Knowing My Shadow

Personal growth has often been described as being like an onion: every time you complete one layer, there's another under it. The one under it is smaller but more intense, challenging the person on that journey to use everything learned in other layers to continue to progress. Often, it is so much tougher, the traveler doesn't feel like it is actually progress.

Jungians describe personal growth as a "hero's journey," also a circular sequence of lessons, but they would say that the one on the journey of growth is learning a series of successively more challenging lessons in a repeated set of archetypes, such as the lover, the warrior, or the magician.

One of my weaknesses is my appetite for books which significantly exceeds my time and energy for reading. Another is that I am easily distracted by the lure of a new book when the one I am reading ceases to fully engage me. The consequence is that, at any time, my nightstand hosts anywhere from six to ten books in some stage of reading, often overflowing to the floor beside it.

At the first of the year, while flirting with another new book, I looked at the daunting pile, and, after a deep sigh, I decided that I had to surrender to some of the ones on my nightstand before starting another. I slowly looked through them, sorting into two stacks--ones that I really wanted to finish and ones with which I'd become bored and was ready to quit. Sadly, when I finished my sort, they were all in the same stack--those that I really wanted to finish. After another deep sigh, I decided to pick one to concentrate on finishing first.

The one that I chose to start with had been a gift from friends who are also consciously on a growth journey. Falling Upward by Richard Rohr takes a different spin on the journey. He says we have one set of lessons in the first half of life and a different set for the second. His book was to be a guide for the second half.

I remember struggling with the first third of the book. I wanted to stay with it because I knew that, if my friends thought it was a fit, there must be something of value for me. Yet struggle I did. Although I was solidly in the second half of life, was my resistance to admitting so?

For whatever reason I found the book difficult, I've picked the book up a few times a year, read a page or two, and then placed it back in the stack for a few more months. And, for whatever reason that it has a different appeal to me this time, Falling Upward has completely engaged me. There is an Eastern philosophy that says, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Perhaps I had finally gotten to the place in the book that was interesting to me, or perhaps, I as the student was finally ready to hear its message.

The content that has intrigued me is about the role of exploring the shadow in the second half of life. The shadow is also a Jungian concept, but I've most often heard it described as our dark side--thus the name "shadow."

Rohr, by contrast, proposes that our shadow side is comprised as our weaknesses. Think of my overactive hunger for books and my habit of abandoning one I am reading for another. Those, who have read this blog for awhile, might also remember my addiction to sugar or my struggle to get back to my 30-year fitness regimen which was abandoned when I started working ridiculously long hours two years ago.

Suddenly, I had a whole different perspective on the shadow, and, almost as quickly, I realized much, if not all, of my posts in this blog have been an exploration of what Rohr described as my shadow side. It would seem that I have intuitively stumbled into this second half of life work without realizing what was occurring.

As I've laid my struggles with my "weaknesses" out in front of me for the whole world to see, I've often wondered why I would want to do that. Rohr says that owning our weaknesses results in a humility that is characteristic of the second half of life. I have certainly been humbled by my "weaknesses," which I prefer to call my life lessons.

While I haven't finished Falling Upward, I am near enough to know there is real truth in the shadow work. Yet on my journey, I've experienced a real sense of urgency about fully using my gifts and talents and being of service--an urgency to assure that I don't squander the precious opportunity that this life offers me to leave the world a better place--while feeling myself regularly thwarted in that resolve, often by my shadow.

A couple decades ago, someone wrote a book entitled something like The Destination is the Quality of the Journey. I never read it but I've loved the title. I have discovered that at this point in my life I am much less tolerant of goals and making things happen than I am with allowing and enjoying what wants to happen.

That change in perspective has certainly been enabled by the humility of admitting that some things are just not going to happen or at least not going to happen in my schedule. There was a time when I thought that determination and perseverance were good things. Now in my second half of life work I wonder if they weren't just part of my shadow, robbing me of the freedom to just enjoy life.








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Getting to Know My Shadow

This morning's speaker at church was a young woman, who is a seminarian.  I believe she has delivered the homily once before, but she is clearly new to the pulpit.  I always find interesting the sources of inspiration that the seminarians call upon.  She chose Thurber and Jung, two of my favorite sources as well. 

As she spoke of Jung and his description of our need to get to know our Shadows, I admit my mind drifted.  My mind floated off to yesterday's post about being back in my groove, my post on Emotional Intelligence and Intention (4/9,) and to conversations about Jung and the Shadow over the past 25 years.  Many years ago a speaker on the topic described that we all have all possibilities within us. Whatever is the opposite of how we usually are is our Shadow. He continued, "Even Mother Teresa had an axe-murderer within her, and," he continued, "even the axe-murderer has a Mother Teresa within."  That was a startling concept, but if we do all have all possibilities, it must be true.

When I've written about the self-awareness and self-management aspects of emotional intelligence, it has usually been from the perspective of what holds us back or what are we afraid of, but if we are honest with ourselves, Jung would say we do have darker places within us.  I blame my Irish heritage for an occasional outburst.  (I get "my Irish up.") Thankfully, probably because of self-awareness and self-management over the years, those outbursts have become more and more rare, shorter in duration, and blow over very quickly.  I still don't like it when it happens, but I seem not to be stop it completely.

The passage of scripture upon which the seminarian's remarks were based was from Romans. Paul was wrestling with his own Shadow, wondering why he did things that he knew were "evil" and neglected doing things that were "good." (Romans 7:18-19)

I have written before about being introverted and having a job that requires me to extravert 90 percent of my days.  When the evening and weekends come, in the words of the Greta Garbo in film classic Grand Hotel "I want to be alone."*  Yet as I contemplated my Shadow this morning, I remembered times when I had more introverted work when I had done more volunteer work in my community.  I've even been considering volunteering for something I would love to do but it happens on Friday evenings--the absolute low energy point for any introvert who extraverts at work.  Has my introversion become my Shadow, or am I just listening to my inner knowing?  Where do we draw the line?

As much of an advocate as I am for listening to our hearts and going/doing what they guide us, today I am keenly aware of the consequences of some of those decisions. The consequences are like the Shadows for our hearts.  Until we look at them, they pop up unexpectedly just like my little outbursts. 

I've lived several different places around the country and have friends and "adopted families" from Coast to Coast, but the truth is that most of those relationships are not the deep and abiding kind that result from having spent a lifetime in the same place and decades building relationships.  Mostly on holidays and special days, I am alone, just as I was on the most recent one.  Where did following my heart and my desire to "be alone" become my lonely Shadow?

Just a few days ago I was having a conversation with a relatively new friend about my life choices and their consequences. I said, and I meant, "There is nothing that I would have wanted to miss.  Even when the consequences were not the most desirable, often those are the times I have grown the most." 

I said when I started the blog that it was about the questions I wrestle with and the answers I am seeking.  I'd love to say I have an answer for my spiritual dilemma, but I don't.  Yet one thing about which I am certain, if we don't consciously and intentionally examine our Shadows, they will drive us.  At least most of my decisions to follow my heart have been conscious ones, often made with great deliberation. 




*From "Grand Hotel" http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/582338/Grand-Hotel-Movie-Clip-I-Want-To-Be-Alone-.html