During most of last year, I experienced significant knee pain, to the point that I was often limping. When I got up from my desk at work, I would actually hobble for a few minutes. [Read more…]
Bring your true self out of the shadows and into the light
By -
During most of last year, I experienced significant knee pain, to the point that I was often limping. When I got up from my desk at work, I would actually hobble for a few minutes. [Read more…]
By -
by Alyce Barry
There have traditionally been two approaches in self-help books: what in Shadow Work® we call the “uphill” and “downhill” approaches.
The uphill approach judges success by an external standard. It tells the reader, “Follow these rules that I offer, and you will succeed.” Success is a golden ideal written, as it were, in the sky. In order to reach the ideal, you, the reader, must ignore the resistance that rises inside you. If that becomes difficult, the uphill approach urges, “Just push through! Just don’t think about that! Just use will-power!” What keeps you going through the inevitable trials is your dream of doing it perfectly.
The downhill approach, on the other hand, judges success by an internal standard. It tells you, “Look within for your true self, and learn to live it.” Success consists in becoming self-aware. In order to succeed, you must sometimes ignore what others think as you put your own truth first. If that becomes difficult, the downhill approach urges, “Listen to yourself, and follow your own path, wherever it may lead.” What keeps you going through the inevitable trials is your belief in fulfilling your mission to grow, however imperfectly.
ALL IN A CYCLE
Neither approach is better. In fact, a mature growth process is a cycle that incorporates both approaches, beginning with an uphill phase.
Since I’m in the process of writing a self-help book (about Shadow Work®, as a matter of fact), I’ll use that as an example.
To publish a book, a writer must aim for the standard of what qualifies as a publishable book. The writer must get words on paper and structure the book in a way that appeals to publishers and readers. The writer must be motivated by a belief that the book’s concept can be realized in an ideal form. The writer must resist fear, impreciseness, avoidance, and other impediments to writing.
When the writer becomes aware of the manuscript’s inevitable imperfections, there is an opportunity to shift to the downhill phase.
With that shift to downhill, the writer views those imperfections with understanding and compassion, recognizing that they make perfect sense given the writer’s talents and perspective. The writer searches within his or her own heart to discover where the real passion lies. A new perspective emerges that reveals how better to capture that passion on paper. The writer views the first draft as a necessary learning experience, not as a mistake or a waste of time, because only by writing that first draft could the writer have reached the new perspective. The writer now has a new goal, and the cycle begins again.
STUCK IN UPHILL
What happens more often, however, is that the writer concludes that there was a right and a wrong way to do it, and this time it was done wrong. Thinking that there is a right and a wrong way is characteristic of the uphill phase. The writer decides that if the rules had only been followed better, the manuscript would have been a success — a decision that reflects the uphill phase instead of a shift to the downhill phase.
Many writers remain stuck in the uphill phase of the process, trying again and again for the same goal and believing there’s something wrong with themselves for failing, rather than accepting a truth about themselves and then basing a new manuscript on that truth.
TWO COSMOLOGIES
This difference between uphill and downhill approaches also says a lot about the differences between Jungian psychology and mainstream culture. Jungian psychology is based on a fundamentally different cosmology.
Uphill cosmology, as held by mainstream culture, believes that human beings are subject to good and evil influences that struggle to dominate our will and actions.
Good influences include God, Scripture, angels, good spirits, and so on. Evil influences include the temptations of Satan, the Devil, evil spirits, etc.
Based on uphill cosmology, the task of human beings in this life is to block out the evil influences and allow only the good influences, so that our actions will be good.
Downhill cosmology, as held by Jungian psychology (as well as by some Native cultures), believes that human beings are alive because the Creator has given us the life energy. Life energy is not inherently good or evil, it simply is. How we use that energy determines whether our actions will be good or evil. This in turn depends on our psychological health, or wholeness.
When I act out of my wholeness, that is, acting consciously from what I like to call “my best self,” my actions will tend to be good. When I act out of my shadow, that is, acting unconsciously from my woundedness, my actions will tend to be evil.
According to downhill cosmology, then, my task in this life is to heal the wounds inside me, so that I am acting out of my best self as much of the time as possible, and acting out of my shadow or woundedness as little of the time as possible.
