Underground Knowledge — A discussion group discussion
This topic is about
C.G. Jung
MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS
>
The "Shadow" in Jungian psychology and its potential relevance to our world NOW
date
newest »
newest »
I am also thinking that now with the massive phenomenon of JOKER (the latest one with Joaquin Phoenix), and the way that film's symbolism is spreading worldwide in various protests and self-expressions across almost all cultures globally, whether this character is affirming everyone's right to express their darker Shadow self? OR somehow that film and that character is somehow a mass psychological realization that we should not judge people so harshly when they appear different or quite "out there"? I dunno, just speculating here... Joker & The Dark Clowns: The New Symbols of Chaos and Protest (Chile, Hong Kong, Beirut) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7Ybw...
Jordan Peterson Joe Rogan - Understanding Your Shadow(Carl Jung) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3mBB...
Carl Jung and the Shadow: Integrating the Hidden Power of Your Dark Side
Jung: An Introduction Into the World of Carl Jung: The Shadow, The Archetypes and the Symbols
More from Wikipedia entry on C.G. Jung's Shadow psychology...Merger with
According to Jung, the shadow sometimes overwhelms a person's actions; for example, when the conscious mind is shocked, confused, or paralyzed by indecision. 'A man who is possessed by his shadow is always standing in his own light and falling into his own traps ... living below his own level':[20] hence, in terms of the story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 'it must be Jekyll, the conscious personality, who integrates the shadow ... and not vice versa. Otherwise the conscious becomes the slave of the autonomous shadow'.[21]
Individuation inevitably raises that very possibility. As the process continues, and "the libido leaves the bright upper world ... sinks back into its own depths...below, in the shadows of the unconscious",[22] so too what comes to the forefront is "what was hidden under the mask of conventional adaptation: the shadow", with the result that "ego and shadow are no longer divided but are brought together in an—admittedly precarious—unity."[23]
The impact of such "confrontation with the shadow produces at first a dead balance, a stand-still that hampers moral decisions and makes convictions ineffective...tenebrositas, chaos, melancholia."[24] Consequently, (as Jung knew from personal experience) "in this time of descent—one, three, seven years, more or less—genuine courage and strength are required",[25] with no certainty of emergence. Nevertheless, Jung remained of the opinion that while "no one should deny the danger of the descent ... every descent is followed by an ascent ...enantiodromia";[26] and assimilation of—rather than possession by—the shadow becomes at last a real possibility.
Assimilation of
Enantiodromia launches a different perspective. "We begin to travel [up] through the healing spirals...straight up."[27] Here the struggle is to retain awareness of the shadow, but not identification with it. "Non-identification demands considerable moral effort...prevents a descent into that darkness"; but though "the conscious mind is liable to be submerged at any moment in the unconscious... understanding acts like a life-saver. It integrates the unconscious"[28]—reincorporates the shadow into the personality, producing a stronger, wider consciousness than before. "Assimilation of the shadow gives a man body, so to speak",[29] and provides thereby a launching-pad for further individuation. "The integration of the shadow, or the realisation of the personal unconscious, marks the first stage of the analytic process...without it a recognition of anima and animus is impossible."[30] Conversely "to the degree to which the shadow is recognised and integrated, the problem of the anima, i.e., of relationship, is constellated",[31] and becomes the centre of the individuation quest. Carolyn Kaufman wrote that "in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness—or perhaps because of this—the shadow is the seat of creativity";[32] so that for some, it may be, "the dark side of his being, his sinister shadow... represents the true spirit of life as against the arid scholar".[33]
Nevertheless, Jungians warn that "acknowledgement of the shadow must be a continuous process throughout one's life";[34] and even after the focus of individuation has moved on to the animus/anima, "the later stages of shadow integration" will continue to take place—the grim "process of washing one's dirty linen in private",[35] accepting one's shadow.
Some of Jung's quotes that I think relate to Shadow psychology:“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”
“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
“How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.”
