bodymindspiritworks LLC

… shadow …

Shadow: dealing with what haunts us

printer-friendly
by Thomas D'Alessio

"Shadow" is anything we disown or avoid as "not me." It can take the form of "dark shadow" (or destructive aspects/potentials in ourselves) or "bright shadow" (constructive aspects/potentials in ourselves). Pathology can and does occur anywhere and everywhere in both the vertical "altitude" structures (developmental stages - Kohlberg, Gilligan, Piaget, EQ, IQ, etc) and the horizontal state stages (temporary states of consciousness both natural and induced). We do not see our shadow, and it takes solid therapeutic work along with a little help from our friends and lovers to bring it into the light. Quite often, in reasonably healthy persons, the very thing needed to be whole persons is locked up with shadow aspects we have dis-owned, and sometimes for very incomplete (and therefore mistaken) reasons.

Sometimes the light comes from the cognitive work of "moving up" developmentally. For example, the egoic narcissism found in the ego-centric/magic and ego-centric/ethnocentric stages of development (which very human being goes through, since each child that is born starts at the beginning) are tempered at the next stage, ethnocentric: loyalty to "my family" or "my tribe" or "my nation" can help to control the impulsive selfishness of the egocentric worldview. After ethnocentric comes rational and then multi-cultural/pluralistic and then on to integral modes of being-in-the-world.

However, each structural stage of "vertical" development also carries the potential for making the individual’s shadow, or disowned, aspects worse. For example, from the pluralistic/multi-cultural worldview ("all perspectives have validity") and particularly at unhealthy multicultural/pluralistic ("all beliefs are completely relative, all perspectives are equally true") serves only to further entrench narcissism, whether it is that of a personality disorder or simply that of a relatively healthy person whose developmental stage is at red (think 2-year old behavior, no matter the actual age of the person, whose parent/culture consistently gives in to tantrums). Ken Wilber calls a particularly pervasive form of this "Boomeritis."

"Boomeritis is the general term coined by Ken Wilber to describe post-conventional/worldcentric levels of development infected with pre-conventional/egocentric levels, or simply and most often, green (pluralistic, multi-cultural tolerant worldview) infected with red (egocentric drives based on power). This green/red complex would often involve taking rather low-level, narcissistic, self-centered feelings and impulses and re-labeling them with high-level, post-conventional worldcentric, and even spiritual names—and actually coming to think of its own egocentric and narcissistic feelings as being very high indeed. And thus, the harder you could feel your ego, emote your ego, and express your go with real immediate feelings, the more spiritual you were thought to be." (Wilber, Integral Spirituality 105)

What's more, any of the spiritual paths of liberation (movement along a horizontal path away from identification with any particular manifestations of being toward "pure Being") can result in dis-identifying even further with the shadow and avoiding issues that need to be dealt with. At any structural stage of development, it is possible to have a peak experience and radically "awaken," and when that happens, for the time we are there, all the shadow issues are gone (in fact, all the issues are gone, and in some ways, our very selves seem dissolved into the experience). Even bratty, spoiled children with serious behavior problems are "little angels" when they are fast asleep. But when we come back and inhabit the manifest realm (a.k.a. "the real world" where the bratty, spoiled child wakes up) all the problems are still there. Believing that all the problems have disappeared because we had an experience of blissful at-one-ment is a big mistake. "Spiritual bypassing" is a major travesty and it is common mistake because "developmental structures of consciousness" are confused with temporary "transient states of consciousness." Too often such spiritual by-passing has resulted in the justification on "spiritual" grounds of emotional, physical, sexual and/or spiritual abuse: "Even advanced meditators and spiritual teachers are often haunted by psychopathology, as their shadows chase them to Enlightenment and back, leaving roadkill all along the way." (Wilber, Integral Spirituality, 119)

Remember that state training (meditation, contemplative prayer, and other spiritual practices) increases our ability to dis-identify. Psycho-emotional dissociation can be mistaken for spiritual dis-identification. Pre-rational magical thinking can be mistaken for trans-rational spiritual experience. Every structural stage of development can get broken; unless that brokenness is healed (psychotherapeutically) it will contaminate every aspect of state training/spiritual discipline.

"The finite self is the vehicle of your spiritual manifestation. If the vehicle is screwed up, it doesn’t matter if your realization of emptiness is pristine, it will come through a screwed-up vehicle."

"Paths of liberation are attempting to wake you up from the illusion of "separate self." Psychotherapy is attempting to make a "healthy" separate self. The paths of liberation are attempting to wake you up from the dream. Psychotherapy is attempting to keep the dream from becoming a nightmare."

"Dis-identifying with an owned self is transcendence. Dis-identifying with a disowned self is double dissociation."

"Shadow, simply put, is everything we lie about to ourselves."

+ Ken Wilber

Further references (external websites):
Kelly Sosan Bearer, "Hot on the Shadow's Trail"
Kelly Sosan Bearer, "Practice 3-2-1 Shadow Process"

back to tour >