This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine.
“The Tempest,” William Shakespeare
In this time of extinction—whatever that means and whenever it may occur, we owe a huge debt to Paul Levy for giving us Dispelling Wetiko. In that extraordinary book, Levy writes that wetiko isn’t just a Native American term for evil, it is, in fact, malignant egophrenia (M.E.), or as Levy cleverly names it, the “ME disease.”
I challenge anyone reading these words to state that they are ME-disease-free. No one raised in an industrial growth society is free of malignant egophrenia. Now let’s be clear. Everyone needs an ego. To those who tout the New Age nausea of being “free of my ego,” I would only ask: Who’s got the car keys, and how did you last find your way to the bathroom? Every human being needs an ego, and children should be supported in developing one, but at a certain juncture in our development, ego diminishment needs to begin and ego development wane so that our inner wisdom or what I call the Sacred Self, can surpass the limits and distortions of our ego development. A pivotal aspect of developing our inner wisdom is becoming aware of and creating a relationship with the shadow.
No, the shadow is not yet another aspect of New Age psychobabble. Drawing from millennia of wisdom traditions, as well as his own experience, Carl Jung inserted the term into modern psychology and in my opinion, literally changed everything by doing so. Quite simply, the shadow is any aspect of oneself that does not fit into one’s ego image of oneself, and ME disease is literally the shadow gone nuclear. Unless we know that we have a shadow and have employed specific tools to develop a relationship with it, it will run our lives. Need I also mention that as well as the personal shadow, nations, cultures, and communities have a collective shadow? And—none of us is immune. In fact, the shadow is now running the world—not Donald Trump, not Kim Jong Un, not the military industrial complex or the deep state.
Whether we like it or not, the ME disease, made even more virulent by the shadow, is not only running the world but threatens to run our individual lives. How not, since we cannot escape the toxicity of this culture? How easy it is to rant about wetiko—out there, and how difficult it is to encounter, explore, examine, struggle with, and heal the wetiko inside ourselves. To clarify, there is no permanent healing of wetiko or the personal or cultural shadow, but owning that it exists and committing to shadow work markedly diminishes its influence whereas ignoring or denying it guarantees that it will consume our lives, compel us to hurt other living beings, and drive us unconsciously to manufacture horrific messes that in most cases, other people will have to clean up.
When shadow behavior erupts or is exposed in the life of someone we highly regard, we have choices about how to respond. We can immediately engage in our own malignant egophrenia and point the finger, as if we have no shadow and are not capable of exactly the same thing. Or because we regard the person so highly, we can discount or minimize the seriousness of their behavior and ignore the shadow. Or, we can own our own shadow, and in so doing, recognize that we are capable of the same or worse behavior. Invariably, this causes us to feel compassion as well as perhaps experience a chilling shudder as we realize the capacity we all have to harm others and ourselves. None of the latter means that we turn a blind eye or continue relating to the person if that does not feel safe or comfortable. But most importantly, when we see the shadow writ large in our midst—whether it is being written by Donald Trump, climate science deniers, human traffickers, trophy hunters, or fossil fuel tycoons, we must stop, take many deep breaths, and humbly acknowledge the event(s) as a teaching moment. The most important question we can ask at that time is: What does this tell me about the personal and collective shadow? And most importantly, what does this tell me about my own shadow?
As we awaken to the horrors of industrial civilization, we must carefully examine the ways in which we have been colonized by it in a manner similar to the ways in which native peoples have been colonized by it. Derrick Jensen has written extensively about de-colonizing ourselves, and I have written a great deal about it as well because I have experienced that it is foolish to rail against industrial civilization if we are not committed to healing within ourselves the traumatic marks that it has left in the personal shadow of our psyches.
When someone we highly regard—a leader in our community or a respected thought leader betrays us by betraying other human beings, the most obtuse response we can employ is to begin arguing about who is right and who is wrong or whether that person’s betrayal means that we should disregard their research or body of work. Such a response engenders an orgy of ME disease, completely overlooks shadow awareness and shadow healing, and misses the stellar teaching moment that that person’s betrayal has presented us with.
I unashamedly submit that if we are not doing deep, intentional shadow work, our activist/resistance efforts are essentially useless because we are not actively de-colonizing ourselves and in fact are opening ourselves to the possibility of damaging, rather than protecting or healing the Earth community.
I do not these write words lightly with disregard of my own shadow. I have been deceived, and I have defended betrayers in the name of “having faith in humanity” or “wanting to believe the best about a person.” To anyone who has been harmed by my shadow denial, I sincerely apologize. What I choose to do in the present moment is dis-associate myself with the betrayer forever and go back into my spiritual cave to do more work on my own shadow. In fact, I would argue that that is where we should all be right now because whether extinction or anything else removes us from this planet next week, next month, next year, or five minutes from now, no question on Earth is more important than: Who do I want to be in the face of unprecedented global and personal cataclysm? As Paul Levy writes:
If ever there was a time when the turning inward of self-reflection was of critical importance, it is now, in our present catastrophic era…In the moment of self-reflection, the psychospiritual necessity for evolutionary growth overrules the biological compulsion of unreflective animal instinct…Self-reflection is a genuinely spiritual act, which is, essentially, the act of becoming conscious…The attitude of self-reflection returns us to the ground of our deepest being, connects us with our destiny, and it begins a cure for the pervasive psychological and spiritual blindness which reigns at the present hour. (193)
love love love love love.
looking inward.
xo
Carolyn,
Thanks for this timely invitation. I too feel drawn into shadow work, to stand-under (hypostasis) the ordinary story of my life and efforts to wake up… to go down underneath into the well of grief… and feel, as I am able, the cata-strophy that is unfolding. I’m going to reread Robert Johnson’s Owning Your Own Shadow, where, many years ago, I first was introduced to the Mandorla which has guided my life work.
