Let’s talk about Ken Wilber’s view of the shadow and how to do his main shadow work technique.
I find Ken Wilber’s theory on the shadow to be refreshing, modern and complete. It far eclipses Freud’s theory, which focuses on childhood dysfunctions and tries to reduce all later dysfunction to it.
It’s also more complete than Jung’s theory, in my opinion. It offers a complex, nuanced, yet intuitive explanation of how shadow forms throughout our lives and what we can do about it.
I’ll also introduce my ebook Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory Condensed in case you want to deepen your knowledge of his work.
Before we look at Ken Wilber’s unique contributions, let’s talk about what the shadow is so that we’re on the same page.
What is The Shadow?
Doshin Roshi’s working definition of the shadow is “the part of us that we can’t see”. It’s the collection of all our psychological traits and emotions that are buried from sight. They are underground, splintered off from our everyday self-sense, meaning they act on their own accord, controlling us from afar.
This is a crucial point: when you have a trait in shadow, it feels like it acts on you rather than you act on it.
Let’s use anger as an example, because it’s a very common shadow trait, and a particularly nefarious one at that. If you have anger in shadow. Then it feels like your anger is uncontrolled, it feels like it’s outside of you.
It’s not fully integrated into who you are and so you can’t consciously experience it. It dominates you from the outside rather than you dominating, guiding or channeling it. It feels like everyone else is angry but not you, even though you are the original source of the emotion.
And a nasty side effect of this is that you experience the effects of your own anger directed back against you. To understand why, we must understand the concept of projection.
The Mechanism of Projection
This is the quintessential mechanism by which the shadow remains hidden to us. This is not an original Ken Wilber insight, but it’s crucial to understanding how the shadow works in yourself and others.
As mentioned, shadow is created when we have a psychological trait, like an emotion, that seems disgusting to us. Therefore, we push it out of our main sense of self, and it begins operating on us unconsciously.
Invariably, we start to see that quality in the world. Everyone around us seems to have it, except ourselves, of course. And because we’re disguising it from ourselves, we start picking literal or metaphorical fights with everyone else, trying to rid them of that disgusting quality. Remember: the shadow is projected “outside” of our habitual self-sense, so it appears to be “out there”.
- Is there an emotion or trait that you perceive in everyone else but not yourself?
- Is there one that you continually attempt to rid the world of?
- Is that quality one that you can consciously embody and direct, or not?
Ask these questions and look carefully at your psyche as you live your life. I guarantee you will find the mechanism of projection if you look closely. We all have it, unless we’re shadow-free, which nobody is.
Now let’s turn to Ken Wilber’s greatest contributions in this area.
Ken Wilber & Shadow: All Traits from All Levels
One unique contribution from Ken Wilber is his claim that any trait can go into the shadow.
His theory says that as we develop through the levels of consciousness and the states of consciousness, the two major axes of development, we continually accumulate shadow.
We start off as a baby with zero shadow because we’ve not got the basic mechanism of repression available to us yet. We don’t have a sufficiently developed psyche either. Over time as we grow up both in age and in our psychology, the more shadow we accumulate, unless we work to undo that.
Shadow has always been associated with the major levels of development. Freud’s theory, taught to legions of psychology students every year, focuses on the earlier levels, such as the oral, the sexual, and so forth, which are the early levels of childhood development. His whole argument was that all our neuroses come from those repressed aspects in ourselves, to dysfunctions that happened in those stages.
Ken Wilber takes this idea and broadens it: at every single developmental level there is shadow, not just at childhood levels. There are many developmental stages, and we can accumulate it at any one of them. In fact, he argues that because of how we move from one stage to the next, we’re guaranteed to be left with some repressed material after each stage.
That is a crucial insight because it basically tells us any trait that is repressed within us is shadow. It doesn’t matter if it seems noble or lofty, from either the Orange or Green or Teal or Turquoise level, it’s still shadow. It still creates dysfunction.
