Shadow and Integration

The alchemists were unanimous on one unwelcome point. The work begins in darkness. Before any whitening or gold there is the nigredo, the blackening, in which the matter rots and its hidden impurities come to the surface. They did not treat this as a misfortune. They called the black raven the first sign that the work was truly under way. For the student of the inner art, the nigredo is the meeting with everything in oneself that one would prefer not to know.

What the shadow is

In the course of growing up, everyone forms a picture of the kind of person they are, and whatever does not fit the picture is pushed out of sight. A child praised for being agreeable hides anger. A child praised for being strong hides fear and tenderness. The hidden material does not disappear. It lives on beneath awareness and continues to act, like the dark side of a body standing in the light.

Twentieth century psychology gave this hidden portion the name shadow, and borrowed heavily from the alchemists in describing it. The older tradition had its own images for the same thing: the black earth, the dragon that must be slain and revived, the faults surrendered one by one in the ascent through the spheres, and the fearsome figure sometimes called the guardian of the threshold, who meets the aspirant at the door and turns out to wear the aspirant's own face.

The shadow is not simply bad. It contains whatever was unwelcome, and that often includes vitality, anger in a just cause, ambition, sensuality, playfulness and gifts that were mocked or ignored. The alchemists said the gold is found in the dung heap.

How the shadow is met

Since the shadow is by definition what one does not see in oneself, it cannot be found by looking inward in the ordinary way. It is found first outside. A quality that has been disowned is noticed with special sharpness in other people, where it provokes a reaction out of proportion to the cause. This is called projection.

The signs are fairly reliable. Some person's fault produces not mere disapproval but heat: one cannot stop thinking about it, speaks of it often and feels personally affronted. The same accusation appears in quarrel after quarrel with different people. Or the reaction is the opposite, an admiration so intense that the other person seems to possess something one could never have. In each case the strength of the feeling marks something of one's own.

Other doorways are recurring dreams and their unpleasant figures, slips of the tongue, the things one does when not oneself, and the honest remarks of those who know one well.

Why the work requires it

A student might reasonably ask why any of this is needed. Why not go straight to the light? The tradition gives three answers.

First, what is disowned still acts, and it acts without supervision. Practices that increase a person's energy and concentration increase the energy of the shadow as well. This is the commonest reason that people who take up esoteric work become, for a time, more difficult instead of less: more irritable, more proud, more secretive.

Second, a large part of one's strength is locked up in keeping things out of sight. When the material is admitted, that strength becomes available.

Third, the aim of the work is wholeness, and wholeness cannot be made by leaving half of oneself outside the door. The Emerald Tablet requires the power of things above and of things below.

Methods

The following methods are gentle and suited to work alone. They should be used one at a time, over weeks.

The evening review

Before sleep, go back over the day in memory, from the evening to the morning. Watch yourself as if watching another person, without blame or excuse. Note the moments of reaction: where you were sharp, evasive, boastful, cowardly or unkind. Do not analyze. Seeing is enough at first. This practice is very old. It is recommended in the Golden Verses attributed to the school of Pythagoras, and it is the root of all shadow work.

The list of irritations

Over a month, keep a list of people who strongly annoy you and of exactly what it is in each that you cannot bear. Then look for the common thread. Ask of each item three questions. Where do I do this myself? Where do I do its opposite to excess? What would I gain if I allowed myself a little of this quality?

The written dialogue

Choose a figure from a dream, or a quality from your list, and give it a voice. Write a question to it in your diary and then write its answer, without planning what it will say. Continue the exchange for a page or two. The results are frequently surprising and occasionally uncomfortable. End every session by closing the book and doing something practical.

The elemental mirror

Return to the elemental inventory and look hardest at the column of faults. For each fault, look for the strength of which it is the distortion: stubbornness is misplaced firmness, restlessness is misplaced quickness. The work is not to amputate the fault but to restore the strength.

What integration means

To integrate a disowned quality is to acknowledge it as one's own, to feel it without being ruled by it, and to give it a legitimate place. It does not mean acting it out. A person who discovers a store of buried anger is not thereby licensed to shout at their family. The discovery is the beginning of a long task: learning what the anger is about, what it protects, and how its force can serve as firmness, protest or the courage to refuse.

The alchemical formula for this is exact. First solve: the hardened self image is dissolved and its contents separated out. Then coagula: what has been separated is recombined into something more complete. The second half is as necessary as the first. Endless self examination with no reconstruction is merely the nigredo prolonged.

Working with care

• Go slowly. One theme at a time. The old texts say the fire for this stage must be very gentle.
• Do not turn the review into a trial. Self contempt is the shadow in another form. The right attitude is that of a fair witness.
• Keep the daily structure. Regular sleep, work, exercise and company are the vessel that contains the process.
• Expect it to pass. The black stage is a stage. It gives way to the white as surely as night to morning, provided one neither flees it nor settles in it.