The Shadow Knows:
The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

A sermon Offered by Rev. Tim Kutzmark
Sunday, December 17, 2006 • Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading

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We have a problem. 

As the time of the winter solstice draws near,
as we approach the longest night of the year,

We have a problem.  We are a people grown afraid of the dark.  We are a people grown afraid of our dark edges.  

A short true story:

There was a moth.  She was born, and from that moment, like all good moths, she really had one goal in life: to find the light.  And so, on the night that our paths crossed, the moth was doing the only thing she knew how to do: she was trying to escape from the dark.  She had gotten into my living room.  Bump, bump, bump—over and over she hit the glass cover of my ceiling light.  I opened wide the windows, and tried to shoo her out into the night.  But moths don’t go toward dark edges.  I watched her dart about the room, her dark shadow projected on the walls as she flew frantically.  The next morning, I found her battered body, wings shredded by her determination to claim only the light. 

We are a lot like that moth.

According to famed psychiatrist Carl Jung, if we look only at the light, if we try to appear as only positive and good people, if we don’t leave room for our imperfection, our dark edges, then we are destined to create a large and looming shadow that will haunt us, a shadow that will batter our very being.

The “shadow” is a powerful concept that Carl Jung introduced into our thinking, and these dark days of December, this time before the Winter Solstice, is the perfect opportunity to explore what the shadow knows. 

This is how our human shadow comes into being.  When we are first born, we have, as poet Robert Bly once called it, a 360˚ degree personality.  Bly says: “As a young child, “energy [the fullness of emotion and feelings] radiate out from all parts of our body and all parts of our psyche.  A child . . . is a living globe of energy.  We had a ball of energy, all right; but one day we noticed that our parents didn’t like certain parts of that ball.  They said things like: “Can’t you be still?”  Or “It isn’t nice to try and kill your brother.” (A Little Book on the Human Shadow, p. 17)  Or “Nice children don’t touch themselves there” or “A good child would never think those thoughts.”  And so it begins: the great putting away of the parts of ourselves [the world doesn’t] want to see.  We have to do it in order to keep our parent’s love.  Then, we get a little older, and go to school.  Robert Bly writes: “[Someone says]: “Good children don’t get angry over such little things.” So we take our anger and put it [away].  Then we do a lot more . . . stuffing in high school.  This time it’s [not just the] grownups that pressure us, but people our own age.”  (Ibid.)  And let’s not forget the lessons we hear from leaders in organized religion.  Says Bly: “Out of a round globe of energy, the twenty-year-old ends up with a slice.” (Ibid.) Then we enter the work world, and the world of relationships.  What do we have to edit here?  This long process is called acculturation; it is how we adapt and survive in society and groups and families.  We develop a ‘light’ personality, a smiling face, and an acceptable way of being.   Carl Jung called this ‘mask’ the ‘persona.’

Psychologists Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams write: “Each of us contains both a pleasant persona for everyday wear and a hiding, nighttime self that remains hushed up most of the time.  Emotions and behaviors—rage, jealousy, shame, lying, resentment, [grandiosity, insecurity, hatred], lust, greed . . . and murderous tendencies—lie concealed just beneath the surface, masked by our more proper selves.” (Meeting the Shadow, xvi, xvii)

So what happens to everything we’ve disowned that is so real inside us?  The shadow sometimes erupts, if we get careless.  The edge of the shadow escapes in a moment of angry outburst.  The edge of the shadow can emerge in addictions, compulsions, or phobias.

But most often, we’ve tried so hard to keep others from seeing these parts of ourselves that we lose our own ability to know them directly. We forget our shadow is there.  It hides in our subconscious.  We can’t see the self that has fractured. 

But we also possess an innate drive towards wholeness.  Our mind needs to feel whole again, and if we are unable to claim all the parts we deny within our self, our mind does an amazing thing.  It projects those disowned parts out into the world.  Without realizing it, we take our shadow, and, like a film projector, project it onto a screen somewhere in front of us so that we can see it again.  And what becomes that shadow screen?

Says Carl Jung, the person who we dislike beyond any rational explanation, the jerk who angers us beyond description, the co-worker who disturbs our sleep because we play the scene or the conversation over and over—these people are showing us the dark edges of ourselves we have disowned.  We’ve projected those parts onto others, and we see it in their behaviors.

This is where other people become essential to our salvation.  This changes how we deal with those people who truly push our buttons.  As uncomfortable as it may be, the difficult people in our lives become pathways to claiming our hidden wholeness.

For me, my brother is one of those people.  I have never gotten along with my brother for as long as I remember.  Until very recently, I could barely be in a room with him without launching into a verbal fight. I can’t stand many aspects of my brother.  He exploits my parents for money.  He literally drank himself just hours away from death, the aftermath of which destroyed my parent’s health.  He usually has difficulties keeping a job because he fights authority at any chance he gets.  And he is a bible thumping Christian fundamentalist.

