فصل 2

CHAPTER 2

CHASING DOWN THE SHADOW

The shadow wears many faces: fearful, greedy, angry, vindictive, evil, selfish, manipulative, lazy, controlling, hostile, ugly, undeserving, cheap, weak, critical, judgmental … The list goes on and on. Our dark side acts as a storehouse for all these unacceptable aspects of ourselves—all the things we pretend not to be and all the aspects that embarrass us. These are the faces we don’t want to show the world and the faces we don’t want to show ourselves.

Everything we hate, resist, or disown about ourselves takes on a life of its own, undermining our feelings of worthiness. When we come face-to-face with our dark side our first instinct is to turn away, and our second is to bargain with it to leave us alone. Many of us have spent vast amounts of time and money in an effort to do just that. Ironically, it’s these hidden aspects we’ve rejected that need the most attention. When we locked away those parts of ourselves we didn’t like, unknowingly, we scaled away our most valuable treasures. These valuables are therefore hidden where we would least expect to find them. They are hidden in the dark.

These treasures try desperately to emerge, to come to our attention, but we are conditioned to push them back down. Like giant beach balls being held underwater, these aspects pop back up to the surface whenever we take the pressure off. By choosing not to allow parts of ourselves to exist, we are forced to expend huge amounts of psychic energy to keep them beneath the surface.

Poet and author Robert Bly describes the shadow as an invisible bag that each of us carries around on our backs. As we’re growing up we put in the bag every aspect of ourselves that is not acceptable to our families and friends. Bly believes we spend the first few decades of our lives filling up our bags, and spend the rest of our lives trying to retrieve everything we put in our bag in an effort to lighten our burdens.

Most people are afraid to confront and embrace their darkness, but it is in that very darkness you will find the happiness and fulfillment you have been longing for. When you take the time to discover your whole self, you’ll open the door to true enlightenment. One of the biggest pitfalls of the Information Age is the “I know that” syndrome. Knowing often prevents us from experiencing through our hearts. Shadow work is not intellectual; it’s a journey from the head to the heart. Many on the path to self-improvement believe they have completed the process but are unwilling to see the truth about themselves. Most of us long to see the light, and to live in the beauty of our highest self, but we try to do this without integrating all of ourselves. We can’t have the full experience of the light without knowing the dark. The dark side is the gatekeeper to true freedom. Each of us must be willing to continually explore and expose this aspect of self. Whether you like it or not, if you’re human, you have a shadow. If you can’t see it, just ask the people in your family, or the people you work with. They’ll point it out to you. We think that our masks keep our inner selves hidden, but whatever we refuse to recognize about ourselves has a way of rearing its head and making itself known when we least expect it.

Embracing an aspect of yourself means loving it—allowing it to coexist with all your other aspects, not making it more or less than any other part of yourself. It is not enough to say, “I know I am controlling.” We must see what controlling has to teach us, what gift it brings, and then we must be able to view it with awe and compassion.

We live under the impression that in order for something to be divine it has to be perfect. We are mistaken. In fact, the exact opposite is true. To be divine is to be whole and to be whole is to be everything: the positive and the negative, the good and the bad, the holy man and the devil. When we take the time to discover our shadow and its gifts we will understand what Jung meant by, “The gold is in the dark.” Each of us needs to find that gold in order to reunite with our sacred self.

When I was growing up I was told there were two kinds of people in the world: good and bad. Like most children, I worked to show off my good qualities and tried hard to hide my bad ones. I desperately wanted to get rid of all those parts of myself that were unacceptable to my mother, father, sister, and brother. As I got older more people came into my life with all their opinions, and I realized there was even more of myself I had to hide.

At night I often lay awake trying to figure out why I was such a bad girl. How was it possible that I had been cursed with so many awful qualities? I worried about my sister and brother who also had many deficiencies to overcome—anytime one of us showed any shortcoming we would get in trouble. I was told that the people down the street in the county jail were there because they had qualities that got them in trouble. I wanted to make sure I would not end up looking through bars to see my family and friends. So early on I figured that the best way to be accepted was to hide these undesirable parts of myself, which sometimes meant lying. My dream was to be perfect in order to be loved. So when I didn’t brush my teeth, I lied, and when I ate more than my share of cookies, I lied, and when I bit my sister, I lied, and by the time I was three or four I did not even realize I was lying because I had already started lying to myself.

