May 2017, by Heidi Loeppky –
(based on Cliff Barry’s work on Parallelism)
Warrior Eyes, Magician Eyes
By Alyce Barry
One definition of a paradox is “a statement that is seemingly contradictory . . . and yet is perhaps true.”
So it seems that the following statement contains a paradox: “Each of us is a separate individual, and we are all connected.”
How can both be true? How can we be discrete individuals and connected at the same time?
Using the Shadow Work Model, it isn’t difficult to explain how both can be true.
The Model is based on the belief that there are four parts of the self — four “flavors” of the life energy that streams constantly through us — which we call Sovereign, Magician, Lover, and Warrior.
Each part of the self has its own purposes and priorities, and hence has its own point of view. The seemingly contradictory statements are simply the differing points of view of different parts of the self — a very useful perspective I learned years ago in the Basic Facilitator Training (BFT) and have thought about a lot recently.
SEPARATE AND CONNECTED
“Each of us is a separate individual” is the Warrior’s point of view. The Warrior is the part of us that sets boundaries and values what we call “reality.” On the plane we call “reality,” my Warrior says, Even if someone I love dies, I can go on living, because there’s a boundary between my loved one and me; we are separate individuals.
As someone who lives much more often in my Magician energy than in my Warrior, I don’t enjoy thinking this way very much. It seems like a lonely point of view.
Lonely, at least, until I reframe it as my Warrior protecting the vulnerable child part of me, the Lover. One of the Warrior’s jobs is to protect the Lover.
And so it happened that, when my mother died last fall, it was my Warrior’s job to remind me of the boundary between my mother and me. It reminded me that I wasn’t the one who was dying, that my mother’s death wouldn’t bring about my own death, because she and I are separate individuals. Though it wasn’t true of my mother’s death, I can imagine a person going down into death as a result of the death of a loved one.
Many people who have suffered a loss, however, take comfort from the Magician’s point of view that “we are all connected.”
“We are all connected” is the Magician’s point of view. The Magician is the part of us that knows and gets perspective and values what some people call “spirit.” On the plane we call “spirit,” my Magician says, When my mother died, our connection didn’t end because we are all connected. My Magician, which can do a certain amount of time traveling and other forms of magic, reminded me that when I remember my mother, she is still alive in a sense, and also that I can bring her back to life in ritual space in a Shadow Work® container if I want to talk to her about something.
WOUNDEDNESS AND CHOICE
In remembering the months I spent with my mother, I’ve come across two more examples of this difference between Warrior eyes and Magician eyes.
Was my mother capable of change? Or was she incapable of making different choices because of the ways in which she was wounded emotionally?
“She could have changed if she’d wanted to” seems to be the Warrior’s point of view. The Warrior is the part of us that takes responsibility for our “stuff” and finds the courage to do it. The Warrior is also the part of us that sets a boundary between our various options for taking action and makes a choice, thereby discarding or “killing” all other possible choices. From the Warrior’s point of view, my mother was responsibility for herself and for her decisions and might have made different choices.
But the Magician has a very different point of view. With its perspective on her emotional issues and her capacity to take risks and pursue change, my Magician says, She could no more have changed than she could have flown to the moon.
MISTAKES
Another example of the difference between Warrior eyes and Magician eyes is how we think about mistakes.
When we take action that seems to hurt us in some way, was it a mistake?
I think “We make mistakes” is the Warrior’s point of view. The Warrior sees a boundary between decisions that help us and decisions that hurt us and relegates the latter to the category of “mistakes.” The Warrior seems to believe that we could have made a different decision if we’d wanted to.
I think the Magician has a different point of view. “There are no mistakes,” it says. “Each decision we make is based on all that we are in that moment, and we couldn’t have been anyone but ourselves in that moment.” From the Magician’s point of view, a mistake is a decision that didn’t bring us what we truly wanted. The Magician sees the long view in which our life goals are significant, and it can assess each decision we make in light of those goals and whether the decision served those goals or not.
Alyce Barry is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is the author of Practically Shameless.
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The “Big Guy” and the Three Big Paradoxes: An Interview with Cliff Barry
January 2014, by Cindy Vargas
I’ve been spending time with Cliff working on the Shadow Types Model and encouraged him to begin sharing a more complete context for how he came to be the Shadow Work® creator and “Big Guy.” His answers are full of fascinating anecdotes and teachings worthy of a book. Someday. But in the interest of making this more immediately accessible, we decided to collaborate on some writing. Those of you who have been trained by Cliff know that he is supremely happy when he gets to go full steam ahead on this subject.
CV: You created Shadow Work® and have become like its “guru.” And now you’ve developed a way to see people in a personality typing model. How does this fit within the Shadow Work® Model?
Cliff: It’s true that I am the one who gets the credit for creating Shadow Work®. Of course, that’s not accurate. No one person creates a whole body of work without major contributions from lots of other people.
I think I can answer your question and even show you some of the ways people contributed to the model “I’ve created.” In the process you can see the evolution of the model and how easily it can be understood and become useful for anyone who is interested.
RUMOR HAS IT . . .
CV: For people familiar with Shadow Work®, we’d assume you will start with the four archetypes. Rumor has it that you aren’t doing that anymore.
Cliff: I think I’ll start with an outrageous statement —
CV: — and that’s new?
Cliff: “Everything we experience can be understood by analyzing it through the Three Big Paradoxes.”
This is where the rumor comes in: “Wait a minute, isn’t Shadow Work® a system in which everything can be seen through the four archetypes?” And you would be right.
But in the last years the Shadow Work® Model has evolved many new facets, so now there are dimensions based on Threes, and dimensions based on Sixes, and Twelves, and Twos and even One-Hundred-and-Eights. And when we look at all the dimensions, and wonder which ones contain the deepest stuff (versus the ones that can be understood most readily by newcomers) we discover that the dimension of Fours is pretty deep. Maybe too deep. So deep that most people can’t relate to it quickly or easily.
