those who both support a rational scientific lens alone, be they humanists or born-again followers of the Sky Father, have more in common with one another than they do with me. How many times have I heard them call for the simple use of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and medication with the same passion that a born-again calls for the methods of Leviticus to control the other? If humanity is the measure of all things, then we cannot deny the shadow within. We must seek it out on a path of an ever-becoming self. Heaven and Hell are imperfect if we believe in eternal salvation or damnation for but 80 short years. Any creator with this outlook is a damaged and imperfect one, worthy of the Gnostic faith’s creator of this world. The shadow is the alchemical solution of who we may be; we find that process in those we love and hate, in the situations we find ourselves in, and in the things we do. We must romance the shadow as we become eternally what we may be. Any therapy, any philosophy, any pattern that denies this is false...and we must beware it...
