The Shadow We're Up Against

Recently, I read a wonderful post by Jungian scholar and author, Paul Levi, who, as I've mentioned, has written some fascinating and wise work on the Shadow archetype.  In this article, I hear the author adulate CG for his genius and way ahead of his time ways. He thinks of Jung as a teacher, and so do I.

I'm good with crediting Jung to a point.  As ahead of his time in scientific imagination as he was, he was also a man of his very patriarchal world view.  Ask Emma if living with C.G. was a picnic, or Toni.  I'm enjoying getting to know my favorite dead dream teacher as a person in Deidre Bair's biography of the great doctor.  But I already knew he was steeped in male superiority from some of his writings on the anima/animus archetype.  I remember practically throwing my copy of Symbols across the room when I read how sometimes rough treatment is the only thing an "animus possessed" woman can understand. Synchronistically, I was working as a counselor in the field of domestic violence, counseling recipients of  male superiority at its most toxic. Jung was enlightened perhaps, compared to contemporary patriarchal standards, but he held and benefited from many prejudices of his status in a patriarchal, "it's a white man's world."  He assumed knowledge of the Feminine Archetype, without understanding the impact of 6 millennia of vilification obscuring the long ancient  history of the Great Goddess.  Fortunately, one of his students, Erich Neumann steered a better psychic course when he published "The Great Mother" in 1955.

Levi makes some good points about our contemporary psychic jeopardy,  (points I also made at the start of the recent gruesome Presidential campaign). At the moment, metaphorically and literally, the Feminine Archetype is living in a "pussy grabbing" world.  From the upright Christians who want to restrict a woman's authority over her life and her body  to the Muslims, who go the extra mile and put women in sacks, to the secular patriarchal club that runs the world and wants women in bunny suits for entertainment,  women are facing new barriers to leadership and power.  Ironically, women are more powerful now than they've been in 6,000 years, in consciousness and in numbers.  More men are actively supporting women's progress than ever in that time, as well.  It's time for the obscene imbalance at the heart of patriarchal religion, the maleness of god, to get tossed out of our collective consciousness.

The Shadow we're up against is Patriarchy; - Trump, Putin, N Korea, regimes of oppression, exclusion and complete control.  Just take a look at the leadership; what do all these sinking ships have in common? Patriarchal despots leading the old boys' brigades around the world.  The mentality of patriarchy is subjugation, domination, exploitation, near sighted, self-serving religion.  The mentality of the Feminine Divine is that we are all one on this planet; what affects one, will affect the other.  What goes around, comes around.

The Shadow we're up against is of an old, fruitless paradigm that's dying of its own stagnation; this patriarchal shit is getting really old.  But, there's also a Bright Shadow we can't miss; the Feminine is emerging.  Women are taking the lead in creating alternative paradigms, and that's a fact.  Men are taking the lead in creating alternative paradigms, and that's a fact, too.  There's a consciousness revolution; more and more people just can't buy the old toxic ways.  More and more people are straddling the two worlds they live in, dreams and waking life, with awareness and grace,  transforming this dangerous, greedy old human race, slowly but surely.  It is the worst of times; it is the best of times.

A Midsummer Dream

photo by A. Kaiser

I recently officiated for the first time at a very dear friend's wedding and was honored with the opportunity to give a short talk on their behalf to introduce the grand event.  What a wedding it was.

When I give a talk, my first care is for those whom I'm addressing; how do I speak so as to give something that might be of value to the good folks in front of me?  In this case, it's also, how do I honor my friend and her wonderful guy; I want them to be happy they asked me.

I produced several drafts of my speech, searching for meaning and brevity combined so I have some bits left over I can use here.  What I left out was mostly about projections in romantic relationships, realizing, though I find this topic fascinating, my audience might appreciate getting on with the ceremony and perhaps to the cocktail hour.  At least reading is voluntary, so here are those thoughts:

Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist of a hundred years ago said that for many people, romantic love and sometimes even marriage is really a fantasy based on the perfect picture of the other that each person is projecting.  “My prince, my princess”, but as the shine wears off over time and they gradually fail to live up to each other’s projected expectations, the fireworks begin.

It takes time to find out who another person is at the soul level; many people are too caught up in building a fairy tale life to take the time to know each other.

The naked truth of marriage is not that “the two shall become one” but that the two shall become three, whether they have children or not, the two becomes three.  I have my soul journey to walk, my husband or wife has his or hers.  Neither of us has a right to impose projections on the other.  But there is a third in a good relationship, it’s the spirit of who we become together, the partnership itself is a life force, if we walk our soul paths together with love and understanding, it only gets better through the years.

