by Troy W. Pierce
"Do I contradict myself? I am vast, I contain contradictions."
- Walt Whitman
According to the Law of the Excluded Middle, a logical proposition
can not be both true and not true. For example: the car is either
blue, or not blue; it cannot be both blue and also be not blue. However,
what is true for logic is not true of our psyches--we are vast, we
contain contradictions.
We grow up in an environment filled with value judgments
on which one of a pair of opposites is 'good' or 'bad,' e.g., this
quality is 'good' for a girl, this one is 'bad' for a boy, this one
is 'bad' in an abusive household, this one is 'good' in an urban setting,
etc. A further example of this are the roles which children take in
family systems. What is 'good' for one child, say achievement for
a child filling the "Star" role, can be 'bad' for a child filling
the "Scapegoat" role. Thus in adapting to the world, we reject parts
of ourselves.
The ego is only a small part of what we are, but it
is the ego's nature to think that it is the whole of what we are.
The light of consciousness only shines on what we believe is 'good'
while the rest is left in darkness. Jung called this darkness the
archetype of the Shadow: the dark other encountered in dreams; the
paired opposite encountered in literature as in Stevenson's The
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde; or seen in the world as
that person you immediately dislike, or as that person who really
gets under your skin, because they were already there.
Integrating the Shadow means accepting things about
yourself that you don't want to accept. It does not entail becoming
a 'bad' person, it means accepting that the other half of the polarity
is a part of us as well--we do not have to act on the behalf of previously
rejected parts of ourselves, we still choose what to do. In fact we
are more under the Shadow's power when we do not accept it as ourselves.
We need to be able to say with Whitman, "I am vast, I contain contradictions."
Accepting that we are, to a great extent, what we dislike most in
the world is no easy task. However, Jung referred to the integration
of the personal Shadow as the apprentice piece, while the integration
of the Anima/Animus he called the master work.
"You know you have created God in your own image,
when you find that your God hates the same people you do." -Anonymous
The Shadow is not merely a personal phenomena, it
occurs wherever identity is involved--individuals, cliques, groups,
religions, political parties, societies, cultures, etc. If you cannot
see the Shadow as a part of the identity of your group, the rejected
part--then you are seeing it in the world, and perhaps are even engaged
in some crusade or righteous holy war against the Shadow. Unfortunately,
such Shadow boxing rarely does any substantial good. The Rev. Martin
Luther King, Jr. was careful to avoid Shadow play in the civil rights
movement, for as he said, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only
light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."
We can identify some of the collective Shadows of
the past easily enough: in the scapegoating, & genocide of Jewish
people by the Nazis; in the accusations of a thinly veiled sexual
nature made against women by celibate priests during the witch crazes;
in the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, and the persecution
of intellectuals and communists after it; and on and on... But where
do the Shadows lie today? And where are our own Shadows cast?
Each of us has experienced the weight of another's
Shadow upon us and have resented it, just as each of us is responsible
for casting our own Shadow on others. This is especially true of religion.
As individuals, we must find our own spiritual path. But, as soon
as an individual finds the source of their own light, they hold it
close, and their shadow ends up being cast out on everything else.
The stronger the light, and the closer we hold it, the larger and
darker the shadow looms. Until everything but your own light seems
like darkness.
Perhaps that is the meaning behind that strange and
paradoxical phrase, "love your enemies." It is so commonplace that
it has faded into a religious cliché. But if we could hear it for
the first time--we would hear its strange paradox and ask, "how can
we love our enemies? And if we could, would they be our
enemies?" As we have seen, those we hold as enemies are to a great
extent a screen for our own projections. Or put in a different way,
part of our enemies is ourselves, and that is the part we can never
defeat. So perhaps, that injunction could be read as, "love your enemies,
or remain with them."
© -1997 Troy W. Pierce
