Shadow Work/Own Your Shadow

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. Blessings

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

You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.

Matthew 12:34

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

The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

Romans 8:7

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.

Ephesians 2:1-3

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

For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

1 John 2:16

Modern Writings

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

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.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event. If you fulfill the pattern that is peculiar to yourself, you have loved yourself, you have accumulated and have abundance; you bestow virtue then because you have luster. You radiate; from your abundance something overflows.

But if you hate and despise yourself, if you have not accepted your pattern- then there are hungry animals (prowling cats and other beasts and vermin) in your constitution which get at your neighbors like flies in order to satisfy the appetites which you have failed to satisfy. Therefore, Nietzsche says to those people who have not fulfilled their individual pattern that the bestowing soul is lacking. There is no radiation, no real warmth; there is hunger and secret stealing.

Carl Jung

We are born whole and, let us hope, will die whole. In the cultural process we sort out our God-given characteristics into those that are acceptable to our society, and those that have to be put away. There would be no civilized behavior without this sorting out of good and evil, but the refused and unacceptable characteristics do not go away; they only collect in the dark corners of our personality. If it accumulates more energy than our ego, it erupts as an overpowering rage or some indiscretion that slips past us; or we have a depression or an accident that seems to have its own purpose. We divide ourselves into ego and shadow because our culture insists that we behave in a particular manner.

Robert Johnson, Owning your own Shadow, p. 4-5

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

Any repair of our fractured world must start with individuals who have the insight and courage to own their own shadow. The tendency to see one’s shadow ‘out there’ in one’s neighbor or in another race or culture is the most dangerous aspect of the modern psyche. Our Western tradition promises that if even a few people find wholeness, the whole world will be saved. Shadow work is probably the only way of creating a more balanced world. A whole generation can live a modern, civilized life without ever touching much of its shadow nature. Then, predictable-twenty years is the allotted time-that unloved shadow will erupt and a war will burst forth that no one wanted, but to which everyone has contributed.

Robert Johnson, Owning your own Shadow, p. 27-30

I have written of the shadow as the dark, unacceptable part of oneself. But I also have noted that it is possible to project from the shadow the very best of oneself onto another person or situation. Our hero-worshiping capacity is pure shadow; in this case our finest qualities are refused and laid on another. It is hard to understand, but we often refuse to bear our noble traits and instead find a shadow substitute for them.

Robert Johnson, Owning your own Shadow, p. 42

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

A mandorla is that almond shaped segment that is made when two circles partly overlap. The symbol represents the overlap of the opposites, the overlap between heaven and earth. We are all torn by the demands of heaven and earth; the mandorla instructs us how to engage in reconciliation.

Christ and the Virgin are often portrayed within the framework of the mandorla. The mandorla has a wonderfully healing and encouraging function, The mandorla binds together that which was torn apart and made unwholesome-unholy. Language can also be a mandorla. One makes a mandorla every time one says something that is true.

All good stories are mandorla. They demonstrate that the opposites overlap and are finally the same. Whenever you have a clash of opposites in your being and neither will give way to the other, you can be certain God is present. It can be hoped that by the end of your life the two circles will be entirely overlapped.

Finally one sees that there was only one circle all the time. The place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise. This middle place is the mandorla. I have won or superseded in some very serious spiritual debates in my inner life by giving credence to both sides, until a superior point of view could be achieved.

Robert Johnson, Owning your own Shadow, p. 98-111

Perhaps no psychologist has stressed the need of self-acceptance as the way to self-realization so much as Carl Jung. For Jung, self-realization meant the integration of the shadow. It is the growing ability to allow the dark side of our personality to enter into our awareness and thus prevent a one-sided life in which only that which is presentable to the outside world is considered as a real part of ourselves.

To come to an inner unity, totality and wholeness, every part of our self should be accepted and integrated. Christ represents the light in us. But Christ was crucified between two murderers and we cannot deny them, and certainly not the murderers who live in us.