When we talk about the four archetypes, there’s always the one called the Lover. Now, that can be embarrassing for some people. “Who wants to talk about being vulnerable as 25% of everything? Really? Do we need to bring the Inner Child into this? And doesn’t the name ‘Lover’ imply some kind of illicit sexuality? Can’t we just leave that one out and talk about the other three, as if they made up everything? Please? This is going too deep too fast.”
I have been struck by the realization that I may have been singing about Shadow Work® in a key that’s hard for the world to hear. Like trying to introduce professional jazz to an eighth-grade music class. It contains chords too complex for immediate mastery. Our culture likes Threes better (Father, Son and Holy Ghost; Executive, Legislative and Judicial).
CV: Are you abandoning the four archetypes then?
Cliff: Not a chance. They form the foundation of this work. But I am backing up a step or two so that this way of seeing ourselves can become accessible to a wider population, not just the deep, committed people who want to facilitate human growth. When we’ve got the more general description available, we can go back to how the four archetypes function to create the whole model.
So let’s talk about Threes. And I’ll use my life to give examples.
THREES AND THE FIRST PARADOX
“How much is Shadow Work® my stuff,
and how much do I owe to the others who helped me?”
This is a paradox. It’s the most basic paradox, I think. It’s a good place to start.
Let’s go back to the Shadow Work® Guru label that some people have applied to me. I am always uncomfortable when I am being credited with being “The Creator” of Shadow Work®.
But, of course, I am equally uncomfortable if someone else seems to be getting more credit than I do.
And there you are. Just another beautiful day in Paradox.
On the one hand, I have devoted my life more than anyone else to planting Shadow Work® in the world. I have done almost nothing else with my life, beyond the intimate relationships I have enjoyed and the children I helped to raise. When people ask me how I got into Shadow Work®, I usually answer that I must have been born to do this, because at a certain point everything I had ever done and everything I had ever learned just seemed to come together. And from then on I knew what I wanted to do.
But on the other hand, my insights always seem like something I receive, not something I create. I mean, when an exciting idea pops up in my head as I am getting out of bed in the morning, who does that belong to?
When I was a little boy, I was taught that all our thoughts come to us through “spirits”, who are around us all day and who provide us with all our thoughts and feelings. So I still say, “Thanks!” when I get a really good insight.
Being aware of the transcendent nature of my own inspiration, how can I call Shadow Work® mine?
And what about all the other people who contributed? The wise and wonderful women who have graced my life with their willingness to hold me in my crazy-making process of putting this together, and who have shared their insights with me? What about the comrades who worked tirelessly alongside me and gave me their own ideas to use? What about all the feedback I’ve received, and the collective creativity we shared?
I am uncomfortable calling Shadow Work® “mine.” I want to honor all those who have helped me make it real. I want to stay connected to them.
But at the same time, I want the independence to lead Shadow Work®. After all, it’s been my whole life’s work. And I’m the one who has taken the most responsibility for it, and sacrificed the most for it. My identity and role have formed around my leadership in this work.
That’s the paradox, the first one. The most basic one. We call it the Needs Paradox.
CV: And this is where we get to insert some visuals; not that they make a lot of sense yet.
THE NEEDS PARADOX
Cliff: The Needs Paradox contains two opposing things: Connection and Independence.
For reasons I’ll explain later, these two will oppose each other catty-corner in this graphic. I believe the needs they represent embody the most fundamental paradox in life. I need to be connected, and yet I need to be independent. This started when I was born and it quickly became the most fundamental job in my life. It remains the most basic paradox today.
I was born connected to others. In fact, when I was newly born I didn’t even know that I existed apart from others. I didn’t know I wasn’t my mother. Heck, I didn’t even know I wasn’t my crib. I didn’t know where that crying sound originated. I didn’t know those things hitting my face were my own hands. I was just completely enmeshed with everything. Maybe that’s why I can’t remember that time. There was no one there yet to remember it, really.
And then, as I started to grow, I began to build my sense of self, separate from Mom and Dad, and my brothers and sisters. And now you can think of me as a separate, independent individual. I have an ego. Good job, Cliff. That was the very first task in my life, and I did it. What is more, I did it so well that I now take the whole process for granted by thinking of myself as being selfish, when, in fact, I have to be selfish sometimes, or I couldn’t show up as a powerful adult.
Now that I’m an adult, with the fully-formed and constantly-maintained ego that’s required to be an adult, I keep myself together without giving it much thought. But it’s why I am always so busy. Even though I long to slow down, and even though I really try to slow down, I keep pretty busy, because busyness builds self, and I still need to maintain my ego. If I go too long without doing something, my ego starts to slip, and I start to wonder, “Who am I, really?”
And so I am always balancing these two very fundamental needs: to be connected and to be independent. It happens either consciously or unconsciously, but it happens all the time. And they are a paradox because they are continually at odds. When I connect very deeply with my wife, Vicki, for too long a time, I begin to wonder: “Am I losing my self in this relationship?” “Do I need to create some distance so I don’t disappear?”
But as soon as I become a little too independent, I become lonely because now “there is no one to share it with.”
For most of us, this paradox shows up as a split between our “working world” and our “family or personal world.” Many people notice how they can show up as a different person when at work than how they are at home. We all learn to temper these two needs so we have the right amount of connection for our needs and the right amount of independence. And we all have different needs around the way these two things get balanced. Some of us want to live very independently, and get a “hit” of connection every now and then. Others want to be so connected that we go for our independence only occasionally.
Maybe your experience with connection in your family of origin wasn’t so wonderful, so you went for more independence. Or maybe you had to be too independent when you were young. Maybe you missed out on connection, so you prefer more connection now.
PREFERRING ONE SIDE
CV: How does someone go about figuring out what side of the Needs Paradox he or she prefers?
Cliff: We have a survey you can take which will measure how much you prefer one side of this paradox over the other. You can answer some questions online, and see what your balance looks like. Joe and Julie Mandarino have constructed a brilliant and well-tested survey which will highlight where you sit on this paradox, and on the next two we discuss.
