The shadow whisperer

The shadow side of us is the repressed and bundled aspects of ourselves that long ago we found too intolerant to process[1]. This material is not “gone for good” but lives in the unconscious as disowned psychic energy. If we are going to engage meaningfully with the shadow (and if we don’t, we live half-lives, caught up in its grip: my teacher Rob Nairn says we either become aware of the shadow or “it’s got you by the throat”) then we need to start off in a skilful way.

There’s a reason why this part of our psyche has been disowned: its full of scary stuff (not chock-a-block full, there is some non-scary stuff there too, we put positive things that we cannot tolerate in our shadow, too). Or at least, at some point in our lives it was scary, so we snuck it away, way away.  Often, we use metaphors such as dragons and demons to describe shadow content[2], since that pretty much sums up what the content was like when we first encountered it, fairly intolerable and unmanageable to our often-infantile selves, the stuff of (Grimm’s) fairy tales.

So, what breathes in the dark has become demonised. So, to approach it in a hostile, controlling fashion is both to replicate the original experience and probably reinforces the very neuropathways that led to the shadowing[3]. We are required to tread carefully. This is a child in pain.

Approaching this demonised child with harsh words or control freakery will not work; the child will withdraw further. We need to whisper our words with compassion and love, to calm and sooth this tender child, we ned to whisper sweet nothings into its heart.

Perhaps Rilke said it best[4]:

We have no reason to harbour any mistrust against our world,

for it is not against us.

If it has terrors, they are our terrors.

If it has abysses, these abysses belong to us.

If there are dangers, we must try to love them,

and only if we could arrange our lives,

in accordance with the principle that tells us

that we must always trust in the difficult,

then what now appears to us to be alien

will become our most intimate and trusted experience.

How could we forget those ancient myths

that stand at the beginning of all races –

the myths of dragons that at the last moment are transformed

into princesses?

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are only princesses

waiting for us to act, just once,

with beauty and courage.

Perhaps everything that frightens us is,

in its deepest essence,

something helpless that wants our love.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises before you

larger than any you’ve ever seen,

if an anxiety like light and cloud shadows

moves over your hands and everything that you do.

Life has not forgotten you.

It holds you in its hands and will not yet you fall.

Why do you want to shut out of your life

any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions?

For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are

doing inside you.

Let us practice our whispering and listen within.

[1] See The Religion of Tomorrow by Ken Wilber

[2] See Feeding Your Demons by Tsultrim Allione

[3] See Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson

[4] From Letters to a Young Poet