Father Chet, July 1983
OPENING OUR PANDORA’S BOX
The unconscious shadow, whether personal or collective, is a Pandora’s Box which we carry around with us all the time. We are well aware of what happened to Pandora when she opened the box. So, we too are reluctant to open the box and face that dark, crude, disruptive, uncivilized side of our personalities, those pent-up, repressed, instinctive tendencies of the human race.
Sacred Scripture teaches us that there exist other intelligent beings in the universe called angels. Some of these, under the leadership of Satan, rebelled against God; and we are in some way affected by their mutiny.
Whether we like it or not, our responsibility is to open the Pandora’s Box of the personal and collective shadow, and with God’s grace put these repressed psychic energies to good use.
“The contents of our Pandora’s Box can, then, with effort and struggle, become divine graces.”
We have a tendency to treat our shadow as some foreign body, a devil, which is seeking to lead us astray from our consciously chosen goals in life. Because it erupts in a primitive manner, we refuse to accept ownership of it as an authentic part of our characters.
When the shadow succeeds in making its presence known in our conscious lives, we are embarrassed and try to blame it on some external cause or person.
PROJECTION
We project it upon one of our fellow human beings, or we say “the devil made me do it” or ‘‘old slew foot is tempting me”. We go to great lengths to objectify the evil within us and attribute it to some external cause instead of honestly acknowledging it as an authentic, though often hidden part of our own personality. Most frequently of all, we project our shadow onto other people, both friends and enemies, e.g. criminals, other nations, other races.
“The more perfect we think of ourselves as individuals or as a nation, the darker and more evil will be the shadow we project upon others.“
Projection harms both us personally, and the person, nation, or group upon which we project our shadow. Projection is an unwillingness to face up to our own inner enemy. Our only hope for release from the evil effects of hanging our shadow on another is to open our Pandora’s Box, acknowledge ownership and responsibility for its contents, and try to find the most effective way to transform its energy into good.
Sooner or later, for better or worse, the psychic energies of the unconscious shadow will come forth into conscious life. The undifferentiated psychic energy that is continually repressed has a propensity to attach itself to the most perverse and least controlled elements of our personalities unless we take firm control and put it to good use. Our prayer time is the ideal place to recognize this undifferentiated energy as it issues forth from the unconscious depths of our being. There, with God’s help we can find a way to transform the shadow and use it for some good work or cause.
THE SHADOW
The shadow has both a positive and a negatuve side. The positive side refers to the raw energy in the unconscious which has great potential for conscious virtue once it is activated. The negative side of our shadow refers to those actual faults of ours which we have repressed out of ignorance, fear, laziness, or malice, and behavior which may erupt from the unconscious as a result of severe trauma and abuse.
This negative shadow is normally projected upon others; and as long as we do not take back the projection (acknowledge it as our own fault which we are seeing in the other), it becomes capable of working harm on others as well as causing havoc in our own lives. As long as we reject the existence of our dark side and it remains unconscious, our lives tends to swing from one extreme to the other, from bad to good and back again, just as day and night succeed each other.
“Only our conscious ego and our conscious faculties are capable, with the help of God’s grace, of reconciling these opposites within us. This, without a doubt, is one of the most important tasks of our prayer time.“
0ur short-sighted, inflated ego is constantly thwarting the Holy Spirit from establishing the proper tension between our conscious ideals and our unconscious shadow. Thus, our journey toward wholeness and sanctity is constantly endangered unless we take up our cross and follow Jesus by giving ourselves wholly to the guidance of the Holy Spirit, rather than to the demands and ambitions of our inflated, selfish ego.
We must let our Inner Self and the Holy Spirit weave the pattern of our lives. (Note, however, that serious shadow traits and behaviors as a result of trauma, abuse and childhood neglect require the attention of a trained psychotherapist.)
This can happen only if we practice self-discipline and give a substantial portion of each day to quiet reflection and prayer. Conflict and struggle are inevitable if we hope to bring our unconscious shadow into consciousness and put it at the service of God.
A balance of opposites must be reached; for this we need a well-disciplined and strong will to carry out the directions which the Holy Spirit reveals to us during prayer. The help of a spiritual companion or a wise and supportive friend can prove very helpful in this effort.
Editor’s Note: This is the fourth of five installments of Fathers Chet’s writings on wholeness and the shadow. The first three were published in April , June, August, respectively; the final reflection will be in December.