“The Shadow” as Carl Jung has defined it, is the dark side of human thought and emotion. Now most people automatically think that this includes all that is “evil” in our personalities. This is not the case. It is anything that you have repressed or disowned due to not being part of your chosen identity. Maybe, as a child, you liked the power of hurting others. Others could be other people or maybe it was your family pet. This is societally and morally wrong. If not repressed and understood, this can expand and the child may grow up to be a serial killer, in an extreme example. In a less dramatic example, a child may get admonished for being overly ambitious and those characteristics may end up being seen as bad and therefore assimilated by the Shadow Self.
Once the Shadow is created, the dark side, the evil side of our minds, we feel that if we acknowledge it in any way, that will make our conscious self, the self we identify with, evil as well. The problem with ignoring any part of your self is that it usually finds a way of popping up in ways we don’t understand or don’t want, and at times we don’t expect. You may feel that showing dominance over others is wrong. It may have been assimilated by your Shadow self and therefore repressed. But then you go home, and you’ve had a bad day at work, your spouse is reminding you of the things you still need to do around the house, with a little more emotion than warranted. Then you “snap”. You yell at your spouse, exerting your self. Your Shadow has come out.
Let’s think about that phrase for a moment. You “Snap”. This goes back to the idea of the emotional pendulum that I spoke about in the previous article “Martial Arts: The Holistic Viewpoint”. Often when we feel pushed, either physically, mentally, or emotionally, the pendulum will swing in the other direction and we will push back. Another way of looking at this is some people have their shadow chained very well. They control their dark side at all costs. Other people’s chains that hold their shadows in check may not be as strong, thus they “snap” easier.
The issues around both can be great. The person whose chains are weaker, who snaps more often may see themselves as more honest emotionally, but society doesn’t like them. They are emotional, go off “half cocked”, are impulsive, unpredictable, and therefore, potentially dangerous in a real sense of the word. The person whose chains are super strong, in stead of allowing the Shadow to rear its ugly head, choose to shut down, to self defeat. These people can be seen as weak, pathetic, and not able to stand up for themselves. They are seen as great followers, but never leaders.
It is important to be able to look into our dark side. Sit down with our Shadow for a drink and try to understand it better. The consequences of not taking the time to understand all aspects of our self can have a drastic effect on our lives. This movement today in thinking that all negative thought is bad. Any opinion contrary to anyone else is a bad thing, is only working to grow and expand the Shadow Self. The Shadow needs to be understood. Others can help you accomplish this, but it is you that ultimately must understand your dark side or run the risk of having it affect your life without you knowing why or how. This is where martial arts come in.
The martial arts are a dichotomy. They teach violence. They teach you how to hurt another person quickly and effectively. They also teach you that this is always the last resort. That you should never choose to hurt another person unless your life is in danger. At least that is how I have been taught. I teach self defense courses and the one thing that I teach that is more important than anything else is to have the mindset that self “defense” is a false idea. To truly defend yourself, you must become the attacker. Most people have a problem with this. Being the attacker is evil, right? Not necessarily. If it is a choice of going for a trip in an ambulance and maybe never seeing your family again or becoming the aggressor and ensuring that you are the one going home at the end of the day, which would you choose? Now that is an over-simplification. Being the aggressor does not mean that you go into a “blind rage”, but the phrase “Calm the mind, make savage the body” is a topic for another article. Suffice it to say that you are the aggressor only until the threat is gone and gone doesn’t have to mean taken away in an ambulance.
The martial arts also teach peace. They teach you to be centered, calm, open minded, and aware. You cannot be aware unless you know all parts of yourself, the good and the bad. Being honest with yourself is one of the hardest things to do, but it is more important than anything else if you want to grow as a person, become stronger, become better. We have all seen the symbol of Yin/Yang. It shows us that opposites work together. That light and dark, good and evil, positive and negative, balance each other. It shows us that there is dark within light and light within dark. It shows us that one cannot be without the other and therefore must be balanced and understood. It is only through this understanding that your pendulum can stop swinging, stop being pushed (read the article on the Holistic Viewpoint).
My shadow is allowed to come out and play when I train martial arts. I focus on what I am doing. There is no illusion that I am not training to hurt, to cause damage, to maim in some circumstances, or even kill. It is a part of every martial art. It is downplayed because it is socially unacceptable, but it is apart of the training none the less. However, in my own experience, I have found that understanding how fragile we are, and how strong we can be, has given me a different appreciation of life. I was the kid who was beat up almost everyday after school. In elementary a group of 4 to 5 boys would torture me. I hated them, and I hated myself for allowing it. Now, I never wanted to get revenge. I don’t have that within me. I did, however, want to be able to be strong enough to never let that happen again. When I was 10, I started training martial arts.
I mentioned that all martial arts have a violent aggressive side. I also mentioned that can help you find your peace in the world. Because of my past, I trained to fight. I trained hard and got very good, physically. It took me years more to be able to face my demons and become truly powerful. By truly powerful, I mean confident. I was confident that I was able to defend myself if I needed to. That confidence made it so I didn’t feel the need to fight. I was able to talk to people without being fearful of aggression. By understanding one thing, the violence, I was able to find peace in dealing with people everyday. To do that, I had to look inside myself and understand why I was afraid. At first there was a lot of bullshit. My ego would tell me things that were not true to justify my mask.
The Japanese have a saying that we all wear 3 masks. The one that the world sees, the one that our friends and family sees, and the one that only we see. Notice that the one that only we see is still a mask. That means that we are not being truthful with ourselves. Your ego will lie to you, and that takes us back to the Shadow. Sometimes it is a conscious decision to repress a thought and sometimes it is our ego that does it for us.
There is another important point that I need to make. Jordan Peterson is noted for talking about this, but it comes from Jung and the integration of the Shadow self. It is the idea that you cannot choose to be a person of peace if you are not capable of great violence. If you are not capable of causing damage you don’t have a choice to be peaceful. You are simply weak. If you are capable of being violent, capable of hurting others, mentally, and you make the choice not to, then you are truly peaceful. If you are weak, you are merely a victim for anyone who is capable of being violent. Understanding your dark side, the violent side, the places in your psyche where you are afraid to look, is essential for understanding yourself as a whole.
It is important to understand our shadow self and allow it to come out and play, in controlled ways once in a while, I would suggest even regularly. The consequences are too great if we don’t. Martial arts are a great way to allow for that. You can work out, spar, throw people around, and be violent, in a controlled way. This allows your shadow to play. Gives your mind the balance it craves. You must have balance in all things. If you do not, the pendulum is being pushed in one direction, eventually it will swing back, and your Shadow will find a way to the surface.
Brad Dotten
Ronin Combatives