"SEEING THE SHADOW"

A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear

February 2, 2003

All Souls Unitarian Church

Indianapolis, Indiana

Groundhog Day is not commonly celebrated as a religious holiday, or even as a holiday at all. There are no special groundhog decorations in store windows, there are no "Happy Groundhog Day" greeting cards, and there are no Groundhog Day parties at the office. Maybe that's just as well. After all, I'd rather not have the groundhog compete with the Easter Bunny for our children's affection, and I also do not want to imagine what a Groundhog Day family dinner would include.

But Groundhog Day, as silly and inconsequential as it is, lends itself to some more serious thought. Or, at least it does if you happen to be a minister. I know ministers who carry in their barrel of sermons one in particular that they like to drag out and show around. One minister I know likes to talk about what he calls his "Baseball sermon," which no doubt turns the sport into a great metaphor for life. Another has a "Tree of Life" sermon, and another a "fly-fishing" sermon. Your minister has a Groundhog Day sermon - a fact about which I'm sure you are very proud. I have given a version of this before, when Groundhog Day fell on a Sunday, but fortunately that only happens once every six to eight years or so.

We know the story as well as we know the story of Christmas or Thanksgiving. Today the groundhog steps out of his winter hole to check the weather, and look for his shadow. Here the story gets a little fuzzy. Will there be six more weeks of winter if he sees his shadow, or if he doesn't? Many of us get this confused. Anyway, we know the shadow is important to the story.

The way I think the story goes is that if he sees his shadow, the shadow scares him, and he retreats to his hole for six more weeks. The shadow is indispensable to the story, and it is the springboard for my thoughts in this sermon. The fact is that the concept of "shadow" is a very important symbol in both psychology and religion. In both psychology and religion, the importance of this symbol derives from the work of Carl Jung, an early twentieth century Swiss psychologist who guided psychology into a new direction following Freud.

I wish to talk about the religious implications of the symbol of the shadow. To do that, though, I must first explore Jung's pivotal concept and theory. This is an imposing task. I am by no means an expert in psychology. I am well aware that there are people in this room who know his work much better than I. So if it seems like I am racing through Jung, that is what is happening. I'm quite anxious to move rapidly through the psychology, about which I know my own grasp is feeble, to get into the religious dimension where at least I know that no one is an expert.

The fact is that Jung has been religion's favorite psychologist. Many psychologists, following Freud, have been quite hostile toward any religious perspective. Not so with Jung. He seemed to acknowledge and appreciate the human religious impulse as a normal human quality; and far from being hostile toward it, he suggested that our quest for eternal questions is a healthy human endeavor. The consequences of our religious quests could be either constructive or damaging, but they were an inherent quality of being fully human.

As an example of this, let me excerpt a section from Jung's 1938 lectures on Psychology and Religion:

"Religion appears to me to be a peculiar attitude of the human mind, which could be formulated in accordance with the original use of the term 'religio,' that is, a careful consideration and observation of certain dynamic factors, understood to be 'powers,' spirits, demons, gods, laws, ideas, ideals or whatever names have been given to factors as (we) have found in (our) world powerful, dangerous or helpful enough to be taken into careful consideration, or grand, beautiful and meaningful enough to be devotedly adored and loved."

To get to Jung's understanding of the "shadow," we must understand first his notion of the unconscious. To Jung, we can understand human beings as having both conscious and unconscious parts to the whole person. The conscious part of our identity derives from our experience. We are fully aware of it. But at least as much of who we are is unconscious, about which we are not aware, or only vaguely or intermittently aware.

So far, what I have said comes as no surprise to anyone who has even a casual acquaintance with psychology. We include both conscious and unconscious parts to our make-up. Our unconscious (or what others might call "subconscious") includes those experiences we have had that we have forgotten or we have repressed from consciousness for some reason. What distinguishes Jung's work, though, is the fact that in his view our unconscious is far more vast than simply that. Our unconscious includes ideas and symbols that we have inherited, in a very literal sense, through evolutionary human development from ancient human experience. Our unconscious includes images, ideas and feelings that may never have been part of our direct experience in our lifetime. Or, put differently, these images in our unconscious mean far more to us than can be explained simply by our direct experience. Jung called these unconscious images "archetypes."

Over the years, Jung spent a good deal of time identifying and investigating these archetypes. Let me offer some examples to help explain.

The idea of "re-birth," having a second birth in life, Jung says, "is found in all times and in all places." This is the test of an archetype of the unconscious. The Greek myths speak of Heracles receiving immortality by adoption and re-birth through Hera. On the walls of Egyptian temples are drawings portraying the Pharaoh's second, divine conception and birth. Jesus, through baptism in the Jordan river, was reborn into a spirit. In Roman liturgy, the baptismal font is designated the "uterus ecclesiae." Numberless children go through a stage believing that their parents are not their real parents, but foster parents to whom they were handed over.

Related to this concept of re-birth is the rather universal recognition of the rite of passage from adolescence into adulthood. Every society says, in its own way, "Now you are a man," or "Now you are a woman." This coming-of-age takes on very powerful meaning that is stronger than our conscious observation that a person ages from one year to the next. Its significance has meaning buried in the human mind, about which we are only partially aware.

Another archetype is the moon. In every place and in every time the moon provides symbolic power beyond simply what we see of it. It carries in the human mind magical powers of both healing and destruction. It is associated with insanity (on a full moon, the crazies come out) and it is associated with romance. The meaning of these universal associations are not objective; they are deeply subjective, imbedded in human unconscious.

What Jung has identified in the archetypes of the unconscious is the fact that many objects and ideas carry deep meaning of which we do not consciously understand, and of which we are only subjectively (not objectively) aware. The number of these archetypes is almost endless. Jung identified many, such as snakes, death, earth mother, the hero, magic, and God.

