The Shadow Self: Michael Tsarion Talks about the importance of doing shadow work.
In this YouTube video, Michael Tsarion brilliantly explains that denying parts of ourselves (our shadow self) will not lead to personal transformation.
We need to gather up all parts of ourselves to work on and integrate them so that, ultimately, we can transform ourselves into complete, whole beings.
What we deny or repress in ourselves, we will see in others and label them bad people when we look at the parts of ourselves that we have cast into the shadow.
“I define a ‘good person’ as somebody who is fully conscious of their own limitations. They know their strengths, but they also know their ‘shadow’ – they know their weaknesses.
In other words, they understand that there is no good without bad. Good and evil are really one, but we have broken them up in our consciousness. We polarize them.”
– John Bradshaw
What Is Shadow Work?
Shadow work is a psychological and spiritual concept that involves exploring and integrating the unconscious or “shadow” aspects of oneself.
The term was popularized by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who believed that the unconscious mind contains repressed or hidden elements of our personality, emotions, desires, and memories.
These elements are often considered undesirable or socially unacceptable, leading individuals to suppress them.
The shadow represents the darker, less-known aspects of the self, including fears, insecurities, repressed emotions, and unresolved traumas.
Engaging in shadow work involves bringing these aspects into conscious awareness and working towards understanding, acceptance, and integration.
It is a process of self-discovery and self-acceptance that can lead to personal growth, emotional healing, and a more authentic life.
Key aspects of shadow work may include:
- Self-Reflection: Taking the time to reflect on one’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and identifying patterns that may be rooted in the unconscious.
- Awareness: Developing awareness of the shadow elements, acknowledging their existence, and recognizing their impact on thoughts and actions.
- Acceptance: Embracing the shadow without judgment and accepting that these aspects are a natural part of the human experience.
- Integration: Working towards integrating the shadow into one’s conscious self, allowing for a more complete and authentic expression of one’s personality.
- Therapeutic Techniques: Engaging in therapeutic practices, such as journaling, dream analysis, art, meditation, or working with a therapist to explore and process shadow elements.
Shadowwork is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. It requires commitment and courage to face and embrace the aspects of oneself that may be uncomfortable or challenging.
The ultimate goal is greater wholeness, self-awareness, and personal empowerment. Many individuals turn to shadow work to deepen their understanding of themselves and foster personal development.
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Carl Jung: Ego – Persona – Shadow
Archetype – The archetype is a psychosomatic concept linking body, psyche, instinct, and image.
The Persona– The persona, for Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world—”A kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual.”
The persona acts to shield the ego from harmful images. Persona is derived from a Latin word that means “mask.” The persona is what we think we are when it is just the tip of the iceberg of our whole being.
Ego – The ego is the organized part of the personality structure, including defensive, perceptual, intellectual-cognitive, and executive functions. Conscious awareness resides in the ego, although not all of its operations are conscious.
According to Jung, the ego represents the conscious mind. Jung called the ego the center of consciousness, but he also stressed the ego’s limitations and incompleteness as something less than the whole personality.
The ego provides a sense of consistency and direction in our conscious lives.
Shadow – In Jungian psychology, the shadow or “shadow aspect” may refer to an unconscious aspect of the personality that the conscious ego does not identify.
Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one’s personality, the shadow is mostly negative or the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything a person is not fully conscious of. The Shadow is all we dislike about ourselves or wish others not to see.
Anima/Animus – Jung describes the anima and animus as elements of his theory of the collective unconscious, a domain of the unconscious that transcends the personal psyche.
In the male’s unconscious, this archetype finds expression as a feminine inner personality: anima; equivalently, in the female’s psyche, it is expressed as a masculine inner personality: animus. The anima/animus represents the “true self.”
Carl Jung’s Shadow Theory
Carl Jung’s shadow theory is a cornerstone of his analytical psychology, emphasizing exploring and integrating the unconscious aspects of the self.
The “shadow” refers to repressed, hidden elements, including fears, desires, and unresolved issues. Jung believed acknowledging and integrating these darker aspects leads to personal growth and a more authentic life.
