Human Shadow Talk

Halloween Shadows

2009-10-08T09:55:00.000-07:00

It's fall, isn't it? All about shorter days, longer nights, turning colors, and the stirrings of evil spirits, both within and without.

An excellent time to read an illustrated book on the human shadow...

My "Little" Shadow

2009-09-24T11:14:00.000-07:00

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow--
Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow,
For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,
And he sometimes goes so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,
And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.
He stays so close behind me, he's a coward you can see;
I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,
I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;
But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,
Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

--Robert Louis Stevenson
(who, of course, also wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)

2009-09-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

A Possible Reason for the Meanness of Conservatives

2009-09-17T11:30:00.000-07:00

A Possible Reason for the Meanness of Conservatives

Talking to Claire yesterday:

about those times when you find yourself
face to face with a wealthy person who starts to foam at the mouth
about the remote possibility that illegal immigrants—who do the dirty work while the rest of us look away or go on vacation—might receive a bit of basic health care while in this country.

And then this morning:

stopping in mid-stride for no logical reason whatsoever,
while actually on my way out the door to do something logical,
dropping down on my hands and knees in front of the art file,
rifling through, pulling out whatever spoke to my heart
and slapping it up all over the refrigerator.
Ah…
Much better.

Could it be a lack of wildness that drives conservatives to meanness?

A fear of being different, of not looking successful enough,
Of not doing the right thing—does my tie look OK?
Is my lawn smooth enough?
The bland sappy art and the elevator music,
the white walls and the beige carpets,
the high ceilings in big chilly houses with faux stone fronts,
the church services where thousands chant the same words in unison,
the same restaurants with the same food
—none of it nourishing—
appearing every few minutes
along otherwise featureless suburban freeways?

Could it be that all this blandness squeezes the wildness and fierceness
out of their poor denied animal natures
in fearsome and menacing ways?

Thank heaven that
young people are getting weirder and weirder looking all the time.
It just might save the human race.

Simply Too Much Shadow to Share

2009-09-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

Not too current on this blog thing, am I? Afraid my last entry was in January...

Ah, well. I assume you've all had plenty to look at on the internet without any input from me.

Sometimes there's simply too much shadow to talk about. Or write about in public, anyway.

A marriage breaks up, the two people live apart for months, then their marriage reforms with new dynamics. Re-marriage, but with the same two principal characters.

And as that goes on relationships with children -- really, I should think of something else to call them besides children, the youngest is 26, for Christ's sake -- also change and evolve.

I don't know about you, but I can't seem to grow without pain. Like that story where the Worm/Dragon has to peel off 7 different layers of skin in order to become human again. Ouch. It hurts to peel off layers of old persona, old masks, old habits, old kneejerk reactions developed in childhood (complexes, a Jungian would call them).

Even when those old skins are so worn out they no longer keep out the elements, it hurts to pull them off and find out what's underneath.

So please excuse my silence. There's simply been too much shadow to share.

A Revolution of the Spirit

2009-01-31T11:09:00.000-08:00

How gratifying to have one's opinion verified by experts first thing in the morning, via the daily paper.

Lately what I've been saying to anyone who'll listen is that the whole premise of our economy is unsound. The GNP is based on all of us selling as many things to one another as we possibly can. Things we usually don't need, that there are already too many of, that the world does not have the resources for us to keep making. How sustainable is that? This system does need a shot in the arm, there's no doubt about it, but beyond that this system needs to fundamentally change its whole underlying idea, its structural vision.

So how pleasant it was to run into Benjamin R. Barber on the editorial page of The Oregonion today (Saturday, January 31. I'll add a link to it as soon as one of my kids tells me how to do so.)

Barber is a senior fellow at Demos, and the author of Jihad vs. Mac World and Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole.

Here's a quote from an essay in today's paper called "A new american revolution?" Rethinking the Soul of Capitalism:

Today we find ourselves in another seminal moment. Will be use it to rethink the meaning of capitalism and the relationship between our material bodies and the spirited psyches they are meant to serve? Between the commodity fetishism and single-minded commercialism that we have allowed to dominate us, and the pluralism, heterogeneity and spiritedness that constitute our professed national character?

I love this question.

What if we didn't spend all our time and money making things we don't need, and started concentrating our resources on making things that benefit us all and enriched our culture?

What if we produced less junk and more soul?

