Working With Your Shadow

Remember, we welcome comments, questions and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com

 

S2E3 9 TRANSCRIPT:

Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder Science-based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts Yucca. 

Mark: And I'm the other one Mark. And this week we are going to talk about working with the shadow aspect.

Yucca: That's Right, So we'll start by talking about what does that actually mean? And then get into how to recognize it. and what to do with it once you do.

Mark: Right, right. This is a frequent topic of conversation in my experience within the pagan within pagan circles, certainly. And.

Yucca: We also got a few requests. We've had actually multiple requests to talk about this topic. 

Mark: We have and it's, and some of those requests were quite awhile ago. So it's taken us a while to get around to this. We deliberately put it off until the Hallows ey time of the year. When we deal with stuff like mortality and decomposition and other, other things that are a little bit harder for people to live.

So, that's, that's why it's been a while, but now we're doing it.

Yucca: Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about. What it actually means, right? Or what, what do people mean when they say shadow work?

Mark: Yeah. And that. Complicated because it really is a moving target. I have heard that term used to mean a lot of different things. But when I go and look for technical definitions within the frame of psychology, there are basically two, the first is everything in your unconscious, everything that you're unaware of about yourself.

Yucca: And that's young, right? That's 

Mark: that's that's young. That was Young's approach to it. He, his perspective was that our personalities have these different components and that some of those components are not visible to us. It's not that they cannot become visible to us it's that they are not visible to us either because we simply have blind spots to them or because of.

Chosen at some level, not to look at them 

Yucca: So, this is sort of the, the whole of the unconscious. 

Mark: that's right. The whole thing, everything going on. And so, he would approach the shadow with interpretation of dreams and other other sorts of imaginative. Responses like responses to Rorschach, blots, things like that. Do people, maybe people don't know what those are, that they're those eight blots where they put ink and then unfold the ink.

And it makes pictures that look like butterflies or whatever you see in them. Right.

Yucca: But it's supposed to be what you see tells some, something about you. Right.

Do you see that it's the, you know, old mother beating a dog with a stick or does it look like a little, child's smelling a flower, Right.

And that's supposed to say something about your internal state or personality. 

Mark: Exactly. And we'll talk more about what some of those techniques might be later on in the podcast. The other definition that is frequently used for shadow work is. Psychological processing and growth specifically about an aspect of the unconscious, not the whole thing, but just an identified. Part of us that is less visible to us that we feel a need to heal or transform or bring more into a conscious visibility.

And those processes are what is called shadow work.

Yucca: Right. So those would be the things that are in the shadow or that. a light, right? Let's say you've got a flashlight or a torch, And you're looking at yourself with it. What is behind what you're seeing? What's still there, but it's, it's part of the shadow that you can't see.

Mark: Right. And this is the time when we should make the point, which we did in our episode, entitled the darkness that when we're talking about shadow and darkness and stuff like that, we are not saying bad. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: We're not going to play that game around, equating blackness with badness, which is a racist trope.

And there's no reason for it. Shadow aspects can be positive things. It's just that you're not aware of them or you're in denial about looking at them. And there are reasons why people deny things about themselves that are actually quite positive that are tied up with their self-esteem and their own, you know, personal injury and all that kind of stuff.

So just, just want to make that point that when we talk about working in the shadow, We're not making value judgments about what those qualities are that are in the shadow for you or for anyone else? It just means hidden.

Yucca: Yeah. And, and sometimes those things will be things that we are That like you were saying that we're going to associate as being positive things. Oftentimes they're going to be things that we don't associate as being positive things. 

Mark: Right. And there are good psychological reasons for that, right? I mean, it's healthy to have healthy self esteem. And so a healthy mind will tend to turn towards reasons to have healthy self-esteem in a way from reasons not to have healthy self-esteem on the other hand, people who struggle with self-esteem might be more gravitated to look.

More negative qualities that they have and more unable to see positive qualities that they have. So it really just kind of depends on where you're shining the flashlight and each one of us is different that way.

Yucca: Yeah. Well, why don't we go ahead and get into how we might identify these shadow qualities or parts of ourselves? 

Mark: Sure. Well, this is the tricky part, right? If it's hidden, how do you find it?

