Shadow

Yes and when people who know us tell us things about ourselves that we are unaware of, it’s easy to become defensive and deny the truth of their observation. We seem to see this happening right here on ILP, as for example, in the case of our moral nihilist friend. He won’t accept feedback about what he does even though multiple people are telling him roughly the same thing about himself.

Many times an archetype like the Shadow can affect our mood and we don’t know why. A friend who knows our situation may be to explain our mood to us better than we can explain it ourselves. We should listen and try to be open to what they are telling us about ourselves. They may be onto something we don’t have conscious access to.

I can do this on occasion. And I have allowed some really horrible feelings and intentions in myself to bubble up to the surface and be expressed. Violent denied aspect of myself, for example, I let ‘take over’ and express their rage - though I was, of course, alone and did not live this out on anyone else. I did not like what I found but I noticed that once expressed there were more healthy versions (of standing up for myself or of expressing desire, even) that were more accessible. I really hate it when someone else notices something first in me. I wish I could say I always take this gracefully, though sometimes I do. Easier when it is someone who loves me, though I’ve managed to work with some reflections from people who dislike me.

I think this is most important bravery. Can one do this?

One can. The unconscious self can put us into situations where it’s necessary for our psychological survival. This gets into the subject of individuation.

It also happens that when we idealize other people that we become unable to see their shadow. This happens in romantic relationships. You fall in love and the other seems beautiful and perfect in every way. Then one day you see their Shadow side and you are shocked to find out that they are a flawed human primate like everybody else.

It also happens to our perception of celebrities and political figures. The tabloid market thrives on overthrowing the popular hero by unveiling his/her shadow side. Or, how about the way Obama’s young followers idealized him when he was running for office and were shocked when as a President he failed to achieve all of his lofty promises? Shock, disappointment and cynicism set in.

So I think the Shadow is related to the idealized self and to the idealized other. The shadow is the other side in the duality. The question becomes: Why do we idealize ourselves and others? What purpose does idealization serve?

Yes, I meant that if one can do this, one is brave. If the answer to that question is yes, then one is brave. I think a lot of risk-taking gets judged brave. It may be. But noticing who one truly is, is a true test of bravery, one that many risk-takers who seem like heroes cannot manage.

perhaps you meant this: the ideals generate the shadow. We think we should be like X and should not have urges and emotions and reactions Y, Z and *. Ideals teach us to suppress rather than integrate.

I was referring to the idealized self and the idealized other which are images not to ideals which are abstract concepts, axioms, principles, etc.

felix dakat

This is true. I once had a dream about seeing what I believe to be my shadow. Very often I have dreams where I am in the dark of night. lol Anyway, it was nighttime and I was in a forest. I had some overwhelming sense of fear, that something was lurking somewhere. I looked to my left and there was something hiding behind a tree but kind of showing itself. It was, in a sense, there but at the same time, not there. Then I woke up.

I think perhaps that when we encounter such so-called entities it might be a good thing to face them down and ask why they are there and what they have to say to us.

This is true but those are the picayne kind of projections that others can see about us that we do not want to see but they are easier to see if we could give up the ego.

There are far deeper-down parts of our shadow which we are afraid to be made aware of but with self-awareness in moments of experiencing that shadow and honest reflection, we can make it a pussy cat that becomes our companion.

Have you ever watched one of those old spaghetti westerns when someone is being hung on a tree by a rope for stealing a horse? If you observe the crowd, the mob, you see before you a gathering of ignominious shadows waiting for the kill, to be satisfied. It is a very scary thing not knowing who we are and what lurks beneath and within us.

It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses- and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism. The individual seldom knows anything of this; to him, as an individual, it is incredible that he should ever in any circumstances go beyond himself. But let these harmless creatures form a mass, and there emerges a raging monster; and each individual is only one tiny cell in the monster’s body, so that for better or worse he must accompany it on its bloody rampages and even assist it to the utmost. Having a dark suspicion of these grim possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature. Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully aware.
“On the Psychology of the Unconscious” (1912). In CW 7: Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. P.35

That’s a powerful quote. In particular it suggests that ignoring the Shadow can result in a person naively going along with a malevolent crowd as happened in Nazi Germany and is being recapitulated with the rise of fascism today.

Lol. :smiley: I frequently think this can be expanded to encompass most of philosophy.

[size=50]shhhhhh. don’t tell anyone here i gave you this.[/size]

[size=50]Ok ok[/size]. Move along folks, nothing to see here. Oh look over there, an elephant !

The police officer who gave up his job to move to Africa to become a tour guide on Safaris.

God always has with him the Devil.

And with some Gods, like say the OT deity, while the official Devil shows up now and then, the OT deity has some characteristics all on his own.

And Christ must have his Antichrist.

And since we just have the terrible, but somehow part of the plan, Judas, the shadow of the NT is very dark.

Amputating the shadow is when one understands their suppressed traumas, that they exist and what their triggers are, why this is an amputation? Because if one understands self and their own triggers, one can control shadow and let it out in a way of which is healthier for the self and no destructive, which the shadow generally is and can be destructive if not understood or left unchecked. I have done a lot of reading of Carl Jung and I have ideas similar to his and others that go farther from his ideas as well. Subconscious thread and all that. Can’t be a healing serpent if the shadow is not understood via that one has one and it’s functionality.

Yes, quite some darker than the original lure of the snake.
it is interesting to draw this in that context.

The seduction … into knowledge of good and evil. Judas got his share of it. A terrible scene in Mel Gibsons movie.
I mean terrible as in efficiently depicting Judas’ acknowledgement of the power of his shadow.

I would contend that there is such a vast lack of shadow-delineation in terms of our conscious efforts, that the energies that motivate our shadows get intertwined and, probably as they lose agency, hooked into large energetic processes, such as computerization and sheer cosmic force. So, that is to say a hyuge collective shadow is moving at our collective feet, gut… more so than ever before and thus also not as easily stirred into war. Something else than war is brewing. War is passed - the ground is being prepared for philosophy.

The philosopher who has only merit as the medicine man, the magick man the medic of his culture, the tamer of the shadow of the world.

So, triggers - thats a word we haven’t heard before. The shadow is triggered. Yes, I believe that’s relevant.
The art of triggering as the devilish work.

I must say its a solid point. When we investigate a Shadow, do we examine its meaning, or its technique?
Is not perhaps its true meaning in how it operates? Or if not meaning, simply the value of the knowledge to us.

How can we “self-value” ***the shadow, bring it into our terms? Not morally we cant - but what we may learn from it from how it smooths in the night, how it reaches for its means in stealth and employs them with utmost efficiency at issues which are demarcated with evolutionary precision, in this we may retrieve some of our soul which has been taken from us by those innumerable forces preying on any and all weakness in the world -
What I mean to say is - we can only reach for the snake if we are aware that we need to straighten out the snake so as for it to be a sword. Toughen it up, really too.
The shadow as a bird of prey.

Perhaps the shadow is elusive because it moves across our mind as fast as the shadow of a falcon.

*** logick –
that the occult value logic I created is most aptly called logick, I realized. Cool. No?

So like “red pilling” is in a sense a portion of humans integrating their shadow, by taking the means by which they were triggered, and triggering others for the sake of triggering. It is in a sense adolescence of the internet, of mankinds moral psyche as it is interconnected.

Then, most of it just becomes shadow and its executive slaves - that the shadow is engaged and known makes of us primarily demons, not yet… lucifers.

Yes but the true antichrist is part of the soul of the Christ –

where Christ meets antiChrist we have the Lodge.

The Demiurge’s crib.