Podcast Ep. 14 ~ From Narcissism to Self-Awareness - The Role of Shadow in Spiritual Evolution

The concept of the shadow originated from Carl Jung's psychoanalytic research into the unconscious. His descriptions of the shadow are invaluable for personal and spiritual growth when combined with Eastern yoga-tantra practices.

Jayne describes the shadow as our unconscious, our psyche, encompassing everything that isn't our ego. She describes how meditation is a powerful tool for encountering the shadow, especially when chakra meditations unite the lower chakras, which contain most of our darker animal instincts, with our higher chakras.

The lower chakras are the energy centers that contain the most active areas of shadow activity that we experience, especially around money, security, sex, and power. They are furthest from the higher chakras associated with empathy, communication, and spirituality.

A key point that she makes is how an unconscious shadow can lead to feelings of isolation and alienation. When dominated by the lower chakras, we may feel disconnected from ourselves and struggle to find meaning in life. This can manifest as narcissism, transactional relationships, and an overemphasis on material pursuits.

Jayne describes how the process of developing self-awareness as part of a process of integrating the shadow with our conscious self. This is a path to becoming more whole, complex, and authentic.

Shadowwork can be a journey toward a more profound understanding of existence that alleviates feelings of isolation and connects us to a sense of life beyond mere material existence.

The featured two talks by Jayne on the Shadow were taken from the Light in the Chakras and Kundalinī Course that we ran in 2022. They are taken from Classes 3 and 5. Understanding what the shadow is and being able to deal with upwellings from the shadow is extremely important in the more advanced practices of the yoga-tantra tradition. This is because they aim to purify the unconscious. The way they do this is via yoga-tantra rituals in which various mantras and symbols are used to invoke the higher spiritual archetypes from within the psyche. Once the practitioner is established in his or her relationship with these higher forces, then the darker forces can be invoked and brought into a relationship with the light and can be transmuted. This results in a powerful method for self-transformation. We teach this in our Light on the Chakras and Kundalinī 9-month Course that we teach every few years.

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Podcast Transcript ~ Episode 14

CLASS 3 - Light on the Chakras and Kundalini Course 2022

Many of you taking the course are stirring up unconscious material. You see things within the unconscious and experience feelings you previously were unaware of. Some of this content is disturbing. This is what Jung calls an encounter with the psychological shadow.

1. The shadow is the unconscious or psyche.
2. The shadow lies between the ego and the highest self.
3. The shadow is everything that is not the ego. That is very, very big.
4. The highest self is a combination of ego and shadow.

In everyday life, our allegiance is to the ego. We are fully occupied with the practicalities of living, and there’s little opportunity, desire, or apparent necessity for us to relate to our shadow. Even if we do have the time, there are infinitely more pleasurable things to do than to keep your shadow company.

Most of our education and encouragement in life is about working with the visible, tangible aspects of living that exist in the domain of the ego. Involving ourselves in what we can know and understand, what feels familiar, helps us feel grounded and orientates us to feel secure and safe.

We spend a lot of our time focusing on becoming useful citizens, performing the work we like or that is necessary, creating a family, and finding the community we fit into. And this ego-building is essential for survival. This is essential; however, there is a cost. We tend not to want to focus on complex, abstract, or obscure things, the things that can only be understood when seen from multiple perspectives: from above, from below, from behind, and side-on. We are built to look forward and walk forward because that is the path we can see, and that appears to be the fastest route to everywhere we want to be.

The forces at play in this world—the excessive rajas created through every industry, even the self-help and spiritual industries—propel us to desire visibility, efficiency, and a kind of perfection. We always try to iron out our perceived flaws, whether house improvement or self-improvement.

So even at times when the shadow steps right in front of us, as it regularly does throughout the day – through certain thoughts and interactions, through the problems we experience, moods and feelings ­– the last thing we want to do is to slow down, take our eyes off the clear forward path so that we can arrive at complete perspective and understanding on what just happened. To ask ourselves, what really triggered that unpleasant thought or reaction? Why did I get so nasty, jealous, angry, or hurt over that little thing?

Even if we become aware enough to ask those questions, we just don’t have the time, mental space, or desire to do so.

So, when confronted by our shadow—or shadows that are not our own—our habitual response is compensation mode to ameliorate the feelings evoked by the encounter. We have many well-practiced ways to do that, from simply cutting off our emotions to busying ourselves with tasks to finding something to soothe us, such as comfort food or thoughts. 

