Part II: The Gold in the Shadow

As I said in my first piece about shadow, there's gold in there. It is precisely because of that gold that we must go mining in the caves of shadow. But let me explain how shadow develops in the first place.

At birth, each of us possesses a full range of human qualities. These qualities start out neutral. But as we grow, influential people in our lives (like parents, teachers, and peers) point out qualities they dislike, and label them "bad." In a desire to be loved and accepted we react. We take those "bad" qualities, and one by one, excise them from our personalities.

What do we do with those cut off parts of self? As Robert Bly says, we throw them into a "long bag." With unsightly aspects of ourselves safely tucked away, we go on, seemingly scrubbed clean of our bad traits. Problem is, we continue to lug that long shadow bag and all its contents around with us. The trash man never comes to cart it off to the dump.

Furthermore, each time we throw something into the bag, really good stuff goes too. Examples. You are four years old. Your mom is at the kitchen table having coffee with her friends. You keep interrupting. Later she punishes you for being rude. Out comes your shadow bag, and you toss in rudeness. Along with it goes some spontaneity.

You're in the fifth grade and your teacher scolds you for clowning around. You get angry and get sent to the principal's office. You open the bag, toss in anger, and along with it, some passion and humor.

To sum it up, by the time we hit age twenty, we've gone from being a full circle of possibilities to being just a sliver of our potential selves. We've dumbed ourselves down. We've learned to color within the lines of life.

As adults we have two choices. One is to deny that we've thrown anything into the bag (even deny the existence of the bag itself). Or we can go into the bag and retrieve the gold we've thrown away.

Most of us are afraid to stick our hand in that bag. We don't know what might bite us. It is truly an act of courage to do so. But the alternative is leaving great chunks of ourselves languishing in the dark. Even worse: what we deny about ourselves we inflict on others. (More on that next time.)

Meanwhile, consider what parts of you you might have thrown away, thinking they were bad. And rejoice. There's great beauty in the shadow.


copyright 2007 starfishdoc
(Thanks, JMR for the first photo.)