My own results show that I am pretty balanced between connecting and independence. This makes sense to me, since I have always been in a very close intimate partnership, usually both living and working with my woman partner. So I very much need the one-on-one connection. But I’m not a great casual connector. I was raised in a very close-knit religious community of about 500 people, where the neighborly connections got to be too much for me. I was seen as a rising star in the community, slated to become a prominent minister, but I didn’t like the fame. It seemed that everyone had their own idea of who I was, and who I should be, and I wanted to be freer, more independent. So I eventually left that world for a much more private personal life. Even as the leader of Shadow Work®, I have avoided notoriety outside of the Shadow Work® world. I think it was so unsafe for me to be who I really was in the community from which I eventually fled, that I created a life where I mostly dealt only with people who had learned Shadow Work®. I have often reflected that I needed to create Shadow Work® to have somewhere it was safe for me to connect with others. I’m a little ashamed of myself for that, but it’s true.
My level of independence is higher than average, I would say. I have created my own brand of personal work, without looking to others much. I am not well-read, for example, in my field. I sometime say, “Well, I could read other people’s work, or I could wait for the same ideas to appear in my head. And when they appear in my head, I can call them mine.” I should be more than a little ashamed of that, don’t you think?
The truth is that I will naturally take on the responsibility for doing things myself without initially even thinking of collaborating with others. I had to learn the value of collaboration. Nowadays, I won’t embark on any new project unless I am working with someone with whom I want to become much closer. My motto about new things has become two-fold:
“Who I am working with may be even more important than what we’re doing.”
and
“Whatever quest you are planning, don’t go alone!“
I’m a good example of someone who has learned the value of teamwork and collaboration. You might be able to measure yourself in this regard by asking yourself this question:
“How do I approach a project? Am I more likely to start out building the connection I want with others and then move into accomplishment, or do I start out acting independently and then move towards connection along the way?”
If you want a clear example of what it means to start in connection, my wife, Vicki, is a natural connector. Vicki lives for connection with others. Lucky for me, really. I have learned so much from living with this creature who does not need to be on some quest to change the world. She is willing to be connected to me by helping me with my life’s mission, but she isn’t compelled to dream up quests on her own.
I am learning to connect more. It’s a work in progress. I am still extremely uncomfortable at parties where people are making small talk about what seems to me to be meaningless things. But I am expanding my ability to be present for others, just for the sake of connection.
So it’s been helpful for me to look at my life as it lies across this Needs Paradox. It has helped me to see where I’m good at one side, and need to bring in more of the other.
CV: You talk about how there isn’t a wide difference in your scores around connection and independence. It’s easier to see how the balance between them serves you. But what about when the paradox is marked by a larger gap between the two sides? What does that mean?
Cliff: We can look at that in the next big paradox: the Action Paradox. Let me explain it a bit first and then move to the answer to your question.
THE ACTION PARADOX
I enjoy seeing how these paradoxes begin to emerge from birth. I believe they show up from the very beginning. I was born into thinking that life was safe. Or rather, we might say that I was born not knowing how to think that life was not safe. I didn’t know how to think that I could get hurt. I would have crawled right into the fire, if no one stopped me. You can see the remains of this assumption in young people who act as if they are immortal. My favorite name for this is Security. We are all born believing that we are somehow secure, even if we really aren’t. Children in a war zone play in the street.
But there is a paradoxically opposed force. Even when I was a tiny infant, I began to seek action. I wanted to do the next thing. I wanted to turn over. I wanted to sit up. I wanted to crawl, to walk, to run. I was impelled by the force I now call Questing. And of course every new quest put my security at risk in some way, because you simply can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
At the time, it was my parents’ job to watch out for my security, because I was completely enmeshed in my sense of security, and at the same time I was completely enmeshed in my instinct to quest, so I could not know how to even think about the risks. But as I grew, I had to learn how to balance this paradox. I had to learn to weigh the price versus the prize. I had to balance my Questing force with my Security force.
In the graphic below, the Action Paradox is represented by two loops that oppose each other by lying crosswise to each other.
As an adult I am constantly balancing this paradox in my life, and for me this is not easy. I seem to have gotten more than my share of the Quest force. I am a fool for my quest. Once when I was creating a new project with a group of men, I jokingly dubbed us “The Fools Club,” because while you didn’t have to be a fool to belong, it really helped. The name stuck, and we called ourselves by that name when we met.
If you’re going to be a guru, or a leader in anything new, it really helps to have lots of Questing energy. For me that means that it’s hard for me to stop dreaming up new thing to bring into life, and it’s equally hard to stop working for their creation. Here’s an example: the minute I began to realize that I may have found a way to write, I was overcome with making it a huge quest. Because new ideas come to me while I’m exercising, and because I now exercise for at least an hour every day, I could picture myself writing while I was exercising. This feat would, of course, require a few new gadgets, so I was soon the owner of an iPad, with a carrying case and strap that doubles as a writing platform, so I can type standing up anywhere. And as I write these words, I am trying to navigate the icy patches on the sidewalk in Boulder, Colorado, so I don’t go flying and break my good hip, or get run over by a car, because I am writing and walking at the same time. In this case my Questing force is overwhelming my Security force.
My way of engaging with this second big paradox is my desperate drive to bring something good into reality. When I cannot be doing that, I am sad, and torn and angry. My survey scores for Questing are so high they are off the charts. But other people do it differently. For some people the Security becomes the mission, and the Questing is sacrificed.
QUEST VERSUS SECURITY
CV: So if you have high scores on Quest, does that mean you don’t do Security?
Cliff: A low score on one side of a paradox doesn’t actually mean that I don’t have that energy. It’s just more likely to show up in a “shadowy” way. That means it will be less organized, less balanced and less mature.
So I have some very strong Security circuits, but they tend to be more compulsive and off balance. For example, there’s the way I keep track of my tasks. When I was pretty young (about 10 years old, I think) my parents started giving the message that I wasn’t a “good finisher.” They pointed out to me that I was good at beginning projects, but then my attention would drift and I wouldn’t finish things. This message must have been driven home pretty hard, because I compensated for this flaw in very compulsive ways for the rest of my life.