Shadow work involves self-reflection, awareness, acceptance, and the ongoing process of integrating the shadow into conscious awareness.
This theory underscores the importance of embracing the totality of one’s psyche for psychological well-being and wholeness.
Self—In Jungian psychology, the self is one of the archetypes, signifying the unification of consciousness and unconsciousness in a person and representing the psyche.
According to Jung, the Self is realized as the product of individuation, which, in his view, is the process of integrating one’s personality.
The self is the ordering principle of the entire personality structure, even though the ego can sometimes butt heads with it. The person’s relation to the ego is compared to that of the ‘mover to the moved.’
Initially, the ego is merged with the self but then differentiates from it. Jung describes an interdependence of the two: the Self provides the more holistic view and is therefore supreme, but it is the function of the ego to challenge or fulfill the demands of that supremacy.
If you ever feel like you are at odds with yourself, this is why. The ego receives the light from the Self as if lighting the way for the ego to journey along, but the ego will often resist.
The ego acts autonomously; you must negotiate, perhaps by writing a contract. The ego is all about the material world and material business.
“Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing.”
― August Wilson
The Shadow Self: Michael Tsarion – YouTube
Michael Tsarion: In psychological terms, though, Pluto, Shiva, represents what is known in consciousness as the shadow self. Now, you see in the schemata of consciousness. We’re out here. We’re out here in the realm of persona, the word for mask.
We’re out here in the Hollywood drama – the mask, the show of costumes. We’ve become so identified with this extreme edge of consciousness: the fashions, what we will look like, appearances, and the whole nine yards.
Of course, we need a certain amount of persona – otherwise, we’ll be wide open to attack. It would be best to have a mask to conceal your real identity, protect yourself, and generally operate with other human beings.
But we have way over-compensated for it. We put all our psychic energy into the mask. You only have to look at cosmetic commercials to know that they are obsessive.
Behind that is the ego – the waking consciousness and its little battery run down every 12 hours, so you need to sleep.
That’s because it’s finite energy, and you must sleep to restore its power. When we wake up, we have Ego Consciousness and Ego Awareness Consciousness.
But the ego is strange – as I said, it’s young, reckless, wild, and unjust.
And anything that your ego or you do not like about yourself you repress, and the repressions of all the stuff you despise about yourselves become what’s known as the “Shadow Personality.”
The Shadow Personality
And it’s in the unconscious realm, not even the conscious sphere because you’re unaware of it. It’s like the director’s cut of your life.
When living and experiencing all sorts of things, you want to have the cute clips you cut out and put on the coffee table – the family album.
But what about the backstory that’s been filmed? Will that footage you hide away one day when you leave this planet be played for you in the darkroom?
They will say, “Come this way; we got something to show you.
Remember all that film you stored in the attic (meaning your unconscious mind); we’ll run you a fantastic film here.”
This is an absolute slasher horror; this is Stephen King and more. Want to see the John Carpenter, you know, Friday the 13th, part 14 – here it is. The shadow is the repressed stuff we don’t show to the world and forget.
Those who find it hard to understand what repression is forget something and then forget that you forgot about it.
It’s the skeletons in the closet; again, it’s an essential part of the human mind. We need it to survive. It’s like the dumpster. You need to throw the trash out.
But we’ve again overcompensated. We’re doing it too much, and it causes enormous psychic problems.
Carl Jung said:
“That the shadow self is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.”
He’s talking spiritually there.
He’s saying that to be integrated; you need to incorporate your shadow self because those are aspects of yourself that you have thrown away, and you’re not getting to the light.
You see the self; the real person is way back here.
(Tsarion has a diagram in the video showing the many layers that cover up the true self, which is who you are).
You can forget about the self. We’re into the ego world. And the ego is doing itself a disservice by continually denying aspects of itself. Now you know something, there were books left out of the Bible, and it’s important to start finding out why.
