Confessing the Shadow: The Initiatory Importance of Shadow Work

Arbor

May 2007

Since the end of World War II, a small but growing number of people have begun to take on an increasingly acute interest in the development of spiritual awareness. Although religion and the spiritual urge have always been a part of human experience, it is fairly obvious that in the past sixty years or so, human beings have begun to search for truth outside of the conventional bounds of the major religions. Initiated in 1875 with the founding of the Theosophical Society, the West has been flooded with all kinds of spiritual ideas which it was previously removed from. Once the west tasted the fruits of eastern philosophy and spirituality it filled its own spiritually vacuous culture with all sorts of ideas which culminated in the "new thought" movement of the beginning of the twentieth century. Fast forward to the fifties, which saw the reclaiming of pre-Christian, pagan, nature-based spirituality with the formulation of Wicca, to the sixties, in which of all sorts of esoteric systems western and eastern such as tarot, alchemy, yoga, and all others which became "new-age" were given a widespread exposure they had never been allowed.
In addition to these developments, quantum physicists such as Niels Bohr, Albert Einstein, and Erwin Schrodinger began to offer radical explanations of the mechanism and behavior of matter and energy, breaking with the centuries-old Newtonian model of the universe. Many of the most fundamental tenets of our understanding of the world were being challenged and fractured. The affect of this occurrence resulted in the tumult of the sixties and seventies, with its unprecedented explosion of drug use, back to the land movements, and thousands of cults claiming to be in possession of the secrets of enlightenment. As we have seen, however, this flooding of the western consciousness with esoteric, oriental, and radical scientific ideas really did nothing to halt the march of fascism and brutality which WWII was supposed to spell the end of. The military conquest of the globe continued unabated, under different flags and slogans, and the violence perpetrated against humans as well as our environment has only increased exponentially. In short- there seems to be something drastically missing from our experience of life, a something which boldly affirms the sanctity of all life, as well as the universal importance and necessity of the deliberate spiritual development of the individual.
The major western, Abrahamic religions to which adhere billions in their search offer only the promise of an after- life eternal paradise; a nice idea, but offering little for the faithful in his lifetime. Sectarian cults, from the Church of Scientology to the Moonies, the Church of Satan to New Age yogic charlatans, have proved to be equally deleterious to the individual, substituting metaphysical gobbledy-gook and financial conning for the exchange of some sort of mind-programming pathetically promised to set one free from the turmoil of the human dilemma. The adherents to these avatars usually end up either maniacal fundamentalists, or penniless and drained of whatever fervor or passion with which they originally sought after the prize.
So what do we have to substitute these ridiculous answers to the spiritual instinct in mankind? The supremacy of the major systems has come to an end- this is apparent if only in the actions of the pontiffs and politicians who advertise widespread support of them. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are so completely politicized that the spiritual answers they can provide the truth seeker with only affirm anymore membership in their own particular tribe. Theological arguing about the nature of the trinity or interpretation of the Talmud has been going on for thousands of years- and to what end? Preacher-men scream across the world about the necessity of having 'faith' and 'believing in Jesus'- but what does that actually mean for the individual, throughout the cycles of development which pursue one throughout life? It never seems to occur that there might be more to the journey of the soul than exercising the same faculty of the mind which allows a child to believe that Santa Claus or the tooth fairy exist.
Just as one's progression through the halls of academia or promotions through one's career occur by degrees, or through a set of ascending levels of advancement, so must one's spiritual advancement follow. You cannot graduate from high school, as far as I remember it, by merely believing that you will. That would be ridiculous. You have to attend classes, do homework, and score certain grades in order to proceed through the grades. If we can posit that advancement into the arms of the Divine is just a little more important than graduating from high school, then how can we continue to assume that we will enter paradise through faith alone? The idea is preposterous, yet continues to entertain the imagination of billions.
"No, no," exclaims the pious pew-monger; "we must live like Jesus, we must perform good works, we must carry the cross!" Alright, accepted. But what does that mean? Must we perform miracles, fast for forty days, live with no possessions but the clothes on our backs, and die nailed to a cross at the age of thirty three? Is that being like Jesus? Or does it mean simply treating everyone with civility, compassion, and respect? Because I know Satanists who do that. So, even if the desire to "be like Jesus" exists in some of us, it hasn't registered any noticeable improvements in our situation.
So I must press forward with my conviction that these futile pseudo-beliefs, articles of faith, and well-meaning ideas will do nothing to avail us the "life which abideth in light." Part of this conviction is that spiritual growth must include all aspects of our life- and every minute of our day. This growth necessitates physical, psychological, sexual, as well as spiritual work and practice. If a person has all the faith in the world, yet whose mind is sick with neuroses, complexes, false associations and identifications, then this faith can't carry the person very far past his own psychic backyard- his ideas of the Divine will be riddled through with his own psychological diseases. On the other hand, I do not think that a purely psychological, scientifically-minded approach can necessarily yield the kind of wisdom necessary to approaching our own Divine nature. Taken to the extreme, these fierce logicians assume that any gods, devils, angels and demons represent inherent psychological disturbances, without any corresponding reality in the greater world, universe, cosmos. This is silly, if only for the fact that one can't really ever know these things. These types need to put an understandable label on every phenomenon because mysteries unnerve those whose only recourse is logical thinking. Neither approach offers a stable ground upon which to stand and create the edifice of our own development. There are still so many unanswered questions for us.
For instance, the Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung, whose ideas this paper will incorporate much, asked

