by Will Craig
Fellow Travelers – Shadow, Trickster
Shadow and Trickster may seem like a couple of guys we don’t necessarily want as traveling companions, but we do. Shadow is our dark side and lives deep in the unconscious vault that stores “behaviors that must not be named.” Trickster draws attention to imbalance and presents alternatives to stagnant perspectives. These are the companions who identify and gain access to the things we want to change.
The trickster is a mischief-maker, joker, and clown. He keeps things in proportion and shows the hero what not to do by doing it himself. The Genie in Disney’s animated film Aladdin is an example of a trickster, shapeshifter, and mentor all rolled into one. His razzle-dazzle, flimflam ways often turn out to be an asset to the hero when he is up against opponents who are stronger and more powerful.
The shadow is the worthy opponent representing the energy of the dark side. Shadows appear as villains and bad guys, monsters and aliens, devils and vampires. Ultimately, they dedicate themselves to the defeat, destruction, or death of the hero. It’s not difficult to name the shadow character in Star Wars. Darth Vader has come to represent the epitome of the archetype. A shadow figure in The Lord of the Rings is Gollum, or Sméagol, as he was originally known.
The shadow archetype is most frequently a negative entity representing things we don’t like and, at the same time, our darkest desires. You may recognize this character as a familiar shadowy side of yourself that struggles over bad habits and enslaving vices. The shadow symbolizes all that we would like to eliminate. By contrast, the shadow can also be affirmative, representing qualities that have been repressed or not acknowledged. Whether positive or negative, the shadow represents everything we repress and deny within ourselves.
The shadow is hard to conquer because it is every bit as strong as the hero and can match the hero’s moves step for step. The shadow sees itself as the hero of its own myth, fighting just as hard for the truth in which it believes. The hero can only be as strong as his most powerful adversary, and the shadow ultimately brings out the best in the hero.
Personal Guide – Character
The guide of character is one to be admired. This personal assistant stands tall and most represents the person you want to become. What you desire is already inside you, so look to your character when times get tough and situations get out of hand.
Character is thoroughly tested in the ordeal. The trickster’s role is to disrupt; the shadow’s role, to destroy. The status quo has no place here, and change is imminent. The mission is to kill and cut off what’s not working in our lives. How we respond to the ordeal determines who we become.
There’s an old saying: “Be careful what you say, it affects how you think; be careful what you think, it determines what you do; be careful what you do, it determines your character; be careful about your character, it determines your destiny.” The life we have lived thus far has generated the person we are and the character we have. Who will you become?
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” ~ Helen Keller
Trial By Ordeal
Throughout the road of trials, you worked through a series of tests and challenges, each new obstacle more intimidating and formidable than the last. You took a leap of faith and pushed past the threshold guardian. You made mistakes and endured misfortunes. You made new allies and battled old enemies. Your spiritual skin is a bit tougher now, and your inner strength is at an all-time high. This is the time and the place to demonstrate your prowess.
The ordeal is the final and most daunting trial—the reason you have journeyed so far.
The ancient judicial practice of trial by ordeal is a primitive but efficient means of determining guilt or innocence. The accused is subjected to distasteful and dangerous tests that are unpleasant and painful, resulting in life or death. Olympian gods and other celestial entities were believed to control the trial and could intervene on behalf of the accused. Surviving the ordeal was the only proof of innocence.
The central conflict, as it is known in the movie business, marks the midpoint in the film. Luke Skywalker and his allies rescue Princess Leia, but Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Agents ambush Neo and his fellow travelers in the Matrix.
Dorothy kills her second witch in a row with the help of a bucket of water.
For us on the inner journey, the ordeal is why we attempted this quest in the first place. The goal is becoming aware of the significant change taking place, facing our shadows and demons, and returning with a renewal of spirit to share in our conscious world. The death of our former identity opens space for a rebirth of the real hero in us.
Done right, life is an ordeal.
Everything that happens on the quest leads to this moment—the ordeal. Everything afterward is about returning home. And, as we all know, there’s no place like home.
After overcoming the ordeal, we’ll be halfway there. There is more exciting action to come. There are those who would steal our reward, take our elixir, or snatch our broomstick. But we’ll leave those adventures for another day. Right now, we must prepare for our greatest challenge as we approach the darkness of the second major threshold.
Approaching the Inmost Cave
In myths and movies, approaching the inmost cave is what happens on the way to the big battle, the major confrontation, or the location of the main action scene. For Luke and friends, it’s when their ship is pulled into the Death Star, where Princess Leia is held prisoner. The life-and-death battle commences shortly thereafter when rescuing the princess.
The crucial destination for the hero in each of us is the inmost place of our being—deep in our unconscious. Some call it the belly of the beast. Others say it is our soul. Bring light into this world and become enlightened by what you discover.
