Two Kinds of Shadow

It may be useful to consider that there are two basic forms of shadow; those elements that we are born with and those that we currently acquire; they can be thought of as either lunar or solar, respectively.

Simply put solar shadow is that part of the psyche that acts as a repository of repressed elements, commonly known as the sub-conscious. Generally, when the contracted self comes across some element of its behavior that it considers not being able to stand the light of day, it tucks it away, hides it from view, and then does what it can to forget that it has done so. It's analogous perhaps to sweeping dirt under a rug. But as noted elsewhere it hasn't gone away, it makes itself known as we trip over something; over an occasion that has high emotive content.

Reversing the process is called de-repression; a procedure that can be described as a forensic science of the psyche. But let's be candid, de-repression is not always a pretty process, and to do so we must be willing to face whatever negativity it was that caused us to bury the contents in the first place.

Maybe a story will help illustrate the process. Many years ago when i first began to root around in the psyche i noticed something about my food prejudices; they all had something in common, a fact which indicated that they were not just random prejudices, but something tied them together. A common element was that all the foods i was prejudiced against were warm, white, and creamy.

But i had no conscious clue (after all i was dealing with repressed material) until i obtained the result of a divination ritual, which was the second and fifth lines changing in the 13th hexagram. At the time i was using Blofeld’s literal translation of the I Ching. The words of the second line hit me like a sledgehammer: His beloved (betrothed) is of the same clan as himself –trouble! Yikes! Suddenly i realized that i had been doing something that good little Christian boys were not supposed to do; desiring elicit contact with my mother! So culturally denigrated is such a notion that we have a special epithet to describe it. I won't mention it here but suffice to say that they're usually thought of as fighting words.

The effect on me was electric! I was so psychically charged that i couldn't sit still. It took me 40 minutes of walking around to calm down enough to be seated once again. And then i read the balance of the divination text. The fifth line holds: The lovers began by weeping and wailing, but they finish by laughing, as the crowd succeeds in bringing them together.

I won't belabor the issue with the finer points of integrating various elements of this particular bit of shadow; but the crowd in this case refers to those hardy investigators into the mechanics of the psyche, who have performed an extremely valuable service, offering a mental context for the defanging of many a tiger.

Lunar shadow on the other hand is stuff we are born with, and most likely represent the accumulated effects of more than one lifetime. Sometimes this is thought of as soul print, a sort of stamp that's placed on us as we enter into manifestation. It's partly in our DNA, partly in epi-genetics, and partly in the more subtle realms, which taken together give rise to our predispositions. It's a vast study. But if we are to become more integrally informed we need the freedom that comes from successfully dealing with two kinds of shadow.