What I love about following a dream practice is that it's easier to recognize and own my projections, thereby sparing myself and others much grief.  Here's a real life example:

Last September I had the absolute good fortune of attending a Michael Franti concert at a very small venue where I was in the front of a crowd of just a few hundred adoring Franti fans, myself included.

In my opinon, Michael Franti has it together and is an emissary of Love. Most Franti fans are pretty cool, they're on the same vibe.

But there was this one woman right behind me who had obviously been to a long cocktail hour before the show and who had a passionate, therefore drunkenly unleashed, projection on to Michael's drummer.  She was screaming for the drummer, lost in the fantasy that he would complete her if only he would return her singular devotion.   As she was screaming the poor guy's name through Michael's songs I finally gave her a look that said, "please be more respectful of all of us"  and she did quiet down some, thankfully.  She was lost inside her own projection that night and she wasn't really present with the crowd, the music and the artists.  

Perhaps this woman, lost inside this pigment of her own infatuation, really wants to be African and play the drums like that?  She's plainly not aware that she doesn't know this man who may have a perfectly good family/love partner to go home to and may not appreciate silly, screaming, inappropriate fans.  This is an example of a relationship projection that's pretty common in pop-idolatry culture, but it can also serve to illustrate the dynamic of personal relationships, up close, in the family model

.  

As a therapist and counselor and as a friend, the issues I've heard related again and again are about relationships, especially, romantic ones, happy or ones gone bad.  The counsel of dreams, in my experience and that of countless dreamers I've heard say the same, is that you must, as Jung would put it, mind your own Shadow first, the dark and the light. I've written an intro to the Shadow archetype here.

What made me truly happy as I officiated my friend's wedding is that she and her partner have been together for nine years and have stripped away much of those early mutual projections.  I don't know how else it can be done.  It takes time to know another and to know oneself.  The good news about relationships is that loving is a lot lighter and more fun when the personal projections are cleared.  

I had such a wonderful time at this wedding and so did everyone else there, that I thought you'd enjoy seeing a picture of my young friend with her beloved.

Wish you all a very blessed Summer Solstice season. 

The Freudian/Jungian Shadow Slip

I don’t have much use for Sigmund Freud and, yes, I’m a big Carl Jung fan, but I do credit Freud for noticing my favorite word synchronicity, the Freudian Slip. That’s when your ego says what your id was thinking instead of what your  super-ego told it to say.  This is usually very embarrassing for the ego.

Here’s one of my favorite FS moments from way back: 

I’m a young coed at a college mixer; there are grad students prowling around, looking for undergrads, I assume.  I meet this guy, good looking and pleasant who tells me he’s studying microbiology.   In true coed light-hearted banter I say, “Oh, you mean you study little orgasms…I mean organisms…” and then I burst out laughing.  There was just nowhere to hide.  I didn’t end up dating that guy, though we had a great conversation.

In my experience, Freudian slips are waking dreams in which the Trickster/ Shadow archetype is messing with me, and since the archetype concept belongs to Jung, I’ve renamed the phenomenon, the Freudian/Jungian Shadow Slip (FJSS) to credit him, as well. 

A waking dream in Active Dreaming is when you look at an event in waking life as if it were a dream and apply the same pondering observation to a waking reality that you would to a night dream.  So, having frequently recognized my Shadow archetype in dreams; I should know Her in waking.

It’s not as easy as it sounds because: a) the ego hates looking stupid, so it usually does a lot of damage control and/or rationalization to avoid looking at any undesired truth; and b) they don’t call it the UNconscious for nothing; what’s in the dark, stays in the dark, unless you shine a light on it. 

But, like night dreams, FJSS moments are opportunities to learn about myself.

As I understand Jung, an Archetype is the energy mold from which certain universal psychic realities flow into particular mythic or symbolic patterns. Cultures project consensus archetypes into myth and religion; we often project our individual archetypes into others. Dreams reveal what archetypes are ready to be integrated in the psyche, sometimes by mirroring some troubled aspect of our lives. As Joseph Campbell famously put it, “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths”.

For Jung, the first step on the path to Individuation, is that a person must face the Shadow. I think this is what Pogo meant when he said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” (Individuation: that’s when your analyst gives you an A, kidding; it’s when a person has integrated all the cast off soul energies, restoring wholeness to the person and peace of mind.  I’d say it’s very like the Eastern concept of Enlightenment).