THE FLAME AND THE GLASS
My favorite image for illustrating how we use our life energy to act in the world is the image of a flame burning inside a lamp.
The flame is what makes us alive and akin to every other being with a flame inside. The flame remains pure and perfect regardless of what happens to us during our lives.
The flame shines out through the glass of the lamp. That glass can and does take a beating as we go through life. The glass can be smudged, smeared, scratched, chipped, cracked, even shattered, by life events.
If you’ve ever looked at a flame through a cracked piece of glass, you will see that the crack appears dark. In the same way, the perfection of our inner flame may look like darkness to the world when our actions reflect the crack and not the flame itself.
Healing work like Shadow Work® can clean the glass, polish it, patch it, even melt it down and recast it, so that the flame can shine out in a way that reveals its Divinely-given beauty.
Alyce Barry is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach, and a writer, in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in September 2006. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
Back to the Articles Menu.
By -
by Alyce Barry –
I’m often asked if Shadow Work coaching is similar to life coaching.
No, I answer, it’s quite different. [Read more…]
By -
by Alyce Barry –
As one of my readers recently commented, my newly completed book about Shadow Work is a journey.
As you can probably imagine, writing it was a journey as well. [Read more…]
By -
by Alyce Barry –
It’s not something I say to every client, but it’s true: Shadow Work® has a cumulative effect. Each piece of work builds on what came before. [Read more…]
By -
By Alyce Barry
I often hear frustration from clients and friends when they re-encounter an issue they’ve worked on before.
“What’s wrong with me,” I hear them asking, “that I keep working on the ‘same old stuff’ over and over? Why am I not over this one yet?”
I can certainly resonate. I have issues I know I’ve worked on at least half a dozen times, each time going a little deeper or approaching it from a slightly different angle. I’m well acquainted with that “Not this one again!” feeling.
At different times, I’ve replied in different ways, depending on what I knew about the person and the issue they referred to. Recently, I wondered if I could come up with a more comprehensive view of why people work on certain issues over and over.
To do that, I turned to the Shadow Work® Four-Directional Model, which I find very helpful for this purpose. In fact, one of the things I like best about the Model is the way it helps me organize my thoughts and encompass ideas that I might otherwise fail to consider.
IN AND OUT THE PORTALS
I think of the four archetypes on which the Model is based — the Magician, Sovereign, Lover, and Warrior — as portals, or doorways.
I can step through each of the doorways toward one aspect or “face” of the highest self I can become. And life brings me things through each of the doorways, too.
For the purposes of this discussion, I’ll use as an example an issue I’m working on right now for what seems like the umpteenth time: wanting to feel more comfortable with my anger.
I grew up in a household where anger felt too risky, so I put anger into shadow. Of course, when I did that, I put away a good chunk of my power as well, since anger is really just power looking for an outlet. It’s my belief that anger is a healthy response to a situation where I want to set a boundary (a goal or a limit) in order to accomplish something. What I’d really like is to enjoy feeling angry, but I’m not there yet. I’ve come a long way, but it still feels risky.
THE MAGICIAN: LEARNING, AND SPOTTING THE PROBLEM
My Magician is the part of me that learns. Thus, if I’m working on anger one more time, “Life” (or the Divine, or God, or the Universe, or whatever you want to call it) is sending some new learning to me through the Magician portal, like light from a new or brighter source.
I believe that, to a large degree, life is about learning, and we’re here to learn as much as we can. Of course, I don’t always want to learn what Life’s trying to teach me. What helps me is remembering all the times when some new learning came in very handy.
I also believe that if life wants to teach me something, I might as well learn it now because it’s only going to come around again later if I don’t. As a friend of mine likes to say, “Life sends us pebbles, and if we ignore the pebbles, we get boulders.” I’ve had some boulders in my life, and I’d just as soon deal with the pebbles, thank you very much.
And what does my Magician want?
As I look out through the Magician portal, my Magician wants me to work on anger one more time because it’s not yet satisfied with how anger’s working in my life. My Magician is the part of me that’s ready to put its finger on whatever’s not quite right. When I’m washing a window, it’s my Magician who looks over my shoulder and points out the spot I missed. Although that’s not always a pleasant experience, I can take some comfort from knowing that my Magician is wants to help me improve.