I was told, don’t be angry, don’t be selfish, don’t be mean, don’t be greedy. Don’t be was the message I internalized. I started to believe I was a bad person because sometimes I was mean and sometimes I got angry and sometimes I wanted all the cookies. I believed that to survive in my family and in the world I would have to get rid of these impulses. So I did. Slowly I shoved them so far back into my consciousness that I forgot they were there at all.

These “bad qualities” became my shadow. And the older I got, the further back I pushed them. By the time I was a teenager, I had shut down so much of myself that I was a walking time bomb waiting to explode on anyone who got in my way. Along with the so-called bad qualities, I had also pushed back all their positive opposites. I could never experience myself as beautiful because I spent so much time trying to hide my ugliness. I could never feel good about my generosity because it was just a mask to cover my greed. I lied about who I was, and I lied to myself about what I was capable of achieving. I lost access to all of who I was.

Because I had worked so hard to shut myself down, I had no patience for others who might be exposing their imperfections. I became intolerant and judgmental. As far as I was concerned, no one was good enough, the world was an awful place, and everyone in it was in trouble. I believed my problems were being imposed on me because I was born into the wrong family, had the wrong friends, the wrong face, the wrong body, lived in the wrong town, and went to the wrong school. In my heart, I truly believed these external circumstances were the cause of my loneliness, anger, and discontent. I thought, “If only I had been born into wealth like I deserved, lived in Europe, and went to boarding school. If only I had the right clothes and a big bank account, my world would be fine. All my troubles would vanish.” I had fallen into the all-too-familiar trap of “if only.” If only this was like that, everything would be okay. I would be okay. This delusion didn’t last long. When the fantasy dried up I was faced with my worst nightmare. I found out that all I was … was me: skinny imperfect, middle-class, angry, and selfish. It has taken me seventeen years to come to terms with all of who I am. The brilliant and the beautiful, the imperfect and the flawed. And it still takes work, even to this day.

The reason for doing shadow work is to become whole. To end our suffering. To stop hiding ourselves from ourselves. Once we do this, we can stop hiding from the rest of the world. Our society nurtures the illusion that all the rewards go to the people who are perfect. But many of us are finding out that trying to be perfect is costly. The consequences of emulating the “perfect person” can eat away at us, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. I’ve worked with so many good people who suffer from various dis-eases … addiction, depression, insomnia, and dysfunctional relationships. They are people who never get angry, never put themselves first, never even pray for themselves. Some of their bodies are riddled with cancer and they don’t know why. Buried in their bodies, stuffed far back in their minds, are all their dreams, anger, sadness, and desires. They were raised to put themselves last because that is what good people do. The hardest thing for them is to break free from this conditioning, to find out who they really are. Because they are deserving of their own love, they are deserving of forgiveness and compassion, and therefore deserving enough to express their anger and their selfishness.

Within ourselves, we possess every trait and its polar opposite, every human emotion and impulse. We have to uncover, own, and embrace all of who we are, the good and bad, dark and light, strong and weak, and honest and dishonest. If you believe you are weak, then you must seek out its opposite, and find your strength. If you are ruled by fear you must go within and find your courage. If you are a victim you must find the victimizer inside you. It is your birthright to be whole: to have it all. It only takes a shift in your perception, an opening of your heart. When you can say “I am that” to the deepest, darkest aspect of yourself, then you can reach true enlightenment. It’s not until we fully embrace the dark that we can embrace the light. I’ve heard it said that shadow work is the path of the heart warrior. It takes us to a new place in our consciousness where we have to open our hearts to all of ourselves, and to all of humanity.

In a recent seminar, a woman stood up crying. Her name was Audrey. She was in tremendous pain. She had terrible thoughts, she admitted, and was ashamed and embarrassed to share them because then we would know she was a truly bad person. After a long discussion, she finally confessed that she hated her daughter. She was so upset I could hardly hear what she was saying. She repeated it softly, over and over: “I hate my daughter.” Everyone in the room was looking at her, some with compassion, others in horror.