Why is one never satisfied with oneself? Why is one unreasonable? Why is one not always good and why must one ever leave a cranny for evil? Why does one do foolish things which could easily be avoided with a little forethought? What is it that is always frustrating us or thwarting our best intentions? Why are there people who never notice these things or cannot even admit their existence? (Jung p. 231).

These concerns raise the fundamental problems we are still dealing with, each of us on an individual scale, as well as a mass or group. We have watched the captains of industry and generals of slaughter work together to create of half our globe a malnourished, smoldering wasteland, while our Hollywood action heroes create single day body counts that rival that of atomic bombs. Violence, terror and deception run in our blood; every person in cable-land imbibes doses of it daily. We "vicariously . . . kill while the whole world dies (tool)." We tend to treat others, from other tribes, nations, families, or cultures, as alien to us. I have watched fear-ridden men and women eyeballing each other on subways and in line at the grocery store, looking like lost sheep who needed the wolf's skin to protect themselves from the evil 'out there.' I have seen grown people who are supposedly lovers, brothers, or kin deceiving and wielding violence towards one another. I myself have acted towards others in ways which I was deeply ashamed of, even while acting in such a way! I have hurt and caused pain and suffering in those around me, in those who loved me the most. What the devil had gotten into me?
What many of us fail to realize is that we treat other people in ways which are dependent upon our own view of ourselves, and oftentimes our view of our self is skewed, and exceedingly childish. Just as an electron cannot study itself, so are we equally shorthanded when it comes to true self-reflection. Of course, the paradox is that we must do this- that it is the most important thing we can do, if life is to mean anything at all.
The thesis of this paper is that the most critically important task for each of us, if we yearn to self-realization or illumination, is to understand, embrace, integrate, and live alongside our shadow nature, or "dark side." Throughout the world's mythological and spiritual systems, we find a common type of path, journey, or way through which the 'hero' (the soul or self) must travel in order to achieve 'the highest boon,' enlightenment, or to use the terminology of depth psychology, the union of ego and shadow. Within this path there is always a stage wherein the hero must descend into the underworld (the unconscious) and confront his own inner devil, or shadow. This chapter, out of all the stages of the "hero's path," is possibly the most detrimental, which is not an attempt to break the path itself into 'important' versus 'unimportant' pieces. It is my conviction that if the mass of individuals which populate our globe were to only focus on this process of embracing or confessing the shadow, we might approach an achievement over the monstrous matrices of guilt, shame, and fear we have allowed ourselves, at least in the West, to incubate within for centuries.
We shall look at the ideas of Carl Jung, who coined the term "shadow" in the sense that we are using it, and extrapolate from his vast corpus a sensible understanding of what it means to embrace or confess the shadow. We will also consider the contributions of Joseph Campbell, the mythologist and author of The Hero With A Thousand Faces.

