The Cost of Ignoring Our Shadow

Despite the moral imperatives that we learn as children, it’s sometimes not enough to just say, “I won’t do it,” to banish all thought of a forbidden thing. This creates inner conflict. Who knows how much physical illness is the battleground of unlived life? You may well get a nervous stomach, back pain, headaches or some other type of ailment when you try to practice a moralistic “just say no” policy.

At the collective level, we see every day in the headlines what happens when the shadow is not recognized. It is projected onto neighbors who are defined as enemies, carrying “the other” for us. In the socially driven process of becoming legitimate and gaining credentials for success in the world, in the experience of wielding power, through our hunger for certainties in a universe filled with paradox and mystery, we don’t want to face our shadows and question our assumptions. It is easier to split off the “bad” onto our neighbors, whether they are down the street or across the ocean, to fear the “other” rather than face the “otherness” within.

If you are drawn to a “bad boy,” or a "temptress blue angel," this is probably a sign that you are too diligent and dutiful in your life. Perhaps you try so hard to be good that the other side needs to be heard to balance your life. (This is a frequent problem for pastors, politicians, families of prominent people, and anyone who feels they must appear as all “good.” One day their “bad” side is acted out in some unconscious manner).

In this example, you must ask yourself how you might break the rules a bit, be more spontaneous, own some of these “bad” qualities in yourself. How is it you became undernourished in this quality? Are there core beliefs that keep you from expressing what is unlived?

To individuate in the second half of life you must fill in the missing pieces of your personality, to become more aware and more whole. It includes both the gold and the dark side that gets projected, so we see it on the outside first and we want to reclaim it. A good part of the first half of life is about that. We probably would never leave home if we didn’t project. We project heroism and all kinds of idealism onto the world. We go out and find we really need to reclaim it, but in the beginning projection is what propels us into the first half of life. Yet, at some point, at mid-life, we gain enough strength or we get frustrated enough at the cycles we keep repeating trying to fulfill these unlived potentials on the outside that we say: “Maybe I need to sit down and do my own work.” That is reclaiming the projection and seeing that this is part of my own likeness that I need to take back.