“Whatever is rejected from the self, appears in the world as an event.”
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
To MorcanThe unconscious is like that rupert sheldrake wavelength of morphic resonance in whole species of bird, making them move at the same time; or duran duran’s “reflex;” or that guy who wrote the Crowd, Le Carre’s descriptions, how they move en masse beyond rational mind; it is cthonic, mobsterous, emotive, nebulous, dark and powerful.
But consciousness can hyperjump from this bs samsaric faux conscious state we live in usually and jump/fall down into that spectrum or jump up and go up in vibration into the subconscious spectrum of the non bodied Jiva self itself where forms symbolic then beriah (the realm all is created out from) is and that is up (see Kabbalah for one reference), whereas the mass unconscious is *down* the other way, consciousness can descend or ascend.
They are as opposite as heaven from hell. But because moderns no longer distinguish the unconscious from the subconscious or believe in a jump either way from the autobot self ever since freud the reductionist (even though all ancient cultures show them two opposite spectrums the conscious can come to); modernity is about to fall off a cliff as a bunch of blind lemmings who can’t distinguish the two.
Their hyper rationalist bs faux consciousness they walk around in has played it’s last card and the gig is up (Buddha tried to get us to see this before it was too late, as did Christ and Vipassana Hinduism has always shown how to see this auto not you preening preppie consciousness as the auto bot or what I like to call people’s giggle bot - Lieh Tzu said of such: “The Way would not be the Way if people didn’t laugh at it”).
They (modern rationalist reductionist majority nebishes) have been ideologically set up - I don’t care who you say it was, little demons, the demiurge, mass collective energy doing itself in, whatever - what matters is “seeing” the set up going on now of distinguishing no heaven from hell; and where all will go next with such delusion?
Unless we individuate as eternally unique creative consciousness beyond autothought of our autobot we will descend in lower spectrum since we do not ascend into higher spectrum cause for faux liberals not liberating anything all such talk is “evil hierarchicalism and not pantheist and accepting” to talk of higher spectrum subconscious being distinct from a lower spectrum unconscious; and all faux conservatives think such higher spectrum is some heavenly next life to dog dream about and not a nexus here now to jump into as Christ shamanically taught of the Kingdom.
So a new nexus must come cause all are asleep and sleep only lasts so long till it molts into other forms. The rational self is a dead end and boring and we didn’t gather enough will to separate from samsaric consciousness maybe in time in these generations to go into higher conscious in the subconscious divine so now we will have just barely enough will to separate and go down rather into the unconscious of lascivious, dark, multi-desires appetizing hell world of wrong relationship toward sex and violence that seems freeing but will be more distentigrating.
I’m not going to go into that but I do see most of what rational exo religion and skeptic psycho-babble people call “shadow and evil” is actually our higher astral self beyond this demiurge daystar god of this age sleeper world so that it is actually more all and more moral not less than the morals and petty increases of these demiurgic rule makers without sensitivity or consciousness higher. But this can only be discerned by conscience as to if such is finer in one or others or if one’s dark side of consciousness is taking over rather - you can’t tell just by judging someones wet path of soma and experience on the left hand path to transcendence or someone’s dry abstinent monkish path of the right hand to transcendence is moral or correct or not except by coscience and taste. There is a certain mania and vehemence and prelest and appetite for sadism if either are not working right in oneself or others and not leading to beauty and divine subconscious astral dark self beyond this sun’s fake influence here. Both are dark: the upoer starry world and the lower cthonic void; we had better learn to discern which is which soon or there will be very destructive results. We just barely entered the lip of Kali Yuga in 3K BC...now we descend.