Henri Nouwen, Nouwen Society Daily Devotion, 1/17/23

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

The Shadow and the Gift

Wide eyed and excited, I see the gifts I used to stumble over. Praying with the shadow, I have come to understand it. Leading me into its secret it has shown me that it doesn't lie. Quietly, it proclaims the existence of something deeper, something real.

Study the shadow and you will find the gift. With eyes wide open you can see through the shadow, all the way through to a deeper truth. Yes, even shadows can make you wise once you've discovered how to look. For every shadow hides a gift. And because of that I love shadows.

Marina Wiederkehr, Celtic Daily Prayer, Book Two, p. 1034-35

The shadow is that part of the self that we don’t want to see, we don’t want others to see, and of which we’re always afraid. Our tendency is to try to hide it or deny it, even and most especially from ourselves. Jesus, quoting the prophet Isaiah, describes it as “listening but not understanding, seeing but not perceiving” (Matthew 13:14-15).

Jesus and the prophets deal with the cause, which is the ego. Our problem is not our shadow self as much as our over-defended ego, which always sees and hates its own faults in other people, and thus avoids its own conversion. Jesus’ phrase for the denied shadow is “the plank in your own eye,” which you invariably see as the “splinter in your neighbor’s eye” (Matthew 7:3-5). Jesus’ advice is absolutely perfect: “Take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly enough to take the splinter out of your neighbor’s eye.”

He does not deny that we should deal with evil, but we had better do our own inner housecleaning first. If we do not see our own “plank,” it is inevitable that we will hate it elsewhere. Once we expose the shadow for what it is, its game is over. Its effectiveness entirely depends on disguise (see 2 Corinthians 11:14) and not seeing the plank in our own eye. Once we see our own plank, the “speck” in our neighbor’s eye becomes inconsequential.

Richard Rohr, Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 78, 79-80.

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

Carl Jung brought together practical theology with very good psychology. He surely is no enemy of religion, as some imagine. When asked at the end of his life if he “believed” in God, Jung replied, “I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.” I’m convinced he is one of the best friends of the contemplative inner life. He suggested the whole problem is that Christianity does not connect with the soul or transform people anymore. He insists on actual “inner, transcendent experience” to anchor individuals to God, and that’s what mystics always emphasize.

One of the things Jung taught was that the human psyche is the mediation point for God. If God wants to speak to us, God usually speaks in words that first feel like our own thoughts. How else could God come to us? We have to be taught how to honor and allow that, how to give it authority, and to recognize that sometimes our thoughts are God’s thoughts.

Contemplation helps train such awareness in us. The contemplative mind sees things in wholes and not in divided parts. In an account written several years before his death, Jung described his early sense that “Nobody could rob me of the conviction that it was enjoined upon me to do what God wanted and not what I wanted. That gave me the strength to go my own way.”

We all must find an inner authority that we can trust that is bigger than our own. This way, we know it’s not only us thinking these thoughts. When we are able to trust God directly, it balances out the almost exclusive reliance on external authority (Scripture for Protestants; Tradition for Catholics). Carl Jung wanted to teach people to honor religious symbols, but from the inside out. He wanted people to recognize those numinous voices already in our deepest depths. Without deep contact with one's in-depth self, Jung believed one could not know God. That’s not just Jungian psychology. Read Teresa of Avila Interior Castle.

Richard Rohr, CAC Morning Devotion, 11/2/22

C.J.Jung saw that: That which we fear, deny, and avoid will, with one hundred percent certainty, be projected somewhere else.

Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern, p. 166

Carl Jung would say the shadow is not evil; it’s simply where we put our qualities and traits we deem unacceptable. From our earliest days, authorities and peers let us know the subjects that are out of bounds. These issues become exiled in our shadow world. When the shadow shows itself in humans, people think evil.

The trouble with the shadow is it makes us blind to the evil or potential for evil in ourselves. We hurt others, particularly those we love, because we are unaware of our own shadow. So every showing of the shadow is a helpful epiphany. Shadow work is good and important stuff. Marriages and relationships are made to-order for shadow work.

Richard Rohr, On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 194.