If tempted to ask what’s in there, know that it is only what we bring with us. This is our inner journey. We are in control. We are responsible. The things feared are only what we don’t understand. Seek to understand, and you are halfway home.
When I finally earned my Bachelor’s degree late in life, I began flirting with the idea of going to graduate school. You should have heard my inner demons laughing at that one. The guy who barely made it out of high school and faked his way through college thinks he’s attending a top-ranked graduate school where only the best students go? The message from my demons and doubters was loud and clear: don’t push your luck.
My big battle—my ordeal—would be earning a Master’s degree in education; the biggest challenge I had ever attempted. At that point in my professional career, I was giving a talk to the local chapter of Mensa. The entire auditorium was filled with members who scored higher than the 98th percentile in IQ. I told them I wasn’t sure they had brought in the right guy to be their speaker. I confessed I graduated in the half of the class that made the top half possible.
The approach to this inmost cave was taking the Graduate Record Exam (GRE). This is the test they give you to see if you’re smart enough to even enter the program. As you’ve probably surmised by now, I don’t test well. This was the mother of all tests.
After prepping like crazy and studying for it the best I could, I faced my fears and took the exam. The results letter that came in the mail was bad news and good news. I did not achieve a high enough score to warrant acceptance into the program. However, they would accept me as a provisional student meaning if I had passing grades in the first semester, I could stay.
That’s all they had to say. I aced the first semester and never looked back.
The ordeal is best viewed as the second threshold. Just as we prepared to push past the first threshold guardian to enter the special world of the unconscious, we now prepare for the major conflict of this quest: confronting our inner demons and dragons.
We have gradually adjusted to being on the “inside,” but being this deep into the unknown
is disquieting. We realize what we must do and accept the risks involved—including the one where the dragon we’ve come to slay manages to live to fight another day. We know this dragon. We’ll soon call him by name.
We are approaching the deepest and darkest part of the journey. The commanding leader of the demons is a fire-breathing dragon known as the shadow. The shadow figure feels completely at home on the dark side. Being this close to the controllers of our lives is a bit unnerving, especially since we’re on their turf.
The stakes are high. Fears run rampant. To overcome the greatest of all tests, the hero summons skills, training, and experience garnered thus far on the quest. To affect change requires cutting off the pieces that are holding us back from being the best version of ourselves. Prepare to seize the sword.
We know the shadow more intimately than first imagined. There’s a reason it’s called a shadow, after all. The shadow is our evil twin, the enemy within, the Hyde to our Jekyll. The shadow archetype embodies the thing we don’t like about ourselves, that we deny, that we wish no one to know.
As we make our approach to the inmost cave, it’s time to regroup the entourage, determine an A-1 strategy, and prepare a Plan B second strike (if needed). There’s no reason to look back. No matter how heroes try to escape their fate, sooner or later the exits are closed off and the life-and-death issue faced.
The Japanese believe that it is only by overcoming an ordeal that we can find meaning that touches our soul. The simple truth to the ordeal is this: Heroes must die so that they may be reborn.
Resurrection calls for a sacrifice by the hero. Something must be surrendered, such as an old habit or belief. Metaphorically, we are coming to terms with our flaws. Something must be sacrificed, given back, or released. The impending ordeal is the turning point. Everything is about to change and—regardless of the outcome—the hero will never be the same.
“Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.” ~ Professor Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
Dark Night of the Soul
In the darkness, we now see things not meant for the light of day. Ironically, we now see more clearly the habits that are holding us back, the beliefs that are not serving us, and the image caused by constant negative self-talk.
In most action-adventures, the ordeal is a dangerous physical test that the hero undergoes while facing a foe. As far as the inner journey is concerned, our greatest ordeal is facing our fears.
The dark night of the soul is a term that refers to a disintegration of a perceived meaning of life. It is the transition where we lose the cultural and conditioned meanings we have built up over a lifetime, and it triggers a major reset. The time when our internal system is rebooting (in all probability, much longer than one night) is scary because life no longer has meaning. Depression sets in for no apparent reason. We’d snap out of it if we could, but we just can’t put our finger on the source. This is because we are not experiencing a clinical depression caused by external forces. The spiritual depression from which we suffer comes from within.
The pain we feel is real. If your experience is similar to mine, the pain has been real for quite some time. The only way out of this pain—the only way out of the darkness—is going through it. Sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it?
The logical thing to do is back away. The pain, however, only grows larger the more we ignore it or try to suppress it.
For the hero, this is the confrontation with our shadow selves. The biggest casualty is likely to be the death of the ego—no small feat. Regardless of the outcome, life changes forever.
Issues and problems we feel are important and significant no longer seem to matter. Our accomplishments and successes, the quantity and quality of our possessions, the number of friends and contacts we’ve accumulated on social media. Meaningless. Inconsequential. Trivial.
