I woke up this morning and turned to Jan: “I just had a nightmare!”
“So did I,” said she.
I was struck by the classification nightmare, not one I really identify with. However, it was the word that came out of my mouth.
As we compared notes, I realized we were in the same dream, though with different props. For Jan, it was the phantasmagorical winged serpent devouring the innocent or foolish. For me, it was the world of people and the devouring power of greed.
In my early waking moments I was being seduced by the mind to attach to intrigues in the world. I watched it happen, but didn’t attach; I held onto my energy. The phantasmagoric imagery of Jan’s dream tempered my interpretation of my own dream. We were being shown an energetic challenge before us and offered the opportunity either to grasp the metaphor and face the challenge within or allow it to project outward onto the world of everyday life.
Jung’s axiom came to the fore: face the shadow within or encounter it without. How quickly, when we attach to the without, is our energy completely engaged and drained. Can we strip away the nightmarish energy, see the challenge directly, and address the needed change? Or must we engage a new drama in an old world?
INTENTO!!!
As we talked about our dreams and came to understand the message, I found myself recapitulating walking out of a Tensegrity workshop that Jeanne and I had attended in 1999 having completed the magical pass of the Sabretooth Tiger of Intent. I provide a link to that pass here. I encourage those who view it to notice the transition back into the human form at the end of the pass. This is how to change: turn around 180 degrees and walk calmly away in a new direction, into a new life.
As Jan and I continued to talk this morning, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t written my blog! In fact, I hadn’t even thought about what day it was or what I might write about! It became quite evident that the spirit had its own intent that this be my blog message today. And so, I have delivered it!
Carlos Castaneda writes, in The Wheel of Time: “We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.”
We are challenged every day by forces that want our time, money, attention, and emotion. Jung focused on the inner culprit—the shadow, or unknown self—as the force that consumes a great deal of our daily energy and actions. The shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage focused outwardly on the flyer, an entity that preys upon the tumult of human excess for its own sustenance and survival.
These are two descriptions of reality that coin metaphors to capture the predatory dimension of life. If we can acknowledge, that is, suspend judgment about this dimension of life, both within the self and in the world at large, we are freed to benefit from this relationship. The function of the shadow/flyer is to show us all of who we are. With this knowledge we can choose who we might become.
As we exit the season of excessive consumption we are shown our proclivity for sensual delight, whether we indulge or refuse it. Encounters with shadow/flyer may result in nausea, guilt, depression, insatiability, out-of-controlledness, and defeat.
Make no mistake about it; these are powerful entities with completely self-serving agendas. They can wreak havoc on our physical and emotional selves. However, their power lies solely in our ignorance or refusal to know the full truth about ourselves. If we can accept that we are sensual, emotional beings that need to find fulfillment in all that we are, we can begin to make room for all that we potentially are, in new balance.
Sometimes, we engage in excess to numb ourselves from parts of the self too painful or frightening to know. This is a defensive strategy that has its temporary value, however, it cannot hold back the deepest need to know and realize the full self. This activity points the way to recapitulation.
When we find ourselves caught in the daily round of repetitive Jekyll/Hyde behavior—fully convicted and repentant with the rising sun, only to be swept away again and again with the rising moon—we are awakened to the power of the shadow/flyer to control our lives in the absence of self-knowledge. As we awaken, we are freed to find new balance in our lives, perhaps a middle way; and with this awareness we are able to release the predatory entity of excess.
Mosquitoes are predatory flyers. However, they will move on to other prey when the stagnant pool that breeds them dries up. If we remain in stagnancy, we invite the shadow/flyer into our lives. It will feast upon us in our stagnancy, however, with the discomfort it creates we are invited to change.
Such is the nature of this symbiotic relationship between predator and prey. The predator becomes the beacon or instigator of change. Nonetheless, we must use this provocation to our advantage. That is, we must wake up, face the fullness of the self and move toward balance and fulfillment in life. Once we begin this process of change we release the predator because it no longer serves us. And we no longer serve it!
Moving on, into a new space. We have literally moved our office to the end of the hall, beyond our former location. See you there!
