Shadow Play

I was discussing the nature of addiction with a friend the other day. In particular, the power of alcohol on certain people. I have been strangely surrounded by alcoholism for most of my life - and I have several friends who attend AA meetings regularly. I have other friends and family who are fighting the good fight against their addiction by willpower alone.

Although alcohol has never appealed to me, I have brushed closely with other addictions: food, exercise, approval - all things I have struggled to enjoy and seek in moderation.

But I think addiction can be a great tool for us. In the depths of our most depraved moment we come to know our truest self. Namely, we are granted a rare glimpse of our shadow self.

The Shadow, is a psychological term introduced by the late Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl G. Jung. It is everything in us that is unconscious, repressed, undeveloped and denied. These are dark rejected aspects of our being as well as light, so there is positive undeveloped potential in the Shadow that we don’t know about because anything that is unconscious, we don’t know about.

The Shadow is an archetype. And what an archetype simply means is that it is typical in consciousness for everyone. Everyone has a Shadow. This is not something that one or two people have. We all have a Shadow and a confrontation with the Shadow is essential for self awareness. We cannot learn about ourselves if we do not learn about our Shadow so therefore we are going to attract it through the mirrors of other people.

The last part of this quote interests me because it suggests that should we choose to avoid meeting our shadow selves - we will nevertheless find it through people we attract. Those who find themselves attracting a certain kind of partner or friend they do not desire to attract might benefit from examining whether or not they have reconciled themselves with their Shadow.

We often hear people say that the traits you dislike most in other people are traits you dislike in yourself. This is just common-speak for the same principal.

In short, you can't avoid your Shadow. It's a part of you.

Now in no way am I suggesting that the only way to encounter and deal with your shadow is through drugs, alcohol or addiction etc. I just think that those of us who are struggling to overcome addiction would do well to remember that meeting our shadow selves, as we do through addictive behaviours, is a crucial step toward healing ourselves and ridding ourselves of it. After all, how can you correct something you don't know exists?

Know thyself. That's a good start.

So rather than chastise ourselves for being weak, we might all do better by being thankful for the rare glimpse into our very darkest parts, so that we might become better than we were before we saw.

Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it.

Carl Jung - The Integration of the Personality. (1939).