The Light Between the Leaves
The Light Between the Leaves
Self-Acceptance + ShadoWork, including an OG Disney reference & my favourite Homer meme
There is one open window between the thick canopy of trees that lets the light in - it pours in with unbridled brightness, spotlighting a moss-covered trunk. The singular glow makes this part of the forest look as a stage, as if the remnants of this tree were to sing. This spot of sun invites warmth into the sacred silence all around. With my feet pressed to the forest floor, I compress needles of pine, fallen leaves and soil so dark, the night sky could have fallen here. The light is a misty haze amid the sharp solitude of darkness that surrounds but both inhabit this space.
This contrast of light and dark is experienced everywhere, from allegories in the media, from the likes of Star Wars to LOTR, to the world we live in ravaged by genocide and climate crises, happening simultaneously alongside the little and big glimmers, to the light and dark within our own selves.
Carl Jung and his contemporaries called this recurring phenomenon the Shadow - whether personal or collective. The Shadow itself is intricately entwined with our early attachment - through our earliest introduction to the world earth-side, we learn rather quickly, what is acceptable and what is not; we learn what will rouse accolades and what begets admonishment. And we begin to change ourselves accordingly.
While the aspects of the Shadow are subject to the earliest repression, it isn’t necessarily “bad” - but the Shadow is feral. The Shadow is wild. The Shadow is untamed. It didn’t need to be feral; it became feral because of the mutiny of self. Gabor Mate describes this process as attachment-based beings will always choose attachment + acceptance over authenticity until we can no longer not choose authenticity. It was choosing the acceptance of attachment figures that had us forgo our authentic selves - and there was nothing else for us to do. Of course we did. Our need for love, acceptance and to be delighted in are basic needs - just like food, water and shelter.
But when we learn there are parts of us that aren’t acceptable to those we love the most, the roots of not-enough-ness begin to twist, curl and rot. This begins a long process of performance that requires hiding away the Shadow-y parts of ourselves. When the spotlight shines on you, when you are perceived by an Other [literally any Other], the tap dancing begins and just like the myth of the Red Shoes, the performance cannot stop.
The Shadow expresses itself through Stress. Defensiveness. Arguments. Conflict. Addiction. Self-Destruction. Self-Criticism.
The Shadow is not bad. The Shadow contains unlimited energy potential. The Shadow often contains our deepest desires, our most authentic truth, our simplest dream. The Shadow can be:
Desire - when we reject our true, authentic desires, they can come through as addictions or compulsions. We satiate desire with excess.
Softness - when vulnerability isn’t safe, we become hard: we work hard, we have a force field that keeps us from feeling exposed. But then we’re never seen.
Wisdom - when we’ve been told again and again we can’t trust ourselves, we come to believe it. So we externalize our authority by always asking “what shall I do?”
Ambition - what we really, really want (I’ll tell you what I really, really want) feels too precious to bring into the world, so it stays on the shelf like a porcelain doll to look at but never touch.
Sometimes the Shadow is rejected out of fear of losing external relationships at the cost of our relationship with ourselves, but sometimes the Shadow is rejected out of protection. Picture Dimitri escorting Anastasia to the secret tunnel to protect her.
It is often because of the authenticity that the Shadow holds that it is rejected from expression. To be authentic is to risk true rejection; to perform is to risk only rejection of persona. And if your persona is rejected, you know it isn’t really you, softening the blow of rejection. But if you aren’t really you, how painful it is to not be yourself, and for so long to be in mutinied fractures.
What begins as self-protection, to protect the deepest essence of yourself (your desire, your softness, your dreams), results in the same self-rejection nonetheless. Our bodies and psyches are always striving for wholeness so the feral Shadow will come knocking. The Shadow knocks on the door like the raven taps on the chamber door, once upon a midnight dreary. The Shadow keeps knocking until we have the courage, the space, the acceptance, the support and the stability to be ourselves. The Shadow knocks through:
Doing things I don’t want to do, like scrolling endlessly and mindlessly
Not doing things I want to do - mostly the things I know make me feel good
Self-sabotage, like a revenge bedtime or a bit too much retail therapy
Intense self-criticism
The Shadow is an inner experience of “hurt people hurt people”, except it’s “hurt parts of yourself will hurt the other parts that abandoned it”. While the knocking of the Shadow can feel destructive, it is an invitation to step out of the spotlight and into the truth of who you are. It is an invitation to be yourself - after all, “it is a privilege of a lifetime to be who you truly are” - Carl Jung But to be who you are is the ultimate “easier said than done”.
The Shadow is kept hidden by the brightness of the spotlight - it creates a contrast and is kept in the dark. While the Shadow looms, you’re haunted by an anxiety of being found out - found out for who you really are (like the Homer meme below - bless the Simpsons for having a meme for everything). The fear of being found out is a self-maintaining loop that keeps the performance UP - the feedback loop continues because there’s never a “good” time to be yourself.
This fear of being found out for who you really are is what I call Existential Imposter Syndrome and I’ll be exploring it more next week, along with themes of Perception Exhaustion - which is exactly as it sounds. These combining factors are the fertilizer to the roots of not-enough-ness and are essential to understand as we learn to become ourselves.