The Shadow in Depth Psychology

I began to realize, after more than a year of intensive study of religion and specifically its occult tendencies, in addition to modern depth psychology and mythology, that some sort of sequence of necessary events are encoded into the program of our illumination, or more appropriately, salvation. This sequence is aptly described in several books, chiefly the work of Joseph Campbell, as well as Carl Jung, Otto Rank, and Lord Raglan. It also appears to be pictorially described in the images of the major arcana of the tarot. Of course, this progression of events of the mythic hero's life is a mystery to be experienced, and it would be imprudent to approach it as a straightforward, already understood phenomenon. We all have our own road to ho, and we don't know what that road is until we have been treading it for some time. But there is much wisdom we can cull from these places, and not just for academic speculation on comparative mythology.
As I outlined above in the introduction, there are a whole host of issues which greatly afflict us, as individuals dealing with one another day to day, and as a whole species dealing with its universe. Most of these revolve around the psychological phenomenon called projection, whereby the traits of our own which we have repressed into our shadow or dark side are seen reflected in others. All of the tiny and great things which irk, amaze, and disgust us about others, be they a husband or another nation, impose this reaction on us through the conscious ego's desperate need to keep away the contents of the shadow- which we cannot escape completely, ever. In fact, the more banished and tightly locked down into the dungeon one's shadow side is, the more volatile and neurotic the conscious ego will be.
It seems that if we were able to begin consciously examining just what does bother us in others, and asking whether we might have acted or could act or be like that person, we could begin this ardorous work of calling out to the shadow. We associate something in the external reality to something in the internal reality, and as life progresses, the line dividing the two becomes more abysmal, or the delusion that the two are separate becomes stronger. A great example of projection is explained by author Sallie Nichols in her fantastic Jung and Tarot. In describing the archetype of the Fool, the first Tarot trump and in a sense the character or hero whose journey the trumps illustrate, she says

This archetypal Wanderer, with his bundle and his staff, is
very much in evidence in our culture today. . . We can see
his present-day counterpart, with beard and bedroll, standing
by the roadside, extending a hopeful smile and a thumb in
our direction. And if this character represents an unconscious
aspect of ourselves, we are bound to react emotionally to him
in one way or another. Some may instantly feel moved to stop
and give the hitchhiker a lift, recalling how they, too, in their
younger days once enjoyed a period of carefree wandering
before settling down into a more stable pattern of living.
Others, who never played the fool in their youth, may reach out
to this wanderer instinctively because he represents an unlived
aspect of themselves to which they feel unconsciously drawn.
It can happen, though, that another person might have a
negative reaction to this young fellow- a reaction so
instantaneous and violent that he suddenly finds him-
self literally trembling with rage. In this case the driver
may jam his foot down on the accelerator, clench his teeth,
and literally flee the sight of the innocent bystander,
muttering imprecations of his "slovenly ways." He may
wish he could get his hands on this "young fool," chop
off his hair, give him a good bath, shave, and then set him
down in a forty hour week "where he belongs (Nichols, 10).