It also reminds us to be constantly vigilant. It’s not enough to go back and reintegrate shadow from the earliest phases of our development. That is the most basic and fundamental. We’re continually accumulating it as we develop. We’re not just ascending: we accumulate dirt and dust along the way, and we have to be vigilant of that.
Ken Wilber & Shadow: Positive and Negative
Another insight that Ken Wilber reiterates is that our shadow doesn’t include only negative or antisocial qualities. This goes back to Jung and differs from Freud’s view.
We often talk about it as though it were negative, as though saying “Oh my God, you have shadow, oh my god, that’s so horrible and terrible!” We often focus on traits that are negative or not socially acceptable. Freud did this in his work.
I do too. I talk about repressed anger a lot because it’s a particularly nefarious emotion to have in the shadow. This doesn’t mean anger is necessarily an ugly trait all of the time. But the more I talk about anger, it makes the shadow seem all dark and negative.
Even the word “shadow” has a certain implication. Though the word is a good descriptor or pointer, don’t be mistaken by the fact that it seems dark and hidden. In and of itself, it’s neither positive or negative. If anything, the effects of shadow are what is dark and negative.
Ken Wilber points out that the shadow also includes positive traits that we don’t acknowledge in ourselves. Instead, you project them outwards, seeing them and admiring them in other people.
Yes, we might have shadow traits that aren’t socially acceptable or are downright dark, but they’re there anyway. Denying them just intensifies them: repressing them is exactly what causes more, as does calling them ugly and despising them.
So let’s not do that, let’s not call them negative. Let’s admit that we have them, then we can do work to reintegrate them into who we are.
Who Do You Dislike?
Ken Wilber is also very adamant, starting from his early work, that anything we dislike in other people is part of our shadow. This is a necessary and sufficient condition. If there is a trait we dislike in others, it’s in our shadow; if it’s in our shadow, we dislike it in others. We dislike it in other people precisely because we dislike it in ourselves.
The fundamental cause is that we’re not at peace with that quality in ourselves. It’s repressed, splintered and unconscious. It’s just revolting to us.
It’s really interesting to look at yourself and spot the people and groups you dislike. It might be family members, or friends, or colleagues. It’s probably a blend of them all. That’s not to say you dislike everything about them, but you dislike certain things: there are certain qualities that bug you.
And due to the mechanism of projection, we see this quality more readily and more intensely in other people than we do ourselves. Criticising and demonising those people helps to keep it hidden because we can keep denying that it’s within us all along. This is precisely what gives this hidden trait its power.
You might even hate entire groups of people: the corporatists, gays, the rich, Asians, whites, teenagers, or any other group. In one sense it might be a values conflict, but even in values conflicts there’s also a lot of shadow involved.
This doesn’t mean they don’t have those despicable qualities. They probably do. You’re probably not making it up! But that quality is also in your own shadow, which is why it causes so much distress to you. It’s triggering your own dislike of yourself and that’s why you focus on it so much in other people. They’re a mirror to you and your own repressed traits, hence why you get agitated.
The good news is that these people, in having these traits that seem so revolting to you, are holding the keys to your shadow. They are the perfect guide for you.
You might like my video on key insights into shadow.
Ken Wilber & Shadow: The Geiger Counter
Ken Wilber also talks about the Geiger counter effect. As we go about life, our shadow is getting activated all the time, much like a Geiger counter does when radioactive material is present.
When you are near someone that is expressing a trait that is in your shadow, you’re going to notice activation, you’re going to feel carpet burn. You’ll feel discomfort and tension inside. Though it feels unpleasant, it’s a fantastic way to see your own shadows. You’ll notice this when you’re around certain people or faced with certain situations.
If you’re having a heated conversation and can feel hatred and drivenness welling up inside you, that’s a good time to stop and ask if this indignation is based on a shadow trait.
You might disagree with something that a politician, leader, family member or friend is doing, but if it brings up all this critical, negative energy and you feel the carpet burn, the ticking of the Geiger counter, chances are it’s pointing to something that’s hidden within you.