In college I began keeping a list of my tasks and commitments on 3×5 cards, which I would keep in my breast pocket right alongside a pack of cigarettes. And while I battled with my nicotine addiction for many years, and finally beat it in my fifties, I didn’t particularly recognize my task lists as an addiction. I had a terrible dread of making false promises to others and then forgetting them, so I wrote everything on my list, so I couldn’t forget. Over the next forty years, the jobs-to-do lists grew and grew. Sometimes I would have hundreds of reminders crammed onto dozens of cards, some of which I carried in my breast pocket in the leather carrier I was given by a friend, and some filed away in other places. I had lists of jobs on my computer, and on my iPhone, too. Jobs, jobs, jobs.
When I began to work more seriously with my eating addictions, I came to realize that my heavy jobs load was a primary contributing factor to my compulsive eating. In fact, it wasn’t until I was diagnosed with needing a hip replacement, and was often dizzy from painkillers while waiting for the operation, that I found I could lose weight. I lost 40 pounds before my operation, primarily because it became harder for me to work, and I didn’t need to eat so much to reward myself for the sacrifices of working non-stop and bearing the weight of tons of unfinished jobs every moment. I finally realized that I didn’t actually have an “eating problem,” I had a “working problem.”
CV: That might be a new way to see weight issues for a lot of us. If you are calling this paradox the Action Paradox, how does Security figure as “action”?
Cliff: Because while Questing is the pursuit of bringing something new and good into reality, Security is the prevention of something bad happening. To make this distinction clear by exaggerating it a little, I could say that “every action we take, and especially every mission we adopt, has one or both of two primary motivations: to make something good happen, or to keep something bad from happening.” And the tension between these two powerful forces is often the difference between whether we are a “positive” thinker or a “realistic” thinker.
NEGATIVE VERSUS REALISTIC
CV: I suspect Questers would call Security people “negative” thinkers but Security people consider themselves “realistic.”
Cliff: Of course, everyone thinks both ways at times, regardless of what they call it. But I tend to work from one side of the paradox to the other. I usually start by dreaming up something good that I could make happen, and then I have to deal with whatever harm might come as an afterthought. Whereas Vicki, for example, is much more likely to envision something bad that could happen, and figure that in addressing the prevention of what’s bad, she will then be making room for something good to be created afterwards.
I think that you can often see this paradox as parents polarize in their approach to raising children. One parent is more likely to be the “fun parent,” who strives to feed the children with new and positive experiences from which they can grow, while the other parent will often see the pitfalls and potential harm that can come to the child, and work to prevent that harm from happening.
As I have said, both are needed to balance anything, including good parenting. But we each tend to enter the paradox more naturally from one side and then work towards the other.
My jobs lists were clearly motivated by a desire to keep something bad from happening. The idea that I would let someone down by forgetting a promise I had made, or that I would have made a commitment to do something and then not do it, was so abhorrent to me that I developed a compulsion, and listed my tasks in an immature, inflated way. We could say that I kept my jobs in a shadowy way.
This was apparent to me only sometimes, if I lost my list of tasks somewhere and went into a panic attack, or if one of my children or grandchildren would mischievously steal my list just to make me chase them. As I raced after them, I would notice an anger arising in me that was completely inappropriate to the circumstance. My children learned that “whatever you do, don’t steal Dad’s list.” It was my version of “don’t step on my blue suede shoes.”
So it’s not like I don’t do Security. I just tend to do it in an imbalanced way. We all enter from one side or the other, but if we have a strong preference, we might leave the other side in shadow.
THE LEARNING PARADOX
CV: So far, you’ve described two paradoxes and how in the first, you don’t have a large gap in your preference for one side or the other, and in the second, you have a distinct preference. What does that mean for the third paradox?
Cliff: Everyone shows a preference for one side of two of the paradoxes in varying degrees. As I talk about the final big paradox, which is the Learning Paradox, you will see that I have a strong preference for one side of this paradox as well. Everyone has at least one that they highly prefer and another that is in second place. The scores help us see what might be more in shadow.
The Learning Paradox, like the others, starts when we are very young and completely enmeshed in one side, but with a compelling urge to develop the other side. In this case the two sides are called Experience and Theory.
Little babies simply experience life. They are feeling whatever is going through them without filters. They cry when they are sad, withdraw when they are afraid, and laugh when they are happy. One of the things we love the most about babies is their innocence in expressing themselves without censure.
But at the same time babies develop a powerful urge to learn. As they grow into children, they start to want to know. They are seeking the theory of life so they can understand what is happening around them. As Kurt Vonnegut put it, “Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly, man got to sit and wonder why, why, why?”
In the graphic below I have positioned Experience and Theory opposing each other in a catty-corner fashion, much like Connection and Independence, but in a different color.
I was the second-born child in my family, and the first boy. For the first years of my life we lived in an apartment in the basement of my father’s parents’ house in peaceful Glenview, Illinois. For me, life was a paradise of wonders. I can remember being stuck inside for a week once when I had the chicken pox, and longingly gazing out the basement window at the luscious green lawn in the glorious sunshine, and just weeping without restraint because I was trapped indoors and could not go out and play. This was my experiencing side.
But it wasn’t long before my theorizing side took over. I have always had a great desire to figure out what makes people tick. It may have come from watching my father suffer from the way he learned to repress his emotions as a result of his experience as a Marine who saw a lot of combat in the Pacific in World War II. My father could barely attend church, after what he had seen and done in the war between the ages of 18 and 21. Or it may have come from watching my mother’s fear of life outside of her prescribed circle inside our church community. It may have come from the ever-present confusion of being completely surrounded by a world in which every adult appeared to believe the same things, expressed by the same religious phrases, when some of those beliefs were painful for me. I was presented by such a monolithic wall of unified belief about what life is, that the only way out for me was to dream about a whole different life, and whole different system. Dreaming was my escape, and later it became creating theories.
