The Shadow and the Disowned Self in Relation to Yoga Philosophy

Yoga Leaflet 4

Ken Wilber writes in chapter 6: "The shadow and the disowned self", of his book "Integral Spirituality"; that the great wisdom traditions, how wise and profound they may be, do not have a shadow concept.

From an Eastern Yoga perspective we need to cultivate a quality called Ahimsa (harmlessness). It is a main tenet underlying yoga philosophy which points to the need a.o. to eradicate or conquer anger and we could do this with the cultivation of patience. Patience is an attribute of love. In short we could practice self-mastery.
There is nothing wrong with this, but with the advent of Psychology, a relatively new science of the psyche, new insights into the functioning of the psyche have come to the fore. One of them is the concept of the Shadow and it is a helpful concept in this respect.

The Penguin Dictionary of Psychology(1985), refers to the shadow in Jung's approach as a complex of undeveloped feelings, ideas, desires and the like- the "animal" instincts passed along through evolution to Homo Sapiens from lower, more primitive forms that represent the negative side of the personality; the alter ego.

Ken Wilber sees the shadow as a psychological structure that points to a variety of unconscious drives buried from consciousness in an effort to avoid what the ego self perceives as dangerous to the self construct. "Shadow" is a term identified by Freud and others and coined by Jung to articulate the repression or suppression of aspects of the self deemed unacceptable to the ego. These disowned aspects are often projected into others in a third person capacity that can create emotional difficulty, conflict and obscure responsibility and authenticity.

Apparently I can deny parts of myself, my I-ness and push these parts on the other side of the self-boundary. This is an attempt to deny ownership of aspects of myself that could be too negative, or even too positive to accept. This pushing away does not get rid of those denied parts of the self, but converts them into painful neurotic symptoms, shadows of a disowned self, which come back to haunt me.

The understanding of psychodynamic repression, as well as ways to cure it, is something we owe exclusively to modern Western Psychology.
Ken Wilber gives a clear description of the mechanics of how the shadow operates. I will only outline and it is a bit complicated. So read it twice if need be.

Under certain circumstances 1st person (I) impulses, feelings and qualities can become repressed, disowned or dissociated and when they do; they appear as 2nd person events or 3rd person events(its) in my first (I) person awareness.(Second and third person events are degrees of alienation and fragmentation, a kind of splitting off or going under-ground).

If I become angry at my boss/friend, but that feeling of anger is a threat to my self-sense (nice people don't get angry), then I might resort to repressing the anger. Simply denying those things that are reflections of our own shadow's anger does not get rid of it however, but makes the angry feeling appear alien in my own awareness. I might be feeling the anger, but I do not own it as my anger. The angry feeling appears on the other side of the self boundary (I boundary) and appears as a second person or event in my own (first person) awareness. One way to do this is to project as it continues to arise. This may result in every body else (or somebody else), appearing as angry instead of myself. In short whenever I disown and project my own (unacceptable) qualities, they appear "out there", where they frighten me, irritate me, depress me, obsess me. In 9 out 10 cases those things in the world that most disturb me about others, are actually my own shadow qualities, which are perceived as "out there".

An example is a study where men who were anti gay-pornography crusaders and who were dedicated to aggressively fighting homo sexual porn, were tested for their levels of sexual arousal when shown photo's of gay sexual scenes. The crusaders were substantially more sexually aroused than other males. The study concludes that they were themselves attracted to gay sex, but finding that unacceptable in themselves, they spent their lives fighting it in others, as if they were above such desires them-selves. Yet all they were doing, according to this study, was projecting their own despised shadows onto others and then scapegoating them.

We tend to be upset by those things that are reflections of our own shadows. For instance my neighbour is a control freak. And it bothers me. Now why should it bother me? It does not seem to bother my other neighbours or the rest of my family. It is probably my own shadow I don't like and crusade against. If the despised person happens to actually possess the projected quality or drive, then that will act as a "hook" for my projected shadow. It becomes a receptacle for my own similar, projected qualities. It is not that those people aren't those things, but if you project your own shadow onto them, you will have two things you hate.

It is that double dose of hatred that shows up as neurotic symptoms, the shadow of a disowned self. If the negative qualities of another person merely inform me, that is one thing; but if they obsess me, infuriate me, inflame me, disturb me, then chances are I am caught in a serious case of shadow boxing. Those shadow elements can be positive as well as negative. We are not only a little bit nastier, but a little bit greater than we often allow for.

This short introduction leads to the concept of unhealthy transcendence. "I" into "it". Whereas healthy development converts I into me, unhealthy development converts I into it. (A fragmentation process). This can be related to some meditation practises.

There appear two important contradictory facts in the process of meditation.
1. The goal of meditation is to detach or dis-identify from whatever arises. Transcendence has long been defined as a process of dis-identification.
2. In pathology there is a dis-identification or dissociation of parts of the self, here dis-identification is the problem and not the cure.

So should I identify with my anger or dis-identify with it? Wilber poses the question and answers... BOTH. He asserts that timing is crucial, developmental timing. If my anger arises in awareness and is authentically experienced and owned as my anger, then the goal is to continue dis-identification (let go of the anger and the self experiencing it-thus converting that "I" into "me", which is healthy).
But if my anger arises in awareness and is experienced as your anger - the goal is to first identify with and re-own the anger, converting that it- anger or his/her anger into "my anger" and REALLY own the anger. THEN one can dis-identify with the anger and the self experiencing it. This is the definition of healthy "transcend and include". If this is not undertaken, the re-ownership of the shadow, then meditation on anger (or whatever else is pertinent), simply increases alienation. It becomes transcend and deny, which is exactly the definition of pathological development.

There are many kinds of anger and I am dealing here with shadow or projected anger which needs to be taken back and re-owned and understood in the outlined context. The same would apply to fear and a host of other aspects of our make up. Self-mastery may in such cases be ineffective and insight into the projection process, the actual shadow functioning could lead to more growth, integration and self-realisation.

Taken from chapter 6: The shadow and the disowned self, from Ken Wilber's book Integral Spirituality. Integral Books 2007

Marjolein Gamble
November 18th 2012



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