The Shadow
Where there are archetypes there is also shadow. Your shadow is the part of your unconscious where you put all of the energies, emotions, thoughts, feelings and behaviours that for one reason or another were not acceptable when you were a child. Not acceptable, that is, either to you or to the people around you.
Robert Bly described how a child is born into the world with a 360 degree personality – an all-round, complete, whole personality. As Alice Miller put it, this is the child’s gift to the world: he arrives in the world “trailing clouds of glory”. Fortunate indeed is the child who discovers a world which welcomes his wholeness and glory, the gift of himself just as he is.
Many, perhaps most, children do not. Instead they soon discover their parents do not want the gift they have to offer, at least not in the form on offer. Their parents wanted something different. A boy rather than a girl, or a girl rather than a boy. A quiet baby or a compliant child. A “good” boy or a “feisty” girl. An amenable child, not a defiant, angry one. A placid child, not a needy, demanding one.
And so a child soon learns which parts of himself need to be suppressed for maximum love to be bestowed upon him; and the parts which are not wanted by the world or the people in it usually get shoved forcibly into the child’s unconscious, into what Robert Bly aptly termed the “Shadow Bag”.
This attempt to suppress those parts of his energy which are not acceptable to the all-powerful adults, siblings, or peers in his world can massively impact every aspect of a child’s later life. So much so that one day he (or she) may well arrive at the door of a counsellor or psychotherapist’s consulting room. He may be looking for help as he tries to find the parts of himself that he senses are missing, or he may be wondering why he constantly experiences unhelpful and repetitive patterns in his life.
However, he’d likely find his true self much more easily by seeking a counsellor or therapist experienced in working with the shadow; preferably one who understands how and why things are put into shadow in the first place, and how to get them out again. Only Magicians with the right skills will easily get all the repressed material out of shadow and integrated back where it belongs, in its owner’s consciousness. The resources section of this book offers suggestions about where you can find men and women who are experienced in this kind of “archetypal” counselling, coaching and therapy, and who are adept in working with shadow energies.
Later in the book we’ll take apart the shadow and look at it from the inside out. For the moment it’s convenient to simply think of it as made up of the parts of yourself you attempted to hide, repress and deny as a child. And although the word shadow conjures up darkness, let’s not forget that many positive energies are repressed as well.
To take a simple example, children often repress their power, their magnificence, and their glory. These are all qualities that make them stand out and shine in the world – or at least, qualities that could make them stand out and shine in the world if they were supported emotionally in their growth through life.
The problem is that our culture can be very hostile to Sovereign energy, particularly in children. The unthinking small-mindedness of parents, other adults, siblings, teachers and friends doesn’t necessarily encourage children to show themselves in all their glory. So into the shadow bag goes a child’s “golden” qualities as well as his “darker” energies (all of which are a natural part of being human, remember).
There’s a big problem here. What you put into shadow doesn’t lose its energy – far from it. Imagine a child who puts his anger into shadow because his parents don’t like that particular energy in their little boy. Think of a child who suppresses his tears and pain because Dad doesn’t like his little boy crying; in fact Dad thinks it shows the boy is a sissy, and somehow the boy knows that, even though Dad doesn’t explicitly say it. The message always gets through somehow.
And so to please his all-powerful parents, on whom the child knows his survival depends, the child may well repress his anger, sadness and weakness – or any other quality his parents don’t accept or approve of.
But putting these feelings and behaviours out of sight and out of mind into the unconscious mind, into the shadow bag, doesn’t take their energy away: in fact their energy can intensify. They are a part of who the child is and they continue to be energetically supported by his psyche.
Over time this energy may grow to a level where it can’t be contained any longer by unconscious repression. Then it may emerge unexpectedly and uncontrollably in a distorted form. This is almost always unhelpful or even downright destructive to the child or the adult man whom the child has become.
These shadow energies can make us behave in ways that cause difficulties in our relationships. Shadow energies make us do things which cause embarrassment and shame. They often lead to low self-esteem and self-criticism. They may manifest as strong emotions: anxiety, guilt, depression, shame, rage, jealousy, sadness, and so on. They are irrational. They make us say things we regret and which destroy harmony and goodness in our relationships. We do not understand what comes out of our shadow, and no matter how much we try to control it, nothing ever seems to change.
The point about shadow energies is that they’re out of our awareness (it’s dark in that shadow bag!) and when they emerge into the light they often do so unexpectedly and unhelpfully. They get in the way of us expressing who we are, getting what we want, telling others what we expect and desire, and expressing our needs. To put it another way, shadow energies stop us being who we truly are.
Our shadow can prevent us from getting into relationships or ruin existing relationships. It can keep us lost in a cycle of addiction, unable to stop self-defeating behaviours. Shadow makes people compulsively behave in ways which are harmful to them and seek out things which are destructive to them, and it all happens in a way they can’t understand and which makes no rational sense.
