INTEGRATING THE SHADOW

How do we integrate the Shadow?  The first challenge is to recognise and accept the Shadow.  Only after this comes the challenge of integration. 

To have the Persona and Shadow as polar opposites is to be divided and at war within yourself.  To bury the Shadow again in terror is to leave yourself one sided, incomplete, with an enemy out of sight ready to engage in guerrilla warfare within you.  Nor is it possible to stamp out the Shadow.

 In his Spectrum of Consciousness, Ken Wilber reminds us of the futility of attempting to eliminate the Shadow within.  He says, and I quote, “Trying to rid ourselves of negative tendencies, trying to destroy them and eliminate them, would be a fine idea – if it were possible.  The problem is that it is not, the negative tendencies in ourselves to which we try to shut our eyes nevertheless remain firmly ours and return to plague us as neurotic symptoms of fear, depression and anxiety.  Cut off from consciousness, they assume menacing aspects out of all proportion to their actual nature.  We can tame evil only by befriending it, and we inflame it by alienating it.” [1]

So how can we befriend the Shadow?  First of all, as I said earlier, we have to be aware of it, recognise it; then we have to claim it as our own not with hesitant repulsion but in a friendly, accepting manner. 

 Recognising the Shadow calls for immense self awareness and attentiveness if we are to pick up the cues in slips of the tongue and of behaviour; recognise the projections we make signalled by intense emotionality; if we are to notice when the direction flips from our wanting to do to others, to our thinking that others want to do to us.  If we are aware and attentive, bit by bit we bring the Shadow into consciousness and, if we are willing, slowly we learn to accept the Shadow.

 Gently, over time, we include the Shadow more and more into our personality, we create space for it.  We accept the complexity of who we are and the many contradictions within ourselves.  We own our negatives as well as our positives.  We learn to say sorry when the negatives get the better of us and we cause hurt to others.  We learn to get up again when we fall.  We learn that we don’t have always to act out of our impulses; that we have choice; that we can experience the impulse and choose how to express it; we can experience the impulse and choose not to express it at all.  Gradually over time we become more truly who we truly are – not always nice but increasingly real, increasingly true.

 As we re-own the Shadow, the split between the Persona and Shadow is “wholed and healed”. We extend our identity and with it our responsibility to all aspects of the psyche and not just to the impoverished Persona.