Chuck
Jan’s book, The Man in the Woods, gives us direct, unfiltered exposure to the collective shadow unleashed upon the innocence of a child. The atrocities of which she speaks are unthinkable, unbelievable, bloodcurdling and yet true. Evil without bounds is indeed an active potential within human nature. How can this be, and what can we do about it?
In her recent blog, Face the Shadow Self, Jan discusses the impact of allowing the truth to remain in the darkness. All that lives in the darkness is free to live and act without scrutiny, without awareness. The more that is pushed into the darkness the greater grows its power, the more distorted and evil it has the opportunity to become. As Jan’s book documents, there simply are no boundaries to the imagination and actions of evil unchecked and disowned by consciousness.
Sexual abuse is a pervasive reality and definite expression of evil actions emanating from the human shadow. What has caused sexuality to be split off and relegated to the darkness, where it has morphed into such grotesque and frightening proportions?
Today, I address not only this question, but I also ask my readers to face the true fact that sexuality is instinct. Instinct comes from our animal nature. We are animals, human animals.
The other day I saw a commercial for a small, safe trimmer to remove all body hair from ears, arms, back, nostrils, etc. to become beautiful, sensuous metro-sexual beings. No! We are animals with hair! If we cut it all off, we stuff the animal into the dark basement. In the basement the animal becomes an angry, ravenous beast, driven to extremes. Once unleashed, that beast will reek havoc upon the innocent.
Our resident predator
Human beings have evolved into beings grossly dissociated from their animal nature. Humans have become so attached to and identified with virtual reality that our animal nature has completely slipped into the shadow. On a collective level the human sexual shadow has turned rabid, a predator of mass proportion that seeks to ravage the innocent. A predatory animal of this proportion is a strictly human phenomenon. There is no other animal on earth that tortures and destroys like the human animal.
The daunting challenges of regulating and transforming the instinctive energies of the human animal were once presided over by the priests and shamans of antiquity. Through the practice of initiation rites the human animal instinct was valued, channeled, and transformed into individually fulfilling, relationally fulfilling, and socially supportive avenues that consolidated and preserved our species. In the modern world such initiation has become the provence of the religious institutions.
However, the modern world has increasingly distanced itself from the true animal nature of the human creature. Religious institutions have become such centers of rationality that they’ve lost the ability to value and preside over the transformation of the instinctive energy of the human animal. For the most part, religious rituals serve social and moral channels, but offer little toward meeting the human animal’s need for expression. Unfortunately, this has led to the de-animalization and over-technocratization of the human being, resulting in extreme alienation and dissociation from the instinctive natural self. Uninitiated instinct is left to its own devices to act out deviantly, at all stages of life, be it childhood, adolescence, adulthood, or old age.
The truth is that the problem lies not in the animal sexual instinct of the human species, for if this were the case the Catholic attempts to reign in and strictly regulate that instinct would have led to an evolutionary advance. To the contrary, recent history has brought out of the shadows the rampant sexual abuse of children by Catholic clergy, those most schooled in regulation of the sexual instinct.
The real problem lies not in the instinct itself, but in the human rejection of it. It’s the discomfort with and rejection of the instinct that leads to its repression in the shadows with evil consequences. If, on the contrary, sexuality is acknowledged and fully integrated into life—allowed to live consciously, in balanced relationship—its expression would find its way into the normalcy of life, passion and love fully entwined in the fullness of human life.
Having been relegated to the shadow self, instinct—our true animal nature—has been demonized rather than consciously and carefully tended to with awareness of its true need to be integrated and given expression. On a species level this disowned instinct creates an enormous collective shadow capable of committing evil without conscience, giving rise to predatory giants destructively compensating for the disowned animal core. Without conscience or regulation, instinct is free to operate unchecked in the darkness.
Such behavior has not only unleashed predatory behavior such as Jan writes about in her book, but it also has led to the refusal to even talk about it, which leaves society’s most innocent, our children, vulnerable. In our denial and refusal to accept the truth of our animal nature we are allowing children to suffer. Can we finally face the shadow we have created and deal with it, as Jan requests in her book? Can we, individually and collectively, responsibly speak out so that our children no longer suffer in silence, made the bearers of our shadow selves, made to carry the consequences of that which must not be spoken about for their entire lives? Can we face what we have truly done, by our denial of our true natures, to those who need our protection the most?
Who is staring out of the darkness?
