Shadow Being

If the word archetype is to have any practical meaning it is shedding awareness and so it is that we should be mindful that darkness as an unconscious metaphor is not simply an enlightenment about our hidden self but the conscious bias that is sitting right in front of our noses, that we are blind to, until of course we learn to see - and that has nothing to do with sight.  This form of seeing is the value contained within our shadow being .  In the next video Eric Klein discusses the - positive side of the Jungian view of the Shadow Self (a.k.a. shadow self and not shadow being which I will explain later) :

I agree most heartily with Klein's articulation of the shadow self that with this is hidden depth is our creativity.  Now I want to recognize that our heart does not see physical light.  It is surrounded in darkness.  Our brain is surrounded in darkness.  The core of our reproductive being is surrounded in darkness, as are most organs other than orifices which are referred to in ancient vedic texts as the "Nine Gates".   I am not particularly interested in whether one knows or does not know how to open up one of the eight energy gates nor the new age view of opening the ninth gate - in terms of darkness - everything that keeps us alive is wrapped in darkness.

The universe itself is an eternity of darkness - that is illuminated by hot burning stars here and there, but the blackness and emptiness of space is not a negative because human beings only occupy a tiny object called Earth and this idea of hidden self is limited to us as human beings - otherwise we have a tendency to anthropomorphize the universe - and that is not a humility but a great arrogance regarding the place of humans in the history and existence of the universe.  Sunlight is absorbed by black objects and reflected by white objects - this absorption of light is what makes black, appear black - and where light is not absorbed, that is what makes white, white. 

This view of WHITE is found in non-Western views - where in places like China and India, WHITE is the colour of mourning, so it is appropriate to wear white to symbolize death in an Eastern funeral.  Thus the associations we make between black and white or dark and light are configured by our culture and the sum total of our hidden being is influenced by that at the unconscious level.   We must not assume the negative because it is associated with darkness or black. 

What interests me about the shadow being rather than the shadow self is that it gets to the heart of how we perceive this idea of "shadow".   Indeed there is actually a phobia related to "shadows" which is called "sciophobia" :

If the flame is the source of light then there is no shadow but if the light source is brighter than the flame then there is a shadow but this fear of shadow exemplifies itself in people who see the metaphor of a flame not having a shadow.  The projection they note accords with their interpretation of shadow.  Yet that is not what I mean by our shadow being.

Our shadow being is the opposite of personal brand.  It is our leadership shadow - which is the shadow of all the people our leadership touches that we are absolutely not aware of.  This leadership shadow touches people for the better, but we are as blind to that reality as we may be about our hidden shadow.  I have already shown how creativity is within that hidden shadow-self - and the shadow being is actually our own inability to realize how powerful we are.  That is pretty much summed up in this Marianne Williamson quote :

Whether it is "psychological types" which got skewed as "Myers-Briggs Personalities" or "shadow self" - we do not get the full benefit of the depth of awareness that is possible to discover in Jung's view of the Shadow Self - nor should that view constrain our own view to extend the metaphor of the shadow to its most positive dimensions.   Personal brand is the light we shine where the negative is found in the creation of PERSONA and not the shadow self.  The Shadow Being is the darkness that most frightens us because this is the light - hence the paradox !

There is another part of our shadow being which is the space between absolute transparency and absolute privacy.  That space is as alive as we choose to make it. I am not a shrill for tech companies that have socially engineered systems to treat people who value the hidden as something corrupt and evil - that simply conjures up the boogey man and works on that fear of the shadow.  We know media ratings draw us to what we fear and what arouses our sensibilities - but our shadow being is boring, it is not of interest to people who want to be interesting, in a social media where "being interesting" is far more valued than being interested.  Just because we are moving into a world where there is a sensor in every corner and a censor against our shadow being, only means understanding our shadow being is that much valuable, because the value here is our very own sense of freedom.   As we proceed in sophisticated digital transformation, we will intitally be viewed as product, but eventually the freedom we win, is being viewed as people who have the right to some form private life - and that makes our shadow being important. The Guardian decided that the state of privacy needs a closer look, producing a feature called "The Power of Privacy" - which show just how open and loose we have become :