Everything we hold dear, especially our ego, is endangered. It will kill us to go through with this, and it should. We’re cutting off a major piece of our identity that has dominated our existence for decades. Our fear is that we won’t be able to live without it. We are correct.
Only through a symbolic death can we experience a metaphorical resurrection that empowers us to fulfill our destiny. Rest assured, my hero—things will lighten up but not before the onset of total darkness.
If we’re looking for the culprits responsible for this, we don’t have to look far. The shadow and trickster have been working overtime to bring us to this inmost cave. No, it doesn’t feel good, but these fellow travelers are doing this for our own good. Consider it an intervention. Regard them as adversaries if you want to. We have permission to treat them as hostile if it makes us feel better. Our personal enlightenment and spiritual growth are on the line.
This duo is a double whammy. Shadow shows us who we’d rather not be, and Trickster shows us what not to do by doing it. “Our shadow controls how much success we’re entitled to create or how much failure we’re doomed to experience,” says author and coach Debbie Ford. “The shadow is an oracle that predicts all of our behaviors, driving the way we treat those around us—and how we treat ourselves.”
Shadows are known to be seductive, luring the hero into danger. When the hero needs to perform, it is the shadow that infuses crippling doubts at the critical moment. When crucial steps need to be taken but fear and hesitancy rule the day, those footprints belong to the shadow.
The trickster’s role is to disrupt. That’s going to look a lot like failure at this point of the journey. The energy of the trickster is that of a contrarian. He is cunning and shrewd while seeming disheveled and irresponsible. Tricksters are adroit at cutting big egos down to size and drawing attention to imbalance and stagnation. They love their role and perform it with a heightened sense of amusement, frivolity, or at the very least, a silly look on their face. The Lakota legends are especially rich in trickster myths like those of Coyote and Iktomi (the latter also being a shapeshifter).
In Hawaiian mythology, the trickster is Māui, an ancient chief said to have created the group of Polynesian islands Americans now call their 50th state. He did this by tricking his brothers while fishing. Māui pretends to have landed a “big one” by catching his hook on the ocean floor. While his brothers try to pull the fish to the surface, they don’t notice the islands rising behind them. It’s the stuff movies are made of as our friends at Disney so adeptly demonstrate in their 2016 animated film, Moana. Māui (voice of Dwayne Johnson) reluctantly joins Moana (Auli’I Cravalho) on her mission to become a wayfinder, like her ancestors who sailed 3,000 years before her.
Tricksters are good at making us laugh at ourselves by altering the status quo, and in the process, necessitating much-needed change.
Shadow Beliefs
We define our self-worth and decide our value within society based on a belief system we’ve built over the years. We may believe we’re a great problem-solver, or that we have a great smile and winning personality, or that we’re a good team leader or the life of the party. We form an identity that allows us to stand out and be significant. It can even be something as simple as being a good listener or someone who’s always punctual. Whatever two or three traits with which we identify most become the fundamental building blocks of our identity.
Our definitions, however, are not synonymous with self-worth and value. The source of the traits we identify with most (e.g., dependable, trustworthy, loving) derives from the antithesis of what we profess to be.
The very opposite of what we identify within ourselves is born from an event in our childhood. For example, “I can’t trust anyone. I’m not worthy of love.”
The reason experiences in our childhood leave such an indelible mark on our soul is because, at such a young age, we’re not able to process events like we do when we’re older. As children, we make them mean something about us. Then, since it’s all about us, we start drawing conclusions about what that makes us.
“I’m not good enough. If only I were special. Something’s wrong with me. I’m such an outsider. I don’t deserve to be loved. I’m not worthy.” The shadow works in tandem with the ego, building a mountain of doubt about the strength of the building blocks you’ve been using to construct your character.
While we might feel like we’re winning this battle, the unseen impact of this manipulation is the significant shift of focus—from building a life of significance and value to protecting an identity we’re not convinced is real. Instead of enlightening and empowering us, our revised beliefs fall into the shadows, weakening our gifts and talents. We go from kicking ass on offense to covering our ass playing defense.
Shadow beliefs are the stronghold of the opposition. They are the fire-breathing dragons we must slay. They command and control our lives from behind the firewall of our unconscious mind. Lacking direct access, we are limited in our ability to consciously change what’s not working for us. From the safety of the unconscious mind, the shadow feeds our subconscious mind disinformation and propaganda designed to alter our source code at the core level.
Unconscious beliefs and expectations influence our relationships. How we treat others—and more importantly, how we treat ourselves—determines our quality of life. This, in turn, drives subsequent behaviors. It becomes routine to enter the reality distortion field convincing ourselves we’re much better off than we are—or that we’re much worse off than is true.