Yucca: Yeah. How do you know that it's hidden in the first place? 

Mark: right. In my experience. It's, it's kind of like, it's kind of like sonar with submarines. You kind of have to send out these signals and see what kind of pings come back to you in order to figure out what's going on. I mean, I use tarot cards quite a bit in. In seeking to understand stuff that I may not be very conscious about because in that complex symbol set, I will then construct a narrative about what the card means.

And that narrative tells me something about myself. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: It tells me that I have a particular perspective on things. If the. Imagery is radically different from what my internal narrative is about. Something that may spur me then to look at it in a different way and go, oh, Well, Hmm. I hadn't really thought about it that way, but now that I think about it, that kind of makes some sense.

Right? It's that sort of, oh yeah. I kind of recognize this feeling that helps when you're, when you're seeking to identify shadow aspects of yourself. 

Yucca: Well I'm at that same line, it seems like other forms of divination could be really helpful as well. Whatever someone's particular preference is what they like working with. 

Mark: Yes. And dream interpretation was young, was big on it isn't so much what the dream is. It's what it means to you. What story you create out of the images of the dream? That, that once again is an expression of your own psychology, your own personality.

Yucca: Right.

Because as we've talked about so many times before that, what one person's association with something. That might not match somebody else's and it probably isn't. Right. And we could use really extreme examples of say a dog. Well, if somebody has had a, you know, their beloved dog who just died that they had had for 18 years, they're going to have a different connection with that symbol than somebody who.

You know, it doesn't particularly like dogs and got chased as one when they were, you know, nine. So they're going to have, and that's on a really extreme level, but we can do colors and scents and all of those things that people are just going to feel different about it. It's going to mean something different in your mind than it would for someone else. 

Mark: Right. And this is why those dream interpretation guides are not useful. In my opinion, I don't think they really mean anything. 

Yucca: At least when they give a key like, oh, means this or this. 

Mark: That's what I mean. I mean, learning techniques for dream interpretation so that you know how to remember your dreams and then create that narrative that illustrates the subconscious meaning to you.

That can be very useful. It's it's when the book tries to tell you the narrative itself, instead of it coming from you, that I don't think it's very.

Yucca: Yeah, so a tool. So two tools that we can mention already is so something like taro or other form of divination and also a dream journal for many of us. We forget dreams pretty quickly. They're there for a few moments after we, Yeah.

me too. Right. So I said, mark, you just raised your hand. I'm the same way there.

They're there for a few minutes. And then they kind of, then they're sort of gone and there was, and then there's maybe just some feelings left and then, and then those are gone to.

Mark: And that is that liminal moment when you're between the sleeping state and the waking state is a place where the, the subconscious really can leak through where you can see highly stylized illustrations of. What's going on under the hood with you, whether it's fears and anxieties, or whether it's hopes and aspirations, or whether it's frustrations around creativity, that's not being expressed or whatever that might happen to be.

So being able to capture that imagery and then particularly to look for patterns over time. Is very, very helpful because one dream is still only one data point, but if you have recurring sort of themes of emotional tones or symbols that occur in your dreams, that that's going to be a pretty good indication that you're talking about something that's in your shadow.

Yucca: Plot people dream differently, but is there a particular plot that is repeated over and over again on, in different circumstances with different different people or different symbols, but it's the same basic story. I mean, classic ones. The going to work or school without your pants on or the flying things like that.

Those are, but like, is there something really unique to you where you're always the person in the backseat of the car or whatever it is. 

Mark: Right. And so this piece, I believe this is the most challenging part of shadow work. Although from an emotional standpoint, once you confront something that you have suppressed for some reason, or, you know, have a hard time looking at positive or negative, it can be a lot of emotional processing work to get more comfortable with that aspect of yourself, but figuring out what it is.

Because the subconscious is so ephemeral and elusive can really be the hardest part of the work. People do other techniques, sometimes some people just contemplate a mirror, just look at yourself in the mirror for a long time. What do you see? What are what's? Because after a while, what's strange about doing work with a mirror is after a while you don't look familiar anymore.

Yeah, it goes through a transformation where you start to see this as another person, rather than yourself. And then all of the, the systemic capacities that we have for figuring out a person's personality start to kick in. Well, what can I tell about this person? You know, what are they like? How long is their fuse in terms of their temper?