Jesus said in the Gospel of Thomas is one of the great gnostic gospels that was thrown away:
“When you see your likeness you rejoice, but when you see your images which come into existence before you which neither die nor are made manifest how much will you bear?
Jesus
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It’s a very flowery language – a different one, but can you see what is being said here?
When you look at your likeness, you rejoice, meaning when you’re in the persona and the world of – Oh, I play the fashion game, and everybody then gives me acknowledgment, and I give acceptance, you rejoice.
But how much will you bear when you see the primordial images that come into existence before you, but those who are neither dead nor made clear meaning – the unconscious mind?
It’s an old story, and the teacher – remember the threat, you know what the teacher does, it projects onto me, comes on, dumps it on me, and we do.
As Carlos Castaneda and other writers have shown, the teacher’s job is to take all that. The teacher is the guy we’ll bury in the sand, as we’ve done many times. The shadow self is mighty; it is a moral problem.
It destroys relationships, and it destroys the teacher’s relationship with the one who’s receiving the teaching. Looking at who we are, it’s all it’s about. The only solution is to look at who we are.
As Alexander Pope said:
“Know then thyself presume not God the scan the proper study of man is man.”
Alexander Pope
William Blake said:
“Thy own humanity learn to adore.”
William Blake
But Carl Jung put it this way: he said, “Look, people will do anything, no matter how absurd, to stop from facing their souls.“
Have you ever been outside recently and ever turned on the TV lately? He’s exactly right.
People will do anything, no matter how absurd. And all that carnival you see out there, and all the distractions and nonsense that this world is wall to wall full of – that’s what he’s talking about.
People believe I must live in the Bahamas and a one-season world. I don’t want to be looking at any of that stuff.
Okay, but then you just condemned the world to horrors; you’re just making a person in your life, your partner, or your children the victims – the slaves to your inability to face yourself.
You’re now having a person fill the void in your emptiness because you’re not a whole person. And now you enslaved that wife, or that husband, or that child, or that animal, or your workmates to your form of tyranny.
You can’t call the police on it, and you’ll never get the court over it to prove that it’s there – but it’s there. And repression doesn’t work – there’s a thing known as the return of the repressed. You can only dump so much of it before the stench comes back.
As Carl Jung said in a famous statement, he said, “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside of you as fate.” Hahaha.
Because there’s a strange contrast between our minds’ unconscious energy and the world, the power that built the world, they conspired together; they’re constructed of the same stuff.
So behind the back of the ego – the unconscious mind – the shadow self – conspires with life – with material existence to bring in front of you the very people, the very person, the very challenges right – to help you integrate when you won’t do it of your own free will.
And we call that living. We often describe all the stuff around us as complex challenges – that’s what that is. We refuse to do the homework to meet it in space and time.
As the Greeks said:
“Your character is your fate.”
Conclusion
Shadow work is a profound and transformative journey into the depths of the self, guided by the belief that acknowledging and integrating the concealed aspects of our psyche leads to profound personal growth.
Originating from the insights of Carl Jung, this psychological and spiritual practice invites individuals to confront their shadows—those obscured facets harboring fears, insecurities, and suppressed emotions.
The process of shadow work is not a fleeting endeavor but an ongoing commitment to self-discovery and acceptance.
Shadow work offers a path toward wholeness by fostering self-reflection, awareness, acceptance, and integration.
The courage to explore the hidden recesses of one’s consciousness can lead to emotional healing, authenticity, and a richer, more fulfilling life.
Embracing therapeutic techniques and engaging in practices such as journaling, dream analysis, and meditation becomes instrumental in unraveling the layers of the shadow.
Ultimately, shadow work is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and its capacity for growth.
As individuals navigate the intricate labyrinth of their own psyche, they emerge not only with a clearer understanding of their inner landscape but also with a newfound sense of empowerment and authenticity.
In the continual dance with the shadow, one discovers that the integration of darkness and light fosters a more profound connection to oneself and the world, unlocking the potential for a more meaningful and purposeful existence.
The way to the true self is through the shadow. – Carl Jung
– Carl Jung
