Look, see the long shadow cast by the trees;
And flowers and people throw shadows on the earth:
What has no shadow has no strength to live.

-Czeslaw Milosz

By Elliot Moore from London, England (Shadow People) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

This closing  refrain from the poem “Faith” by  Czeslaw Milosz reveals a telling truth about the human condition. We all cast shadows. And not just the kind that Peter Pan became detached from and had to have stitched back on. We all have psychic shadows as well, parts of our selves that we repress, hide, deny; parts of ourselves that are unconscious or unknown to us.

Carl Jung said that we think we know about 80% of our psyche, and that 20% is hidden. But Jung claimed that in reality, we know about 20% of who we are, and that 80% is in shadow! What a lot of hidden material to work with!

We tend to think of shadow as the ‘bad’ stuff, the killer, abuser, cheat, philanderer, rascal, devil in us. And certainly we tend to want to ignore our less admirable traits. I certainly would if I had any! 🙂 But that’s only part of the picture.

We have “golden shadows” too, wonderful bits of us that we may be too shy, modest or just unaware to recognize and use. If we are made in the Divine Image, there’s glory in us all!

Even the nasty bits can serve a useful, if misguided purpose. The part that pushes away others keeps us from getting our heart broken. That sudden anger that flares up wants justice. The conniver and thief is usually trying to fill some worthy need.  Welcoming our shadows into the light, finding a better way to meet the “unmet needs” they are trying to satisfy, can bring us healthy new energy and purpose. Approaches like Shadow Work Seminars can help us alchemically transform our coal into gold. After all, we only have shadows because we are standing in the Sun.

What hidden parts of yourself need to be brought to light?

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Czesław Miłosz (30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish poet, prose writer, translator and diplomat. In 1978 he was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, and in 1980 the Nobel Prize in Literature. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, he divided his time between Berkeley, California, and Kraków, Poland.

Joe Laur is a father, husband, naturalist, executive consultant, and a lowly rabbinic student. He can be reached at joe.laur@godsdog.net.