I quoted this at length because it is such a great illustration of what types of reactions we have to things which we project our own unconscious content onto. It may be a positive reaction, or a negative one, but either way it is an unaware or unconscious reaction, as we are ignorant of its origin or reason for existence. Our projections issue from the unconscious contents we call the shadow. Freeing them into the light of waking consciousness liberates a previously banished and shamed inner power which proves to be less scary after the confrontation. Sort of like the elation of leaving the hospital, realizing that the surgery wasn't what you thought it would be, that you are fine, that you were so scared for nothing.
The concept of the shadow can be stretched into so many realms. For instance; if we each have an individual shadow side, then entire cultures could have collective shadow-figures such as the Devil, Satan, Kali, Mephistophales, etc. We try to elude the judgement of our consciences because of the awesome power of the shadow. All that we have had to store away into unconscious or hidden realms of our mind, in order to prohibit them, for whatever reason, from coming to the surface and becoming conscious, threaten us should they be exposed. The shadow loves to be in the shadows, the dark, the mysterious and mischevious sidekick. We would do good to get a hold of what this thing is.
On an individual level, according to Jung, we "still attribute to the other fellow all the evil and inferior qualities that we do not like to recognize in ourselves, and therefore have to criticize and attack him (Jung p. 223)." Confessing the shadow is confronting this 'other' side, and accepting this other side of oneself, just as one must accept the eternally 'good' side of oneself. Although it may seem preposterous to accept that the evil we see in the world is really the evil we don't want to see in ourselves, given the enormity of evil in the world, it makes more sense when we apply it to one-on-one scenarios, such as the example of the hitchhiker and the motorist above. We allow ourselves to paint a very rosy self portrait, and praise those who seem to match this portrait- those that don't are seen as different, other, inferior, bad, etc.
We are bound to our shadow as Prometheus to the rock. We are scared to confront it and find what it is composed of. We all have things which we have done, thought, or have happened to us of which, for good or bad reasons, we would never want others to know about. We would rather never be reminded or in any way aware of them, either. Being hidden behind the curtains, or in the basement of one's Self, the shadow is able to thrive and wrestle with us for our whole life while we assume that this evil, lurking thing is somewhere 'out there.' For this reason, initially we find the shadow only in others, be they particular types of groups (such as Hell's Angels or Catholics) or individuals with whom we interact with on a daily basis. As we begin to examine our reactions to the things we don't like about these people, we tug on a string, which we are usually horrified to see leading back into ourselves. The contents of the shadow are not just "little weaknesses, and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this (Jung p. 240)." This dark side of us can erupt as a pious, self-righteous, bible-thumping Pope character, eager to see the guilt and weaknesses of others. We might explode in a cacophany of jealousies and condemnations, hiding a childish weakling behind the veil of personality we allow the world to see us as.
According to Jung's model, we have what is called a Self, which is unrealized until the ego and shadow are absolved into each other. This Self, or Higher Self, is the accumulation of all of our possibilities as a human, light and dark. We are mortally afraid of looking our shadow in the face, partly out of fear of the disgusting shit it is covered with, but also out of fear of the awesome power of a potentially-realized Self which might emerge after we adopt this dark side. The shadow upsets the false equilibrium of the ego, or ego-persona, which is usually, in reality, a very precarious balance. It is often held together by a tenuous ratio of supposed strengths and weaknesses, and the need to compliment or chastise oneself and others compulsively. The mask we know we must maintain for the world, for our wives, bosses, parents, and friends, is commonly mistaken to be our actual character itself. In reality "we carry our past with us . . . the primitive and inferior man with his desires and emotions, and it is only with an enormous effort that we can detach ourselves from this burden . . . And if such a person wants to be cured it is necessary to find a way in which his conscious personality and his shadow can live together (Jung p. 241)."