Are they generally happy? How do they feel about me?

Okay. So. You may see things in yourself that you weren't aware of. And now that you can can address, because you've used your capacity to read non-verbal communication cues in order to understand those shadow aspects of yourself.

Yucca: Yeah.

And I want to jump back to where we were before because I love the mirror idea, but the men also mentioned when we were talking about how the hard work really comes in, trying to figure out what it all means, right? Talking about dreams or what you look at. And there may not be one meaning. Right.

The fear, we are really quite multifaceted. It can be multiple things at once. And so if you're finding a meeting then great, like you don't need to worry about it being the, the absolute right. You know, capital T truths, meaning, you know, you can work with what you're finding and then you can come back to the same thing later and from a different perspective.

At a different time, take a look at that and follow it. Where you, where it takes you again. 

Mark: Yes. The thing to look for is that deep resonance in yourself, which says, oh, that's true because. When it comes to yourself, you will be able to recognize the things that are true about yourself. When, when, when they're brought into your conscious mind and you contemplate them, you know, I am a person who is kind of this way.

There will be this, this bell that'll ring in your chest where you'll realize, yes, that's true about me now. How, how do I feel about that? How do I want to work with that? Is that something that I'm comfortable with? Do I want to evolve that into something else? All of those are pieces of what we call shadow work.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: The last major technique that I can think of. And often the hardest one to read is what are my repeated experiences in life. If I keep having the same kind of interaction with people over and over again in different contexts, the only common. Denominator there is me. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: And so it becomes important. I think for me to start to ask the question, well, what is it about me that may have contributed to that?

And I don't mean this in a blame, the victim kind of sense. I don't mean that at all because people can experience. Various kinds of abuse undeservedly and having not brought it on themselves at all, but if there is that kind of repeated pattern in your life, it's worth at least asking the question.

Was there some, some way I was inviting that was there some way that I was provoking that and maybe the answer is no, and that's fine. But maybe the answer isn't no. And so it's at least worth, worth asking the question.

Yucca: Right,

Yeah. And, and if the answer isn't no, there's, there's something to be excited about there because. That means there's something that something you have to work on that you can do,

Mark: Yes.

Yucca: That that's, there's a little bit of empowerment there. Okay. So yeah. What was it? And it, maybe it hurts. Maybe it's really, really painful to look at what that is, but then, you know, then you can make, you can make, take those steps and go, okay, this is The case.

What do I need to do? What can I change so that I don't have to go through this again or not, not in the same way or not as strong anymore. Yeah.

Mark: The big challenge. In confront thing, many of these, many of the negative things that we might find in the shadow, because I want to say again, there can be very positive aspects to a person like you know, if, if someone is a very generous person, for example, and they they're very, very giving throughout their lives.

And that's just like the water they swim through as a fish that. Used to it. They don't pay much attention to it. And they kind of shy away from thinking of themselves as a generous person. That could be a shadow aspect. It could be something that you would come to to pay more attention, to, to view, and to embrace as a part of your self understanding.

But in the case of things that are not positives the big impediment in my experience is shame. Because it's embarrassing to discover something about yourself. That isn't, it isn't perfect. Right? I mean, I tend to be a perfectionist, but I think that a lot of people do in terms of their expectations for themselves.

It becomes embarrassing to realize, oh, the way I treated that person that could have been better. I really, that doesn't reflect. The person that I want to think of myself as being, and I cannot overemphasize this. We're all works in progress. Everybody is, is growing throughout their lives. If they're, if they're not growing, they're dead.

And that means that even if you've made mistakes, even if you've had aspects of yourself that really caused problems or hurt other people, shame doesn't help you or yourself shame, doesn't help you. What helps is. Frank willingness to look directly at it and then enough caring about yourself to do the work, to make it better.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: And if in the process you need to make some amends for some people. Well, then do that, you know, apologize to people that need an apology because sometimes you discover stuff that. Means that you're in a different kind of state than, than you thought you were when you were having a conflict with someone or whatever it is.

