Scary Shadow/Gold Shadow
The Shadow, yeah, that one even sounds scary, right? It may sound, even be, a little dark, but it only appears scary until you accept it. You remember what happened when the princess deemed to face that harassing frog and kiss him? He turned into a prince. That’s what happens when you face the scary Shadow in your dreams and ask what it wants from you—acknowledge, recognize, welcome it—give it a big fat kiss!
The Shadow is represented in dreams by an intruder in our house—or a dark figure, sinister feeling because it represents the part of ourselves that we “don’t want to recognize,” that we’re unconsciously afraid of. Our house is ‘us,’ our life, our psyche. When you have that scary intruder or monster dream, try to recognize it as some part of you that wants you to acknowledge it in your conscious life. When you refuse to acknowledge it as a part of your ‘whole self,’ it will continue to stalk and scare. Your dreams will report how the ‘scary’ changes and dissipates as you work to integrate the Shadow parts of your psyche.
The Shadow’s Backstory.
So what’s the Shadow’s backstory? How’d it get to be so scary? It represents the parts of ourselves that we’ve tried to ignore or repress by hiding ‘in the dark.’ It’s the unconscious parts of our psyche that our conscious/ego does not recognize in itself or (worse) refuses to recognize in itself. What you accept about yourself is ‘conscious.’ What you don’t want to accept, well, that’s what we hide in the ‘Unconscious’ aka The Bloody Room in ye old myths and fables.
Anything in the Unconscious WANTS to be conscious.
So, the object is to recognize it all, the good, the bad and the ugly as part of your entirety. It’s all gotta be recognized as a part of you to become whole—that’s all, just recognized and accepted. You don’t have to become “the Shadow,” just shine a light and say, ‘ok, bad stuff, you’re a part of me, too!’ Shining a light and admitting to what you see—being honest even when no one is looking—is all that’s required.
Containing the Opposites
We all contain the opposites of any attribute we have—the good and the bad. The nurturing mother and the devouring mother. Many times we do not want to lay any claim or recognize the ‘shadow’ side of the opposite—“Not as a part of me, by gosh!” We stick it in the Unconscious and hope to hide it in the dark. We’ll just forget it’s there. It now becomes the Shadow.
“Everything in the Unconscious seeks outward manifestation.” Carl Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR)
WARNING! WARNING!
If you don’t acknowledge it on your own, that hidden shadowy part you don’t want to recognize will ‘act out.’ Yep, it takes on a will of its own. IT WILL BE KNOWN! You’ll be doing stuff you know you don’t even want to do, but that Shadow will make you do it anyway because, by god, it wants to be recognized! You don’t have the Unconscious under your control. It has you.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious,
it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Jung
Trying to keep something in the Unconscious? It’s like trying to hold a ball underwater. Ever tried that? Hard. Takes a lot of (emotional) energy. Produces a chronic tiredness that may cause you to take your tiredness out on other people. More than likely, you’ll tire out before it does and it will pop the hell up out of the water and smite you smack dab up the side of the head!
Just claim as your own any of those things you think “huh-uh, not me!” You just have to acknowledge that both the good and the bad are contained in you, are contained in each person. And it’s okay. It’s what makes you whole. You have to ‘contain’ both sides of the opposites.
The Projector Room of the Psyche
What your Unconscious wants you to deal with, it will ‘project’ onto another human, to get it out there where you can at least see it! It was my Unconscious projecting my Animus onto ‘the perfect man’ so that I could see the strong masculine traits I also contained to be able to integrate them into a whole life. Likewise why we ‘project’ those traits that we don’t want to admit we have onto others. This is why we ‘hate.’
Jung: “To the degree that you condemn others and find evil in others, you are to that degree unconscious of the same thing in yourself…Or at least of the potentiality of it.”
Why We Hate.
The aspects of our personality or psyche that we find difficult to accept about ourselves (and deny, deny, deny), we will impose or “project” onto another individual (or group or sect). That’s how the psyche works to get us to recognize we contain both the good and the bad. It will project the ‘shadow’ aspect that we don’t want to claim for ourselves onto another person, another race, another religion, or any one not like us, referred to as “The Other.” The Other holds all those horrible attributes that (we think) WE DON’T HAVE!
“We Bitch Most About Those Things We Do the Worst.”
That’s projection. Your Unconscious/your True Self has gotta get it out there for you to see it in yourself. No harm. No foul to admit it. Makes you whole. Makes you empathetic. Makes you stronger. I have another saying: Repression Is the Root of all Evil. Repressing that admission will only bring harm, dis-ease in your soul and psyche. I love the way Kari Hohne describes the projection of the Shadow in her blog:
“Jung pioneered the study of the Shadow and referred to it as the repressed and undeveloped aspects of the personality. Jung described projection as changing “the world into the replica of one’s unknown face.”
https://cafeausoul.com/dreams/dreamdictionary/Shadow
“The replica of one’s unknown (repressed/hidden) face.” That face is the part of you that you don’t like, can’t admit to. That face is exactly the part of yourself you need to give a big fat kiss! And look at what the ‘replica of one’s unknown face’ is looking like in the world today.
If you hear yourself complaining and pointing a finger at a particular friend, or group, those 3 fingers pointing back at you carry a message for you. When you can’t see, admit, own, and accept that you do anything bad like all those ‘other’ people, those are the exact things you think are too horrific to admit could ever be a part of you. And you are always going to project what you can’t see in yourself onto ‘the Other.’
That’s a hard life. An angry life. A tiring life.
You have to shine the light on your dark side, recognize it and accept it. It requires that you own both the good and the bad of every opposite out there.
Here’s the bonus round:
Once you recognize and accept your own failings, shortcomings, bad traits, you will no longer have to ‘hate’ them in others. You’ve hated those things in others because it was easier than to hate them in yourself. (Do you know how much energy hate takes???) You’ll be more accepting. Life will seem to get a whole lot easier. Less angry. Less tiring. What you accept in you, you will no longer hate in others.
I don’t know if incorporating the Shadow is easier to do for women than men. Women, since Eve, have been told we were the root of all evil in the world, even down to every thorn on every rose, according to my Baptist pastor. Perhaps it’s easier for us to accept the dark side and lead it into the light.
Gold Among the Dross
If the Shadow sounds like bad news, remember: we’re talking about opposites, so here’s the good news! The Shadow also contains all the good parts of our selves that we have ripped from us and thrown away (repressed) into what the myths call ‘The Bloody Room.’ How’d those good parts of us get torn off? Bloody stumps thrown into a locked and hidden room? More than likely because someone in authority in our lives—parents, church, teachers, friends, peers, and other authority figures—made us feel bad about those good parts or didn’t accept them, many times shaming us for them. We felt we had to get rid of them to be loved…or to be accepted…or to keep peace…or not to show weakness…or to be a part of the group.
Good parts among the bad-rep parts. Yup, thar’s gold in that thar dross darkness.
In myths, The Bloody Room is always locked and forbidden, but if we have the courage to look, we find gold in the dross (from the Bible also). We find outstanding attributes, traits, talents, feelings and abilities that we have hidden in The Bloody Room, the Unconscious—living quarters of the Shadow. That, in and of itself, should give us courage to look inside. Shining the light on the Shadow and accepting it into the conscious, you will also dis-cover hidden assets that came with your whole Self.
Anima and Animus for Everyone–Why Opposites Attract.
If you’re new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it’s best to start at Post #1 and continue in numbered sequence, like Connecting the Dots.