Exploring the Dark Side

Learning to embrace the shadow(35 slides)

creatively compiled by dr. michael farnworth

Fragmented we are.

We are living our life in the way of fragmentation.

There are things that we hate about ourselves, that we wish would go away.

We try really hard, over and over again to make them go away but they stubbornly remain.

We engage in denial, depression, forgetting, going to sleep but all to no avail.

We are afraid the dark truth is still within us.

It is not even our fault that we are fragmented.

We were made to believe certain things about ourselves from being around our parents.

They didn’t like certain aspects of our personality and over the years they turned us against ourselves.

Which is really a sad thing.

Most of what we consider our dark side is nothing other than the unintended consequence of parents who didn’t know any better.

There is only one healing that will work.

It is the healing of surrendering to Life.

Of being made whole by the fragmented pieces coming back together.

It can happen if we are courageous enough to stop the inner war that rages inside.

All we need to do is lay down the hatred, the contempt and vanity we think we need to defend our selves.

The surrendering is the key if we can overcome our fear.

The fear of embracing that which our parents rejected.

In the second movie of the Star War Series, The Empire Strikes Back, Luke is training with Yoda and is enticed to go into a cave

where there is great evil.

He takes his light saber, even though Yoda tells him he will have no need of it.

In the dark underground cavern he confronts Darth Vader and engages him in battle which he wins by severing Vader’s head from

his body.

There, upon the ground, Vader’s mask dissolves to reveal Luke Skywalker’s own face.

He has just done battle with himself.

Luke did not trust the Force (by surrendering) but rather depended upon his own efforts

(symbolized by taking his light saber in with him because of his fears).

He may have defeated himself in the confrontation in the cave.

But the dark side of the force remained in his heart.

Looking at a little more of the same episode as the failure at the cave scene that we talked about.

Think about this. Vader is the embodiment of evil in Luke's life that killed the only one who really cared about Luke and allegedly his own father.

His fear drove him to take his weapons into the cave and his anger is what drove him to draw and kill his own reflection.

However, even after Luke's failure and attempt to deal with his energies, his final test is to confront the real Vader.

Yoda knew that it was another test of his spirit and not skill.

He then had to try to grasp that not only was Vader his own father, but couple that with his failure in the cave and hopefully he realized then the depth of his own dark side and where he could end up.

I guess that is just the long way of saying even if we deal with it now there will be deeper and darker levels

to explore.

The here and now only continues to prepare us for more.

The only way to overcome it all is surrendering; otherwise we will be consumed by it one way or the other.

I feel that many of us don't get stronger after trials, but more defended to deal with more the next go around.

- Isaac Porter

This is a well known theme in mythological literature where the hero has to confront and engage his dark side in battle.

It is a theme in our own life too if we but awaken to it and see with new eyes.

We cannot win this battle by ourselves, it is impossible.

But, a Great Warrior of Light will fight our battles and vanquish the darkness within us.

The devil made me do it

• The Devil made me do it.–

• Is a well known scapegoat and excuse that is often alluded to by the Christian World.

• It serves the function of placing the blame on someone other than our self.

• And it thus, may keep the person safe from confronting his own nature that was responsible for the darkness.

• It is a very convenient form of rationalization.

Maturity in life will introduce you to a whole host of dynamics that may cause you to question your life that have nothing to do

with being evil—

Dynamics like being defended, scared, wounded, neurotic, hardened, superficial, proud, vain, grandiose, hurt, pain,

sadness, paranoia, disassociation, fragmentation, intellectualizing, being addicted, withdrawal, sickness,

dishonesty, deception, depression, and the list can go on and on and on.

As one wise person once said:

There is nothing more dangerous that a truth misunderstood by those that hear it.

Addictions may be the best example of procrastinated healing.

Because for most of us, when we are hit with anxiety, suffering, threat, sadness and the like we turn to what can give us comfort

and safety namely our addictions.

The addictions take the form of activities, substances or people and relationships.

