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A Painter's Quest Art as a Way to Revelation Peter Rogers  |
SHADOW SIDE OF REALITY To live life fully, we must gather all sides of ourself--masculine and feminine, light and dark, divine and human, certain and uncertain--and plunge into the cavern of possibility. Any less will leave us dry and incomplete. As Socrates said, "An unexamined life is not worth living." Light is defined by shadow. Shadow is created by light. Both coexist and play off of each other, each beautiful in their own way. Culturally we regard the light as pristine, illuminating, hopeful, awe-inspiring and ultimately good. While we are suspicious of darkness, imagining it as uncontrollable, forbidding, dangerous, and perhaps evil. In our holographic universe--where we are a part of everything and everything is a part of us--the laws of nature apply to the human personality. We are both light and dark. As small children we learn when our mother and father say, “Don’t touch that. Be that. Think that. Imagine that.” Early on, we repress and split-off those aspects of ourselves which are disapproved by family, society, religion and government. In order to gain approval and love, we carefully position our culturally sanctioned pretense. Our one-sided mask looks good. We belong. Feeling shame for our unacceptable curiosities and hungers, we push them into the darkness of our unconscious mind. It takes a lot of psychic energy to keep the shadow locked up. “Up jumped the Devil,” my grandmother use to say every time my child-self rebelled against clean clothes and ladylike manners. I got a big whipping for stealing her Viceroy Cigarettes, and hiding behind the garage, where I taught my two year old sister to smoke and playlike movie stars. This same principle of futile repression sends a statistically astounding seventy-five percent of United States’ males to porn sites. That shadowy door which holds our passions will not stay shut. We try. A repressed culture creates acceptable outlets to satisfy our raw nature. Worship of rock and movie star icons, who we vicariously live through, is one example. How many millions did People Magazine pay for the first photo of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's baby? It's ludicrous. Riding the energy that stars emanate, we either judge them as wrong, or long to be so wild and free. In either case, we live our passion through someone else's experience and not our own. Why are violent movies, television and video games so popular? We get to vent our own rageful impulses which are fed each day by televised injustice worlds away, or right under our noses in Washington, D.C. To judge with conviction, we deny we are capable of every immoral act, and react in the extreme like bloggers on crack. What we do not acknowledge and control, controls us. The Age of Reason birthed by Aristotle, and the world in which we still live, creates a most untenable duality and split in the human psyche: Culturally we value thinking (which we label masculine), as superior to feeling (which we call feminine), and spirituality (Father God), as superior to the body (Mother God). What a box. Bound on all sides by either/or. By far the most damaging adaptation in a polarized society is projection and the scapegoating which results. Gays are the new blacks, hispanics are the new gays. It's a given that society must operate from moral values and standards, or we would plunge into chaos, but Witch Hunts belong in the Dark Ages. What ever happened to "Live and let live" and "Love thy neighbor as you love yourself?" How do we lead our bad sisters and brothers out of the closet and civilize them? We must be creative. Fortunately, human beings are technologically advanced, and capable of digging in dark places to extract the gold. There is a path to healing. It's called self-honesty, love and tolerance. I suggest a small effort toward solution: Getting to know and take charge of, all the aspects of our Shadow Self. The process of shadow integration operates something like this: 1) Awareness. Before we can incorporate our unacceptable hungers, rages and lusts, we have to own up to and admit their existence. Overreacting to someone is a potent clue to our Shadow Self. When we point a judgmental finger, there are two fingers coming back at us. Admitting our humanity is healing in itself. Having an impulse toward badness is not the problem, acting on it is. 2) Acceptance. In some way, we are like everything we hate. How many times has someone you know well finally acknowledged that they are greedy, manipulative, have a secret habit or two, and wish they could whack someone? You laugh, because you knew it all along. People can see our Shadow! We are the only ones that are in the dark about it. 3) Action. Do something about that nasty habit, tendency, out-of-bounds emotion. Throw shame out the window but keep the guilt, which is useful because it can lead to constructive action. If you are mad, whack rage around the golf course, smack disappointment with a baseball bat, and exhaust your anger with power work-outs. If you feel lusty and are thinking of, or having, an affair that is making you feel miserable about yourself, try substituting some wildly creative and dangerous pursuit. Web sites abound with Adventure Travel possibilities. Yeah. Maybe you could climb Everest, or buy that company and be your own boss, or have a child at forty. 4) Patience. Be kind to yourself. Learning Theory suggests that we have to perform new behaviors hundreds of times before they become second nature. You will fail. And you will begin again. 5) Persistence. Keep at it. We are a work in progress. It takes a lifetime to become a loving human being. What’s the hurry? Life is an endurance contest, not a race to the finish. There are lots of flowers to smell along the way. In this process of integration, we are liberated from fear and become our potential--not too hot, not too cold, but just right, whole and complete. And the best part of all? On our journey towards healing, we will connect with amazing human beings. Not the least of which is our True Self, or as some suggest, our God Self, the Holy Spirit, the Divine Within. Our deepest fear is not that
we are inadequate.
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