The Shadow, Part II

Expanding on part I, The shadow is an archetypal abstraction of everything that you need to hide or that you don't want to confront. It is deeply embedded into your being but it is also dark, ugly, uncouth, unbecoming and malevolent. It is everything that you don't want the people to see, so animalistic that it cannot be displayed in the kind of civilised society that we live in, or at least that's the kind of judgement you fear so you repress it.

It lies in the unconscious, in the dark dungeons of your psyche. Paradoxically, it's in the confrontation of what you don't want to confront that the first part of the integration of the shadow begins.

BECOMING AWARE OF YOUR SHADOW

It is like I explained above, since our shadow is everything we don't want to know, we start by knowing it. Becoming aware of it requires a lot of honesty and vulnerability though. You have to admit to yourself that you have been sheltering yourself from everything that you find uncomfortable about you and that simply ignoring it will not make it go away.

It is still in you, allowing yourself to explore within is how you become aware of it. But if you're uptight and think that you're incapable of being a bad person or incapable of committing the most horrific acts known to mankind then there's no way you'll ever improve, go shrink into something that's lesser than what you could be.

If you think that you're such a bastion of heroism and virtue emerges out of you in the form of a bright light then you might as well stop doing this. Stop lying to yourself. People that always brag about what a good person they are and that they could never be bad or do a bad thing are exactly the kind of people that you need to be wary of. They're exactly the kind of people that end up committing atrocities because they were so blind to the evil within them that they considered themselves incapable of such things.

Confront the evil within you. You see, integration of the shadow isn't going to make you a worse human being, in fact, it is going to make you a better human being by making you realise what horrible things you're capable of so that you don't do it.

We all hate virtue signalers, but what exactly do we hate about them?

It's simple if you think about it and it is exactly what I’m talking about.

They all think that they are so much better than everyone else, so much so that they consider themselves as capable and competent judges that decide what's right and what's wrong and also that they have the authority of passing that judgement upon others. They are the authoritarian tyrant in the guise of a compassionate human being. But they're not compassionate at all, they are not as tolerant as they make themselves out to be. If power were in their hands, nothing good would come out of that.

We've seen these examples throughout history, when these kinds of people were given the power that they desired, they committed nothing short of the most heinous acts in the history. Mass deaths in the concentration camps, in the Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Russia. After all, you can't oppress someone until you think of yourself as superior.

This is exactly the kind of ignorance I warn you against. Ignore what you don't want to confront and stray far away from the path as a result or confront what you want to ignore and see yourself emerge victorious out of it. That is how we evolve. This is how we become better.

Now this brings us to the integration.

INTEGRATION OF THE SHADOW

If you have done the first part then congratulations! You know more about yourself than you did before. After you confronted your shadow and became aware of it, you must have realised that you have a nature. You have a personality, things that make you happy, things that make you sad, things that appeal to you and things that you find disgusting. That is your nature speaking to you. Listen to it very carefully, It is telling you what you are and what you are not. It speaks through you in ways that you know but don't acknowledge.

You see, learning to integrate your shadow is the same as learning to become a seasoned warrior. Not only do you learn how to wield a sword but also how to sheath it. When to wield your weapon and when to sheath it as well. It is not only becoming capable of cutting down what's in front of you but also asking, should you? If your soul is not corrupted you would know that the sword should be wielded only when it is absolutely necessary.

It is meant to protect what you hold dear, be it yourself, your family, your friends, your morality or something that you think is important. It is not meant to cut down the weak, the already defeated. Not if you want to be anything close to a noble warrior. Which is something that everyone should strive towards.

Once you've grown teeth and sharpened your fangs, you bring it under control. That is in essence the integration of your shadow.

Bear in mind that this is a lifelong battle. For there will always be things that you don't want to confront and that you should confront. Believing that you have explored all that there is to you is a blatant lie and you'll be taking a step in the opposite side.

We don't understand ourselves truly and fully. It's a consistent iterative process through which we keep realising more of ourselves. Maybe the most we will ever know about ourselves is the moment before we die. For it would be the last time we would ever be alive. But that's alright.

Strive towards improvement folks!

That's the end of my shadow series!

P.S. - I wish I was an orangutan sitting peacefully in a forest and swinging around trees while making noises. That would be fun!