The addictions fuel our vanity.

This kind of vanity is based upon our own sense of pride and grandiosity that engenders a sense of self-sufficiency and

independence.

A belief that if I keep working at it long enough and hard enough that I will eventually triumph.

Why do you think you may do these things?

Things like:

-looking at internet pornography and then masturbating.

-eating ice cream and a bag of cookies and then vomiting.

(what follows is a metaphorical type of conversation)

Could you give yourself permission, as a wounded human being, to do these things for a week?

No way! Are you serious? There is no way I could give myself permission to do it it is wrong!

How long have you been trying to stop this behavior?

About 7-8 years.

And how successful have you been?

I have been successful. I have been able to stop for periods of time, sometimes for

months!

But you always end up doing it again?

Yes.

So with all your will power and best of intentions and all of your efforts to stop, you still have the problem?

Yes.

So, if what you have tried, has been unsuccessful why can’t you give yourself permission for just one week to engage the

activity?

What do you have to lose?

I can’t. It is wrong and I can’t believe you are actually asking me to give

myself permission to do it when I have been trying so hard to stop.

End of conversation type.

I want to propose an explanation of why these students are so resistant to giving themselves permission to sin it goes

something like this:

Because if you gave yourself permission to sin- the jig would be up. You can’t help yourself! You can’t stop yourself! In fact, on

some level you want to do these things because you keep on doing them despite your best conscious efforts to stop!

And it is only because of your pride and vanity that you have to believe that you really don’t want to do these things and that

you will someday succeed in stopping them.

You refuse to see that the darkness is in you and that you cannot escape it.

All of your self control is taking on the characteristics of the darkness it is suppose to be subduing.

And you are becoming more dishonest, disassociated and fragmented!

You are practicing unrighteous dominion over yourself and judge yourself as evil and weak.

The fuel that is feeding your obsessive behavior is your own self contempt and loathing.

You are out of control and you hide.

You are wounded and yet you pretend otherwise.

Your are dark and yet you disassociate.

You have created a false self because you want to believe you can whip this thing by yourself!

It is your pride and vanity which is in control.

How much energy do you expend pretending that all is ok and that you are really not dark, full of pretense?

Think about it and absorb it.

You are dark.

It is in you and you cannot run from it!

It is too painful to admit that you are dark even though those thoughts and feelings fuel your attempts at perfectionism.

You have to keep them on a level, once removed from your conscious mind, but your heart knows!

What would be so wrong about admitting that you are a wounded and hurt human being who stumbled upon some

addictive activity that helped you cope with the pain of your wounded disconnection?

What would be so painful about acknowledging your need for a healing in your feigned life?

Our darkness has a gift for us.

it is in understanding our need for healing.

I believe that the shadow side of each person has a gift to offer if we but are brave enough to accept it.

To confront a person with his own shadowis to show him his own light.

Carl G. Jung

*Maybe he could set up a culture based upon appearances where the only things of real value were how people looked, dressed,

money made, jobs of influence and prestige, etc.

*Maybe he could sponsor a cultural philosophy that demeaned peoples feelings of the heart as fickle and stupid while enthroning

the intellect of the head as king.

*Maybe he could establish a system of values based upon production where everyone kept themselves so busy that there was

never any time for introspection and soul searching.

*Maybe he could set up the culture to punish and shame children for their feelings. While ignoring their fears and teaching them they

shouldn’t feel anything that is not acceptable.

Your shadow self will need to be embraced sooner or later and the gift received.

The life experiences that are served up, all need to be embraced the good and the bad, the bitter and the sweet, the peaceful and

the fearful.

We cannot live our life in fear of our own darkness and shadow for if we do then that can keep us out of our inner kingdom and

we will never be able to reclaim it from the darkness!

In confronting our darkness we do not need to be subdued by it.

Have faith in your quest and inner adventure.

Please Read:

Spiritual Integrity

Rachel Naomi Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom

Those who don’t love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either. Most people have come to prefer certain of life’s experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may

come wrapped in plain or even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness. Or even that the love we have been given can

be trusted.