Many of my brother’s behaviors are destructive, but they emotionally hook me.  The hook is the key.  If someone’s words or actions just inform us, then that person is not showing us our shadow.  But if someone’s words or actions affect us, if they cut into us and we get caught up in them, then we are seeing our shadow self.  The key is whether they just inform us or affect us. The key is to look for situations where our reactions are out of scale with what the person has done.

So how could my brother be my shadow?  Just a few thoughts…

My brother has exploited my parents for money.  Well, there is a part of me that longs to find a way to kick back and mooch off the world.  And, I have to confess I harbor a belief that the world really does owe me something for nothing, and I like to forget there have been times when I’ve exploited others for my own gain.

My brother literally drank himself just hours away from death.  My brother is an alcoholic.  And he lied about it for years.  I also have an addictive part in my personality that I try to keep hidden away.  There was a time I liked using drink as a way to escape and control things.  I was lucky to be able to channel some of that addictive impulse towards healthier pursuits, such as exercise, diet and meditation.  But I use food, exercise, spirituality, and my work schedule to hide from things, and to control how I feel.  And I still have compulsions that sometimes get the better of me.

My brother is a bible thumping Christian fundamentalist.  I find myself recoiling from his judgmental beliefs.  Then I catch myself—I am dismissing him for being judgmental when I am judging him just as harshly.  I can be just as unyielding in my pseudo-intellectualism and liberalism as he can in his literalism and orthodoxy.  And, there is a part of me that envies him. I often get confused about what I believe.  I grow weary of all my questions and doubts.  I sometimes get lost in the complexity of possibilities.  I often wish I could see the world simply through his faith-filled eyes.

By looking at those parts of my brother that affect me in reactive ways, I begin to own parts of myself I’ve pushed away.  If I denied my very deep reaction, if I am only “nice” and hide my true feelings in order to appear spiritual or good, then I loose the chance to understand this darker part of myself that comes alive through him.  In coming to know the dark side, I can begin to diffuse the fierce emotional reactions.  I can actually become more balanced and centered.  He can’t push the buttons so hard if they are no longer wired into my unconscious core.  I might even find more room in my heart for him.

We all have individual shadows.  But groups of people also have shadows, called collective shadows.  Families have shadows, countries have shadows, and religions have shadows.

 “The family shadow contains all those feelings and actions that are seen as too threatening to its self-image.”  (Meeting The Shadow, p. xxi).  Sometimes, a family comes to therapy because one person is acting out in some way.  The family is looking for someone to fix the problem person.  An astute therapist will realize that the problem is much more complex than one person.  Often it is the entire family system projecting its collective secrets, wounds, and disowned behaviors onto this person. The family shadow is seen through the one identified problem person.  In that light, I often wonder what shadows my brother carries for my entire family. 

Likewise, a country can have a shadow.  A country that incessantly proclaims itself the land of “freedom and justice for all” will create a large shadow. Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams suggest that the collective shadow of the United States of America is “staring back at us virtually everywhere.  It shouts from newsstand headlines; it wanders our streets, sleeping in doorways, homeless; it embezzles our monies from the local savings and loans; it corrupts politicians and perverts our systems of justice; it drives invading armies through dense jungles and across desert sands; it sells arms to mad leaders and gives the profits to reactionary insurgents; it pours pollution through hidden pipes into our rivers and oceans.” (Meeting The Shadow, p. xx)  A country can have a large and deadly shadow.

Even a church can have a shadow, especially a church that focuses on the goodness inherent in all people. A church can have a shadow, especially a church that wants to appear “good” and healthy and vibrant.  In a church that is relentlessly positive, it is hard to make mistakes and admit them.  In a church that values the positive, it is hard to talk about the losses that come with growth and change.  In a church that is always positive, it is harder for people to admit they are tired.  And in a church that values peace, it can be  hard to deal openly and directly with conflict.  We can tend to pacify or ignore certain behavior, not because we believe that all people have worth and dignity, but because we don’t want to deal with conflict, which we’ve convinced ourselves has no place in a “happy” church.  But by not dealing with conflict directly we lose the self-awareness that comes from looking at our shadow.

We need to normalize disagreement and conflict in church.  This can be hard for any church, but for a church that is still recovering from the trauma of a past conflict, it can be even more of a challenge, for we unconsciously fear re-igniting a difficult time

But we cannot shy away from conflicts or problems, or we will project the parts we’ve denied onto certain individuals.  Those individuals will embody and act out what we refuse to see and be.  That, according to Carl Jung, is what happens to the group that is trying too hard to be perfect, to appear good.

If we are going to be a church that helps people find wholeness, there needs to be room here for loss, weariness, disagreement, and conflict.

In our own lives, in our families, in our country, and in our church, let us not be afraid to look into our darker places.  At this time of the Winter Solstice, let us not rush so quickly to embrace the return of the light.  Let us spend some time in the dark, and be guided by these words of David Rothenberg:

“When you finally catch up with the shadow, it will certainly tell the truth.  All you need to do to see the shadow is turn away from the sun.” 

Blessed Be.  Amen.

©Copyright 2006 Rev. Timothy A. Kutzmark
All rights reserved.