In fact your shadow lies behind every dysfunctional, unhelpful, unexpected and unwanted thought, feeling and behaviour you’ve ever brought into the world.
And while many of those things don’t matter, some of them do, because they get in the way of you living the life you want to be living. So the question naturally arises, “What can I do about all this?”
The answer is to take the energy out of your unconscious and make it conscious; to open up to whatever you’ve hidden away, out of sight if not out of mind. Then you can transform it into something more useful and helpful that serves you better in your life today.
And yes, of course that’s the object of all therapy, but in my experience traditional psychotherapy and counselling can be a very slow process. In fact it may not produce any significant changes in a person’s behaviour at all, even when it leads to greater insight and understanding.
Another approach uses some powerful techniques which bring the energy in your shadow into your conscious awareness. It’s an approach that takes the parts of yourself you stuffed away as a child out of your shadow and brings them back into the light. And it honours them, heals or transforms them if necessary, makes them into a positive and helpful part of you, and finally integrates them into the essence of who you are today.
Other names for this approach include “healing the shadow”, “working with the shadow”, “emotional process work” and simply “shadow work”. Whatever you call it, this is all about getting your sabotaging, holding-back, limiting and generally now unhelpful parts out of shadow and giving you control over them so you can access their energy in a helpful form. In short, these techniques can make your shadow energy available to you in a healthy, emotionally mature way to use in your life today. And if that sounds exciting, so it should!
You’ll discover how to step into your power. You’ll become more emotionally mature, stronger, more independent, more balanced, and better able to give and receive love.
You’ll be better able to set healthy boundaries and you’ll become a stronger and more powerful leader in your life
. You’ll develop the strength and will to get things done more effectively, think more clearly, and stop making harsh judgements about yourself and others.
You’ll develop a much easier relationship with love so you can give and receive genuine love freely. In fact just about every other problem that you have in your interactions with other human beings will become more and more manageable and simply melt away over time.
Perhaps you think that sounds too good to be true. But just for a moment imagine how your life might look right now if you’d enjoyed an ideal childhood in which your needs were fully met. A childhood throughout which you were loved and supported unconditionally and where you were allowed to express your personality exactly as you wished. A childhood in which you could grow to embrace all your qualities and values and learn how to manage all the emotional energies within your personality.
Imagine what your life would now be like if you’d had the opportunity to fully access every part of your psyche rather than having to use your energy in repressing parts of yourself that were unwanted or unsafe to express for some reason in your childhood. Do you think that might have made a difference to your life? Yes? You are absolutely right; your life would most likely have been very different. Now you can bring those changes to life anyway. Through emotional process work and healing your shadow you can become the person you were always meant to be, no matter what stage of life you have reached. More of that later. For now, let us turn our attention to the archetypes.
Chapter 2
The Warrior Archetype
The Warrior archetype is at the core of every man’s being. For many thousands of years our survival as a species has depended on the Warrior archetype. The Warrior archetype gave us the energy to hunt, build homes, battle against hostile tribes, and find ways of surviving in a dangerous world. And because of its power over life and death the Warrior archetype is deep within our genes to this day – it is an essential and unavoidable part of the human male.
When we repress the warrior energy within us we also repress a vital part of our masculinity, and then we can never embody the fullest expression of who we really are. Maybe we even sacrifice some aspects of our soul. Yet at the same time the idea of warrior energy has received a bad rap. Women in particular seem to be uncomfortable with this aspect of the male psyche – and who can blame them?
Look around the world today or consider any time in our history and you will see ample evidence of warfare, slaughter and mutual destruction in ever more sophisticated and monstrous forms.
No wonder this uncontrolled aggression, this uncontrolled warrior energy, has been demonized. Yet demonizing our warrior energy and trying to suppress it, even eliminate it from our society, doesn’t seem to have worked too well. Nowadays there seems to be more aggression and more destruction than ever before in the history of humanity, perhaps even extending to the destruction of the planet on which we live.
The problem is that when archetypal warrior energy is repressed rather than embraced, this energy becomes a potent force in our shadow and then it will inevitably erupt from time to time in emotional and physical violence. Alternatively it may be turned inwards and eventually reappear in acts of self-abuse, self-harm or depression.
But such destruction originating in the Warrior archetype is a corrupted and uncontrolled form of this energy. It is not the mature expression of the Warrior which is so necessary for our well-being and survival.
Throughout human history almost every society has had initiation rituals for teenage boys on the brink of manhood. These rituals have put those boys through challenging rites of passage which take them over the threshold of adolescence and step them clearly and undeniably on the road to becoming mature men, men who have total control over their Warrior.
The purpose of these rites of passage has always been very clear: they demonstrate to the arrogant, testosterone-fuelled teenage boy that he is smaller and less powerful than the world around him. He is not, in fact, master of all he surveys. He is not the powerful, all-conquering, all-knowing being he thinks he is.