I worked with Audrey for a while, explaining that if hate was what she was feeling, it was okay. She needed to accept the hate she felt for her daughter. I asked how many other people in the room had children. Almost everyone raised a hand. I asked them to close their eyes and try to remember a time when they might have felt hate for their children. Everyone found at least one memory of feeling hate. Then I had them imagine what gift hate could give them. Some said sanity, some said love, and others said release of emotion. Everyone saw that they had no control over the emotion itself. Even when they didn’t want to feel hate, they felt it sometimes.

Seeing that she was not alone helped Audrey give herself permission to feel hate without judgment. I explained that we all needed hate to know love, and that hate only has power when it is suppressed or denied. I asked Audrey what would happen if she embraced her hateful feelings and waited to find their gifts instead of suppressing them. She still looked ashamed, her head down, so I told her a story.

One day, twin boys went off with their grandfather on an outing. They walked through the woods until they came upon an old barn. When the boys and their grandfather stepped inside to explore, one of the boys immediately started complaining: “Grampa, let’s get out of here. This old barn stinks like horse manure.” The boy stood near the door, angry because he now had manure on his new shoes. Before the old man could respond he saw his other grandson running happily through the barn’s many stalls. “What are you looking for?” he asked the second little boy. “Why are you so happy?” The boy looked up and said, “With all that horse manure in here there must be a pony somewhere.” The room was now quiet. Audrey’s face was shining. She was beginning to see the gift of her hatred—the pony—in this aspect of herself. This shift in perception allowed the negative energy she had carried around for years to be released. Audrey understood that her hateful feelings were a defense mechanism, which protected her boundaries around the people she loved. Even though this hate had caused her great pain, it had also been the catalyst for her spiritual journey and the impetus for her to seek out her own inner truth.

There was more gold to come. Two weeks after the course Audrey’s daughter called her. Audrey was feeling good about herself so she took a risk and told her daughter how she had felt for the past couple of years. Audrey explained how she had embraced her hateful feelings in the course, and when Audrey finished speaking, her daughter started crying. She cried and cried, releasing years of pain and emptiness, and expressed all the hate she had felt for her mother. When she was done she asked her mother to meet her for lunch. Sitting across from each other, they were able to feel the special connection that a mother and daughter have, and they vowed to express any and all emotions from then on so that nothing would ever keep them apart again.

If Audrey hadn’t been brave enough to express her hate, this healing wouldn’t have been possible. Both mother and daughter had so many suppressed emotions that anytime they got into a room together, there would be a blowup. The hate needed to be expressed and embraced so that its gift could be revealed. The gift of Audrey’s hate was love. It gave Audrey a new, beautiful, honest relationship with her daughter.

Every aspect of ourselves has a gift. Every emotion and every trait we possess helps show us the way to enlightenment, to oneness. We all have a shadow that is part of our total reality. Our shadow is here to point out where we are incomplete. It is here to teach us love, compassion, and forgiveness, not just for others but also for ourselves. And when the shadow is embraced, it can heal us. It is not just our denied “darkness” that finds its way into the recesses of our shadow. There is a “light shadow,” a place where we have buried our power, our competence, and our authenticity. The dark parts of our psyches are only dark when they are stuffed away and hidden. When we bring them into the light of our consciousness and find their sacred gifts, they transform us. Then we are free.

I saw this clearly in one of my courses in a tough, resistant, gum-chewing woman with “screw you” invisibly tattooed across her forehead. Pam questioned everything, yet firmly stated she had no problem owning her darkness. She was right: her darkness was her comfort zone. She did not care if you called her angry or a bitch. Pam considered those words compliments. So when I told Pam she was a “mush-pie,” she looked at me in disgust and complete disbelief. “Me? Mushy? Never!” She was completely unable to see herself as soft, sweet, or feminine. I left her alone, trusting the weekend process would show her the way. Sure enough the next day, after a cathartic movement meditation, I asked several people to come to the middle of the group to get a hug from the rest of us. I had never done this before, but it was clear that Pam and a few others were stuck and needed some love. When we put our arms around her Pam broke down, wailing inconsolably and calling for her mother. For more than an hour a group of ten or so people sat comforting Pam while she let go of years of pain, loneliness, and sadness.