Here is what I wrote a good friend of mine earlier about the Joker phenomena related to all this (and I’ll try to edit my above rambling later, just had 10 mins before I had to do something this morning):
Oh I loved the Joker! My wife wasn’t too crazy about it but said it *is* how anyone who has been abused feels. Ok I agree with everything you said about it. But first his acting: he puts together all his roles into this one and it is his best ever: rock star johnny cash a little, the decadent mysterious roman emperor in Gladiator you can almost sympathize with, his druggie character who moves like smoke in P.T. Anderson’s amazing movie not too long ago. If you ever watch the lead singer of Big Star - early 70’s footage; Alex Chilton, it’s like he’s the exact image of him: dark, mysterious, thin, whispy but sharp and haunting, magnetic presence. Just amazing.
But the message. See I don’t know anyone besides Tolkien in the past three centuries who knew as much as I do about the Great Ages of Deep History. And what I have found is at the end of every cycle (and maí, there have been so many ; ) ) there is some law conformable Apollonian Divine Justice Reversal that befalls upon each at end point Eucatastrophically.
Now what I can tell you is per Hesiod & Ovid, Hinduism, Chinese Lore, Hopi in a general way, and 3 eastern wisdom teachers who went west that I most value of the late 1800’s early 1900’s (and many more sources): we are in the end of the 5th House of Man and all starts over soon around now as next cycles blend with ours any century now. So we are headed for such a retributive point in History. I don’t know if this retribution being “ever just” (?) is always “just” (as it seems to me) or if it depends on the tone we as humans set leading up to it as to how it will turn out.
But what this movie made me realize is, not just that we are *not* infinitely far from such coming period anymore; but also that male energy is wild and it never historically works out to inhibit it, it just makes it worse to inhibit it.
It’s like male energy was cosmically destined to ever revolt either upwards toward goodness or revolt it still will even if it decays and becomes evil, but how terrible that is when that happens that way and decays downward. I believe some periods on earth have been like Cormac McCarthy’s the Road. So all we can do and hope for is wait and make sure we have done everything so that if that time ever comes it is a good and just and not bloodthirsty (but not cowardly) revolt going completely back toward goodness.
Too often the trauma of the oppressors teaches the new violent one’s to behave in a different flavor of the exact same way their oppressors did in them and then everything repeats like self destroying parts in a cell. But if there is a way out from such error that would be good.
So it showed me male energy is, at it’s foundation, revolutionary so that all that can be done is help it go towards good, not stop it’s tidal wave inner violence - unless you are some total 4th Way Maurice Nicoll or Guru or Wizard on the High Path of Non-violence above violence. But people have no idea at all how extremely hard that is to truly attain that. It is way harder than any hippie or war general diplomat thinks. But I feel these days I may be getting a little closer to it. But it is hard to know till you are put in that situation.
Well that is what I thought of it.
The most important part to me was when you saw he scribbled in his notebook:
“They want you to behave
As if you do not”
That statement has messed with my head for like 3 days
I didn't even notice that line in Joker's notebook, but it's a very true statement!Applying Jungian psychology to Joker, it's almost like Joker is the character's shadow self... Except he loses control of his shadow? I dunno, it's all too deep for me!
I guess I was just saying the shadow is our finer subtle magnetic self that can go well or not so well for us and it is important to live more in it and then move right with it without repressing or taking it out on others; and all that is subtle and can easily go wrong. And the secret is Consciousness understood in a particular and exact experiental way. Weird, I was just listening to this just now:
“And as we wind on down the road,
our shadow’s taller than our Souls...”
- Stairway to Heaven
Led Zep
Robert Plant a few years back said in an interview “that hopeful possibility in that song partly sung to Lady America is long past now because of all she has choosen by this time.”
Jordan Peterson answers the question "how to develop one's shadow" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ictUb..."A practical approach for developing shadow, fundamentally, is radical honesty. Jung said that a genuine moral effort was a good substitute for psychotherapy."
Thank you for that. Radical Honesty does, I see that, sometimes I see that a little too slow and a little too late but that is so good. You become “the devil” or a shadow to mass consensual reality (temporary truth) floating about and opposing you, opposing you usually the more honest you are.
