by Connie Zweig
In my twenties, I took a job as a clinical director in the New York City prisons and set up therapeutic community programs for the prisoners. Deep in the underworld belly of the prison, I felt afraid and disillusioned and faced a crisis of confidence: I did not know enough about myself to be able to heal others. Acknowledging that I moved through life in an unconscious, mechanical fashion, I reasoned that perhaps I was a good tadpole doctor—but I knew nothing of becoming a frog. Transformation eluded me.
At age twenty-five, I had my second dramatic wake-up call: My young wife had an affair. With this betrayal, my illusions shattered and my feelings came alive as my heart broke open, exploding in tears of grief and overwhelming rage. The world as I knew it dissolved around me. I had been thrown out of the grail castle and into the emotional streets. I had previously believed in my ability to read people, to see others as they were. But now, because I had remained unaware that my most intimate companion had been living a lie, I could no longer trust that my mind provided me with valid impressions. I was so confused that I had no idea what to believe; I admitted, silently, that I needed another way of knowing. And I realized that my grail was not to be found in a romantic projection.
I also recognized that, although my feelings had awakened through the breakup, I still lived in my head. As a result, my body was asleep. Slowly, I began to awaken to my senses through meditation and tai chi chuan and later introduced these practices into the New York City prison system.
Still overcome with the sorrow of losing my marriage and with it my identity as a man, I hungrily pursued my own healing in Jungian analysis. For the first time, I uncovered the layers of my own vulnerability, hurt, and anger in relation to my mother and other women. I faced my wounded masculine generativity as it related to self-acceptance, sexuality, and creativity. During this time I came to understand the suffering figure of the Fisher King, who appears in the grail myth as the king who presides over the grail but cannot be healed by it. For him, the healing miracle is just at hand but out of reach. An unhealing wound on his thigh leaves him cold and dry, so his kingdom, like my experience of life, lies arid. He is too ill to live but unable to die, which describes precisely how I felt upon the breakdown of my marriage.
In analysis, my curiosity was awakened. My values suspended, I began to explore humanistic and transpersonal psychologies, as well as Eastern philosophies. One day, I decided to take a psychedelic: Lying on the grass, the sun shining on my face and a quiet rain falling on my body as a spider walked across my chest, I experienced deep within my soul a unity with all of nature. I spoke aloud: The purpose of my life is to achieve this state of unity without drugs.
With this mystical experience I also found my relation to young Parsifal, whose ascent to spirit contrasts with the Fisher King’s descent to soul. I began to recognize and embrace these two characters within my own soul. Parsifal is an image of the puer eternus, or eternal youth, who soars to the heights by cutting off memories of pain and limitation via meditation and altered states. In this way, he avoids his feelings of shame and his needs for intimacy and loses his masculine standpoint. The Fisher King is an image of the senex, or rigid old man, who falls into the depths, bearing the pain of loss, sorrow, inadequacy and personal limitation, but remains cut off from his own larger potential.
Like the Fisher King, who gained relief only by fishing in deep waters, I, too, was relieved only by reaching into the depths of the unconscious for meaning. In analysis, I came alive, as if waking up from a deep sleep. I discovered a personal relationship to the archetypes, mythology, and fairy tales. I began to write poetry and play with clay. My curiosity burst forth and I began to ask my own questions, eventually discovering my relation to a larger story. As I identified less with the conventions of the outer world, I set aside my parents’ instructions and turned within for an inner source of guidance.
My new intense aliveness awakened a well-buried fear of life itself. I was afraid of the pain of remaining a tadpole, but even more scared of becoming a frog. I admitted that I needed a teacher, a guide for the journey of transformation that had begun. Like Parsifal, who meets a hermit who provides him with instructions for finding the grail castle, I met Oscar Ichazo, founder of a mystical school known as Arica, who offered similar instructions. Under his guidance, following a path clearly marked, I learned how to reexperience the ecstatic states that I had stumbled onto earlier. Asking the right question—Whom does the grail serve?—I entered the grail kingdom for the third time. And by acknowledging my own woundedness, I was prepared to receive the healing. I learned that the grail is as near as my own Self, whose voice can be heard at any time.