Yucca: Yeah. Yeah. And there, and there's so much in there. So the critic and we've talked about the critic and a past episode, we mention it quite, quite often. Actually this is.

a time where the critic is probably going to raise its head and have quite a bit to say. Right. But it can, you know, we've talked about ways to, address and work with the critic, but it's important to get past.

That protection that the critics trying to put up to not let you go there and not let you see that vulnerable part. Because it's trying to not let you get hurt. It's trying to not let you feel that shame and, and all of that, but, but you've got to look at it, right? You've got to go there into the shadows to be able to see that part of yourself, because that part is real.

Whether you acknowledge it or not, it still is there. And it's still part of what, what and who you are. 

Mark: Right. And if you don't acknowledge that part, if you don't work with it, then you're stuck. Then that part of you won't evolve, it won't grow. And what that means is that you will have the results of that part of you come up again and come up again. And you know, certainly in my life I felt. You know, I keep banging my head on this wall and the wall isn't going anywhere, but boy, my head hurts.

You know, there comes a time when you just have to reevaluate your strategy.

Yucca: Yeah. Okay. So we've talked about looking for those, those places, those repeating places and in life and got looking in our dreams. There's can also just be some observation of what are the things that tend to get big responses from you, right? Whether what is it, what is whether it's a really, you know, positive excitement or if it's the thing that just really just gets, it just bothers you.

Right? There's if you start pulling on that and it's probably attached to something, you might be able to go down and figure out okay, where. What's what's down there. What's underneath this. 

Mark: Right, right. Yeah. Because our emotions bubble up out of a, a brew of many different factors and experiences. And we can learn more about that brew when we observe what the bubbles are. They come up into, they come up into our conscious mind. At this point I also want to put in a word for therapy. If you, if you are really contending with stuff that is not working for you and heavy applications of the critic voice without too much countervailing self-esteem or depression or anxiety, any of those things doing the kind of work that we're talking about.

And we'll talk about some ritual approaches in a bit Is not a replacement for working with a professional who can, who can help you with those things. It can be a great, it can be a great compliment to to various the. Professional therapeutic approaches, but I just want to, I want to say, you know, by listening to this podcast episode and going out and doing your mirror ritual and, you know, getting started if you really have serious stuff to deal with you probably want someone to help you through that.

So 

Yucca: Yes. 

Mark: make sure that that said 

Yucca: yeah.

thank you for bringing that up. That's really, really important. And, and that's what they're there for, Right.

This is, these are people who, this is what they're doing with their lives is figuring out how to help other people with these issues. And just because one therapist wasn't a good fit.

It doesn't. The whole concept is a bad concept. There are so many different styles and different personalities that, you know, if you tried it two years ago, you tried it 10 years ago and it sucked, you know, it's, it's still worth going back and looking for somebody else that is a better fit for you where you're at now and your personality. 

Mark: Yes. And it's also worth asking the question. What did suck to be when you say that your therapeutic experience really sucked? Was it because they put their finger on a really source. That indicates where some of your shadow work is. 

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: I mean, in some cases it's just personalities that don't fit or, you know, therapeutic modalities that aren't the right one for you.

All of that is certainly true and possible, but it's at least worth asking the question. If I had a really strong emotional reaction to this therapist, where's that reaction coming from?

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: Now

there are a number of things that we can do as, as pagans ritually to help ourselves with our shadow work. And we actually have a time of year this time of year to look at that shadow stuff. The The traditional way of describing it is that the veil between the worlds are thin. Right? Well, we can choose to see the subconscious and the conscious as two worlds and to do the work, to kind of bring forward what we can learn from our own subconscious and do ritual work that enhances that and helps us to embrace those aspects of ourselves that we haven't.

That we haven't been aware of in the past. So I go to mirror work. I have both a regular mirror and a dark mirror, which is a piece of a tinted it's a circle of tinted car glass. I got the darkest tintype possibly could, and then I painted the back black. And so what you get is this sort of ghostly reflection of yourself rather than a super vivid, bright daylight one.

And. I find that that can be a good thing to contemplate for me when I'm trying to figure out just what's going on me. If I'm having some kind of strong, emotional experience and I can't put my finger on why which does happen then that's, that's a useful tool for me. I, oh, go ahead.

Yucca: well with the. If, if you don't have something like that, or even if you do, there's other things you can do with the lighting in the room, Right.