By the time I reached high school, in a Swedenborgian boarding school a thousand miles from my home, I had reached the point where I could actually imagine a wholly different spiritual system, with a different relationship between God and man. And it looked to me like the system I had imagined would work much better than the system I was being taught. I had figured out how God could have created man so it looked like man had the power of choice between good and evil, when in fact this choice was mercifully moderated so that half of humanity did not need to be wasted by suffering an eternity of torment in hell. But this put me in an awful bind, because now I had to choose what to believe. Hard for a high school student to believe he knows better than everyone else. Hard for a high school student to realize he must choose between what he wanted to believe and what was believed by everyone he knew and loved. Hard for a high school student to face the consequences of being wrong: namely, that he was a heretic and would undoubtedly pay for his heresy with condemnation and eternal torment after death.
DECLINING TO BE GOD
I remember thinking about it like this: “Well, if I can see a better way to have created the universe, so that many more people are saved, then I must:
- be God
- be smarter than God, or
- these people around me must be mistaken.”
That did it for me. I couldn’t be smarter than God, and I surely didn’t want to be God. One of my favorite songs back was sung by Shawn Phillips: “Struck with the thought of being God, I respectfully decline. There really wasn’t very much money, and the work was awfully hard.”
So, as a youth I was put in a position where I had to find another way to see things, or give up on my heart. I had to figure out how things worked on a spiritual and psychological level or perish. I had to get out of experience and deal with theory.
In some way, we all go through this. We are enmeshed in an experience, which does not fit us in some way, so we learn to detach and find another way. It was so for our ancestors on the savannahs of Africa, who learned to walk upright, and it is so in smaller ways today. We all begin by working from the Experience side of this third paradox to the Theory side. And if you know anything about little children, you know how powerful the drive to learn can be.
RECOGNIZING THEORY AND EXPERIENCE
CV: How would Theory and Experience be easily recognizable to us?
Cliff: I will often ask people the question, “Do you prefer to read, think about, listen to, study something and then go and do it? Or do you prefer to jump in and try things and then form theory around it?” This seems to help people divide the way they learn into a starting place.
I am happy talking for hours about the thought process and patterns that my theories illuminate. But at some point, Vicki, as someone who prefers Experience, will say, “Get your head out of your model, Cliffie.” Probably in every organization, this will become evident at a meeting. Those who prefer Experience will vote for action and to please stop talking it to death.
ARCHETYPES AS INTERSECTIONS
CV: You’ve covered all three of the big paradoxes. What would be helpful to someone who wants to learn more?
Cliff: For each of us there are these three tracks: Needs, Action and Learning. In each case we are born into one and are driven by deep instincts to develop the other.
If we get wounded, discouraged or shamed as we try to move to the other side of a paradox, we will subconsciously decide to stay on the first side. Or if we are being wounded on the first side, we will hasten to the other side, and develop a preference for that side over the other. And so our personality is developed across these three lines of tension, as we learn to bring forward one side for one situation, and another side for another situation. But in the end, everything can be analyzed across these three big paradoxes. I have not found a dynamic which cannot be usefully understood by applying these lenses for viewing ourselves and for viewing one another.
CV: And now what does this mean for the archetypes?
Cliff: They form the intersections between the sides of the Paradoxes.
Don’t worry. They’re not lost. They are the building blocks out of which the paradoxes are made. But the paradoxes are easier for someone new to understand because they don’t use archetypal names. Once someone understands the paradoxes and has done some work with them, it becomes easier to introduce the archetypes. So then we can take up with explaining the archetypes in our customary way.
CV: This seems like a way to give people the option of wading slowly into the pool as opposed to jumping in the deep end first. Both ends of the pool are valid sources of enjoyment and learning. And it’s all connected. Of course, this is an Arizona metaphor, but I can’t seem to make it work as well with the idea of shoveling snow.
Cindy Vargas is a Certified Shadow Work® Coach, Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Licensed Massage Therapist in Phoenix, Arizona. Read more about Cindy. If you’d like to take the survey mentioned in this article and get a reading from Cindy, you can reach her at cvargas20@cox.net.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in February 2014. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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Equine-Assisted Shadow Work®
“Believe in your dreams, even when you can’t see the way.” This motto (and potential bumper-sticker) sums up my journey of finding a way to bring my two passions together: Shadow Work® and equine-assisted healing. [Read more…]
Integrating Shadow Work® and Mindfulness
August 2014, by Asha Goldstein, LCSW
As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Certified Shadow Work® Coach, I am dedicated to practicing empowerment-focused and experiential models of psychotherapy that have a keen eye towards healing shame. I call my work radical acceptance, and the two main modalities I work with are Shadow Work® Coaching and mindfulness.
Mindfulness is currently one of the most highly researched therapeutic approaches for a wide range of uses including anxiety, depression, struggles with eating and body image, relationship difficulties, addictions, and much more. Mindfulness is defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, founder of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, as “paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally, to the unfolding of experience moment to moment.”
Both Shadow Work® and mindfulness are embodied approaches to psychological healing because they work with direct experience of the body and emotional states. There is also a quality of non-hierarchy in both approaches as they regard the participant as having wisdom, insight, and authority over their own healing. In Shadow Work® we might ask, “What needs to happen between these two conflicting aspects of yourself in order for you to have what you want?” With mindfulness we ask, “What do you feel in your body right now? Can you describe it as sensation? Now can you fully experience that sensation just as it is, without turning away from it?” These questions are empowering as they draw out a person’s own capacity to guide their healing process.
Below is an outline of some of the major traits as they are shared, or slightly differentiated between the two approaches:
A COMPARISON
MINDFULNESS-BASED APPROACHES
- Cultivates attention and awareness of present-moment experience.
- Encourages non-judgmental response to emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations.
- Supports principles of curiosity, openness, and “beginner’s mind” for responding to internal experience.
- Usually practiced while sitting, though can also be used while standing, lying down, walking, or in the midst of daily activities.
- Intentionally non-goal-oriented. Emphasis is on meeting present-moment experience with openness on ongoing basis.