Continuing to awaken my body through Chinese martial arts, I grounded the meditation practices. My heart opened and I discovered love again, more prepared for the struggles on the path of conscious relationship. Then one day I was put to the test: While I was camping in the wilderness with my second wife and young son, a huge black bear appeared at our camp. Like Parsifal battling a pagan knight, I fended off the hungry animal to protect my family. But just as Parsifal discovered that the knight was his own dark brother, whom he then embraced, I discovered that the bear was alive in my own wild instincts, which I had reclaimed from the shadow.
With this initiation, I felt ready for the return. Armed with the maps of consciousness from the Arica training, I could see how spirituality completed Western psychology as a natural part of adult development. My quest to integrate Eastern philosophy and altered states of consciousness with Western models of psychological development had led me to a new land. I re-enrolled in a doctoral program in psychology and completed the degree that I had begun twenty years earlier. With the self-knowledge I had gained from a rich, adventure-filled life experience, I felt ready to participate in the larger society, develop my craft, and dedicate myself to serve humanity as a clinical psychologist who had personally experienced the benefits of both psychological analysis and spiritual practice.
As a provider for my wife and son, I underwent another initiation into masculinity: healing the senex-puer split at a deeper level. At the end of the grail myth, when Parsifal hears news of the Fisher King’s death, he returns to the castle and is crowned king. He marries and reigns in peace for many years. The story teaches that rulership of the grail kingdom passes to the person who, after many trials, has gained both self-knowledge and compassion. Similarly, when a man has done shadow-work and the old king or father complex dies within him, he can become a conscious king, uniting the puer and senex energies on the inside.
As I left behind the world of my father and found my own way, doing spiritual work and repairing psychological wounds, I also left behind the puer’s flight and began to experience a kind of masculinity that is large enough to contain the wisdom of spirit, the depth of soul, an empathic relatedness to women, the worldly responsibilities of work, and the blessings and demands of fatherhood. As a husband and father, I continue to undergo daily challenges to my masculinity. In my gratitude, the land is bountiful again.
CHAPTER 1
ME AND MY SHADOW
One need not be a chamber to be haunted—
One need not be a house.
The brain has corridors—surpassing
material place.
Far safer, of a midnight meeting
external ghost,
than its interior confronting—
that cooler host.
Far safer, through an abbey gallop
the stones a’ chase—
than unarmed, ones self encounter
in lonesome place.
Ourself behind ourself concealed—
should startle most.
Assassin hid in our apartment
be horror’s least.
The body borrows a revolver—
he bolts the door
o’ erlooking a superior spectre—
or more.
—EMILY DICKINSON
One hundred and fifty years before Carl Jung wrot
e about the shadow, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote a vast work on Faust and Mephistopheles, the story of one man meeting his devil, which has rung dark chords through the halls of Western civilization. Henrich Faust is a scholarly man who thirsts in the desert of an over-intellectualized life. Dissatisfied with the knowledge he has gained, he longs for meaning. Despondent in his isolation, he longs for an end to his feelings of estrangement and alienation. Disillusioned and alone, he yearns for faith in something greater than himself.
In a moment of desperation, Faust turns to magic to gain meaning and power. When the specter of a black poodle appears, he falls under its spell and makes a blood pact with the devil: He trades his soul for youth and pleasure, agreeing to become the devil’s servant after death if Mephisto will be his servant during life. In this way, Faust becomes possessed by his shadow, surrendering his will in a quest for gratification.