What if we spent our time building and staffing first-rate, engaging schools? What if preschoolers, the elderly, and those too mentally challenged to hold a job, were cared for by well-paid experts in quality facilities?

What is the basis of our society wasn't rampant, unbridled capitalism--the most ruthless economic system ever invented other than outright oppression--but became instead the pursuit of non-material happiness?

The struggle for the soul of capitalism is, then, a struggle between the nation's economic body and its civic soul: a struggle to put capitalism in its proper place, where it serves our nature and needs rather than manipulating and fabricating whims and wants. Saving capitalism means bringing it into harmony with spirit--with prudence, pluralism and those "things of the public" (res publica) that define our civic souls. A revolution of the spirit. Is the new president up to it? Are we?
--Benjamin R. Barber, Rethinking the Soul of Capitalism

What A Difference a Few Months Can Make!

2009-01-08T18:19:00.000-08:00

Having been absent from the blogosphere since October due to family difficulties, what a welcome change to return to it only twelve days from the inauguration of Barack Obama as President of the United States.

Unbelievable. Unprecedented. Indescribably delicious.

The USA is about to have a President who understands the concept of the human shadow, although he may not call it that. Who understands that name-calling, fact-twisting, blame-mongering or sending-to-hell will not solve any of our problems, and is, in fact, holding us back.

Who shows a graceful awareness of his country's shortcomings as well as his own, and shows the willingness and the ability to confront both.

Hallelujah.

While you wait for inauguration day, read both of his books, available now in paperback: Dreams from My Father, a clear-sighted and thoughtful memoir, and The Audacity of Hope, a succinct history of how the US got where she is today, and what can be done about it.

That creaking sound you hear, right there at the edge of your hearing, is the sound of the wheel finally starting to turn...

Workshop on "Greeting the Shadow in the Body"

2008-10-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

Greeting the Shadow in the Body
A Workshop on Integrating the Human Shadow

A time for noticing, with body and mind,
the parts of our beings we usually forget.
Practical teaching in shadow work,
during a guided yoga session.

With Jay Fields, Certified Yoga Instructor &
Kay Plumb, author of Using Beauty and her Beast to Introduce the Human Shadow

December 6, 2008
12:30pm to 5pm
$50/person
OmBase
6357 SW Capitol Highway, Portland, OR 90239
(in the Hillsdale neighborhood, across from Food Front)

Wear comfortable clothes. Bring a yoga mat if you have one.
No prior experience in yoga or shadow work required.
Call 503.285.9210 to reserve a spot.

Election Murk

2008-10-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

There is no better time than election time to study the human shadow.

When we point our finger at another and accuse them of doing what we ourselves are doing right at that very moment, we are talking straight out of our shadow.

As in, "Barack Obama will say whatever he needs to to get elected." --John McCain

Accusing others of doing what we are actually doing ourselves--the best offense is a good defense--is now so pervasive, elections in this country have gotten so unreal, so much stranger than fiction, that we might as well quote George Orwell:

"...Newspeak words have two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts... it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink...

Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. The Party member knows in which direction his memories must be altered; he therefore knows that he is playing tricks with reality; but by the exercise of doublethink he also satisfies himself that reality is not violated. The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt...

To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies--all this is indispensably necessary.

Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. "

--from 1984, by George Orwell

Tolle's Terminology

2008-09-02T11:08:00.000-07:00

Another way to look at ego and shadow is to lump them both together, which is what Eckhart Tolle does in A New Earth, Awakening to Your Life's Purpose. While his approach may be driving some Jungians crazy -- It's not that easy! I can hear them holler -- it does have a certain 'practical shortcut' appeal.

Your ego is your persona, the masks you wear every day when you go outside in public, who you think you are, who you tell people you are.

Your shadow holds the parts of your personality you don't want showing, the parts you would never consciously tell anyone else about.

Since Tolle's aim is to get people to go beyond thinking to Being, he lumps the ego and the shadow together. And it does work for the purposes of his discussion, because neither is your true essence. Neither is "a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human systems of thought," as Jospeh Campbell defined God. (Campbell also defines God as the Ground of Being, which is my personal favorite since I'm a gardener. )

But in Tolle's approach I miss the poetry of "the brighter the light, the darker the shadow." My dualistically-conditioned-mind responds immediately to images of Jekyll and Hyde, light and shadow, what I show vs. what I hide, what I must project onto others vs. what I can face in myself.