These rites of passage were, in part, a lesson designed to teach boys how to control their warrior energy and live with respect for their environment and the men and women within that environment.
If you look at the world today I believe you can clearly see that something needs to be transformed within this part of the male psyche. In many ways the male warrior energy we see in the world is destructive, even devastating. But if the Warrior is a universal archetype present within our genetic code then we need to find a way of living with it, not demonizing it. A way of transforming it, not repressing it. We cannot ignore warrior energy simply because it is not to our refined, modern day tastes and sensibilities.
To do this we need to first find how it can serve us and then to discover how to embrace the positive qualities of our Warrior so it can constructively help us in our life and work. This will help to save the human race from the destructive qualities of the Hero archetype (the immature form of the Warrior) and the shadows of the Warrior archetype.
The Warrior In His Fullness
With that in mind, let’s look at the powerful qualities of the mature Warrior in his fullness.
Powerful Male Energy
Think of a Warrior’s qualities and you might think of aggression. But like the word “Warrior” the word “aggression” has a bad rap. It’s a word which evokes thoughts of conflict and violence, of invading someone else’s territory. Aggression implies a lack of respect for boundaries and is often seen, perhaps rightly, as a force disruptive to harmony rather than a constructive route to peaceful co-existence.
Those men who have experienced the “red mist” or “bloodlust” will understand how men in combat situations or dangerous situations can be overtaken by a force which seems to go beyond themselves. This is a rage for killing which may be a potential energy within all men.
The ancient civilizations knew this, which is why they had initiation rituals and rites of passage for young men. Nowadays we fear it, with good reason. We may pretend it is not within us, yet in doing so we cut ourselves off a fundamental part of who we truly are as men.
If we take a step back from this point of view and look at aggression in a different way, we can see it has many valuable and positive qualities. And when we see that, we can start to transform our view of the Warrior archetype by renaming this energy.
So let us think of the energy of the Warrior as simply masculine energy – the kind of energy that gets things done in the world. Then masculine energy, the energy of taking action in the world, becomes the purest and most basic form of the energy we call assertiveness, anger or aggression.
When you see the energy of the Warrior in this light it simply becomes an energizing force that gets us out into the world and motivates us to live fully. It moves us from a position of passivity and defensiveness to one of action and achievement. To put it bluntly, it gets us out of bed in the morning.
And then this energy clearly becomes one of our greatest allies. Truth is, the energetic force of the Warrior archetype with its power to move out into the world and change things, to get things done, is a significant element in your ability to get what you want in life.
Yet if warrior energy is the energy of going out into the world and getting things done, then the question arises: how do you know what level of warrior energy is appropriate in any particular set of circumstances?
For even when your Sovereign has given orders to your Warrior to go out and get things done (as he should be doing), there is still a judgement to be made about the degree of force that is appropriate. This is where the Warrior’s quality of discernment comes into play.
Discernment
A Warrior knows what he wants and he knows how to get it done. As he acts he draws authority for his actions from the instructions of his Sovereign. He heeds the wisdom of the Magician archetype for advice on how to achieve his objectives. Yet in his own right your Warrior can also be a
master tactician and a cunning strategist.
So the Warrior is no dumb servant of the Sovereign. Ideally he serves your Sovereign because he believes in the rightness and justice of the King’s cause.
This is a Warrior tradition: loyalty to a just cause. Samurai Warriors, often held up a model of Warrior energy, would only serve their Lord for as long as they believed his cause was just and right. When their Lord became corrupt or pursued ignoble aims, true Samurai Warriors would transfer their loyalty to a new Lord – one they could honourably serve in the pursuit of another noble cause.
So a Warrior’s discernment is partly about judging whether the cause for which he is fighting is just and right and proper; he might consider whether it benefits the Kingdom and the subjects of the realm. He also needs to bring discernment about the way in which his fight should be taken into the world. To use a military analogy, an army commander might find that a frontal assault is going to cost too many lives or take too much time and too many resources; and so he might decide to adopt guerrilla tactics or guerrilla warfare.
Whatever strategy the Warrior adopts he will certainly know the right moment at which to leap into battle. This discernment tends to be absent in the adolescent boy and young man. Their Warrior energy is invested in the archetype of the Hero.
We’ll look at this in more detail in a moment, but essentially the Hero archetype is an undeveloped form of the Warrior archetype in which a boy – or indeed a man still in its grip – does not know his limitations and somehow still believes he has the power to change (or even save) the world single-handed.
By contrast, a mature Warrior has clarity and discernment which he brings to the challenges he’s facing. For him, being a Warrior isn’t just a physical fight; it’s an emotional and mental campaign as well. A mature Warrior needs a mind which is as sharp as his sword, for he must think clearly under pressure. He must assess each situation and take action in the way which is most likely to lead to victory.
Warrior, Magician, Lover, King Page 2