Here’s a little shadow poem wrote some time ago…
CONFESSION IN THE SHADOWS
From time to time it is a
grace-full thing to pause
along the path,
to turn from the light and
look behind to the shadow lands.
As I kneel on the path and
turn in the direction from
whence I came I am
silenced by the shadows.
They seem to stretch from the horizon.
Not darkness. Not light.
Not the most real thing,
not an illusion.
Not separate from my form which cast them.
They are greed, fear, doubt, lust –
they are all there. Resentment, impotence –
they are all there and many more
variations hidden in the shadows
of muted gray tones
(it’s no good running or pretending it’s all light).
Clinging, they must always follow.
As I kneel and touch the cool path
I am reminded by a grace-thrown voice
over my shoulder that it is good to notice…
After a Sabbath moment I rise
slowly, turn, and continue toward the light.
There is healing in noticing.
The backside once only dark
has now been bathed in light.
Terry Chapman. Sabbath Pause
Carolyn, is the shadow equivalent to the pain body or the vasanas as taught in Vedanta?
I believe that the pain body is different although they are related. The shadow is unconscious whereas we are usually aware of our pain body, even though we may not understand what that means.
“..superheros…the Buddha spoke of two superheroes he called “the two bright qualities that protect the world”…These are Hiri, or conscience, and Ottappa, our respect for others.
The first hero, Hiri, can be thought of as conscience or self-respect. She (the Pali noun is feminine) flies into our mental world at the moment when we are considering doing something that we know deep down to be wrong. Hiri is our personal sense of ethical integrity, our moral compass, our intuitive understanding of what is right and wrong, what’s appropriate and what isn’t. She is not a severe critic but a soft, caring voice whispering in our ear and guiding us through our lives with courage and compassion. She saves us from the demons lurking within and stands beside us when we say, “No, that is just not right. I will not do it (or say it, or think it).”
Her intrepid ally Ottappa is the elemental force of caring for others and respecting their concerns. It (the Pali noun is neuter) appears on the scene when we’re tempted to do something that is against the laws of propriety, is outside the social norm, or would be condemned by the people we respect. Ottappa draws its strength from the fact that we are social creatures who belong to a family or community, and that our actions are rooted in and accountable to a larger collective order. Our sangha (tribe) is like a group of stars that helps us navigate a moral course. Ottappa points steadily at the inherent respect we possess for others as our north star, and helps us say, “I care about the opinion of the group and would not have my friends be ashamed of my actions (or my words or even my thoughts).”
Whenever these two superheroes are at our side, we are sure to make the right choices and to act, speak, and even think in ways that are helpful, healthy, and skillful. The Buddha says they guard the world, protecting it from getting broken by the onslaught of the worst parts of ourselves. Without them people would act like beasts, ravaging even their own mothers. For so many victims, Hiri and Ottappa do not always show up in time, held at bay by their nemeses, Ahiri (lack of conscience) and Anottappa (lack of respect). These two antiheroes are present every time a harmful, cruel, or ignorant deed is done, blocking out the benevolent effects of conscience and respect.
Fortunately Hiri and Ottappa have other friends, including Sati, or mindfulness, who goes first into every fray and summons the team into action. Sati is conscious awareness of what is happening right now, and Ahiri and Anottappa can only function when such awareness is absent. When people do harm to themselves and others, they are often not aware of what they are doing. They are conscious enough to act, but not conscious enough to be aware of the quality of their actions or of their consequences. Whenever a person musters even a degree of mindfulness, conscience and respect arrive there too, helping them do, say , and think what is helpful rather than what is harmful.”
Andrew Olendzki
Tricycle Fall 2017
aho
This is very timely Carolyn. I’ve been descending deeper and deeper into despair and rage because I’ve been unable to face the shadow within me and in the world.
But something major shifted within me recently and I’m starting to come to terms with the fact that evil will always be with us. I can choose to hide from it and let it consume the world or I can do what all other species do – resist it with my last breath and protect all that is sacred and beautiful in life.
Thank you. I too have become very despondent of late and fight a deep depression when I see the murder of Earth in all of the gory repugnant horror. I hear her cry as I too feel her pain. This sit keeps me sane. Peace, The Ol’ Hippy
Thank you carolyn. This has been brought to my attention in a such big ways twice. One by being Lebanese a child in the beginning of a long war. I observed how Lebanon became a rubbish bin, a depositary for the I retrieved worlds shadow . The second was when we put together a police file to arrest my spiritual teachers who committed atrocities in the names of Spirit. These two events activated a new perception of the shadow retrieval called for. It was only when I tracked, experienced and admitted my own capacity for war and abuse that I could grieve and heal some of the shocks involved in both events.