Thank goodness we don't have to make a choice. We can learn from Jung, and we can learn from Tolle.

K

Ego and Shadow

2008-08-12T09:51:00.000-07:00

Kay,

The "shadow" is how I have always thought of the ego. A subversive element to it, more interested in maintaining itself than anything else. Distorting the reality of situations to suit its purpose and its survival.

Marilyn

Hhmmm... isn't that true for each part, ego and shadow? That unless consciously injected with compassion, each is only out for its own survival?

We're born knowing how to flee. How to fight. How to snatch a worm out of mama bird's beak before our siblings can. How to knock the other hummingbirds off the perch.

But calmness, compassion, contentment, mercy, forgiveness... the only way I know to develop those traits is by conscious practice.

That's where shadow work comes in. If we don't learn how to love ourselves first, with all our flaws, if we don't handle all the selfish little baby birds and menacing beasts that dwell in our own shadows compassionately --humorously, even -- then we can't cut anyone else any slack.

Jeremiah Abrams calls shadow work "the pursuit of an unhypocritical life." That's a hell of a good definition.

Hell of a task, too.

K

Marilyn's Question

2008-08-11T13:03:00.000-07:00

Kay,

I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your book. I know that you have been told this a million times, but here is one more, it was so much in your voice. I could imagine you sitting in front of me with your faint Texas accent, saying those very things in those very words. I have loaned it to a couple of friends and both have liked it. I wanted to ask you how you differentiate between the "shadow" and the "ego."

Marilyn

If only we could! What an excellent question.

Your ego is how you learn to act as you grow up. Your ego is who "Marilyn" is.

Your shadow is everything that doesn't fit into the picture of "Marilyn." It's Marilyn's opposite, everything Marilyn doesn't want to be.

Both grow up together, side by side, hand in hand. Every time your parents said it was bad to get angry, or your peers thought it wasn't cool to be so enthusiastic, et cetera et cetera, something voluble and lively fled the light world of your ego and hid in the darkness of your shadow. As repressive as parents and school systems tend to be, most of the juice goes into our shadows.

Thus your ego learns how to please, how to get around in your culture, and gets all the credit out in the world -- let's say Marilyn is a very hard worker -- while your poor ole shadow has to hide in what Robert Bly calls the "long black bag we drag behind us" thinking I'd really like a day off, sometime, you know? and eventually getting frustrated enough to sneak past your ego and take swipes at other people. That John Doe is so lazy!

"Shadow work" is noticing that you're unreasonably upset at John Doe, and asking yourself why. Hhmmm... why am I being so snarky? If I'm getting angry over someone else looking relaxed, maybe I need to relax myself. Schedule a little more play into my life. Shadow work pulls something out of the dark bag -- the unconscious -- and brings it up into the daylight world where you can see it and decide what to do about it -- makes it conscious. Better for you, better for John Doe.

Here's a good description of ego-shadow formation, from Meeting the Shadow, by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams:

"As ego comes, so goes the shadow: the disowned self is a natural by-product of the ego-building process, which eventually becomes a mirror image of the ego. We disown that which does not fit into our developing picture of who we are, thus creating a shadow. Because of the necessarily one-sided nature of ego development, the neglected, rejected, and unacceptable qualities in us accumulate in the unconscious psyche and take form as an inferior personality--the personal shadow.

However, what is disowned does not go away. It lives on within us--out of sight, out of mind, but nevertheless real--an unconscious alter ego hiding just below the threshold of awareness. It often erupts unexpectedly under extreme emotional circumstances. "The devil made me do it!" is the adult euphemism that explains our alter ego behavior.

Ego and shadow are thus in an age-old antagonism that is a well-known motif in mythology: the relationship of opposing twins or brothers--one good, the other evil--symbolic representations of the ego-alter ego in psychological development. Taken together, these sibling opposites form a whole. In the same way, when the ego assimilates the disowned self, we move toward wholeness."
--Meeting the Shadow, The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature,
--Edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, p. 47

2008-07-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

Summer Shadows

2008-07-07T08:42:00.000-07:00

It's summer.

We wait a long time for summer here in the Pacific Northwest. Especially in this exact spot, near the top of a hill that overlooks the union of two big rivers and catches every passing cloud in its treetops. Rather moist and muted most of the year. Shades of dark green and gray.

But right now? Loud electric light. Air that's been scrubbed clean. Every green in the world. Flowers. Sweet smells. Bird song. A garden unfolding into all the delights I forgot about during winter with its long, cold spring.