SHADOW WORK® APPROACHES
- Cultivates awareness and experience of different aspects of the self.
- Encourages understanding and honoring of all parts of the self, including those parts that have been most challenging (i.e., Risk Manager).
- Facilitator models open, non-judgmental inquiry when engaging with participant’s different “parts.”
- Usually practiced by having participant take different positions throughout a room to represent different parts of themselves, though can also be done via Skype by having participant shift positions with laptop.
- While there may be a goal of having participant complete full Shadow Work® process and connect with qualities they were wanting, there is also a great openness to meeting the participant and their experience exactly where they are at.
MUTUALLY SUPPORTIVE
As I deepen my practice of both Shadow Work® Coaching and mindfulness-based approaches, I come to recognize more and more how mutually supportive they are. Mindfulness is a powerful way to help a person be more in touch with their body and their emotions. In this way it supports connection with the Lover, Inner Child, and Warrior archetypes of Shadow Work®. Mindfulness can also be used to cultivate a sense of spaciousness, perspective, and distance in the midst of overwhelming emotions. By focusing on the breath and witnessing thoughts without being absorbed in them, a person gains greater access to the objectivity of the Magician and the wisdom of the Sovereign archetypes.
Shadow Work® and mindfulness offer both theoretical frameworks and specific therapeutic practices. Some people are more comfortable sitting and exploring their internal landscape of emotions and sensations with mindfulness practices. Yet in these instances I may still be considering the Shadow Work® archetypes and the different parts that are active in someone’s inner world. On the other hand, some people are more comfortable actively embodying different parts of themselves, speaking as those parts, and dialoguing between them. Even in this Shadow Work® practice, however, I may still bring in mindfulness practices of moving closer to their emotions and bodies or using mindful attention to create more objectivity.
I recently worked with a client who was a wonderful model for how these two approaches can be used together.
A CASE STUDY
Deborah was a 57-year-old woman who contacted me for Skype sessions after discovering my website in an online search. While she lived in a large city in the South, she hadn’t found anyone locally whose work really matched what she was looking for. Deborah was struggling with both depression and anxiety. She worked as an executive in a large company and was also caring for her mother who was in early stages of dementia.
We met over Skype, and Deborah was ready to dive in right away. She shared that she wanted to feel more present and grateful in her life rather than feeling stuck in resentment about caring for her mother and fear about not maintaining her performance at work. Through our work together, Deborah became more aware of a part of herself that was hyper-responsible and thought it needed to take charge of any situation. She came to understand and honor how these qualities had been her best attempt to feel safe in a family that was unstable due to her father’s drinking. The more that she was able to accept these qualities in herself, the more she was also able to recognize how much she yearned to be able to relax and trust life more.
I found that Deborah had easy access to the Warrior and Sovereign archetypes but struggled to connect with her body and her more vulnerable emotions. Mindfulness practices helped Deborah attend to the tension in her body and the emotions that accompanied it. When she reached her threshold and didn’t feel comfortable going further, we used Shadow Work® practices to explore the risks associated with feeling emotions like sadness and hurt. We also used mindfulness to help Deborah feel a sense of presence that allowed her to feel safe in the midst of strong emotions.
With time, Deborah found that connecting with her grief about her mother’s declining health helped her feel a great sense of relief. The more she trusted herself to be able to tolerate a wide range of emotions in her life, the less she needed to try so hard to be in control. Deborah learned that she could recognize and check-in with the different parts of herself in the midst of her busy life. She developed the capacity to pause in the midst of her busy schedule to recognize and respond to her emotional needs in a way that left her feeling strong, adaptable, and relaxed. She reported that our work had indeed allowed her to feel far more present and focused on all that was good in her life.
TWINS
Through my work with Deborah and many other clients I have come to feel that weaving Shadow Work® and mindfulness together is the most effective way I can help people heal. These two approaches are fraternal twins, similar in many ways, but not identical. I continue to learn so much from the mindfulness perspective of releasing agendas and expectations in favor of embracing the realities of life. Buddhist teacher and psychologist Tara Brach defines radical acceptance as “the willingness to accept ourselves and our lives as they are.” It seems that there is a very deep wisdom in this teaching, with many layers to peel as I come to understand more fully what this really means.
I am so grateful for all the ways that Shadow Work® was designed to mirror this perspective. Whichever approach I utilize in a given moment, it is so rewarding to help a person come to understand and honor aspects of themselves with which they have been at war. A person who is willing to meet any part of themselves is truly a liberated person.
Asha Goldstein, LCSW, is a Certified Shadow Work® Coach and psychotherapist in Ashland, Oregon. She offers classes, workshops, and individual counseling and coaching in person and via Skype. More information is available on her website at AshaGoldstein.com. Please note that any identifying information in the case study portion of this article has been removed. Read more about Asha.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in August 2014. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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Consider Changing Your Relationship With Shame
April 2015, by Giles Carwyn
One of the basic tenets of Shadow Work® is that we have no “bad parts.” All of us is good. Every part of us is trying to love and be loved, even if our current way of doing so is pretty messed up.
In Shadow Work® we teach that “laziness” is just part of our ability to relax and enjoy the moment. “Cowardice” is just part of our healthy management of risk. “Clinginess” is just a misinterpretation of our beautiful desire to be connected to others.
That idea is worth repeating. All of us is good. All of us. All of me, all of you. That is a very challenging concept. But I don’t think you would be reading this article if you weren’t up for that challenge.
CAN SHAME BE GOOD?
But what about shame? How can being ashamed of ourselves be a good thing? How can feeling like we are worthless, incompetent, unlovable, or broken be positive? How can allowing others to criticize or belittle us be anything other than an aberration that must be abolished?
Graphic © chrisdorney – Fotolia.com
All of us have felt shame, been shamed by others. All of us have taken on messages that we were somehow unwanted, undesirable or deficient. I have been diminished by those feelings throughout my life. I have lost years of productivity. I have missed thousands of opportunities for joy. I have undermined countless relationships with false beliefs that I was somehow not good enough, that the other person was somehow not good enough.