As the story unfolds, Faust appears to have lost all sense of moral responsibility. But in his confusion he slowly begins to wrestle with the two aspects of his human nature: spirituality and sensuality, conscience and desire, ego and shadow. Following a series of trials and misdeeds, Mephisto’s influence on Faust’s inner life begins to wane, and a psychological awakening takes place within the protagonist as he faces the split between the divine and the diabolical in his own soul. As Jung puts it, “Faust is face to face with Mephistopheles and can no longer say, ‘So that was the essence of the brute!’ He must confess instead: ‘That was my other side, my alter ego, my all too palpable shadow, which can no longer be denied.’ ”
Like his more contemporary brothers, Frankenstein, Mr. Hyde, Darth Vader, and the Terminator, Mephistopheles lures Faust with promises of power and conquest and the hope of usurping the dominion of god. He is the incarnation of Faust’s desires for power, sex, and money; he offers the end of greed, envy, and jealousy with the glowing fantasy that Faust can have it all.
Like Faust, each of us longs for meaning and an experience that connects us to something larger than ourselves. Like him, each of us yearns for an end to loneliness. And like him, each of us has sold out to a devil, sacrificing our complexity and authenticity in an effort to feel safe, earn money, or win love.
Contemporary Faustian bargains take many forms: We trade off our tender feelings of intimacy for a marriage of convenience. We trade off a rich family life for success and influence in the marketplace. We trade off peace of mind for persona, building up a large debt to attain the symbols of external status. We trade off authentic relationships for hot anonymous sex, or we trade off sex for the appearance of purity. We trade off autonomy for financial dependency, remaining childlike under a family system or a welfare system. Or, we trade off the lifelong struggles of soul-searching for the temporary pleasures of an addiction.
Of course, we make these pacts unconsciously, without knowing the sacrifice involved: the loss of vulnerability, intimacy, authenticity, imagination, and soul. But, at some point, perhaps when detecting a lie we have told ourselves or facing a lost dream at midlife, we wake up to the cost of the bargain. Previously, we believed that by paying the devil its due we could avoid suffering; we would not have to acknowledge our own darkness. Then, like Faust, we realize that we have committed the ultimate betrayal: We have betrayed ourselves. At moments like these, when we meet our own inner Mephisto, the shadow seems large and overpowering. From the ego’s point of view, it is life-threatening: When the shadow takes over, the ego is pushed into the backseat and a forbidden, even repulsive part of us moves forward and appears to take the steering wheel.
In these crucial moments, we see that forces much larger than ourselves shape the events of our lives. And that which was clear becomes ambiguous; that which was Other becomes our own. Jung wrote of this phenomenon in this way:
The meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one’s own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is. For what comes after the door is, surprisingly enough, a boundless expanse full of unprecedented uncertainty, with apparently no inside and no outside, no above and no below, no here and no there, no mine and no thine, no good and no bad. It is the world of water … where I am indivisibly this and that; where I experience the other in myself and the other-than-myself experiences me.
This chapter introduces the internal figures of the shadow in each of us. In it we will examine how they develop naturally and inevitably within us and how they appear to sabotage us later in our lives. We will trace their roots in personal psychology and in culture, as we invite you to do when you engage in shadow-work.
For an extended discussion of how to do shadow-work, see “A Shadow-Work Handbook.” It includes a centering practice that can help you to step back and regain your balance when you are confronted by a shadow character, several ways to identify the appearance of shadow characters, and a suggestion for how to realign with the voice of the Self, which permits the shadow character to recede from the seat of power. In the next chapter, we explore in greater detail the roots of shadow-making in the family. And in the following chapters we move from the inner world to the social world, emphasizing the appearance of shadow in relationships and the promises of romancing it.
MEETING THE SHADOW: ABUSERS, ABANDONERS, ADDICTS, CRITICS, THIEVES
Typically, the meeting with the shadow occurs in small ways quite often, even several times a day. When we feel humiliated by an unacceptable aspect of ourselves—the addict, the critic, the thief, the miser—we meet an interior saboteur, a shadow quality. When we walk into a party and feel an immediate dislike of a stranger (“He’s so stupid,” “She’s so fat,” “He’s so arrogant,” “She’s so seductive”), we meet a projected shadow quality. At these times we may feel as if our conscious intentions are crossed by unknown, unconscious opponents.