It's just not possible to stay indoors, to think about human shadows and write blogs, when the shadows outside underneath the trees, the ones occurring in nature, are so vivid and compelling.

It's not possible to read the paper, to listen to the news. If only Charles Krauthammer went outdoors more! Four sentences into his editorial in The Oregonian this morning I felt like throwing up. So much hatred! So much vitriol for "the other side!" How did human beings get to such levels of rottenness in discourse?

Strength and comfort to you through it all, Barack. Thank you for being brave enough to take it on.

And to you, Mr. Krauthammer, a reminder that "the other" is merely a projection of what lies within your own heart.

National Shadows

2008-06-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

How about the human shadow in elections?

Seen any accusing,
blaming,
finger pointing,
name calling,
or general-attempts-to-discredit-others
going on lately?

Seen anybody trying
to appear perfect?

Seen any cover-ups going on?

The Peaceful Warrior

2008-05-10T10:56:00.000-07:00

How do people write blogs?

This discussion started days ago, at the very bottom of the page. So now it's completely ass-backwards, and getting more so every time I add something to it. Oh, well. Maybe that describes life's proper trajectory. Going forward can appear backward in the eyes of the world.

As I continue to re-read Karen Armstrong's book The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, when I get to the section on the Bhagavad-Gita, or Song of the Lord, I'm reminded that Krishna answered the question "How do we defend ourselves from predators without becoming predatory ourselves?" 2300 years ago, as he counseled Arjuna on the eve of a major battle between warring princes:

...How could a warrior do his sacred duty to society without incurring the bad effects of the violent karma that he was forced to commit?

...Krishna proposed that Arjuna practice an alternative kind of yoga: karma-yoga. He made a shocking suggestion: even a warrior who was fighting a deadly battle could achieve moksha (awakening to one's true self). To achieve this, he had to dissociate himself from the effect of his action--in this case the battle, and the death of his kinfolk. Like any yogin, the man of action (karma) must give up desire. He could not permit himself to lust after the fame, wealth, or power that would result from the military campaign. It was not the actions themselves that bound human beings to the endless round of rebirth, but attachment to the fruits of these deeds. The warrior must perform his duty without hope of personal gain, showing the same detachment as a yogin...

...he must take the "me" and "mine" out of his deeds, so that he acted quite impersonally... by practicing karma-yoga he would in fact be detached from the world, even while he was living and active in it...could learn to transcend selfishness in the ordinary duties of daily life...

...the whole material world was a battlefield in which mortal beings struggle for enlightenment with the weapons of detachment, humility, nonviolence, honesty, and self-restraint. (bold added)
--The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, pgs. 431-7
--Karen Armstrong

OK. Fight only when necessary, never for glory, and only for defense. Got it. Act like Yoda.

Which is so against human nature, with its psyche simply crammed full of archetypes like the ogre, the tyrant, the selfish stepmother, the cruel Baba Yaga. No wonder it takes some yoga, some sort of spiritual discipline, to access our saint or our wise ruler!

And not only do we have trouble changing masks -- we want to put that warrior mask on and leave it on, stomp around like Achilles, reap the spoils of victory, scare the shit out of lesser mortals -- half the time we don't know if what we're fighting for is worth having. I gave up 35 years of my life and all I got was a heap of possessions and a giant mortgage I'll never be able to pay off.

What if the warrior finds himself engaged in a battle he no longer believes in, or feels to be unjust?

Gnarled and Ancient Roots

2008-05-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

The problem with "being good" is that human beings come from such gnarled and ancient roots. We usually come closer to a hummingbird knocking his fellow hummers off the feeder than we do to Buddha.

I'm old enough to have gone through the little spiritual revolution that took place in Portland in the late 60s and early 70s. Ran a natural food store, owned exactly 1 skirt (made out of a batik Indian bedspread), one pair of Danner boots, one pair of overalls, and lived over the store. 6 of the 8 apartments over that store, in a rickety old 1920s-era wooden building, housed idealistic 20-somethings who worked there.

As Dickens said, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Best because we were committed and dedicated -- save the world with organic agriculture and simple living! -- worst because we knew nothing about our own shadows. So no matter how hard we tried to be good, and we did try really hard, and we did do a lot of good, every once in a while something very bad would happen. Accusations would fly, relationships would explode, gossip would flourish, feelings would be hurt.