The Shadow has many manifestations; perhaps the most extreme is the archetype of evil, the devil. The Shadow represents what we reject about ourselves as unacceptable, and since it’s unacceptable to the egoic persona, we tend to unconsciously project our shadows on to others.  The devil, the enemy, the blasphemer, the person I just can’t stand, whose faults just drive me crazy, the person who is different, race, gender, nationality, the list is fairly long.

The main element of the Shadow is that it’s hidden, the ego hasn’t got a clue that it’s there; but, says Jung, in order to grow up and take responsibility for our own actions, it’s the first threshold we need to cross. We meet our Shadow in dreams, as same-sex-as-the-dreamer characters doing stuff the dreamer would consciously never do.  The otherness of the Shadow is the first clue this archetypal energy is at work.  The challenge is to see our Shadow and incorporate it’s existence into our conscious, waking life.  Since we are by definition, unconscious of the Shadow, the only way to understand those aspects of ourselves we need to face and integrate positively, is by paying attentions to dreams, and in my opinion, to FJSS.

In FJSS, the Trickster archetype is also at play alongside the Shadow. The Trickster archetype comes by its name honestly. It’s the energy in life that seems to trip you up or put you off your intended course. Trickster energy in many cultures is closely aligned with the Shadow; it’s manifestations are usually ironically funny.  Examples are the Norse God Loki, wonderfully featured in the movie, "Mask", in which Jim Carrey portrays a human who encounters the Trickster God when he finds a mask of Loki.  In other traditions, like the Afro-Cuban Lucumi, the Trickster god is Eleggua, who is also the gatekeeper and guardian of the crossroads and of all beginnings, so he is propitiated before commencing any human undertaking. 

For Jung, the Shadow is the gatekeeper of the Psyche, which is Consciousness in each of us. With the Trickster, how you respond makes the difference between learning the wisdom offered you by the unconscious or losing the gift in ego fueled befuddlement. 

So in my coed FJSS, what’s behind this slip is a towering Feminine Shadow Archetype; the Prostitute, the “easy woman.”  Interestingly, I just met a new embodiment of her for the first time, Pompa Gyra, the Lady in Red; a Brazilian friend introduced her to me. Recognizing this archetype’s pent up energy and giving her some elbowroom in my personality can help me avoid a lot of silliness and personal repression. In patriarchal cultures, the Feminine Sexual Archetype, personified throughout millennia in many mythic goddess forms, is driven underground.  Woman is split into Virgin/Whore and to various degrees, in various cultures, controlled by that myth.  But the energy of an archetype only doubles when it’s repressed; it needs it’s proper place in the psyche, culturally or personally.

Lucky for me, I live in a country and at a time when that wounded Feminine Archetype is less hidden and beginning to heal. There’s still a lot of cultural skewing of the Feminine, but personally, more women are looking within for who and how they want to be.  I have a wonderful Pompa Gira Shadow from my dream adventures that I’ve written about earlier; her name is Jeze-bella. 

As I make friends with the Jeze-bella in me, I learn to be more critical of the social mores and standards I allow to be knee-jerk truths for how I live my life. With Jeze-bella’s help, I sift through the good girl/bad girl indoctrination and come up with ideas that fit and attitudes that feel right.

So, let’s hear it for the Shadow, the dark side of our personality moon.  Let’s find a way to befriend our own darkness so we transcend the pettiness of projection.  The Shadow is a formidable Archetype until it is integrated; then it is the wisest of teachers.  My dreams have taught me that there is so much to learn that can’t come from books and universities, scholars or authorities.  Many spiritual teachers will tell you that you are born knowing all that you need to know; however, the process of remembering what you need to know after family and culture gets through with you can be a huge challenge. 

Every time you put your ear to the pillow, listen.  If what you hear constantly scares you, get help; otherwise, listen, record, and come to know your dreaming experience and the dream self that lives it every night.  We are on the cusp of a major paradigm shift; the next generations will value their dreaming, both in sleep and waking. Each of us who takes to this path today adds weight to this tipping point we’re living.  

From Robert Moss's wonderful new collection of poetry: "Here, Everything is Dreaming."

Go out in the garden any night,

step one inch outside the tame land

and you are near what you seek.

Open the window of your soul

any night and your guide may come in.

The issue is whether you'll run away

when you see what it is.  To make sure 

you succeed, tether yourself like a goat

at the edge of the tiger wood that breathes

right beside your bed.  He'll come.

 Hunting Power, August 16, 2009