Human consciousness does not emerge at any depth except through struggling with our shadow. It is in facing our conflicts, criticisms, and contradictions that we grow. It is in the struggle with our shadow self, with failure, or with wounding that we break into higher levels of consciousness. People who learn to expose, name, and still thrive inside the contradictions are prophets.

Richard Rohr, CAC Devotion, 9/14/19

If your ego is still in charge, you will find a disposable person or group on which to project your problems. People who haven't come to at least a minimal awareness of their own dark side will always find someone else to hate or fear.

Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, p. 127

When we're in the shame-and-blame game, which is when we're in the shadows, we'll usually be masters of projection. We know that our hatred of others is normally a projection of our own inner state. That's why Jesus taught that, for the sake of our soul, we must love the enemy. The enemy carries our shadow side.

Look carefully for those you resent, because they're normally carrying at least some of what you hate or deny or reject within yourself. Again, Jesus said it first: Why do you try to take the speck out of your brother or sister's eye, when you cannot see the log in your own?" (Matthew 7:4). Normally, it is here, in us, before it is there. We let our feelings out against the group or against the community instead of realizing that this is a time when God can teach us. We must think: "Perhaps this is a lesson. How can I learn from this too?"

Normally, at that point, we do need a spiritual friend; it's almost impossible to pull ourselves out of the pit alone. Someone else has to "preach the gospel" to us. I know, as a preacher, that I usually cannot preach to myself. We also need a guide because we're in uncharted territory. We don't know how to get out of the shadows, so it's easier to just sit there and justify being there.

We tend to seek out friends who give us the justification for being there, who keep bemoaning the terrible situation and legilmating our hurt. We keep replaying the old tapes. The temptation of our group, our family, our community is to be threatened by our negativity. They don't want to hear it, perhaps because they might be drawn in by the truth that's there. Some fear all critical thinking because they fear that the structures will collapse.

I see this in so many of the neoconservatives who cannot tolerate any criticism of the church, or the patriots and flag-worshipers of America. There is such a thing as healthy criticism. People who love something have also earned the right to make it better and keep it true to its deepest vision.

All criticism is not blind negativity; it can also carry hope and vision when we own the problem. When we recognize that we are an accomplice in the evil and also complicit in the good, and take responsibility for both, when we can use the language of "us" and not "them," then we are bearing the full mystery of something. Then our criticism is coming from love, not hate.

Richard Rohr, The Wisdom Pattern, p 192-193

Whatever we fear or fail to see within ourselves we will see in other individuals and groups and hate it there instead.

Richard Rohr, On the Threshold of Transformation, p. 139

On a personal level, our shadow is all we would not be, often all our parents told us was bad behavior; it is all we would improve, all we would fix and get over, move on from. Our enemies can tell us what our shadow is in a minute, though it is hard for us to see because, like a physical shadow, it is always behind us, adding three dimensions, depth.

Most of us have dreams of being chased by a shadowy figure; that was the origin of Jung’s name for this complex. We find in our shadow complex what our ego deems negative, and usually it is. But we also may find in the shadow good parts, positive dreams, capacities for hope and creativity that we have left to languish. Sometimes it is the shadow part that saves our lives, that points the new direction.

Ann Belford, “Where to Put the Bad? Where to Put the Feminine?,” in The Living God and Our Living Psyche: What Christians Can Learn from Carl Jung, Ann Belford Ulanov and Alvin Dueck, p.55, 56.

If you try to outrun your shadow, you’re bound to fall on your face.

Stephen King

Look at how evil can hide in our own good work. Altruism is a defense mechanism motivated by the need to feel better. There is a healthy narcissism required (bold humility). Projection is a mechanism for shadow to operate.

For the best insight into your shadow: Look at those you despise and look at those you greatly admire. You are projecting your shadow, both it’s unacceptable parts, and the virtuous traits we dare not admit onto other people. Whatever is disowned (both unacceptable and noble traits) goes into our shadow, and then is projected onto others.

Key: don’t take yourself too seriously. You need to claim it all: mistakes and goodness. Ego always has an agenda: to keep us safe. Every time we meet God it is a crisis event for the ego. Shadow shows up as the need to look like a good person.

Mark Ritchie, Spiritual Director

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