“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” – Joseph Campbell

“We have to acknowledge that we hate those things and only those things in the world that we first hate in ourselves.” – Ken Wilber

If you look up at the night sky in a city, you’ll see a couple of stars. There’s the constellations you’re familiar with, and a few others here and there. You may have seen the sky full of stars, but that’s probably not the sky that you experience most of the time. It’s limited, but it’s your sky. In a similar way, we are habitually identified with a certain type of consciousness, our ego. This is the attitude, thoughts, beliefs, that we have grown up with and grown used to. 

It’s been developed for good reasons, because an ego helps us to relate with others and get things done in society. But because of how the ego is developed, unconsciously, and in response to stuff that happens in childhood, it is naturally going to be a little bit narrow. As we’ve grown up, we’ve made all these little choices about what is good, what is bad, and so on. It’s been in our interest to try our best, but we’re always operating off limited information. So our personalities end up a bit limited too.

The ego is missing some stuff. It’s probably over-indexed on certain things, under-cooked in other areas. It’s a house designed with very little oversight. Some of us spent most of the time designing a sleek infinity swimming pool. Others spent a lot of time getting the kitchen right, but forgot to plumb the bathroom. Some rooms are lit up with seductive mood lighting, others have no electricity.

In this imperfect process, as we double down on the things we believe to be important, we’re also doing a lot of shoving away of the things that are deemed dangerous or difficult, or that don’t particularly help us to navigate the world.

This stuff becomes what Jung called the Shadow, the “dumping ground for all those characteristics of our personality that we disown”¹. Deborah Stewart, of This Jungian Life podcast, describes it as “the underbelly of the ego…that’s hard to look at… hard to feel really connected to…loaded with feelings of disgust, profound discomfort, and a feeling of wanting to push it away.”²

Although the ego and the shadow have such differing relationships with the conscious mind, they both constrain us. We are constrained by identification with some things and rejection of other things.

The Constraint of the Ego

I was collaging with some friends. I hadn’t made a collage in a long time. I thought it would be easy, but I found it very difficult to create a composition that I liked. I was selecting and cutting out images from magazines. I thought I was being clever. I thought I had a good eye and aesthetic. I’m a designer. I should be good at this.

But I was stuck. I was jiggling around pieces like a jigsaw puzzle. Nothing was fitting together. My friend D saw this and asked what I was doing. I said “I’m trying to move it around so it looks right.” She replied, “What’s right? It’s a collage.” She had a point. What did right mean? And why was that important? Why not just have fun? Why not make something silly, or shocking, or bright turquoise? No, for me, I need to get it right.

A few pieces of ripped paper shone a bright light on what’s habitual for me, what I identify with. The need to be careful, considerate, aesthetic, minimal. I pick pleasing things. I take care and attention and time. That’s my ego.

There’s no right way to do a collage, of course. That’s like saying there’s a right way to make a song. And I got more interesting results when I used colors that I don’t normally use, or if I used my left hand, or closed my eyes, or if I ripped things really quickly, or if I ripped instead of using scissors.

The Constraint of the Shadow

When I buy something at the supermarket, I don’t make small talk. I place my things down on the counter, my phone bristling ready to pay. I move on as quickly as I can. I want to be efficient. I don’t want unnecessary attention on me. I don’t want to slow down people behind me.

Now, sometimes, when I need coins for the laundry in my apartment building, I need to ask for change. It’s not possible to move by quietly like usual. I have to stop and say “Hey…” I have to ask someone to do something for me. In a way, I have to admit that I need help, or that I don’t have my life completely organized and together. Those are things that I would rather not look at directly. Things that my habitual side really can’t stand and pretends don’t exist. That’s my shadow.

And there’s a lot of defense mechanisms when I’m pushed into those shadow areas, even with something simple like asking for change. For some people it’s “hatred, disgust, avoidance, criticism, accusations, attacking.”³ In this case, I’ll get irritated. I’ll try and avoid it. I’ll roll my eyes. I’ll think about finding a machine to do this so I don’t have to think about it again. I’ll feel bad about holding up the line and apologize a lot. 

Just like the ego constrained my collaging attempts, my shadow also prevents me from spontaneously asking for things. 

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There’s no need to blow up the ego, or to live out your shadow all at once. That would be reckless and dangerous. These functions have been carefully created for practical reasons. But we need to watch them closely. Watch how they shape our behaviour and most importantly how they constrain us into tight spaces.

We can try to stop squeezing ourselves between our (self-created) likes and dislikes. It’s not comfortable there and never will be. We need room to move. Like Viktor Frankl famously said, “between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” 

We can look up at the sky and we can say “hey, I kind of know this isn’t the full sky, right? I kind of know that light pollution is blocking some stuff. I know there might be more out there.”

1. Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche ↩︎
2. Episode 55 – Identifying & Integrating the Personal Shadow,” This Jungian Life ↩︎
3. Episode 55 – Identifying & Integrating the Personal Shadow,” This Jungian Life ↩︎