Shadow Work/ Own your Shadow-Intro
You must understand, God loves your shadow much more than he does your ego! John Sanford
Gregg’s Reflection
For the first 50 years of my life, I was trying to prove myself worthy, to live up to an ideal self-image. Failure was not an option. Yet no amount of success was enough to move me beyond my self-image of ‘not good enough.’ I was hard wired to see my brokenness, and live in shame when I fell short.
1n 2000, just after we sold the business, I attended my first Robert Fritz seminar, Fundamentals of Structural Thinking. I learned that I had been living my life out of obligation, and began to embrace freedom. My structure session with Fritz helped me see the brokenness of my structure, and that I had basically been trying to be my own savior. I accepted that God has created us as imperfect human beings, and began to allow my shadow into light.
Two years of therapy helped me get in touch with my emotions, and with the little boy inside that ‘just wanted his father to love him.’ All of this contributed to bringing my shadow into the light. I began to see how God can use us even in our broken imperfection, and started to live into my gifts and calling.
Some years later, I stumbled onto Robert Johnson’s book, Owning your own Shadow. I have quoted him extensively here. As I read that book, I realized that I did own my Shadow, since that is what we had named the Keeshond puppy we got to be a sibling to our beloved Smokey.
My wife of 52 years, Genie, has been helpfully pointing out my shadow ever since we married. Not much fun sometimes, to see through her eyes my own foibles. Yet, we need all the help we need. If we do not take ownership of our own shadows, we will project both the bad characteristics and the good onto others, burdening them needlessly.
So, come along into a journey into shadow, and find the benefits of doing this hard but critical work. This is a powerful post. I hope you will click through to the full post here. Blessings
Find the rest of the post here.
Journaling Prompts
How do you react when you realize you have fallen short? When you find someone you dislike, how might you be projecting something you dislike about yourself? When you admire someone, can you see that you might carry the seeds of that same beautiful character yourself? How often are you blindsided by realizing you have offended someone without even realizing it?
Scripture
Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
Proverbs 28:13
He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Isaiah 40:29
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind.
Jeremiah 17:9-10
Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when there is the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your brother’s eye.
Matthew 7: 3-5
He went on: “What comes out of a person is what defies them. For it is from within, out of a person’s heart, that evil thoughts come—sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and defile a person.”
Mark 7:20-23
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
Romans 3:23
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Romans 7:14-15
If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
1 John 1:8-10
Modern Writings
Our shadow is our internal storehouse for anything in us we’ve disowned or rejected, or are otherwise keeping in the dark things such as anger, shame, empathy, grief, vulnerability, and unresolved wounding. All of us have our own shadow, which is packed with our unique assembly of those aspects of ourselves we’ve learned to keep out of sight, a collection accumulated over the course of a lifetime.
We learned, for reasons of survival, to deny or bury our deeper pain and core wounding. All too many of us struggle mightily to keep these matters locked away, assuming that if we do, we’ll be safe, loved, and accepted, only to have them burst forth in dramatic, often upsetting ways, or rule our lives as invisible undercurrents.
When our shadow is running the show, the result is often discord with others and within ourselves, with suffering and unhappiness all around, regardless of our good times. Everyone has a shadow, but not everyone knows their shadow. And the degree to which we don’t know our shadow is the degree to which it influences, controls, runs us.
But when we turn toward our shadow, and explore and work with what we find there, we start to break free from the hidden forces that have been secretly controlling, driving, and binding us. Our shadow will continue impacting all that we do until we cease distracting ourselves from it. All that’s needed initially is curiosity and a willingness to look in ourselves where we may not have looked before. But make no mistake: edging into our own darkness, our unexplored territories, is an act of courage. And it’s a truly vulnerable undertaking.
Robert Augustus Masters, Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love
To refuse the dark side of one’s nature is to store up or accumulate the darkness; this later expressed as a black mood, psychosomatic illness, or unconsciously inspired accidents. We are presently dealing with the accumulation of a whole society that has worshiped its light side and refused the dark, and this residue appears as war, economic chaos, strikes, racial intolerance.
Robert Johnson, Owning your own Shadow, p. 26
People are as frightened of their capacity for nobility as of their darkest sides. If you find the gold in someone, he will resist it to the last ounce of their strength. This is why we engage in hero-worship. I have almost a sixth sense of the gold in another person and I delight in acquainting others with their high worth and value. More often than not they will resist that process with all their energy.
If we have worn out our known capacities, our unused shadow can give us a wonderful new lease on life. Two things go wrong if we project our shadow: First, we do damage to another by burdening him with our darkness-or light. Second, we sterilize ourselves by casting off our shadow. We then lose a chance to change and miss the fulcrum point, the ecstatic dimension of our own lives.
Robert Johnson, Owning your own Shadow, p. 45-46
When the truth of our identity begins to descend from our minds into our hearts, we may not feel peace and joy! How easy it is to reject part of you as not really yourself and claim only your ideal self as your real self. Can we remember we are the beloved of God when we fail?
In solitude and meditation the dark and wounded side of us that is still in need of healing often asks for attention and has to be acknowledged just as much a part of us as our idealized selves. By bringing the whole self to our attention, we not only claim the dark side but also change our ego ideal.
In the stillness we cultivate, we become free to stand as we are before God and transcend our limited view of ourselves. The mystery of life is not only that we have a dark side which we want to deny but also that we are better than our ego ideal. We are bearers of God’s image and spirit. That is the revelation of God within our innermost soul.
Henri Nouwen, Discernment, p. 138
During the first half of our lives, we are building up our separate or false self. For the first months of life, human infants feel they are one with their caretaker, usually their mother. But soon the child grows into a sense of separateness, a split between my self and your self that understands “I’m here and you’re over there.” We call this dualistic consciousness.
To put it very simply, as children we learn which behaviors cause approval and disapproval from our family, teachers, and friends. If we want to have some sort of control over our lives and create pleasant outcomes, we tend to develop those things which are acceptable and repress those things which are not. Those things we repress or deny about ourselves become our shadow.
The more we have cultivated and protected a chosen persona, the more shadow work we will need to do. The more we are attached to and unaware of such a protected self-image, the more shadow self we will likely have. Our self-image is not substantial or lasting; it is simply created out of our own mind, desire, and choice and everybody else’s preferences for us! It is not objective at all but entirely subjective (which does not mean that it does not have real influence).
The movement to second-half-of-life wisdom has much to do with necessary shadow work and the emergence of healthy self-critical thinking, which alone allows us to see beyond our own shadow and disguise and to find who we are, “hidden with Christ in God,” as Paul puts it (Colossians 3:3). The Zen‘s call it “the face we had before we were born.” This self cannot die, lives forever and is our True Self. Religion is always in some way about discovering our True Self, which is also to discover God, who is our deepest truth.
Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 6/13/21
You must understand, God loves your shadow much more than he does your ego! The ego is primarily engaged in its own defense and the furtherance of its own ambitions. Everything that interferes with it must be repressed. The repressed elements become the shadow. Often, these are basically positive qualities.
There are two shadows: the dark side of the ego, which is carefully hidden from itself and which the ego will not acknowledge unless forced to by life’s difficulties, and that which has been repressed in us lest it interfere with our egocentricity and, however devilish it might seem, is basically connected to the self. In a showdown, God (Self) favors the shadow over the ego, for the shadow, with all its dangerousness, is closer to the center and more genuine.
John Sanford, The Strange Trial of Dr Hyde