The Shadow in Myth

The symbol or meaning of the shadow side, and of our dangerous series of initial meetings with it, has a place in most major myths, such as the motif of descending to the underworld. In this mythic sense, the underworld is the unconscious. Not all of the unconscious contents are shadow material- just the ones we keep actively repressed and staved away from our waking consciousness. But descending into the underworld, or unconscious, is still scary, for this realm is not organized in the way we try to keep the contents upstairs organized, and operates according to its own rules, which we know to be more powerful, oftentimes, than our conscious will.
This part of the hero's path is symbolized in the story of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess who descended into the underworld to battle her evil sister Ereshkigal, similar to the Greek Persephone's fall, Jonah being swallowed by the whale, Christ descending to hell to defeat Satan and the powers of darkness, etc. It is also characterized, in different aspects, by several of the tarot trumps; the Hermit, Death, the Hanged man, and the Devil.
Joseph Campbell explains how this descent is such a vital part of the hero's path in the world's mythologies. This process is something we are all very scared of. And "it so happens that if anyone . . . undertakes for himself the perilous journey into the darkness by descending, either intentionally or unintentionally, into the crooked lanes of his own spiritual labyrinth, he soon finds himself in a landscape of symbolical figures (any of which may swallow him) (Campbell p. 101)." The hero must descend to the depths, the absolutely lowest point, in order to confront whatever symbol of absolute evil exists there. Why is this necessary? Because as we grow and mature as human characters, there comes a point where we cannot shield ourselves or continue turning our backs on evil. We must, I believe, answer the basic question, or problem, of evil, and its sticky, slimy existence in this universe created by a God we posit to be only everything good.
The Devil is the grand collective scapegoat cause for these repulsive things we hate in the world. Almost every culture known to man has some sort of symbol whose function is to be the Devil; the inspiration and accomplice of all Evil and scary, gross, deathly, and harmful. There is also the aspect of the Devil as the "adversary," as the Hebrews called this entity. It was he who tested one's strength in life, which evolved into the phenomenon of "sin" and the mechanism of "temptation." Another facet or name of the Devil is Lucifer, a Latin word meaning "bringer of light" (lucis feri). It was he who tempted Eve with the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge- it is he who holds the key to the other half, or dimension, of consciousness we wish to remain aloof to; the unconscious.
But his supposedly eminent domain, as it exists for all of us as a shadow side, is only scary or foreboding when we flee him in terror. For instance- when a dog is chasing after you, there are only really three things you can do: 1) Run away 2) Run towards it 3) Sit on the ground and stare it dead in the eye. If you run away, the beast will surely continue chasing you. If you run towards it, it will almost definitely attack you. It is in the hard wiring of a dog to react in these ways to these approaches. However, if you sit right down on the ground and stare at it, it has no clue what kind of psycho monster it is dealing with. Its circuitry is thrown out, disengaging the threatening aspect of its behavior. This is similar to the type of methods one has to approach the shadow by. The more it is kept in lock-down, the more of a horrific beast it becomes. And on the other hand, the more its needs are fed and obeyed, without the aim of integrating it into the greater Self, the more dastardly it can have us be.
In actuality, after the initial plunge, the (personal) Devil appears with his weaknesses attached, as a pathetic child who only wants to be re-admitted to the play room. His awesome power is only destructive, as a snarling dog, when it has not been trained to serve one's will properly. If it is your will to bomb innocents and torture prisoners, he can willingly oblige his help. If you want to plumb your own depths and those of the greater universe, his light is unmatched. He is like a dumb animal, who doesn't really know what's good for it, and needs to be beaten into submission to the master. But there is an immense power in that. The difficulty lies in the fact that this entity is within each of us. Just as the promise of a potential Buddha exists within each of us. But these inner demons, as we might call them, have to be faced, accepted, and confessed to our higher Self, that inner authority whose wisdom we also, as part of this same strange chiarascuro, shield ourselves from.
The poem "The Litanies of Satan" by Charles Baudelaire explains something about the mystery of the Devil:

O Satan, take pity on my long misery!
O Prince of exile, to whom wrong was done, and who,
vanquished, dost always rise up in greater strength, o Satan...
Thou who knowest all, great lord of the things which are
under the earth, familiar healer of human vanquish, o Satan...
Thou who even to the lepers, to the accursed outcasts, dost
impart through love the taste of Paradise, o Satan...
Thou who givest to the condemned man that calm, lofty look
that damns a whole people gathered around a scaffold, o Satan...
Thou who knows in what corners of envious earth a jealous
God hid precious stones, o Satan...
Foster father of those whom, in his black anger, God the Father
expelled from the earthly paradise, o Satan... (Baudelaire p.128-130).