Thank you Carolyn. I am sorry for your loss. The fall of a friend is always sad.
My hope is this will break his spell over many and allow them to see through the silliness of near term extinction predictions.
Purely from a statics perspective, his prediction track record is terrible so that should help.
My fear is that this draws him toward the Michael Ruppert conclusion. Hopefully his support network doesn’t completely abandon him.
“There goes my hero. Watch him as he goes.
There goes my hero.
He’s ordinary.”
I think Martin Buber goes much deeper than Carl Jung, here. Shadow is another abstract dualism. The issue is not about self, but about relationships. The I-Thou relationship was swallowed up by I-It (or nowadays, Me-It and even Me-Me! relationship) The Rastafarians got with I-and-I. There is no way to separate self from other. It is not “new age” goo to understand that no self exists separate from a world of relationships. Have you come across Ted Lumley’s thinking on inclusionality? If not, he is worth an hour’s (or 20) read. He is certainly not New Age! http://goodshare.org/wp/2017/07/
I read ‘Columbus and Other Cannibals’ when it first came out, just after reading James Wilson’s The Earth Shall Weep which documented the conquest of Native Americans, from their own witness accounts. I could not finish it because it was too painful to read. Perhaps, this is the time to finish it, since we are liable to be going through a similar experience.
But another lesson we can learn from the Native Americans who went through a killer Weteiko epidemic before is the meaning of Survivance as opposed to survival, a term coined by the great Gerald Vizenor. It means standing in harmony with all-our-relations against the storm – however it was unleashed – free of Weteiko, not as victims or selves, but as flashes of beauty, love, harmony and kindness in the in the hypercanes to come.
Thank you for this wise and measured response to news that I find deeply disturbing.
Thx for your analysis and sharing. I’ve had mixed contacts with guy. I’m pretty disturbed by his shows of damaging narcissism. But not surprised!
Pause, Self reflection and. meditation always seem to be good responses
Yes, to all of the above
I thank you for giving your time and knowledge to this situation. At this point, I am numb. I really am. I have been following this individual, for about 6 years. This was inconsistently at first, but then quite loyally. I think I can discuss with you, the passing thoughts I had about the individual, in regards to, abuse of “knowledge power.” I did consider this to be a slight possibility in him. It did occur to me that he COULD… be like that, although I did not think it would be to the extent that, I guess it has turned out. The reason, it occurred to me is that, being a professor, he had opportunity over the years. That being said, I couldn’t stereotype him just because of being a professor. As I listened to him, over the last couple of years.. the thought occurred, but I pushed it aside thinking I was being paranoid. I mean, I didn’t REALLY think he could be doing this.. but, the overall situation… SEEMED TO LEND ITSELF TO THAT OUTCOME… it is sad to think that with all that HE WROTE in regards to ABUSE OF THE FEMINE…that he ended up doing just that… It will take me some time to process this. I am trying to process it, but it is very difficult. The reason I was able to even have an inkling of this outcome in regards to his power… is that I have had experiences with this type of situation. Older men, two ( I was going to say one, but I have to include my father)… had this “orientation” and I experienced that power abuse personally. So, I also, was in denial. I also, pushed aside some intuitive signs/thoughts when listening to this person. I want to be angry. I am … but it hasn’t manifested yet. I will go through a lot of his work and … well, I want to “BELIEVE” that the work was free of this power abuse. I think it was/is… since other credible scientists like Peter Wadham’s, Keven Andersen etc.. also think along these lines… although a bit …different. Again, I thank you for your work. Wish I had followed my intuition.
As I have been emphasizing. This is a remarkable teaching moment. Some people are choosing to ignore that reality and attack one another with “coulda” “shoulda” and “woulda” statements and sentiments. Hindsight is always 20/20. The real issue is: What can we all learn about our personal shadow and the collective shadow from this horrible experience?
I wholeheartedly agree with what you say about meeting with your own shadow and I wish the mental tools to do this well were more wide-spread and accepted. To embrace the light, we need to embrace the dark. I believe the lack of outlets for our shadow (e.g. through ritual) is to a large degree responsible for what went wrong with our culture. And they may be what results in behaviors such as what we’ve just observed. Without wanting to excuse anything, there is a wound at the base of it all. Here’s is a courageous article about this https://everydayfeminism.com/2016/04/mental-illnesses-stop-hating-on/. Having said that, I totally agree with walking away from toxic relationships and do so myself. But it is food for thought and needs to be considered. I also see another teaching moment: gaining clarity about our own values and beliefs. Sometimes we need to be shown what it is we don’t want so that we can emerge with more clarity about who it is we want to become and what change it is we want to stand for in the world. A strong ‘not that’ response may just be what catapults us into the next iteration of our individual evolution – an inspired ‘what then’?