That Utopian experiment -- plus growing up in a fundamentalist household -- taught me that "absolute goodness," or "compassion for all beings," is just not a reachable goal for most of us. There are breakthrough personalities, who truly get it and can actually do it -- Confucius, Socrates, Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, Black Elk, Dalai Lama -- but few of us ever hit that plane. The rest of us would be better off admitting we have some unpleasant characters in our personality, and learning how to deal honestly and openly with them; better off to get to know our inner caveman, than to pretend like he doesn't exist. (first and second blogs)

It's hard to be good. In fact, some of the meanest people I know try the hardest to be good. Go to church every week end, cheat people in business every week day. Know the words to every hymn in the book, say terrible things about others. Are politically active, but have no tolerance at all for other political opinions. "Goodness" involves judgment. One thing better than another. Us and them.

"Goodness" does not occur in nature. It's another man-made construct, like justice or fairness. Beauty occurs in nature, tragedy occurs in nature, violence, love and nurturing all occur in nature. But goodness? Whether budding out or dropping its leaves, a tree is neither bad nor good. It's simply "tree." One whole thing.

Reminds me of a famous Jung quote: "I'd rather be whole than good."

If it were OK for human beings not to be so good all the time, not to always be right, not to have the last word, not to know every answer, would they become easier to live with?

If we could accept that we are merely animals -- or, with such gnarled and ancient instinctual roots, maybe even plants now and then -- could we become better human beings?

Balancing Aggression & Compassion

2008-05-02T09:34:00.000-07:00

In the course of self-publishing Using Beauty, I went through a bruising process with someone who treated me less-than-honorably. I have some righteous indignation, some anger, some bitterness about the whole thing.

But I've been re-reading Karen Armstrong's The Great Transformation, The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions, and got to the section on Buddha last night. In light of what I've gone through lately, the concept of loving everything, of having compassion for all beings, is mind boggling. I mean... This guy? Dick Cheney? Child molesters?

How DO we balance the parts of ourselves that are aggressive, selfish and violent, with the parts of ourselves that want to be tolerant and compassionate?

How DO we protect ourselves from predators, without becoming predatory ourselves?

Evolution

2008-04-25T09:19:00.000-07:00

Today, with the book out after all these years, an actual copy sitting here on my desk, the caveman slinks back into his lair and I evolve a little bit. Stand up a little bit straighter, look ahead a little bit farther. Plus, the sun has finally come out. It's so hard to be cheerful when your whole month of April feels like a set from Blade Runner.

Fifteen years of thought in such a slim volume. Amazing. I've heard that the shortest books carry the biggest messages, and it's true that I couldn't do without The Left Hand of Darkness or the poetry of Mary Oliver, but I couldn't do without Anna Karenina, either. Hhmmm... does size really matter? An age-old question.

Things change. Archetypes come and go. Shadows form and dissolve within me.

The trick is to develop a little compassion for each one. As soon as I look right at Bob's drawing of the caveman, notice how beautiful he is in his own way, he throws down his club and starts to stand up straighter.

As soon as I admit what I'm doing, I can begin to cut it out.

Ignoring my caveman does not work as well as acknowledging his existence.

K

The Caveman

2008-04-22T08:41:00.000-07:00

A friend who can't believe I'd rather stay home and spread compost or re-read Joseph Campbell than go shopping or out for coffee called yesterday and asked, "Have you exploded into a ball of light yet?"

And I said, "No. Just the opposite. Today I am totally in shadow."

Teetering right on the brink of publishing a book about the human shadow--the web site up, the book at the printer and ready to be shipped out to the distributor, the marketing started--I find myself completely whelmed, over and under, inside and out, by awareness of my own shadow. Absolutely covered in murk.

Friends and neighbors look at me and see a middle-aged Beauty--the kind, pleasant, responsible, pillar of the community--but when I look in the mirror this week I see the caveman. Primitive. Carping, impatient, negative, mean. Swinging a club of words under its breath as it lurches from side to side down a narrow, rocky path. A clear danger to anyone it meets.

Who is this guy? What is all this negativity I carry within me? Where does it come from? What does it want?

One thing's for sure: it belongs to me. It's definitely mine.

If I sit still long enough to let reality enter the picture, it becomes very clear that every negative thing I think or say about others appears in my own conduct, or has at one time or another.

That the caveman swings his club at his own shadow.
K