We also have destructive ways. We may react defensively to the confrontation with the shadow by protesting, gossiping, blaming, arguing, plotting against, or, in some cases, becoming violent. We each have our own cunning and strange ways of coping with daily encounters with the shadow, and we barely notice our own mechanisms because they are unconscious, too.

And realistically, we can’t always be aware of our shadow, which would make us extremely neurotic.

So, generally, when we sit to meditate, the conscious ego relaxes.

Initially, the gross tensions are released through simple breath awareness, which evokes feelings of pleasure. For some meditators, these feelings are accompanied by imagery, such as fond memories of people, places, and events that were rich with good feelings.

But tensions run deep, as deep as our shadow. So, in meditation, as we go beyond initial relaxation into deep relaxation, the ego gives over a little more of its power to the unconscious. As it does, we discover ever more complex tensions.

Activating the psychic centers naturally exposes unconscious tensions bound up in the shadow. All that the ego has cast aside is there: flaws and failings, the archetype we never wanted to be, perhaps a materialist, brute, fool, snob, or Everyman or Everywoman—just an ordinary person whom the ego has been striving to blot out in its desire to be “special.”

Although the ego has let go of its stronghold in deep meditation, it hasn’t completely disappeared. Even in dreams, the ego is present and vigilant to shadow factions' powerplays.

One aspect of the shadow finally gets a little light; we get a flash of insight, and the ego comes to the rescue. It battles to save us from the pain of seeing our darkness, of falling into the abyss of our flaws, failings, archetypes, and the feelings it doesn’t understand or want.

And this battle can birth new, more profound tensions – confusions about one’s identity and morality.

So, if your encounter with your shadow is overwhelming during meditation, don’t be afraid to leave the meditation and return to it later. You always have the option to keep going or to stop. Better still, just slow down and modify your meditation practice so that you bring in more grounding and relaxation. Remember, you are in control, not the shadow.

Another important point is that a healthy ego creates the scaffolding from which we can explore the shadow without feeling devasted or depressed by the encounter.

And, of course, there's great purpose in getting to know the shadow. It's not all terrible. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, and that, as it becomes more integrated into your conscious mind, you see the value in the shadow. You see the jewels that are buried there, eventually. You see this amazing light in the shadow.  And that all enables you to become more whole.

That's what the whole purpose is. That you're not just this ego walking around. That you're bigger, you're more complex, you're more mysterious, you know, so that's a wonderful thing.

CLASS 5 - Light on the Chakras and Kundalini Course 2022

In Class 3, we generally discussed shadow. Now, more specifically, we discover that shadow originates and is most active in the lower chakras, mūlādhāra, and swādhisthāna because they are the furthest from the light of empathy, communication, intelligence, and spirit—anāhata, vishuddhi, ajna, and sahasrāra chakras.

So, my focus for today is on how the shadow can make us feel isolated and alienated.

When we feel cut off from ourselves and life and from knowing what we are doing here on the planet, the lower chakras dominate our existence. The shadow has become so unconscious that it has created an opacity that blocks us from knowledge and truth. We experience immense suffering in the form of ignorance, delusion, and feelings of profound alienation – all qualities of tamas.

In the pandemic, physical isolation killed thousands of people and afflicted many others with mental illness. One of the reasons was that many people did not have the internal resources and resilience that make extended physical isolation bearable. Of course, I am not saying that was the only reason. Enormous, complex pressures endangered many people’s ability to survive.

But pandemic or no pandemic, when the shadow is unconscious, we become wholly invested in social existence. We tend to believe that the only value in life is to be found out there in the material world and by belonging to mass consciousness. That is where our energy and vision go.

The paradox is that we experience a sense of belonging in being integrated into society into that consciousness, which is important. Still, we also feel a sense of loss of self, which creates  isolation. And that feeling of isolation can sit under the surface of our awareness for a long time before we fully recognize it. And this paradox is very unsettling. We feel we belong, but only to a finite, physical, material world.

Living in that level of consciousness makes us fearful, selfish, and overly attached to finite, material things. Everything becomes a temporal object.

It’s all about me, and others are only commodities. Relationships become transactional. Sexuality departs from love, children become objects of parent’s ego desires, and friends are reduced to usefulness, for example, for their status or entertainment value.