Once you realise this, you can stop your condemnation and start taking ownership of it.
Do Shadow Work
Ultimately shadow integration, whether it involves antisocial traits or not, is a very positive move, not just for you but for everyone around you. It’s going to make you feel much fuller and authentic. You’re not going to be so obnoxious, dysfunctional, and half-baked to the people around you.
You’re going to consciously own the traits that you tend to project onto others and blame them for. You now take them back and own them, possibly for the first time in many years.
What I will say is that you really need to do shadow work both to reintegrate it and to fully understand what the shadow is. I’ve described what it is, what it feels like as it operates on you, and what it’s like to reintegrate repressed traits.
But these are just pointers to a first-hand experience that is tricky to adequately explain. I’m trying to translate the experience into workable language, and it might not mean much until you’ve clearly seen your shadow and experienced shadow reintegration.
To help you do that, let’s cover Ken Wilber’s signature shadow work technique.
Ken Wilber’s 3-2-1 Shadow Technique
Ken Wilber proposes this technique as being the most direct and powerful for shadow work, once you’ve identified some traits and emotions that are likely in your shadow. Do this for 15 minutes a day for four weeks, and you’re likely to notice positive results.
By the way, the 1, 2 and 3 mean 1st, 2nd and 3rd person. These are crucial concepts in this technique, because we’re trying to take 2nd- and 3rd-person traits and turn them into 1st-person ones. Let’s delve into this.
Primary selves are in our first-person: we feel identified with them, we feel they are us, and we can fully express them with little repression or hesitation.
On the other hand, disowned selves are in our second- or third-person: they appear to be outside of us, either directed against us, or directed “out there” with no specific victim. As I’ve said in my Dreams series on YouTube, 3rd-person shadow traits are more extreme and more dissociated than 2nd-person ones.
The process is quite simple, and all this talk of 1st, 2nd and 3rd-person will become clear when you practice it.
It helps to sit comfortably in a space where you won’t be disturbed for around 15 minutes. Here are the steps to follow:
- Choose a quality you want to start reintegrating. This can be an emotion, a trait, a behaviour, or a blend of them.
- First, feel the symptoms of the quality and the result of it in your body. This step is easier if you’ve done meditation or other awareness practices.
- Next, seek the trait or emotion in your 3rd person. This tends to appear as a vague sense that the trait exists out there, far away from you, as though “out there” in society. Ask it what it wants, and respond as it. You’ll notice little whispers and expressions of that emotion or trait. Go ahead and verbalise them. Repeat this until you feel that you’re more in touch with it.
- Then go to the 2nd person. We feel the effects of 2nd person qualities as their opposite, as though this emotion or trait were directed right back at us. Ask it questions, and speak as it, to yourself.
- Keep going with this, and try to feel that there is no quality out there, and that it belongs to nobody but you! You are that quality.
- Now you should be able to express this quality with no distance between it and you. It’s now part of your psyche again.
If you can regularly reach this point during your formal work, you’ll find that in everyday life you’ll slowly be able to embody that trait without it being revolting to you. And you should feel a sense of relief and release. You’ll feel fuller, more authentic, less accosted and buffeted from the outside.
My ebook Integral Metatheory Condensed eases your learning of Ken Wilber’s key contributions: Integral Metatheory and the AQAL model.
Gain solid knowledge of the theory while bypassing a lot of superfluous information found in other sources.
Not only can this theory provide you with a new operating system for life, it offers you practical tools for solving the perennial problems of humankind.
Get instant access to my ebook on Integral Theory.
Join tens of thousands of like-minded people today.
Follow the Deep Psychology PodcastSubscribe on YouTube
- Spotify
- YouTube
The post Ken Wilber’s Take on The Shadow first appeared on Deep Psychology.
The post Ken Wilber’s Take on The Shadow appeared first on Deep Psychology.