Although it seemed like her tears would never end, Pam finally surrendered and allowed us to love her unconditionally. Later, I discovered Pam had been abandoned during infancy and had never met her mother, nor did she have a single baby picture of herself. In fact, she had hired a private investigator who had been trying to locate her mom for the past several years. By the last day of the course Pam was embracing her softness and gentle qualities. Everyone kept marveling at her transformation. And just a week later, Pam heard from the private investigator and received her first baby picture. Two weeks after that, the detective found her mother, and Pam spoke with her for the first time. Once the shadow is embraced, it can be healed. When it is healed it becomes love.

If the gold is in the dark, then most of us have been looking in the wrong place. As Deepak Chopra often says, “Within every human being there are gods and goddesses in embryo with only one desire. They want to be born.” We long to see the seeds of our divinity blossom but we have forgotten that every seed needs fertile ground in which to grow. That dark, earthy, essential place within us is our shadow. It is a field that needs acceptance, love, and cultivation before the flowers of ourselves can bloom.

EXERCISES

It’s important to be in a state of mindfulness when you do these exercises. All the answers you need are within but you must become quiet enough to hear them. Leave yourself plenty of time, and make sure you turn off your phone and completely surrender to the process. I recommend that you set aside at least one hour to do these exercises. Put on comfortable clothes and sit in your favorite place in your house. You might want to light some candles and put on soft music to help create a seductive atmosphere for yourself. Nearby, keep a journal and a pen or pencil that you enjoy writing with. You might want to get a tape recorder and record the following steps so you won’t have to keep opening your eyes to read what comes next.

When you’re ready, close your eyes and take five slow, deep breaths. Inhale for five counts, retain the breath for five counts, and then exhale slowly through your mouth. Use your breath to relax your entire body. Focus all your attention on your breath as you continue. This is one of the best ways to quiet your mind.

Now, with your eyes shut, imagine yourself walking into an elevator and closing the door. Press one of the buttons in the elevator and go down seven floors. Imagine you’re going down deep into your consciousness. When the door opens you see a beautiful sacred garden. Try to clearly visualize everything about it. Notice the trees, the flowers, the birds. What color is the sky? Is it a brilliant, clear blue or is it laced with clouds? Feel the air’s temperature and the wind caressing your cheeks. How are you dressed? Are you wearing something you love? Imagine yourself at your best, looking your most attractive. Take off your shoes and feel the earth beneath your feet. Is it grassy or sandy? Is it dry or moist? Do you see a pathway of stone or marble? Are there waterfalls or statues? Are there any animals? Take a minute to look around in all directions and notice what else is in your garden.

When you’ve finished creating your garden, create a sacred meditation seat where you can come to find all the answers you’ve ever desired. Spend a minute exploring your inner sacred place and make a commitment to visit it often. Return your attention to your breath and take five more slow, deep breaths. Bring yourself to an even deeper state of relaxed awareness.

Now ask yourself the following series of questions, and take your time in listening to your inner voice. After each question open your eyes for a moment and write down your answers in your journal. The best way to do this is to write fast and to write whatever comes to your mind. There are no right or wrong answers. Don’t worry about what you are writing; just let yourself feel and express whatever needs to emerge through this process. When you have the answer to the first question, close your eyes, return to your garden, and sit down in your meditation seat. Take two more slow, deep breaths before you ask yourself the second question and so on. Take your time.

1. What am I most afraid of?

2. What aspects of my life need transforming?

3. What do I want to accomplish by reading this book?

4. What am I most afraid of that someone else will find out about me?

5. What am I most afraid of in finding out about myself?

6. What’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told myself?

7. What’s the biggest lie I’ve ever told someone else?

8. What could stop me from doing the work necessary to transform my life?

When you finish this exercise allow yourself time to write in your journal and express on paper anything else that needs to surface. Then take a moment to acknowledge the courage and hard work you brought to this exercise and continue on to the next chapter.