And then you see face to face what of you is truly more devil shade and false as the *re-actor* shadow (persona in greek is a word that means mask, so different from essence) and what of you is not so but their mind bubble pervading upon you pushing you towards a cartoonish but deadly corner they want to fit you back in that is your “writing on the wall” if you become that when you weren’t before (people still understand almost nothing of suggestibility). If you don’t react from your own unconscious “mordor” and don’t mime how they want you to to their consensual group think, between those two the doors of perception are cleansed and you see all as you really are. How selfishly solipsistic, to use people to develop soul/sol. But it all makes sense.
Yes the Devil analogy works here I think. Essentially recognizing your own inner Devil, a monster inside, and not denying its existence. That way you tame it, perhaps? Whereas those who deny their Shadow self are likely to see that negative aspect manifest in their actions in the world?
Carl Jung and the Shadow: The Ultimate Guide to the Human Dark Side https://highexistence.com/carl-jung-s...“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.”
— Carl Jung, Aion (1951)
Underground Knowledge — A discussion group
Books mentioned in this topic
Jung: Myth and Shadow (other topics)Carl Jung and the Shadow: Integrating the Hidden Power of Your Dark Side (other topics)
Jung: An Introduction Into the World of Carl Jung: The Shadow, The Archetypes and the Symbols (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Joseph Campbell (other topics)C.G. Jung (other topics)
My (limited) understanding in terms of Jungian psychology is that everyone has a dark (Shadow) self. And if you repress that, and give it no healthy outlet, then it will rear its ugly head in horrible ways that surprise you and surprise others. Negatively surprise I mean. The Shadow will always find an outlet whether you want it to or not.
I always remember hearing a quote from somewhere or other that always stuck with me: The more moralistic a society becomes, the more immoral its citizens will be.
I believe that history shows that to be true as when you control people to that extent with either political or religious moral restrictions or judgementalism, you are essentially restricting their ability to express their Shadow self.
The arts in particular have always been a way to allow people to express such darker aspects of ourselves (without harming anyone) - either directly as performers in the arts, or vicariously as audiences reading or watching or listening to artistic forms of expression. Other positive outlets for our Shadow self might be more twisted sexual roleplaying (within respectful relationships), watching violent sports like boxing or MMA, etc.
It also seems our ancient ancestors understood the Shadow side of Mankind much better than our society has in recent centuries. Virtually all ancient peoples appear to have used shamanism to do extremely dark rituals or ceremonial roleplays that in my view are not encouraging such behaviour but rather releasing it from tribal members (and this is often misunderstood as Satanism by modern conspiracy theorists, in my assessment).
But very keen to hear what others think, as I have only ever done limited reading on this subject.
Shadow (psychology)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_...
In Jungian psychology, the "shadow", "Id", or "shadow aspect/archetype" may refer to (1) an unconscious aspect of the personality which the conscious ego does not identify in itself, or (2) the entirety of the unconscious, i.e., everything of which a person is not fully conscious. In short, the shadow is the unknown side.
Because one tends to reject or remain ignorant of the least desirable aspects of one's personality, the shadow is largely negative. There are, however, positive aspects that may also remain hidden in one's shadow (especially in people with low self-esteem, anxieties, and false beliefs).[1]
Contrary to a Freudian definition of shadow, the Jungian shadow can include everything outside the light of consciousness and may be positive or negative. "Everyone carries a shadow," Jung wrote, "and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is."[2] It may be (in part) one's link to more primitive animal instincts,[3] which are superseded during early childhood by the conscious mind.
Carl Jung stated the shadow to be the unknown dark side of the personality.[4][5] According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. Jung writes that if these projections remain hidden, "The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object—if it has one—or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power."[6] These projections insulate and harm individuals by acting as a constantly thickening veil of illusion between the ego and the real world.
From one perspective, "the shadow...is roughly equivalent to the whole of the Freudian unconscious";[7] and Jung himself asserted that "the result of the Freudian method of elucidation is a minute elaboration of man's shadow-side unexampled in any previous age".