I am not sure I would use the word ‘arduous’ but it ain’t easy noticing, feeling and expressing the Shadow. ‘Mechanical’ does not fit at all. It is an extremely human, organic, expressive process that actually reduces mechanical aspect of living, habitual repression and suppression, mechanical responses, general stiffness in expression and the body. You don’t know where you are going, it is exploratory, it is individual. IOW you cannot be mechanical about it. I summed it up very quickly, so I suppose it could seem like that, but my experience is that the process varies wildly, there is tremendous intuition involved regarding when and how much and in what way. Feeling your way forward.
You can’t skip the process of becoming aware. I was saying what I want to do at a certain point, which is go deeper than what I experience Jungian therapists, books and processes as doing.
Yes, I was describing the later processes that I want in addition to what Jungians seems to do. I don’t have a huge amount of experience of Jungian processes, therapy, etc. But quite a bit. Not enough to be certain, but my sense was they were not going as deep as I want and not aiming for the integration I watn.
That’s certainly not anything I am advocating for.
Sure, and I think all that is great. It’s just not enough for me. I don’t think active imagination does that much intregration.
Well, it depends on what this means. I did say that I don’t want to run around with a machete. It is not killing the ego and it is not a sudden thing. But over time actually letting that monster, as you call it, control how the body moves - in the safety of the home or therapist’s office or the like - to make the sounds it wants to make, to express the emotions it wants to make. Only then can one actually know, slowly over time, what it’s role actually is. BEcause if it is held outside of emotional and physical expression one cannot be aware of it. Then you are aware of it mainly in the twisted and judged state it is in. If you judge rage, for example, and we all do. This creates a monster in the cellar. If we let it express, we are much more likely to understand how we have judged utterly healthy portions of the self. I think Jungian therapy can lead to some acceptance and integration and I do things that parallel or are like that, but I don’t think it doesn’t go deep enough for me.
Having that dialogue is not mutually exclusive with giving the monster voice. One can do both. But you haven’t really met the monster, I experience, until you let it express more physically and emotionally, as me, because it is me, or better said, a facet of me.
No argument with that from me.
I could have personalized my first take more, and worded as my personal preference. At the same time I would like to be a bit provocative. I think there may be others who would want to go deeper than the Jungian approach does. But I do realize that individual goals may not match mine nor individual needs. And it is a process one needs to take careful steps in over a long period of time.