I think the shadow only becomes “shadow” if parts of the soul are suppressed and un-expressed. For whatever reason, historical or other, there are certain qualities of human nature that have gotten negative connotations, i.e. anger, sexual urges, childishness, selfishness, etc. The curious thing to me is that the same exact attributes can and often do have completely different connotations in different contexts. For example, someone may consistently get taken advantage of by other people, and in that case it would be wise for that person to cultivate some more selfishness, because it only does harm to be taken advantage of. On the other hand, someone who is always thinking of themselves and how they can personally benefit, at the expense of the group, would probably be chastised for being too selfish. Therefore, we cannot simply state that selfishness, or any other quality for that matter, is inherently good or bad and leave it at that; it depends on the context.
However, we have this tendency to somehow decide which qualities are good and which qualities are bad, and then identify ourselves with labels accordingly, using blanket statements such as, “I am not a selfish person.” We convince ourselves that the qualities in the “bad” category have the capacity to do harm, so we lock them up out of fear, but in that locking we may very well foster ignorance, more fear, lack of connection, lack of intimacy, underachievement, emotional confusion and pain, etc., and all of these can be just as harmful, if only not as immediately or as discernibly.
Take for example the common practice, as mentioned above, of applying blanket labels to ourselves such as “introvert” or “extrovert,” or “street smart” or “book smart,” etc. The reality is that we all have extroversion and introversion, book smarts and street smarts, etc., living within us all the time, even though one or the other may or may not have been predominantly expressed up until this point in our lives. The question that keeps recurring to me is: why is it necessary to pick and choose what we are among these arbitrary and, frankly, very loosely defined polar opposites? What good does it do to identify oneself as an introvert rather than an extrovert? I realize how often in my life I have been self-enslaved by these conceptual notions of what or who I am, and I don’t think it has done me any good at all. Rather, it has limited me from honoring and nurturing parts of myself that have the potential to flourish and give to the world, and I’m tired of limiting my own potential for the false security of an identity made of arbitrary labels (which also, by way of their loose colloquial definitions, lead to all kinds of painful and frustrating miscommunications on a regular basis).
It is the soul’s very nature to seek expression, often magical and unpredictable expression, and this need of the soul is so strong that it will happen whether we want it to or not. Every part of the soul will see itself expressed; the choice we all have is whether or not we will be conscious of that expression, in all the multitudinous ways it can occur. When we lock away all the qualities of ourselves that we think are bad or harmful we create the shadow, and the more we try to suppress the potential that we have those qualities, the more they control us unconsciously, the more they cause us to judge and hurt others, and the more they make us suffer. I believe this locking up happens every time we deny a part of ourselves the mere possibility of being expressed.
People get scared because they think that once they open the door to the expression of what has been shadow, there is no telling what craziness will ensue. For example, someone who has suppressed the sexual part of themselves may be scared to let it be expressed because they would do something against their value system. But in order to make a true choice about something, I think permission has to be given to the possibility of both options. In other words, someone with a formerly suppressed sexual urge could do a lot of self-liberating just by granting permission to the idea of doing something sexual, without necessarily fulfilling the urge in actions. Having given permission to that possibility, they have allowed that part of themselves, of their soul, the part that is sexual, a voice and a seat at the table, even if it wasn’t acted upon. And it’s such a more gentle choice at that point to not act upon it, rather than white-knuckling on a just-say-no mentality when the urge is chomping at the bit. If we can do that on a regular basis, then we can start to really feel ownership over our lives, because we are making true choices in every moment. When we don’t do this, and instead deny and deny and deny certain parts of our soul, that is when we get addictions and various other behaviors that appear “deviant,” such as the very conservative senator who has long opposed gay marriage and considered homosexuality a sin, only to be caught having homosexual sex outside of marriage while trying to keep it a secret. All the soul wants is expression, even if that means simple acknowledgment in the theater of your own mind.
In my own experience of the world, I think that human growth is possible to the extent that we can give the entirety of our soul a voice, and I believe this is what is meant by “integrating the shadow.” This is what makes the greatest artists the greatest. The greatest artists, poets, athletes, people do not accept self-imposed limits of what they are “supposed” to be like or look like or act like. They only respond to the call of the moment and the truth and let it take them where it will, without fear or worry about what people will think or how they will be judged. No one became one of the greatest by being afraid to do something that no one had done before; it is precisely because they are willing to open and offer their own uniqueness to the Muse and let it guide them into truly new territory that they are great. And the reason they can do this is that they have transcended the arbitrary and obeyed the call of the infinite.
So in a way, when I say “God” or “The Infinite,” I refer to that which simply is, despite the fact that we may or may not want it to be so. And I say YES it is a mystery, but that doesn’t mean we can’t know it, it just means we can’t speak it in literal English. We can speak it in metaphor and in feeling, and we can express it in our art and our poetry and our movements and in so many other avenues besides the literal one.
To attach our understanding of life to the literal and the arbitrary is to attach ourselves to suffering. Inevitably the magic of the moment will always call our arbitrary rigid expectations into question, and we can always feel it, no matter how numb we’ve become or how unconscious we are of it. That we can always feel it is why we can still suffer at all, for just as the soul seeks expression, so does the truth, and when it is denied confusion and pain will ensue, because the truth is still there in the room, despite the denial. So just as the enlightenment of the gurus and the legends involves transcendence of the arbitrary and alignment with the infinite, so it involves a movement from the literal to the metaphorical realm. Prayer and Myth. These are the master talents of the soul, and the soul has known how to do these things since before we were born, when it still lived unencumbered in the land of pure is, never having known the concept of should. If only we can move our rigid egos out of the way, the soul will always know what to do, and will always be at home in the truth.