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Home > Blog > The Shadow in Spring
The Shadow in Spring
Posted: April 10th, 2010 @ 1:26am
Last weekend, when I originally sat down to think about my April newsletter, I came across this seasonally-appropriate, albeit snarky quote: "Easter says you can put truth in a grave, but it won't stay there." Perhaps you don't even celebrate Easter and, even if you do, you might not necessarily make sense of it literally. Religion aside, the quote actually bears relevance to a theme that has been coming up for a number of my clients recently: the shadow self and how we make our peace with it.
We all have a wild and luminous heart, but we also have a dark side -- the part of the psyche that hisses and bites, that's irrational, unconscious, and motivated by baser forces and desires. Often we'd prefer to ignore this "inner demon" as it is unflattering and afflictive, and certainly not in line with who we dream ourselves to be. Carl Jung referred to it as the "shadow," and regarded it as the lead that alchemists sought to transform into gold.
When we consider it from Jung's perspective, the shadow doesn't sound so terrible. And it's not (in fact, it's a well of untapped potential!). But there's a trick: it takes work to make peace with this part of ourselves; it doesn't simply disappear when we try to will it away or, worse, when we pretend that it doesn't exist. The only way to heal this mess of repressed "stuff" is to bring it out into the light of day where we can lovingly work with it.
Jung was certainly a proponent of the idea that what is not brought to consciousness comes to us as fate. Put another way, truth won't stay in the grave; eventually there is a reckoning. What we often forget, however, is that our greatest gifts lie in the reservoirs of our pain. As Joseph Campbell once said, "Where you stumble, there lies your treasure."
Many people who call me to consider doing some kind of psycho-spiritual work are tentative. "What if I start to look at myself and I don't like what I see?" someone recently asked. This is a common fear and, yet, what is the alternative? How do we ever move toward our growth edge if we don't first acknowledge that we have one? How do we transform "lead into gold" if we don't first touch the lead? I am hardly one to romanticize the process of depth work; it is difficult and humbling for sure. But transcendence certainly doesn't come from some route of "bypass."
Unfortunately a lot of New Age spirituality encourages us to think that if we just focus on the "good" and the "positive" that we can somehow achieve happiness. The other extreme, of course, is the side that glorifies cynicism and equates it with insight. I'm rooting for a healthy middle-ground -- a place where we build hope and optimism not through a repression of shadow forces, but by an authentic and rigorous engagement with them.
Sometimes, though, it can be hard to find that place of equilibrium. In the drabness of a lingering winter, it may feel all-too-easy to get stymied by the darker elements; and now, in the refreshing expansiveness of early spring, it may be tough not to fall prey to pure levity and whimsy. And not that there's anything wrong with either place -- but the key lies in keeping them both in check.
Spring tends to be an optimal time of year to begin a process of deeper growth....or to pick up where you've left off if you've already begun. With more light to brighten the dark, perhaps we find ourselves less daunted by the task at hand, and more willing to brave the shadowland terrain. Nietzsche once said, "The great epochs of life come when we gain the courage to re-christen our evil as what is best in us." What have you hidden or buried out of fear that now begs for illumination and reclamation? In this season of longer days, I invite you to consider what you might resurrect from the bowels of your psyche in the spirit of embracing radiant wholeness.
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