Me And My Shadow

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

My shadow, my shadow side. The part of me that is out of my sight. The searchlight of my consciousness is not directed at her. It is visible to others. I do not notice her, and therefore she acts independently of my will, manifests itself in relations with others. This is how a dispute arises with close people who are significant to me. They notice in me what is hidden from me. They tell me what they see, because it affects them, and they are not indifferent to the relationship with me. This is the point at which I have bewilderment, anger, resentment, a desire to push a person away, a desire for him to shut up.

Because it casts doubt on my holistic image of myself. I am building it so carefully, brick by brick. Sometimes it seems to me that I am attentive to the formation of an idea of myself, and I do it consciously. But this is more like a game. After all, my consciousness throws aside the bricks that do not correspond to the architectural project - the project of me.

And also because I so carefully hide what others have seen from them and from myself. What am I hiding there, and why?

Let's see how it works. In the process of being raised by our parents, we begin to face feelings of shame, rejection, disgust, anger towards us. The shadow begins to form when I, as I am, as a result of my manifestations with significant people (parents, educators, teachers), face shame, rejection, rejection, anger. All of the above is related to the deprivation of love from a significant adult. Deprivation of love for a child is identical to deprivation of care, deprivation of care in childhood is identical to death. A child, due to the level of his physical and mental development, is not able to survive alone. And the question of love for a child is literally linked to the question of survival. We begin to face the fear of death and destruction before we begin to realize it. And what we do with ourselves further, we do instinctively. This is called the instinct for self-preservation. Faced with rejection, shame, rejection, disgust of the parent as a result of our certain manifestations, we risk being deprived of love or for a time deprived of it. In the language of a child, we risk dying. Instinct tells us how to eliminate this risk, how to return love. Simply by eliminating the cause that led to such a parent's reaction. Since the cause of the reaction is our specific manifestation, we choose not to manifest in this way. But since natural desires and aspirations, charged with vitality - the energy of life, do not disappear anywhere, they continue to live inside us and remind of themselves. Which causes conscious tension, pain and suffering. We have to hide them from ourselves, take them out of brackets, outside our borders, so as not to suffer. To be ashamed, to reject this part of yourself. Tell yourself it's not me. The focus is only partially successful. We can deceive ourselves, but we cannot in reality cut off a part from ourselves. And it still continues to live in us, like a black hole, attracting and absorbing our energy with its grandiose mass and gravity, suspended somewhere in a vacuum, in a shadow, invisible to our eyes, but acting according to the laws of the universe. Just as a black hole is discovered by astrophysicists by its manifestations, by the way it affects objects in the zone of its gravity, so our shadow becomes noticeable to others by its manifestations.

I tell myself, “I support others. They are worse off than me. I have no right to want something for myself. I am less important than others. " After all, this is fraught with the loss of love, rejection, shame, annihilation. I say to another: "Look how I support you, I care about you!" And suddenly at some point, when life has settled down, my skillfully constructed image lives, participates in relationships, I come across the words of another: “You are an egoist! You only think about yourself! You don't notice me! " What is in my head at such a moment? Right. The cognitive dissonance. “How is it? I … Here, look. " What do I want to do in such a situation? Defend your self-image, your carefully implemented project. I start to get angry, I start to prove, I start to argue. It doesn't work for me. With all my energy, I throw the other away, isolate him in a zone from which he can no longer influence me in such a way. I am offended, I don’t want to see him, I don’t answer his calls, etc.

Now try to look from the outside, through the eyes of this other, at what is happening. A person who declares that others are more significant to him than himself, who sacrifices himself for the sake of others, rushes to save everyone and everyone, forgetting about himself, in this situation with tremendous energy, not characteristic of his other manifestations, defends himself, rudely, brutally throws me away. He becomes different from himself.

In fact, in such a short moment, I just become more like myself. I step out of the shadows, using my shadow to protect her desire to remain invisible. This makes the shadow visible.

What happens after? As a result of such a conflict, I myself, of my own free will, find myself in isolation, that is, having rejected the other, I myself experience rejection. I am ashamed. Since what I said and did in a quarrel did not resemble myself, I was "not myself." I risk losing my love. Yes, I am already an adult. And from this, of course, I will not die. But it doesn't matter to me anymore. I am good at being afraid of being deprived of love. I come to you with the words: “Forgive me. I was not myself."

For a moment flashing in the darkness with a bright flash of a Supernova, my living part is reborn into a black hole, returns to its place - into darkness, vacuum, depths of space, my I. So the circle closes.