This is the disease of narcissism. It comes from the shadow that has taken control.

And Jung said something to the effect that “the shadow not only consists of weaknesses and defects but of the potential for “demonic dynamism,” meaning that the free-wheeling shadow has the vitality, the firepower, to launch evil. It’s easy to see that in the world. We see the narcissism of leaders and corporations, but the potential also exists within every human being.

You can spend a long time trying to fill your life with pleasures and a false sense of security in the form of people, things, and activities. Still, that sense of isolation, the absence at the core of your being, the chasm between living and knowing why you’re living, grows.

Hiding from your shadow in busyness

That core absence is obscured by busyness, routines, and habits. Eventually, it reveals itself through sleepless nights, disturbing dreams, and moments when you find yourself drifting into vague yearnings for a life far from your reality. And that is quite often the trigger for a midlife crisis—which can occur at any age.

A faint, exasperated voice whispers, “Is this all there is?”

When that voice can no longer be buried, we usually pursue the answer, a vision of what life could be. If no answer comes, we can become impatient and frustrated. This can go on for a long time and feel like never-ending seeking.

Many people, fortunately, interpret this as the need to find purpose and meaning. Others can fall into anxiety or existential depression. “You know, what’s the point of it all?”

And these people are still stuck in hand-me-down ideas of mass consciousness, focused on the material and social world.  

They can only want what others want because that’s all they know there is and believe is possible. They can brainstorm forever and not come up with anything that feels worthwhile or enduring because they don’t know why that core absence exists.

Over the years, I have written a few articles on purpose and have had quite a few people from different backgrounds contact me, wanting to know their purpose.

What I often discover is that even though they reach a sense of disillusionment, they still have their sights set solely on the outer world. So, rather than address their purpose, they need a way of reaching into and understanding that core emptiness.

And most people have been quite relieved to hear that. It makes sense, while others are horrified because they believe that everything can be fixed using a materialistic, mechanistic approach, which is how they have tried to solve most of their life issues. They want a formula.

Example of an intellectual who was disconnected from his shadow

For example, a very educated, successful man told me he needed to find his purpose over the next three weeks. He was about to be promoted to a leadership role in an international organization that taught personal excellence.

To get the promotion, he was asked to write an article on how he found his purpose and developed personal excellence.  However, he didn't know his purpose and he didn't have that sense of personal excellence Despite all his achievements, he was smart, extremely well read, he knew so much, but was, it was all academic knowledge, all sort of rational knowledge, which is you know, the lower chakras.

So, even academic intelligence does not mean you have escaped the trappings of mass consciousness. It is so powerful that it lives in all of us to a degree. But it’s the degree that matters. How much sway does it have? How bound am I? How deep does it go? You know, how deep is it inside us, controlling us? These are the questions we each need to answer.

And, of course, this also applies to people in spiritual fields. When the shadow is dominant, spiritual achievement is all about gain. What will I get from becoming spiritual? How much more important will I be when I am spiritual?

The educated man I'm speaking of was socially connected and what they call an “influencer” in the social media world. He was doing interesting, valuable work but was chronically lonely and so protected around that vulnerability.

Summing up

So, to put it very simply, when the shadow dominates, your true identity becomes a mystery because you are lost in the mass consciousness. “You can feel alone in a crowd “is the saying we often hear. But how do we solve that paradox of being with others but feeling alone?

If we asked Carl Jung that question, he would say something like, “You can feel alone in a crowd until you individuate.”

You feel alone when you have unconsciously bought into ideals, values, and ideas that are not of your making, not of your highest individual potential.

Fortunately, you can reduce the degree of mass consciousness in yourself by integrating the immense power of the lower chakras, their vitality, and firepower - their ability to motivate - with the light of the upper chakras. That is part of the process of individuation.

We do this with meditation. But equally, you do it through self-reflection, personal psychological insights, esoteric training, and through everyday living.

Eventually, that faint, exasperated voice that is seemingly endlessly questioning, “Is this all there is?” changes.

It says, “No, this is not all there is. Life is more than material, and you are eternal.”

It can take a long time before you hear that confident voice, but when it comes, you experience the truth and knowledge of your existence, and you no longer feel alone.

And I’ll talk more about that in the upcoming classes!

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