You can take a regular irregular bathroom mirror and light it with candles.

Mark: Right.

Yucca: Or use other led lights, right? Not necessarily. I mean, you could do your flashing kind of disco thing, but with led lights, you can get really, really inexpensive ones that you can set the color exactly what you want it to be.

So you can have this beautiful, you know, golden red, if you want or play, what is it, you know, looking at yourself in the mirror and looking. With the green and then moving through the rainbow. And how does that change your perception? 

Mark: a great idea. I never would've thought of doing that actually. With the LEDs. Yeah. And if you have a very strong reaction to the idea of looking at yourself, well, 

Yucca: Hm. 

Mark: that's some information, that's a data point right there. Yeah. Because at root. You know, we have this one life. We are these improbable biological machines, just astronomically improbable.

We talked about this last week. The odds that any of us would exist is just this tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny probability. 

Yucca: that we shouldn't really 

Mark: Yes. Yes. 

Yucca: I mean, just 

Mark: If you were to round the number, it would be zero.

Yucca: Yeah. 

Mark: And we have this life and it can be a beautiful life. Now that doesn't mean that it won't have suffering in it. It doesn't mean that there aren't horrible things that happen to people. All of those things are true, but it can still be a beautiful life if we choose to be open and grow and to embrace ourselves and.

What we can do with this shadow work is to become more comfortable with embracing ourselves not in a, you know, arrogant sort of I'm better than others kind of way. That's, that's not the point. The point is that each of us has good reason to, you know, to. Hold our head high and, you know, feel like a worthy manifestation of this universe.

And if you're having a hard time looking yourself in the eye, in the mirror, then it's probably time to start taking a look at what.

Yucca: Yeah. And maybe there's some things to do to start gently when. Right. Start with, you know. Okay. So working your way towards looking at the eyes, maybe starting in the dimmer light, right. If you are doing actually mirror work itself maybe starting with, with looking at your hands, your body, the rest of you And becoming comfortable with that there could be sort of internal.

Journeys that you could go on imagining yourself as a forest and going for a mental walk through that forest. And literally looking under that log seeing what, what do you find under that log? And literally looking around and starting to explore that so that you can get to the place eventually where you can do that, where you can look yourself in the eye.

Mark: Right. And if you can't even get there, you can write yourself a letter, right? You can write yourself a letter saying, I want to be able to look you in the eye. I want to be able to embrace who you are and where I am right now is. And explain where you are, because believe me getting that out, getting that out in some kind of an expression will make a big difference.

Just, just crafting that kind of an articulated expression about what your current, psychological and emotional state is in relation to yourself can make a huge difference. And you can mail that. By burning it or by burying it. There are a lot of different, you know, things you can do, or maybe you just, if you have an alter or a focus, he just fold it up and stick it under your alter cloth and just let it sit there.

It doesn't even have to be visible, but it's, it's a. It's a con it sets a context for the work that you do at that alter

can't really express enough how important that is. I mean, listeners of this podcast are at all different stages of their lives. And I know that earlier in my life, you know, I didn't have very good self-esteem. It had a lot of terrible stuff going on. And it was very hard for me to look myself in the eye in the mirror.

Um, But I learned and I got better. And one of the things that helped me to do that was to do some mirror work along the way.

Yucca: Hmm. 

Mark: So, we would be really interested in hearing your thoughts and ideas about rituals for shadow work and any experiences that you'd be willing to share. Our email address has always is thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. So the wonder podcast queues for questions@gmail.com. And we really welcome you to drop us a line.

Lovely email this week from Melissa who was just so kind and suggested a bunch of cool topics a list that we will be interrogating thoroughly. And just want to know how much we appreciate your taking your time to listen to us. We just passed our 75th episode and. We so appreciate that you choose to spend the precious moments of your life, listening to what we have to say.

And we really hope that you get something of value out of it. So thank you. 

Yucca: thank you.

And we will be back with you next week for hollows. 

Mark: Yes, the, the Hallows cell and Halloween issue which is always a lot of fun. So we'll be, we'll be talking about that then as always, it's lovely talking with you, Yucca. 

Yucca: Likewise, mark. 

Mark: Have a great week.