Predators and their predatory acts must be fully outed and held accountable. All predators must be stopped and exposed. However, as a species, we are all responsible for acknowledging and integrating our animal selves. Spirit selves that forget they are also animal selves will become victims of their own disgruntled, rageful animal natures. The ultimate culprit in the etiology of the predator is perhaps the evolution of the human animal gone too far in one direction. We have so disowned and abandoned our animal selves that we’ve created huge predatory monsters that hide so well in the labyrinths of our denial that we can hardly believe they exist at all.
As a species this is where we find ourselves now. In our collective attitude of denial we have created monsters in our midsts, predatory beasts who roam and ravage, plunder and take, safe in the silent darkness of denial. The virtual, bionic fantasy that currently dominates the human race is, in fact, the jailer of the human animal that creates the minotaurs that roam in the maze of our collective shadow with free access to the innocent.
Before I begin today’s blog I note again: The paperback version of The Man in the Woods is now available for purchase through Amazon. Simply click the book icon in the left sidebar and it will take you directly to the Amazon page for the paperback book. If you desire to purchase the Kindle version you can find that here in the Kindle store. We invite reviews and are most grateful for feedback—of any sort. Please post comments on the Amazon page under customer reviews. Thanks for reading and keeping in touch!
Today, I address the shadow. We all have one. I met my own as I began the process of recapitulation.
Doing a shamanic recapitulation was not an easy process, but it was one I just could not avoid any longer. Try as I might the darkness of my shadow, which had been looming ever wider for years, finally swept over me and in one fell swoop I took the journey it offered. I let myself get swept into its darkness, but not without a firm grip on reality, with a place to anchor myself as I went deeper and deeper into its secrets. You see, the shadow holds all of our secrets—our secret desires, our secret fears, our secret pain, our secret thoughts—our secret self in all its myriad presentations.
That which is disagreeable
I thought I was living an eventful and meaningful life, full of creativity, but when I finally faced my shadow and asked it to take me into its depths, I could not deny that my life had been both controlled and unfulfilling. I knew for most of my first fifty years on this planet that something else needed to happen, but I just could not get a grasp on what that was. As Carl Jung said: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.”
In my experience, meeting the personal shadow was indeed a most disagreeable process, but also a most transformative and enlightening one as well. I am also convinced that the world will not change if we do not face our individual shadows, for the collective shadow grows ever more prominent and domineering the longer we turn from our own, as we let the world outside of us bear the brunt of our personal darkness.
By the time I was done with my recapitulation I was not the same person I was when I had started the process three years before. I no longer viewed the world in the same way. I found myself totally changed, in a different world.
As I mention in the introduction to my book the idea of hiding the truth of what sexual predators do to children is abhorrent to me, thus I chose to be explicit in describing some of the things that happened to me as a child. In so doing I address the shadow, the facts of life that society chooses to keep in the darkness. Until we bring such behaviors into the light they will remain active in the dark, as that which is suppressed will find some other means of expression.
So, although I challenge my readers in my book, I do so because I refuse to carry the darkness of the sexually abused child within. It must be exposed. Only in exposure do I believe the world of the sexual predator can be dismantled and true healing happen.
Can we really change our world? Yes, but only by totally exposing the truth. We all carry burdens, in the darkness within where all that we could not face or allow to live resides. During my recapitulation I learned that by releasing myself from my own darkness I released my children from having to carry forth the burdens that were mine to resolve and release. My secrets, until I faced them, burdened them as well. They had to live with a frightened and depressed mother, and I found that as abhorrent as the sexual abuse I suffered. Family secrets burden every member of the family.
In turn, society’s secrets burden every member of society. What we are not allowed to speak of must be repressed and that repression results in disturbance somewhere. Our individual psyche will only take so much before it takes the liberty of letting us know that it is being overburdened. Our collective psyche works the same way.
There are many ways to heal and to face the challenges of the psyche. I found recapitulation to fit me perfectly. That is not to say that it will fit everyone, but if one is interested in facing the troubling messages coming from the deeper self, manifesting both innerly in mental anguish and outerly in the craziness of the world we live in, recapitulation offers a structure that is both spiritually and experientially enlightening and magical.
