From the time we are very young and as we learn to speak, we carry out a process of selection and evaluation for each of the characteristics that integrate and form what we have come to call me, myself. Therefore, to a certain extent, we decide which of our qualities are going to be part of what we want to be and which characteristics we are going to reject, gradually consolidating, in this way, our own self-image and sense of identity. Little by little, we will build our value systems, which in reality will be heavily influenced by inertias and innate automatisms.
The individual's own traits are shaped firstly by genetics and secondly by the information inherited from the ancestral soul. Automatisms form a whole by uniting the body and the mind, integrating an individual scheme in which the configuration of the brain, the functioning of neurotransmitters and hormones, the emotional nucleus and the core personality will condition the individual’s tendencies towards excess, lack, or balance and their patterns of interaction with themselves and with the environment. These personal attributes will be nurtured and modified, for better or worse, by means of the experiences lived during the fetal stage, childhood and adolescence in the first place, as well as by the decisions made from the beginning and other experiences that occur throughout life.
The interaction between personal inertias, experiences and decisions produces a strong identity process. This is a predominant element of the egoic stage in which we find ourselves. Each individual develops a particular combination of emotional patterns, beliefs, ideals and behaviours that are nourished by processes of affiliation and disapproval, which, in addition to being based on innate tendencies, are also formed through a phenomenon of imitation or rebellion against maternal and paternal patterns (driven by emotional dependence), as well as the transfer of this same phenomenon onto other male and female figures that are present in our lives. The combination of preferences and rejections develops the moral part of the individual, which will be structured by forming the images of good and evil, which will orbit around one's own self-image and the image of the world. I will discuss systems of images at length at a later stage.
Inevitably, the egoic phase provokes a permanent and compulsive need to judge others, the world and ourselves. In this way the ego is nourished, and its four pillars are stimulated. These pillars are true collectors of energy that drain the original being through the feelings of superiority, inferiority, personal importance and offense.
In the process of creating the egoic identity we will adopt certain qualities as our own (positive identification) and discard others as unacceptable or simply extraneous (negative identification). However, some of the aspects that we reject, repress, or try to eliminate from ourselves, because we consider them to be external to our preferences, end up being integrated into the unconscious part, into the shadow, thus becoming a hidden part of our identity.
The shadow is one of our worst enemies. It has a power beyond what the average person is capable of imagining and it uses this power to manifest itself persistently in our daily lives. The ego is our dark side and the shadow is its most hidden and destructive aspect.
The shadow is part of the automaton and is formed by the combination of everything that we reject in others and that is still present in ourselves, even if we do not recognize it. This lack of recognition causes certain processes of negative identification to become part of the unconscious ego, thus feeding the shadow itself. The stronger the rejection and the more intense the denial, the more the shadow will have power to generate inertia in our daily lives through perverse impulses, desires, rejections and automatisms, both in the external and the internal worlds.
The attitudes, people or events that cause us the most pain or displeasure are a mirror or manifestation of our own shadow. What we disown most may be hidden and nourished within ourselves, thanks to a twisted mechanism of imitation or rebellion. Evil is not only outside, but also within. This is evidently very hard for most people to admit. It takes a true act of impeccability to start to awaken from lethargy and begin to use the energy that we normally focus on blaming others and the world, to look at ourselves. This is how we can discover the ruses that allow our shadow to dwell and act far from the light of consciousness. Introspection (free from self-judgment, self-pity and self-deception), recapitulation, meditation, detachment (which is not the same thing as disinterest) and true emotional development can illuminate the shadow.
In order to become aware of how our shadow acts and therefore be able to transform it, the following aspects must be taken into account:
- The shadow can be created when you refuse to accept feelings or attitudes that you consciously experience, but classify as unacceptable. If this is done with sufficient force or insistence, at least some of these feelings or attitudes can pass into the unconscious mind and then become part of your shadow.
- The dark side is not the same as the shadow, although the latter is part of the dark side. The egoic mind is the dark side and the original mind is the luminous side.
- The shadow will try to express itself and will therefore "attract" to you people and circumstances that will remind you again and again of what you refuse to accept. They will be like mirrors of your own shadow. In fact, what will happen is that you will repeatedly focus on certain negative characteristics of other people, judging that you are right and they are wrong. Your ego will inflate itself by emphasizing your "good" state and the "bad" state that others find themselves in, falling into even greater ignorance, which will again give strength to your shadow.
- The negative feelings you repeatedly have towards others are how your conscious part feels towards your shadow.
- The negative feelings that others repeatedly have toward you is a reflection of how your shadow feels towards your conscious side.
In order to work with the shadow, it is essential to develop a very special cognitive aptitude: acceptance. This is able to neutralize the state of denial on which the shadow feeds. Acceptance is an energetic-cognitive function that is oftentimes misunderstood. It has the simple and at the same time very important task of objectively recognizing what there is, of assenting without judgment or assessment:
"Yes, this is what I have, this is what there is, this is what I am right now."
Acceptance is complementary to, yet different from, the ability to evaluate, which is the adequate ability to analyze what is needed and what is not needed, what one has and what one does not have, what is valid and what is perverse. To avoid making the shadow grow, it is essential that the hierarchy between these two functions is respected: we always need to accept first, and then it is possible for us to evaluate.