It makes sense to reject shame, to villainize it. Shame is a cancer of the soul, a disease to be cured, an ignorance to be re-educated, an unwelcome house guest, an intolerable attack on our persons. Right?
I don’t believe so.
HEALTHY VS. TOXIC
On some level, if shame is the enemy, and I feel shame, then I must be the enemy. If shame is bad, and I, despite my best efforts, shame myself and others, then I must be bad.
I don’t believe I am a bad person. Yet I feel shame. I choose to shame others. How do I reconcile that?
First, I think it is important to draw a distinction between healthy shame and toxic shame.
Toxic shame is taking on the belief that we are bad, at our core. It is an attack on our character. “I crashed my car, I’m an idiot.” “She didn’t pass her test, she’s a failure.” “He ate the last piece of pizza, he’s a selfish bastard.”
Graphic © Stuart Miles – Fotolia.com
Healthy shame is the belief that we did something bad. It is a critique of our behavior. “I crashed my car, I let myself get distracted.” “She didn’t pass her test, she wasn’t prepared.” “He ate the last piece of pizza, he was discourteous.”
I would take that a step further and say that healthy shame is noticing a moment when we are not living in alignment with our values.
SHAME AS A GIFT
Under that definition, it is possible to see shame as a gift. Shame is a wake-up call. Shame is an email message from our higher self that says, “You are not behaving like the person you want to be right now. Please consider doing something different.”
Shame is not only informative, it inspires action. If we harness shame’s energy it can become fuel for change. Shame energy in our bodies can drive our efforts to behave differently next time.
For example, suppose I am walking down the street and I see someone ahead of me asking strangers for money. Sometimes I will avoid eye contact, I will pretend they don’t exist and try to slide by without any kind of interaction. When I do that, I feel shame. My heart constricts and I feel a churning in my gut. I want to be a person who acknowledges the humanity and inherent value in all people. I want to engage with others and let them know that I see them and that they matter. I believe that is of far greater value than whatever change is in my pocket.
However, I am also the judgmental, fearful guy who avoids confrontation, who doesn’t want to say “no,” who clings to every dollar he has, who harshly judges, “That freeloader is just too lazy or cowardly to go make her or his own money.”
The moment I see that panhandler I get to make a choice. Do I look them in the eye? Do I interact with them as a human being, even if it is only for a few seconds? Whether I give them money, or a few words of encouragement, do I choose to see them? Or… Do I let my more-protected, less-generous self dictate my actions? If I make a choice that I don’t respect, my shame will send me a reminder that I am acting like a person I don’t want to be. And that is a gift.
SHAME IS THE VEHICLE OF TOUGH LOVE
In the same way, if presented with some finesse, inviting others to feel healthy shame can be a gift. Is it a kindness to tell someone they have some spinach stuck between their teeth? Is it a gift to tell someone that what they are doing is making you uncomfortable? Is it a profoundly loving act to tell someone that their excessive drinking is having an unacceptable, negative effect on their family? All of those are shaming messages. They are tough love. And it takes a fierce and courageous kind of love to tell someone something that will hurt them in the moment and but ultimately serve them. (Warning: Like all love, tough love is best when delivered with careful timing and delivery. If you choose to challenge someone in this way, I suggest asking for permission first. Then let go of your desire to have them react in any particular way. Lay your gift at their feet and walk away; doing your best to release any attachment to whether now is the time they choose to pick it up.)
We can choose to see shame as a gift to ourselves in the same way that constructive criticism can be a gift to others. It is a form of self-parenting. It’s not the kind of self-parenting that says, “I will always love you, no matter what.” It is the kind of self-parenting that says, “Don’t sell yourself short. You’re better than that.”
Next time you feel shame, I invite you to pause. Let it in. Feel it. Give yourself time to discover what important information your body is trying to give you. Sometimes the shame is just junk mail sent by your parent’s vision for your life, by society’s unrealistic expectations, or by someone who is trying to make you feel bad so they can sell you something. If the message isn’t from your soul, you can just delete it. That is toxic shame. Give yourself permission to chuck it in the SPAM folder.
EMBRACING SHAME IS NO EASY TASK
Letting our shame in is easier said than done. Shame can be overwhelming. We want to run away and hide or distract ourselves anyway you can. My favorite response is to attack others, to make them wrong. Talk about a highly effective way to distract myself from what I don’t want to see and feel. And if I’m not attacking others, I often turn on myself. I latch onto the shame and beat myself up with it for a good long while, which is also a highly effective way to avoid being present to the moment and making the hard choices I need to make in life.
Graphic © klublu – Fotolia.com
We shouldn’t judge ourselves too harshly for these responses. We all have good reasons for avoiding shame. We have all been deeply wounded in life. We have all taken in many soul-crushing messages from ourselves and others, especially when we were very young and had no defenses from other people’s less-than-ideal selves. Toxic shame hurts and the hurt lingers for years. And the part of us that protects us does not want that to happen again. Our risk managers go into hyper drive anytime we get close to anything that even remotely resembles toxic shame. It is easy to miss the gift of my healthy shame because it resembles its evil twin so closely.
TELLING THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HEALTHY AND TOXIC SHAME
I invite you to remember that not all shame is toxic. The way we tell the difference between healthy and toxic shame is by identifying the message it is giving us and discovering the source of that message. For example, I recently felt shame when I failed to meet my self-imposed deadline for getting this article written. The message I got from my shame was, “You are weak, and lazy and quit whenever something gets hard.” (I don’t know about you, but my shame doesn’t pull any punches.)
I looked at those messages and tried to see where they came from. The, “You quit whenever something gets hard,” message is definitely toxic shame. My mother said that to me all the time when I was growing up. That was her stuff. She had unrealistic expectations of my age-appropriate capacity overcome discouragement. She meant well, but didn’t realize that I needed encouragement to keep going when I got frustrated. That “quitter” shame is not mine. It was given to me by someone else and I don’t have to keep it.
