Shadow Realm In Active Imagination

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

In the last group, there were many new people for whom the method of active imagination is new. They, as is often the case, faced two gatekeepers to the pantry of spiritual resources. We decided to talk about one of them the archetype of a person or a Disguise next time. And here is a story about another fantasy character, manifesting the archetype of the Shadow, it was not possible to talk in the group … Therefore, I am laying out some of my thoughts and impressions here.

Jung wrote that one of the problems of an unprepared person who decided to analyze his own inner world, for example, with the help of passive imagination, is that he falls into "unconscious Satanism." It looks like "mastery" the Shadow archetype … In a sense, a person is possessed by his Shadow, that is, a set of traits that were rejected by a person in the course of his personal history as "bad", that is, they do not correspond to the rules adopted in his family or authority figures that replaced parents and parental family.

This does not all coincide with social beliefs about the bad. So, as an example, the story is given about the Shadow of a Thief, who grew up in a family of thieves, where theft was not something unacceptable, but an honorable family craft. The shadow of such a person can become an inner policeman all the time forcing him to make mistakes, leaving traces or otherwise seeking to bring him into the hands of justice in order to compensate for a conscious attitude.

Alas, the upbringing of most of my clients is not that terrible. Therefore, their shadow is rather associated with various aspects of unbridled aggression and auto-aggression or sexuality. Another feature of the post-Soviet Russian is his spontaneous agnosticism, which manifests itself in the entire spectrum of beliefs: from the wildest superstitions to aggressive atheism. And in a world where there is no god, there is no devil either. That is why it is difficult to expect that Satan or at least his messenger Mephistopheles will appear in your active imagination.

Who is it worth waiting for?

All sorts of "petty devil" or "black man" in all its spectrum from fascists to Caucasians and blacks. But much more interesting is where you get to. The kingdom of the shadow often looks like a "dilapidated reality." Not as dilapidated as in Constantine, but quite reminiscent of some of the Twilight levels in Lukyanenko's or the "vestibule between the worlds" from Lazarchuk's Tranquilium.

This area is not only dilapidated, but also devoid of colors, sulfur. In about the same way as the ancient Greeks described the dark kingdom of Hades, or as the singing stomach of the Russian stage once wrote “Faces are erased, colors are dull”. The same goes for its inhabitants. It may well remind you of some traumatic episode from your personal history or "the kingdom of the dead."

I repeat, this classic hell with devils, cauldrons and sulfur is quite rare. Most likely, in your cool world, the boilers are turned off, and instead of sulfur, it can smell like bleach or other rather smelly disinfection. That is, it is worth waiting not for biblical stories, but for a certain CJSC "Ad" so well described by Viktor Olegovich Pelevin in "Evening Moscow".

Another of the signs of "mastering the Shadow" is the demon of Pride and with ideas of his own exclusivity, omnipotence or supernatural abilities. That is, if you feel like a fighter in the massacre of psychics, it would be nice for you to discuss this with your psychotherapist. As a last resort, look again at the active imagination group.

Well, or whatever you consider this text exclusively advertising, use another of 2 Jung's methods.

Myself Jung spoke of two main ways of dealing with the "mastering of the Shadow", not related to personal psychotherapy, this is religious education or extensive anthropological knowledge about the mores and customs of different peoples. I will add that, first of all, it's my own.