Hot On The Shadow's Trail

Anyone who has committed to or even dabbled with a spiritual practice knows that practice rarely changes our experience of our family during the holidays. No matter how deeply we practice, we still go home for Christmas and act in automatic and unconscious ways. Why is that? Well, there are a number of reasons. The main reasons may be that transformation is slow and hard won and the fact that many spiritual practices do not facilitate an awareness or re-integration of the shadow.  The shadow is created when we split off or dissociate from an aspect of our personality that we find threatening. Although presumably “hidden,” this disowned shadow shows up all over the place. In fact, what we hide from ourselves is obvious to everyone around us. Most people can see our shadow... plain as day; we are the only ones who find it difficult to see ourselves.

"The shadow is created when we split off or dissociate from an aspect of our personality that we find threatening"

Before we go on, let's listen to Diane Musho Hamilton, a Sensei in the Zen tradition and an Integral Life Practice trainer, share an explanation of the shadow, what it looks like, how to spot it, and how to work with it.

So as Diane discussed, a common way that we deal with our own shadow is through projection. We project our undesirable thoughts, motivations, desires, or feelings onto someone or something else. When we do so, our motivations, feelings, and traits appear "outside" of us, as an external source of aggravation, irritation, or obsession. Although these qualities are perceived as "outside" of us, they may actually be a manifestation of a part of ourselves that the self does not appreciate. This is not to say that others do not posses the qualities that we find disagreeable. Sometimes a jerk is really just a jerk. But why does is bother us so? Why does it consume our thoughts? Why does it affect us emotionally? Why do we find ourselves complaining about this person nonstop? If the negative or positive qualities of another person infuriate, disturb, or disgust us, chances are we are looking our own shadow in the face.

To spot this, we can notice when another person triggers us, either because of a positive or negative quality. If we are not able to own that quality in the 1st-person, for example, "I am not angry," then we are likely hot on the trail of uncovering our shadow. If we push that quality away or project it onto the 2nd-person. "I am not angry, but you sure are," we can be fairly certain we are dealing with some shadowy aspect of ourselves. If it is a quality that is deeply threatening to our sense of self, we may push this quality even further away from the self, into the 3rd-person. "There is a lot of anger in the world."

There are several benefits to recognizing and working with our shadow qualities. For one, we are usually more effective when we are not projecting all over everyone and everything we encounter. By reclaiming our projections, we unburden others from our projections about them, and allow them to just be themselves, rather than as how we see them. In that way we gain more objectivity.

But possibly the most important reason to work with our shadow is that hiding our shadow from ourselves requires an extraordinary amount of energy. What could we do with all that liberated energy? Enjoy life more? Enjoy others more? Accomplish more because we aren't being constantly triggered into a familiar drama? Maybe even make a developmental stage transition? Remember, we can stall at any stage of development and a common cause for "stalling" is the shadow. Our shadow can actually keep us at a particular stage of development because we do not have the insight we need from the shadow to free ourselves, nor do we have the energy that's required to grow to a more complex stage, because we are too busy keeping parts of ourselves we find displeasing "outside" of our awareness.