The, “you are weak,” message is also toxic shame. It comes from unrealistic societal exceptions. I missed my deadline because I was grieving. I am in the process of losing a relationship that is very important to me. I was mourning that loss, but society tells me that men don’t cry. Society tells me that I should shut off my feelings and focus on work. Our culture does not encourage people to take the time to truly feel our feelings when they are there. That “weakling” message is not mine. I don’t agree with it. I can toss that aside.
The third part of the message, the, “You are lazy,” that’s a different story. Before I missed my deadline because I was grieving, I was way behind on my deadline because I spent a bunch of my work time watching Nextflix and playing games online. Writing is hard work. Believing that I have something to say, saying it well, and putting it out in the world is challenging. And I truly want to be a person who faces those kinds of challenges. But on this particular occasion, I choose to take the easier path and disappear into a string mildly amusing sit-coms. That’s not who I want to be. That behavior does not support my mission in life, and I am only truly happy when I am living my mission. Therefore, the, “You’re lazy,” shame is healthy shame. The language the message is course, but I can rewrite it to say something that feels very true to me: “The rewards of hard work far outweigh the pleasures of superficial immediate gratification.” That reminder is a gift. Next time I am tempted to fall into my avoidance behaviors, it will help me remember how good it feels to give my gifts and how wretched it feels when I hide from my work in the world.
READING THE EMAIL
Next time you feel that familiar churning in your gut, consider running toward it rather than away from it. Open that email from your higher self. Sit with it. Ask yourself what you are calling upon yourself to do differently.
Graphic © Artistashmita | Dreamstime.com
Sometimes the reason for our shame will remain a mystery, but if we discover why we are feeling shame, then we can choose how to respond from a place of knowledge, balance and empowerment. We then have the option to change our course of action to be more in alignment with our highest selves. We can make amends for behavior we are not proud of. We can own our contribution to a painful dynamic. We can choose to de-escalate a conflict or begin to repair a damaged relationship. We can acknowledge the unintended consequences of our actions and become more aware of our impact on the world. Or, we could simply notice what happened without obligating ourselves to do anything about it.
Next time someone else shames us, we have the option to pause, read the email, feel the feelings in your bodies. We can remember that they shamed us because they saw us do something (accurate or not) that does not ultimately serve us. No matter how clumsy or misguided, they are trying to love us.
If the other person is off the mark, fine; we can appreciate the effort and ignore the advice. But if their words sting because they are true, then we have received a rare gift. Someone loved us enough to point out how we are not living in integrity with ourselves.
If we view our shame as nothing more than information and energy, if we view it as an invitation to make a conscious choice and the energy to follow through with that choice, then we can engage with ourselves and others from a place of power, compassion, and grace rather than a place of defensiveness or self-doubt. If we stop fighting or running from our shame we can use its energy to do the hard work of changing our habits of perception. We can take one step closer to believing that all of us is good? All of us. Even our shame. Especially our shame.
EXPECT GREAT THINGS
Shame is the part of us that expects great things from us. It is the part of us that loves us enough to tell us what we don’t want to hear in the moment because it will ultimately lead us to where we want to be.
This is an invitation to change our relationship with shame. We can see it as another tool in our toolbox. See it as another friend who’s got our back. See it as us fiercely loving ourselves.
Giles Carwyn is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach in Asheville, North Carolina. Read more about Giles.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in April 2015. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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Tuning Your Archetypes
June 2015, by Jeff Baugher
Sometimes when men and women have a persistent issue, their conscious attempts to resolve it fail — repeatedly. They decide that in the future, they will “be more open,” or “set clearer boundaries,” or “lead instead of follow,” or “listen to my intuition.” Instead, however, these direct attempts to operate differently get overridden by a mysterious, unconscious mechanism. In Shadow Work®, we would say this hidden reaction pattern is in shadow.
To understand what’s going on, we use a simple map that divides the human psyche into four parts. Each part is called an archetype and represents one fundamental human dimension. In Shadow Work®, these are identified as the Sovereign, Lover, Warrior, and Magician. And for a given issue, a person has each of these four archetypes set at a relative strength or “volume” level.
For example, imagine that as a boy, I get shamed for showing vulnerability. Messages of “Men don’t cry” or “You’ll be taken advantage of if you’re weak” come in forcefully and from several directions. In order to cope, I make a conscious decision (a “vow”) to hide my sensitive side. By reducing my tendency toward openness and sharing, I have effectively turned down the volume level of my Lover archetype. At the same time, I also turn up the volume on my tendency to be emotionally detached and to respond from a mental place (my Magician archetype.) From that point forward, this archetypal balance of settings affects my relationships, decision making, and eventually career direction.
Years later, this coping mechanism of detaching and shutting down feelings has now become so ingrained that it occurs automatically with no conscious thought on my part. Although this works well for a career in computers, any endeavors that require more heart and less head become problematic. What is tragic is that the Magician on high volume and Lover on low volume pattern also occurs with the very people who love me and would honor my vulnerability. My relationships with my spouse, my child, and my own spontaneity are all casualties of this pattern. The coping mechanism has been successful in keeping me safe but at a cost of emotional isolation.
So, how can Shadow Work® be used to reset one’s archetypal volume settings? Via Shadow Work Coaching, or Centerwork in a group setting, we create a process where a person can experiment with what has become difficult (in this case, vulnerability). The facilitator helps him to actually experience and feel what it’s like to operate by being open. And by running this new pattern slowly and deliberately while in a shame-free setting, he builds a new pattern with the Lover volume cranked higher and the Magician volume reduced.
Afterwards, the payoff is that he now has choices about openness and connection. The depth and quality of his relationships grow, his world becomes bigger, and he feels more whole. And now he must turn his attention to the challenge of accurately discerning which situations and people merit his vulnerability and sensitive side.
Jeff Baugher is a certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach, and professional astrologer. Located in Louisville, Kentucky, he offers workshops and individual coaching as well as couples coaching, and often co-facilitates with his wife Becky Schupbach. Visit ArchetypalArts.com for more information about Jeff and Becky.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in July 2015. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
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