I know that most people, religious or not, regard the Devil as something that is somehow outside of God, as something that is somehow opposed to God's will. But nothing could oppose God's will. God is everything. Seen from a higher place, the evils we think are somehow contrary to the universe appear to be actually necessary to its endless series of peaks and troughs, as we call them. If God is omniscient, then this must be the case.

Conclusion

The concept of the shadow as introduced by Jung, as well as that of one's descent into it as represented by some of the world's mythologies, has been presented. We have also talked about the archetype of the Devil, and what its presence means in our personal lives, as well as how it allows for mass escapism and scape-goating, and how this relates to shadow work. Now I wish to speak of the process of shadow work, and how detrimental it is to our greater initiatory progress through these varied levels of realities.
As we have seen, the meeting with the shadow, or the Devil, has its place in the world's mythological traditions as a stage in the "path of the hero," as well as its place in the tarot trumps. It is only one stage in a very long process of development, however I have presented it as the most important in that path, for our betterment as a species. The reason that this part of our development as psychological and spiritual beings is so rare is because it is so scary to undergo. One who is "established" in the world of finances and society, who has acquired the standard issue wife, job, house, family, dog, appearance and level of acceptance in one's field or pursuit, would of course would fear such a thing. Once one has built so much onto an undeveloped persona or ego, the threat of allowing these unconscious, shadow contents to the surface is surely nothing this type of person wants to deal with. "I have finished the chandeliers in the ball room of the proverbial mansion, and you want me to go start hammering away at the proverbial foundation again? No way, buddy." And that is fine. One will not perish any earlier for not doing this work- their lives just might remain unfulfilled, unexamined, and incomplete upon death- a harrowing thought if ever there was one.
We cannot blame others for our own complexes and inadequacies anymore. We cannot allow ourselves to be swept up into the feverish cry for war and torture against an alien presence, anymore. We must face the hard fact that we each have a shadow, and unless we integrate this shadow into waking, ego consciousness- we cannot evolve past our current stage of supposed civilization. The problem of evil is a sticky, gritty one. No one wants to claim ownership of it. The fear of a public hanging or lesser humiliation is too great. But we all contain this germ, and we all know it, deep down, where the good stuff is.
I fear that people of lesser intelligence or moral esteem might interpret this as an endorsement of licentiousness. It is anything but that. What I wish I could do is tell the whole world that each of us must go into our room and sit alone in the dark everyday, to attempt the plumbing of our own nature, and to meet the demons and angels which people that landscape with fair turn and careful consideration. I am nauseous every morning when I awake; not from the whiskey, but from the darkness and the unthinking people I must interact with daily. I think, don't they get it? Do they really think that the accumulation of money, professional status, and supposedly good looks is the measure of righteousness in this universe? Do they really feed their flabby asses on these lies, daily? I pine at the thought. It was always my tendency to lean towards Christ's admonition to not build our kingdom on earth, and what that meant was always too clear to me. This world is a passing fancy of images and events; yet they are the accumulation of all sorts of higher phenomena- and it always seemed quite clear to me that the idea was to go into these hidden realms and find just what we might need to do to salvage ourselves from this mess of banality and death, which we call life.
The object of confessing the shadow is to finally let go of the grief, the guilt, the shame, the trouble which this part of us imposes on us. By letting go, we accept it into the contents of our totality of Self- we allow it to be part of us, instead of continuing to keep it at arm's length day in and day definitely out.


Sources Used
Jung, Carl Gustav. Psychological Reflections. (Princeton UP: 1970).
Nichols, Sallie. Jung and Tarot. (York Beach, ME, Weiser: 1984).
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero With A Thousand Faces. (Princeton UP: 1973)
Baudelaire, Charles. Selected Poems. (London, Penguin: 1995).