Connie Zweig - Meeting the Shadow

This New Consciousness Reader is part of a new series of original and classic writing by renowned experts on leading-edge concepts in personal development, psychology, spiritual growth, and healing. Other books in this series include:

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Fathers, Sons, and Daughters

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Healers on Healing

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In the Company of Others

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Meeting the Shadow

EDITED BY CONNIE ZWEIG AND JEREMIAH ABRAMS

Mirrors of the Self

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The New Paradigm in Business

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The Truth About the Truth

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To Be a Man

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To Be a Woman

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EDITED BY ROBERT PRAGER, PH.D.

Founding Series Editor: CONNIE ZWEIG, PH.D.

T ARCHER P ERIGEE

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

Penguinrandomhouse.com

Originally published in 1991 in paperback by Tarcher/Penguin

First published as an ebook in 2020 by TarcherPerigee

Copyright 1991 by Jeremiah Abrams and Connie Zweig

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Meeting the shadow : hidden power of the dark side of human nature/edited by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams.- I st ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 0-87477-618-X

I. Shadow (Psychoanalysis) 2. Good and evilPsychological aspects.

I. Zweig, Connie. II. Abrams, Jeremiah .

BF175. 5.S55M44 1990

150.19 5-dc20

91- 8168

CIP

ISBN 9780593329986 (ebook)

pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

The evil of our time is the loss of consciousness of evil.

KRISHNAMURTI

Something we were withholding made us weak,

Until we found it was ourselves.

ROBERT FROST

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN

That which we do not bring to consciousness appears in our lives as fate.

C. G. JUNG

O ur deepest appreciation to the poets and artists whom we follow in exploring the dark side, especially those whose thoughts on the shadow have had a deep effect on this work and, as a result, on our lives: C. G. Jung, John A. Sanford, Adolf Guggenbhl-Craig, Marie-Louise von Franz, and Robert Bly.

For loving support and creative assistance, our thanks to Jeremy Tarcher, Barbara Shindell, Hank Stine, Daniel Malvin, Paul Murphy, Susan Shankin, Susan Deixler, Lisa Chadwick, Steve Wolf, Joel Covitz, Tom Rautenberg, Bob Stein, Suzanne Wagner, Linda Novack, Michael and Kathryn Jaliman, Peter Leavitt, Deena Metzger, Marsha de la O, and the womens writing circle, Bill and Vivienne Howe, Bruce Burman, Andrew Schultz, and the staffs of the Los Angeles and San Francisco C. G. Jung Institute Libraries.

Special mention to Connies shadow sisters Jane, Marian, Susan, April; and lifelong gratitude to my wise mother and father. A twinkle in the eye for Jeremiahs patient children, Raybean and Pito.

We recognize that our shared language creates as well as reflects our cultures unspoken attitudes. For this reason, we apologize for the archaic use of the masculine form he, which designates hypothetical individuals throughout these copyrighted excerpts. When read today, this usage seems jarring and dated. Unfortunately, even now we have not devised a better style. We hope that soon one will emerge.

THE EDITORS

CONNIE ZWEIG

A t midlife I met my devils. Much of what I had counted as blessing became curse. The wide road narrowed; the light grew dark. And in the darkness, the saint in me, so well nurtured and well coiffed, met the sinner.

My fascination with the Light, my eager optimism concerning outcomes, my implicit trust concerning others, my commitment to meditation and a path of enlightenmentall were no longer a saving grace, but a kind of subtle curse, a deeply etched habit of thinking and feeling that seemed to bring me face to face with its opposite, with the heartbreak of failed ideals, with the plague of my naivet, with the dark side of God. At this time, I had the following shadow dream:

Im at the beach with my childhood sweetheart. People are swimming in the sea. A large black shark appears. Theres fear everywhere. A child disappears. People panic. My boyfriend wants to follow the fish, a mythical creature. He cant understand the human danger.

Somehow I contact the fishand discover that its plastic. I stick my finger through its end and puncture itit deflates. My boyfriend is furious, like I killed God. He values the fish over human life. Walking up the beach, he leaves me. I wander off, up into the trees, where a blue blanket awaits.

In analyzing this dream, I realized that I had never taken the shadow seriously. I had believed, with a kind of spiritual hubris, that a deep and committed inner life would protect me from human suffering, that I could somehow deflate the power of the shadow with my metaphysical practices and beliefs. I had assumed, in effect, that it was managed, as I managed my moods or my diet, with the discipline of self-control.

But the dark side appears in many guises. My confrontation with it at midlife was shocking, uprooting, and terribly disillusioning. Intimate friendships of many years seemed to turn brittle and crack, bereft of lifeblood and its elasticity. My strengths began to feel like weaknesses, standing in the way of growth rather than promoting it. At the same time, dormant, unsuspected aptitudes awakened and arose rudely toward the surface, disrupting a self-image to which I had become accustomed.

My buoyant mood and balanced temperament gave way to deep drops into the valley of despair. At forty I descended into depression, living in what Hermann Hesse once called a mud hell. At other times an unknown rage would storm out of me, leaving me feeling depleted and ashamed, as if I had been possessed momentarily by some archaic god of wrath.