Each day I wake up full of energy, no longer depressed or afraid, but in a totally new world. Even though it’s exactly the same place, it does not at all present itself the same way because I do not accept it on the old terms. This is what I wish for all. Though I know it is asking people to take a journey that is as Jung said “disagreeable,” I know it is well worth it. If we really want to change our world we must begin within. This I have no doubt about.
I applaud all who seek spiritual and mental health and garner the courage to face the darkness within. The journey of the self is the most challenging and transformative. No matter how one elects to take it, know that it matters greatly to the self and the world.
At a gathering of student analysts eager for exactitude in definition, Jung, in an exasperated reaction, expressed that the shadow was simply the whole unconscious! If it’s not in the light, it’s in the shadow. And what lies in the darkness—that unknown part of ourselves—effects us profoundly, though we see it not.
In a dream, Jan and I are walking up a hill. It is night, dark and cloudy. Suddenly, I realize we are standing on slippery snow/ice and I lose my balance, falling, sliding down into the unknown, completely unable to see. I keep my composure but have no possible way to orient myself. I am truly in the shadow, without light. I awaken.
It’s the morning of June 21st, the summer solstice, Jeanne’s birthday. Jan has just emerged from a similar dream. Clearly, I am being shown that we are headed into the unknown—something that cannot be controlled. Can we get comfortable with the ride? Isn’t it really all preparation for the journey we all must inevitably take—our ultimate appointment with death? Isn’t it all about getting comfortable enough with the ride into the unknown so that we might find safe passage?
Isn’t it really our daily challenge to allow ourselves to go forward and grow, to become a new self as we integrate new truths of who we are into our lives? Or do we awaken stubbornly each day, insisting to reincarnate our familiar selves, grasping onto our familiar habitual attitudes and habits?
Jung resisted exactitude in definition because he respected the unknown and unknowable too much to assign anything more to a definition than a possibility or a metaphor. Rather than shirking scientific responsibility here, he was instead expressing scientific humility—a true scarcity in our modern world.
What Jung could hint about the shadow, however, was the compensatory function it served to balance our ego’s stranglehold over the unrealized or unconscious portion of the psyche.
In practical terms, if we consciously insist on attitudes or behaviors that thwart our deeper selves, the shadow will strike, as Freud observed, with verbal slips that reveal our heart’s true sentiment. In other instances, our shadow may have gathered enough steam to literally take possession of the ego as we find ourselves possessed by an intense mood or affect that takes control of our otherwise level behavior.
These states of possession can range from a profound depression to extreme acting out where ego control is literally obliterated. These are the extremes that lead us to fear the shadow, brand it as evil, and seek relief through a controlled life of goodness. Indeed, at an extreme state of imbalance the shadow might strike in an evil way.
On closer examination, however, we might discover that what we brand as evil—and may in fact be evil—is the compensatory action of the unknown part of ourselves, reacting to the falsity or limitation of our conscious attitude. Here, the shadow drives us to extremes to wake us up to grapple with other facts and truths within ourselves.
The more rigidly we cling to a one-sided attitude, the more intense must be the shadow’s counterattack to both balance us out and awaken us to introspection upon the truth of who we are, what we feel, and what we need.
Ultimately, the role of the shadow is to expand our consciousness by leading us into greater acquaintance with our unknown selves and our true reason for being in this life. We cannot, as my dream depicts, avoid our slide into the darkness, into the unknown.
Truthfully, what do we really know? What we think we really know is but the ego’s castles in the sand that, as Jan’s dream of Monday night depicts, will be washed away by the tidal wave of the shadow. The question that emerges in both of our dreams, and in the time of now, is: How we will take the slide or ride the inevitable waves of our lives?
Can we get calm in the midst of the unfamiliar? Are we open to discovering more of who we are as we glide into the unknown where even a compass doesn’t work?
Jung was wise to resist the exactitude of definition. Exactitude becomes another ego sand castle. However, Jung’s discovery of the mechanism of compensation provides a basis for relationship with our unknown selves.
Rather than get caught in the moralism of good and evil, or goodness and badness, we can suspend those judgments and shift to an appreciation for darkness as necessary to prod and challenge our ego self to broaden its purview into the vast unknown of the self with an attitude of respect and discovery.
In this respect, shadow is truly a friend yet also a foe that pushes us onward and keeps us honest.
