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Get Full Access For $1 (30 days)* Or explore all membership plans → * Trial price for the first 30 days, then $20/month. Cancel or switch plans in 2 minutes at any time.he “shadow” refers to aspects of our self that have become disowned, broken off, our pushed into the unconscious. One of the most important goals of healthy integral living is to recognize and reclaim these broken pieces of ourselves, and to reintegrate them back into our total self-system so that we can become less reactive, more responsive, and more fulfilled. In other words, we do shadow work so that we can become whole again, to become more of ourselves, to re-own and reintegrate all those splintered pieces of ourselves that we may have unconsciously pushed away over the course of our lives.
Watch as Ken offers a stunning overview of the psychological shadow, emerging first in the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and then further unpacked by human potential pioneers like Stan Grof and Frtiz Perls. Ken describes several different kinds of shadow — projection, introjection, and retroflection — and how each of these represents a particular breakdown in the subject/object relationship.
We also get into the difficult issue of “collective shadow”, which has become a prominent feature of 21st century politics. We are seeing a massive wave of people who sincerely believe that they are chasing down the collective shadow — from #BlackLivesMatter protesters to anti-maskers to the multiple enclaves of conspiracy theories that been circulating in recent years, so much of the conflict we see in our culture is the result of standing in each other’s shadows. Everyone has a unique perception of what the collective shadow actually is — whether it’s systemic racism, media manipulation, or top-down statist oppression — and when we feel like we are trying to confront that collective shadow, it gives us a sense of righteous purpose which, if we’re not careful, can become its own source of fresh shadow material for us to work with, because in the end it is very difficult to tell where your personal shadow ends and the collective shadow begins. Which means that when we think we are confronting a “collective shadow”, we are oftentimes just projecting our own shadow onto the world around us — our own fear, our own bias, our own powerlessness, our own need for certainty.
And yet, collective shadows are real, because shadow can in fact appear in very different ways in all four quadrants. Ken shines some much-needed light on all this, exploring the different kinds of shadow that can emerge in each quadrant — physiological and behavioral shadows in the UR, institutional shadows in the LR, cultural shadows in the LL, and of course psychological shadows in the UL — all of which allows us to discern and deal appropriately with these different kinds of shadow when we encounter them.
Finally, we have a brief conversation about the relationship between violence, shadow, and social transformation. Is some degree of violence necessary for meaningful social change? As John F. Kennedy said, “those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”. Just how inevitable has violence become? Can we gauge the health of a society by the amount of violence required in order to enact meaningful change? What does “a stronger violence in saner hands” mean, and what role does that stronger, saner violence play while creating genuine worldcentric “anti-fascism” safeguards?
We hope you enjoy this latest episode of The Ken Show! Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Written and produced by Corey deVos
Music by Stuart Davis
Previous Episodes of The Ken Show
Transforming Self, Society, and the Spaces Between Us
November 6, 2023 
Putting the “Art” in Artificial Intelligence
November 1, 2022 
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From the lowest depths to the highest peaks, there is no place our shadow will not follow us, even into the heart of nonduality itself. Listen as Ken Wilber offers a guided tour through the major states of consciousness described by all the world’s spiritual traditions, while pointing out the many ways that our shadows can impede or even sabotage our efforts to contact and stabilize these states.
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Ken Wilber offers what’s got to be one of his most hilarious teachings to date. His focus is on shadow, but this time he adopts a more practice-oriented perspective, offering examples of shadow at each of six levels of development—featuring conversations with a stripper, a monster, a man burning in eternal flame, a radiant being, an oil tanker, and Gaia. As for what these conversations entail, you’ll just have to experience them yourself….
Perls of Wisdom: Introflection, Retroflection, and Other Games People Play
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Ken offers insight into the high-level features of two major therapeutic approaches, the role that a defense called “retroflection” plays in the process of projection, and some of the ways in which we can objectify the role-based psychological games we play while interacting with each other.
The Four Quadrants: A Guided Tour
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Ken and Corey take a in-depth tour through one of Ken’s most well-known contributions to integral philosophy: the Four Quadrants. Watch as Ken shares his personal story about the origins of the Four Quadrant model — the day everything came together — as he weaves 3rd-person theoretical descriptions of the model with his own 1st-person experience and creative process.
Integral Guided Tours
How to Think Integrally
Ken Wilber and Corey deVos
Ken and Corey explore some of the major qualities of integral thinking at the “vision logic” or “construct aware” stages of development, focusing on the three primary heuristics of integral thinking — non-exclusion (“everyone is right”), enfoldment (“some are more right than others”), and enactment (“if you want to know that, do this.”)
Growing Up: A Guided Tour
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Here we explore one of the most central elements of integral metatheory: growing up through multiple stages of developmental maturity. Watch as Ken and Corey offer a guided tour through each of the major stages on the Path of Growing Up — an exploration of your own greatest, deepest potentials — and offer some simple practices to help you actualize those potentials.
The Many Ways We Grow
Ken Wilber and Corey deVos
Human development is uneven, which means that we are better at some things than we are at others. Some skills come more naturally to us, and others are more difficult to acquire. Watch as Ken and Corey explore each of these developmental capacities in detail, offering a powerful summary of human potentials, talents, and intelligences — a comprehensive map of the territory of “you” that will help guide your own ongoing growth and development.
The Varieties of Integral Spiritual Experience
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Ken and Corey explore the path of Waking Up — a guided tour through temporary states of consciousness that include everything from emotional states to chemically-induced states to the direct, immediate experience of timeless reality, revealing an infinitely renewable source of energy, resilience, and creative inspiration that rests at the very center of you.
The Four Quadrants: A Guided Tour
Ken Wilber and Corey deVos
Ken and Corey take a in-depth tour through one of Ken’s most well-known contributions to integral philosophy: the Four Quadrants. Watch as Ken shares his personal story about the origins of the Four Quadrant model — the day everything came together — as he weaves 3rd-person theoretical descriptions of the model with his own 1st-person experience and creative process.
Click here to find a full list of all Ken Show episodes, which include both video or audio.
About Ken Wilber
Ken Wilber is a preeminent scholar of the Integral stage of human development. He is an internationally acknowledged leader, founder of Integral Institute, and co-founder of Integral Life. Ken is the originator of arguably the first truly comprehensive or integrative world philosophy, aptly named “Integral Theory”.
About Corey deVos
Corey W. deVos is editor and producer of Integral Life. He has worked for Integral Institute/Integal Life since Spring of 2003, and has been a student of integral theory and practice since 1996. Corey is also a professional woodworker, and many of his artworks can be found in his VisionLogix art gallery.