THE SOVEREIGN: HEALING TO DO, AND BECOMING A BIGGER DOLL
From a Sovereign point of view, I’m working on anger yet again because Life, or the Divine, is letting me know I still have some healing to do. There’s still some hurt around anger, in other words, and the Divine is sending me compassion, like sunlight that pours through a doorway onto the floor and warms up the room. It comes through the Sovereign portal because my Sovereign is the part of me that connects me with the Divine.
If I ask my Sovereign what it wants out of working on anger one more time, an image comes to me, of nesting Russian dolls, each one nesting inside another doll that’s slightly larger.
Earlier in my life, when my Sovereign was mostly in shadow, I felt small as a person. I got support from mentors and teachers whose dolls looked bigger than mine.
As I bring more and more of my Sovereign energy out of shadow, my Sovereign becomes a larger doll. The larger it gets, the more it can support those whose dolls see themselves as smaller than me. In other words, I become a mentor and teacher to others.
What my Sovereign wants from working on anger one more time is to become a bigger doll: to become a role model in dealing with anger so that I can help others who struggle with the same issue.
I love this image of the nesting dolls. As I work through deeper and deeper issues, I get to know smaller and smaller dolls within me, so that I’m healing younger and younger parts of me. I also become capable of helping other people with deeper issues of their own, and healing younger parts of them.
The deeper the issue I’m working with, the more my Sovereign asks for, and receives, support from the biggest doll in the set, which is the Divine. It will always be there to support me, even on those sunless days when I see myself as the littlest doll in the world.
THE LOVER: ON THE DANCE FLOOR
Coming through my Lover portal is a soft rain from a cloudy sky. It’s a good day to curl up with a story book.
Once upon a time, when I was small, something painful happened: I found out that my anger wasn’t welcome to someone I loved. So I put my anger away rather than risk damage to my relationship with that beloved someone.
My anger was a natural, healthy part of me, and when I put it away, I felt the grief of loss. And I lost a part of my connection with that person who couldn’t welcome it, too.
Today, anger remains an issue because a part of me is on a dance floor, in a painful dance with that person. To that part of me, who wants desperately to hold onto the remaining connection with that person, a painful dance is better than no dance at all.
When I can see the dance as my way of loving, I become able to change it. I can give back the painful dance to my beloved partner and take a different way of staying connected. In doing so, I also reclaim what a loving person I am.
What my Lover wants, as it peers out through the Lover portal, is a different kind of dance. It wants to dance with my anger, to play with it, have fun with it, enjoy it, instead of feeling uncomfortable with it. My Lover wants me to connect with power through my body. It wants my anger to be part of my relationships, too, where it can help me create healthy boundaries.
My Lover hears a dance tune coming through the portal. It invites me to step through and start dancing.
THE WARRIOR: PERSONALITY TYPE AND A HARDER RACE
Lastly, what comes through my Warrior portal is a bracing wind that reminds me that a struggle with anger is one aspect of my personality type.
I once thought of a personality type as a kind of pigeonhole, and I didn’t like that at all.
These days, I think about personality type very differently. My type isn’t a limit. It represents a set of strategies that I adopted at an early age for navigating my early environment. It’s a map that shows me where I started, and by implication, what direction I might want to go.
In my early environment, anger was risky, so I put it away. That happened so early in my life that my struggle with anger became a foundation for many other things I became. It’s natural that I should run into it from time to time as I work on the deepest, youngest parts of me.
There’s little question what my Warrior wants as it bravely steps out through the portal: it wants a challenge!
Just as my Sovereign wants to become a bigger and bigger doll, so my Warrior wants to get stronger by running a longer, harder race over more difficult terrain. I’m working on anger one more time because my Warrior wants to run to a finish line that’s a little farther away than the last finish line was.
A MAP
When I chart my new insights by the four directions, I have a map for helping me understand why I work on “the same old stuff” over and over again. It looks like this.
Alyce Barry is a Certified Shadow Work® Group Facilitator and Coach, and a writer, in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is the author of Practically Shameless.
This article originally appeared in our free email newsletter in 2007. To subscribe, visit our subscription page.
Back to the Articles Menu.
By -
by Alyce Barry –
In Writing the Shadow Work Book, Part One: Storytelling, I explained how my new book about Shadow Work®, Practically Shameless, became a personal story rather than a traditional nonfiction book. [Read more…]