The non-acceptance of certain negative or problematic aspects of a person leads to the emergence of their antagonist, denial – a defensive but inefficient psychological mechanism, as well as a perverse one. The denial of a problem renders its management or resolution difficult. Denial creates a process of negative identification, the most serious consequence of which is the disintegration or fragmentation of part of the personality and the emotional core: it is, therefore, the origin of dissociative behaviours.
Some people think that accepting something negative is the same as resigning or giving up, but nothing could be further from the truth. Acceptance allows us to move forward. Resignation, on the other hand, makes it difficult to move towards a better state, as the present is perceived as final and finished, rather than as an intermediate step in a flow of processes that continues into the future.
For a warrior of consciousness, defects in identity and personality are considered to be true wells of stagnant personal power. By gathering the necessary courage and making the decision to access these wells, we can then extract, connect, recycle, revitalize and redistribute that energy-information that had been trapped, squandered and blocked every time we had made use of any of those perverse parts of our personality in our relationship with ourselves or with the world.
Warriors accept the ego and then they give it a fight. They know that at times it will appear to be full of personal importance and at other times it will be pitiful, and it will feel miserable. They accept the fact that the ”I” is full of arrogance, weakness, excess, deviation, emotional dependence and shadows, but at the same time, it is the most resilient and resistant thing, the most formidable and, in a way admirable, enemy. Yet they do not worry, because they know that being born with an ego is inevitable in this world, although they rejoice in the discovery that what is not obligatory is to die with it. There is a choice of freedom, of realization. Accepting the shadow and the dark side is part of the battle. Not everything in us is an automaton, because, although we were born as slaves of the egoic self, we were also bestowed with the gift of freedom and the possibility of being faithful to the original self. We were not given the ability to do whatever we want, but we have the power to choose among the options available at any given time. And to accept is within those options.
The healing of the being can be found through the understanding of how we should manage the process of identity. The automatisms of the dark side and of the shadow influence, but do not compel – at least not completely. When a negative feeling appears, one can remember that this is only part of the automaton, and then ask oneself, “Is this me or is it just something that I am feeling?”. Herein lies the principle of detachment, of the ability to distance oneself so that the ego cannot identify with emotionality, given that it nourishes itself from it. In this way, the original being gains power and the ego loses it. The seeker of light knows that a small amount of reclaimed power can be used to achieve a little more and so, step by step, we can forge our own impeccability that will help us to think, speak and act without wasting awareness or vital and emotional energy. In this way we can gradually illuminate parts of our shadow with the light of acquired consciousness, carrying out a process of authentic healing and re-integration of the identity around the original self – instead of around the ego. It is a process of sublimation, since the ego cannot be eliminated directly, but through deception in which we convince it to become impeccable and brilliant.
Another way of working with the dark side is to keep in mind the Johari Window model (formulated by psychologists Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham) which says that the self may be divided into the following four areas, defined as follows in Emoenergetica:
- The Open Self:
A part of the conscious self (that which one knows about oneself) that is shown to others through one's behaviour and personality. It is both an automaton and part of the selfhood.
- The Blind Self:
A part of the unconscious self and the personality that is shown to others without one being aware or recognizing it. A portion of the shadow comes from here. It is part of the automaton.
- The Hidden Self:
The characteristics and behaviours of the conscious self by means of which the person tries to hide parts of themselves from others. The hidden self manages privacy and closeness, which causes different aspects to be shown, depending on the degree of trust that one has with the different people with whom one interacts. The hidden self is also used to hide other aspects of ourselves that we do not like, so that at a given moment it can collaborate in the creation and feeding of the shadow. It is both an automaton and part of the selfhood.
- The Unconscious Self:
The part of the self and personality that remains beyond the reach of the conscious self. Except for a small fraction that is shown directly to others through the blind self (less profound information), almost all of it remains hidden despite being the largest container of data and programs associated with the mind. The unconscious is shaped and grows through the experiences and characteristics of the conscious. It is part of the automaton. This is where the shadow resides.
The people you interact with will indirectly show you your shadow, especially those who make you feel more important, or insignificant, angry or indignant. The more intense the feeling, the stronger your shadow is. This does not mean that you should allow to be mistreated or stop setting limits on whoever you have to set them on, but that you will be able to see others as beings who also have their shadow and who seek, with more or less success, that luminous self that we have within us. Accepting your dark side is one of the keys to opening up your process of emotional and transpersonal growth.
In recent years there has been a major movement in alternative therapy circles that deal with working with the shadow. Some of these techniques are very dangerous, in particular those that try to convince you that you have repressed and forgotten memories in the unconscious, especially those related to physical and sexual abuse. Some therapists, sometimes with good intentions and at other times without scruples, use techniques through which they reach these conclusions and can produce in you the phenomenon known as the implantation of false memories. The result is that your mind generates new real traumas, as if those events had actually happened. At present, science has not found conclusive evidence to indicate that the phenomenon of suppressed memories exists, beyond specific events in which through a momentary trauma (physical or psychological) a blockage occurs in a part of the memory: despite this, the person does remember what has happened, although not completely. In my experience, when someone has suffered significant traumas over a period of time, they have memories of it – to a greater or lesser degree.
Working with the shadow is, in reality, working with the light, with that mysterious energy of consciousness that we are vessels of.
Illuminating the Shadow by Chema Sanz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.