It is natural, even instinctive to prefer comfort to pain, the familiar to the unknown. But sometimes our instincts are not wise. Life usually offers us far more than our biases and preferences will allow us to have.

Beyond comfort lie grace, mystery, and adventure. We may need to let go of our beliefs and ideas about life in order to have life.

The loss of an emotional or spiritual integrity may be at the source of our suffering. In a very paradoxical way, pain may point the way toward a greater wholeness and become a potent force in the healing of this

suffering.

A woman with heart disease and chronic angina once told me of the downside of the surgery which had relieved her symptoms. Before this surgery, she had suffered frequent chest pain from her disease. Over the

years she had modified her diet, learned to meditate, and had been successful in controlling most of her pain. Yet some of her pain had been resistant to her efforts. Paying very careful attention to this, she had been

shocked to notice that she experience pain when she was about to do something that lacked integrity, that really wasn’t true to her values. These were usually small things like not telling her husband something that he

did not seem to want to hear, or stretching her values a bit in order to go along with others. Times when she allowed who she really was- to become invisible. Even more surprising, sometimes she would know this was

happening but sometimes the chest pain would come first, and then, examining the circumstances which provoked it, she would realize for the first time that she had been betraying her integrity and know what it was

that she really believed. She had learned a great deal about who she was in this way, and though she was physically more comfortably now, she missed her “inner adviser.”

This is actually not so surprising. It is known that stress can affect us at the weakest link in our physical makeup. It raises the blood sugar in people who have diabetes, precipitates headaches in those with migraines,

and stomach pain in people with ulcers. It causes people with asthma to wheeze and people with arthritis to ache. What is new in this story and so many others that I have heard is that stress may be as much a question

of a compromise of values as it is a matter of external time pressure and fear of failure.

Unexplained pain may sometimes direct our attention to something unacknowledged, something we are afraid to know or feel. Then it holds us to our integrity, claiming the attention we withhold. The thing which calls our attention may be a repressed experience or some unexpressed and important part of who we are.

Whatever we have denied may stop us and dam the creative flow of our lives. Avoiding pain, we may linger in the vicinity of our wounds, sometimes for many years, gathering the courage to experience them.

Without reclaiming that which we have denied, we cannot know our wholeness or have our healing. As St. Luke wrote in Acts of Apostles 4:11- the stone rejected by the builders may prove in time to be the

cornerstone of the building.

What we believe about ourselves can hold us hostage. Over the years I have come to respect the power of people’s beliefs. The thing that has amazed me is that a belief is more that just an idea- it seems to shift the way in which we actually experience ourselves and our lives. According to Talmudic teaching, “We do not see things as they are. We see them as we are.” A belief is like a pair of sunglasses. When we wear a belief and

look at life through it, it is difficult to convince ourselves that what we see is not what is real. With our sunglasses on, life looks green to us. Knowing what it real means that we remember that we wear glasses, and can take them off. One of the great moments in life is the moment we recognize we have them on in the first place. Freedom is very close to us then. It is a moment of great power. Sometimes because of our beliefs we may have never seen ourselves or life whole before. No matter. We can recognize life anyway. Our life force

may not require us to strengthen it. We often just need to free it where it has gotten trapped in beliefs, attitudes, judgment and shame.

If we cannot embrace our self in the integrity of our darkness then we are doomed to hide and pretend.

This hiding will fuel our pride and vanity and with grandiose perverseness we will live out our life in dishonest ignoring.

We deserve better.

“If those who lead you say to you, "See, the Kingdom is in the sky," then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you,

"It is in the sea," then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come

to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you

who are that poverty.”

(All the sayings of Jesus gathered from ancient sources and compiled into a single volume for the first time. Compiled by Ricky Alan Mayotte) From The Complete Jesus. (p. 71) Jesus

We do not have to live our lives in the poverty of not knowing ourselves.

the end