Gold In The Shadow

Join us for GOLD IN THE SHADOW Oct. 26th, 3pmEST via World of SoulCollage®

“To draw the skeletons out of the closet is relatively easy, but to own the gold in the shadow is terrifying.”

– Robert A. Johnson

When we think of shadow work, we immediately jump to alchemizing (or balancing, or harmonizing) the “shadow-iest” things we can dredge up.

We might scour our “favorite” cards to discover whatever “and/both” shadow elements they hold or take very seriously what we find in our “trickiest” cards without looking for their corresponding positive “flip-side”. 

It seems to be a fact of human nature that we rarely take time to notice and explore all the good stuff we’ve hidden in our (individual and collective) shadows.

To illustrate this point, let’s use Robert A. Johnson’s (and before him, Carl Jung’s) idea of the teeter-totter, or seesaw we all have within us (and the collective society has as well). It is a rule of life that nothing ever leaves the teeter totter, but as we grow up we place our persona or ego-approved aspects on one side of the teeter totter and everything else we push onto the shadow side of the teeter totter.

If we are a little girl and we get negative feedback about speaking up for ourselves, we push having boundaries onto the shadow side of our see-saw. Or if we are a little boy and we get negative feedback for showing emotion in the form of tears, we push our ability to grieve onto the shadow side of our teeter totter. Or if we are a society and we are told that nothing matters but money, we push away the natural richness of living in favor of things that “make money”.

Remember, nothing ever leaves the teeter totter.

When we grow up, the man or woman or the society we have become has blocked themselves off from the “gold” of the ability to have boundaries or to feel all our feelings or to enjoy all different types of abundance.

Interestingly (and counter-intuitively) in our desire to be “good” at shadow work, we often rush past hidden treasure so we can get to the more disagreeable aspects that were banished.

•  Given our general proclivity to hide away our flaws and lionize our best features, why would this be? 

• Why would we hide a good portion of our gold in our shadow? 

• Why wouldn’t our gold be the first thing we rescue from shadow?

All of the above are true because we humans have a strong negativity bias.

It seems to be hardwired for us to skew towards the negative. Perhaps this was a genetic imperative – that we are here because we had ancestors who paid attention to dangerous things instead of all the things working in their favor.

In and of itself there is nothing categorically bad or wrong about our strong negativity bias.

But, it is interesting to put that bias on pause when we dive into shadow work.

That innate resistance to the “seeing the good” might cause us to miss some important, gleaming, golden qualities we knowingly or unknowingly cast into our shadow.

And yes, we put a lot of scary and mean and sad stuff in our individual and collective shadows. But we also we put a lot of our shiniest bits in there; as we intuit (perhaps rightfully at the time) they will make us a target of one kind or another. Sometimes, the best of us – our ability to experience richness, our ability to set boundaries, our ability to FEEL life with our whole hearts - languishes in shadow our whole lives.

This is especially true for women, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, and all “othered” groups.

Just like in daily life, where we are much more likely to remember the one criticism over the hundred compliments, most of us have an incredible resistance that keeps us from claiming the best of ourselves and of life.

By societal necessity, when we are young, we are especially sensitive to what is “allowed” for us. But, what if that results in our putting into shadow something that actually is a key to our highest and best? Contemplate this in terms of your individual experience and then also consider what this means on the collective level.

Luckily for us, we are SoulCollage® people and we are courageous enough (and have the tools!) to engage meaningfully with the following contemplations:

• Does shadow work count if we are drawing forth traits and behaviors that are golden?

• Do we feel like it only is “real inner work” if we pull out the worst of the worst to “work” on?

• In SoulCollage® have we made more cards for our “monsters” than our “angels”?

•  Do we take more seriously messages from our trickiest cards?

•  Do we skip past the banished benevolent gifts and only concern ourselves with the “hardest” things we find in our (individual and collective) shadows?

These are rich areas for exploration. Join us for our Gold in the Shadow workshop October 26, 3pm EST where we will take it even deeper… and by the time we are done we may even be calling it shadow-play instead of shadow-work!

  - Jessica Snow