Because by definition the shadow is unconscious, we cannot gaze at it directly. Because it is hidden, we need to learn to seek it. And to do so, we need to know where to look:
• The shadow hides in our secret shames. To uncover the feeling of shame is to discover an arrow pointing straight toward shadow material, toward sexual taboos, bodily defects, emotional regrets—perhaps toward that which we would not dare to do but would secretly love to do. When shameful feelings are tucked away from those we love or even from ourselves, the shadow remains in the dark, out of sight of loving eyes and therefore unavailable for healing. What private thoughts or feelings most embarrass you? What trait do you wish to be rid of? In what ways do you feel unacceptable, dirty, or shamefully different?
• The shadow disguises itself in our projections, when we react intensely to a trait in others that we fail to see in ourselves. If we feel disgusted (“Gee, she turns my stomach!”), incredulous (“I can’t believe he would actually do that!”), or embarrassed (“That makes me really uncomfortable”) by another’s trait or behavior, and our response is exaggerated, then we may be seeing an aspect of our own shadow indirectly, out there where it’s safer to observe it. We project by attributing this quality to the other person in an unconscious effort to banish it from ourselves. Whom do you hate or judge the most? What group of people most repulses or terrifies you? What is it that you cannot stand in a friend or family member?
• The shadow lurks in our addictions. When we are in the grasp of compulsive behaviors, we aim, even unknowingly, to deaden shadowy feelings and to fill an invisible emptiness. Whether through alcohol, drugs, sex, work, or food, we disguise our deeper needs by creating the symptom of addiction and becoming deaf to the call of the Self. What do you crave most deeply? What desires do you attempt to control or limit when you succumb to the addiction?
• The shadow blurts out in slips of the tongue. When, like the archetypal Fool, we make embarrassing misstatements, the shadow slides past the gates of consciousness momentarily and reveals unintentional feelings or thoughts, such as sexual innuendo, sa
rcasm, or cruelty. Caught with our masks down, we smile in embarrassment. For instance, in describing a gift of cuff links from a father-in-law, which previously had belonged to the donor’s own father, a client said, “I just can’t believe he gave me those handcuffs.” Unknowingly, the client revealed that he felt trapped too quickly in this man’s line of descent and resented such a presumption of intimacy. What do you secretly wish you could say but believe that you cannot?
• The shadow erupts in humor, especially cruel jokes at another’s expense and slapstick antics. We howl at off-color remarks and laugh at the clumsiness of others, then shake our heads in wonder at our own responses, as if taken over momentarily by a surprisingly cold or cruel inner character. When have you been surprised or ashamed by your reaction to another’s demise?
• The shadow wears the camouflage of physical symptoms. We may lie, but the body does not. We may forget an abuse, but the body does not. Like shock absorbers, our bodies absorb the wear and tear of emotional experience. We may defend against it, but our bodies take the heat. And slowly, over years, the patterns of stress and trauma accumulate. Inevitably, if we do not become conscious of the shadows lodged in our muscles and cells, they begin to tell their tales. What is your body trying to say? If your cells could speak, what secrets would they reveal? What betrayals?
• The shadow rears its head at midlife. During that time, we do not need to go in search of the shadow; it comes to find us. Whereas the tasks of the first half of life typically involve creating stability in love and work, the tasks of the second half involve creating consciousness of that which has been neglected and ignored. Thus a midlife crisis often feels like the notorious dark night of the soul. Frequently, the result may mean instability in love and work, the feeling of running out of gas, the urge to flee for the unlived life. We suggest that the first half of life is for developing the shadow, while the second half is for romancing the shadow. What god or goddess is summoning you to a new life? In what ways do you yearn for a change? Where is the Trickster turning your established values and customary habits upside down? When you are eighty years old, what will you regret having done or not done?