In Jung's system, "the Shadow" is one of the principal archetypes. The shadow is a symbol representing those parts of our personality of which we are not aware, or of which we wish to deny and repress. As an archetype, it is part of our unconscious, not conscious, self.

Whatever it is we deny about ourselves, as a part of who we really are, is in fact a part of us, for it exists as our shadow. Think about what qualities you most dislike in other people. This theory says that those qualities exist in you, perhaps dormant, but real.

Let me name something that bothers me in other people. I have little tolerance for people who cannot listen. I am speaking of those people who always have to be speaking, who pay no attention to the ideas of others, and always feel that their gems of wisdom are more important. These are the people who, when I tell them something very important that happened in my life, they respond by saying, "Oh that's nothing. Wait till you hear what happened to me!" God save me from people who can't listen.

What Jung is telling me is that I am a person who can't listen. This is part of my shadow. I deny it, of course, but it is there. It is there as part of my unconscious. And it comes out from time to time. I never will it to come out. I never ask it to come out. I never want it to come out. But it does. Once in a while, when someone is telling me about a profound experience they had, I will say to them, "Oh that's nothing. Listen to what happened to me!" Or words to that effect.

I have given you a rather mild example of a shadow. The fact is that for most of us, our shadow includes some very destructive ideas and feelings. It includes violence and intolerance and bigotry. It includes lusts and jealousies and revenge. The literary archetype of the shadow is perhaps the classic story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The point of this brilliant piece is that the cruelty of Hyde exists within the character of Dr. Jekyll. Hyde is not a different person from Jekyll. Hyde is Jekyll's shadow which he has been able to repress and deny for most of his life.

John Sanford, a Jungian analyst, gave this interpretation of Robert Lewis Stevenson's famous story:

"Jekyll displayed psychological insight. He was aware of the duality of his own nature, and declared that 'man is not truly one, but truly two.' He could even hazard a conjecture that people are made up of a whole assortment of part-selves, that their personality is not single, but is like a village of people, an insight modern depth psychology corroborates. Jekyll saw this duality as 'thorough' and 'primitive,' that is, archetypal and therefore present from the beginning as a fundamental aspect of basic human psychological structure."

It is easy to exaggerate the sinister nature of the shadow, and it is natural to describe it that way. The fact is, though, that the shadow is not always something evil. Remember, our shadow self is that part of ourselves that we do not want to identify in ourselves. For most of us, we don't want to be evil and cruel. That is why the shadow is so often identified with evil. But there are also some otherwise very healthy things that we often wish to deny in ourselves.

Part of my shadow is intolerance. I like to think of myself as a tolerant person, and in fact I find myself quite offended by those people who are intolerant of others' differences. Intolerance, my shadow, does appear from time to time, I confess. It should be added, though, that there are some things in this world, and some people in this world that should never be tolerated. There are times when intolerance is, in fact, appropriate. There are times when this part of my shadow deserves encouragement.

Or take a calmer example. As a rule, I don't make snap judgments. I like to think things over before forming an opinion or making a decision. And furthermore, I am often suspicious of those who do make snap judgments and form quick opinions. But I realize that there are appropriate times when snap judgments of situations are not only useful, but essential. When facing a deadline, for example, or when someone offers help in an emergency, it would be useful to be able to make quick decisions and judgments. If my shadow is being quick to judge, it would be useful for me to learn to develop it, so I can use it when needed, even if I am uncomfortable with it.

So Jung did not see the shadow as only negative, though often it is. It may be that part of us that we don't like and that we deny. But whether our shadow is corrupt or not, all those who have studied Jung's ideas agree on one thing. The healthy way to deal with our shadow is to face it, to acknowledge it, to know what it is.

Like for the groundhog, the purpose of coming into the light is to see the shadow for what it is.

One eloquent description of this task is offered by Deena Metzger, a Jungian psychotherapist. She writes:

"The shadow - that darkness which is ours, which we cannot escape, but which is most difficult to contact because it is by its nature elusive -is the reflection of ourselves that occurs when there is no light. Therefore, to contact the shadow, we must be willing to go into the dark, for that is where it lives, in order to make a partnership with the unknown. If we do not move toward it, we run the risk that the shadow will come to us in a meeting that will be furtive and violent; yet moving toward it, we are overwhelmed by the fear of being engulfed. In the dark, we often feel as if we ourselves are the dark."

We are now approaching the religious significance of the shadow. There is, the Jungian scholars agree, a moral obligation to confront our shadow.

The whole point of understanding the role of the shadow is to understand that it is part of us, and that it can find _expression through us no matter how much we try to deny it. Our moral obligation is to understand it so that it will not be outside our control. Jung called the shadow "the moral problem par excellence," and this is well explained by one of his close colleagues, Liliane Frey-Rohn, who said:

"Becoming conscious of the shadow sounds like a relatively simple demand. In reality, however, it is a moral challenge which is extremely difficult to meet.... Contrary to the general opinion that consciousness of the shadow strengthens evil, one finds repeatedly that just the opposite is true: knowledge of one's own personal shadow is the necessary requirement for any responsible action, and consequently for any lessening of moral darkness in the world."

Or, as Kay Signell, yet another Jungian analyst, put it:

"The shadow needs to be acknowledged and given its place. You must invite it to the dinner table, this dubious guest, civilize it as best you can, and see what it has to offer. You cannot leave it outside the door raising a rumpus or sneaking around and causing worry."

Part of the genius of Jung's work is that his insights into human personality seem to correspond not just to individuals but to society collectively. The notion of the shadow is often quite easy to identify, I think, within a society. We see it often in our own society.

This country hallows as nearly sacred scripture the founding document that announces a government based on the proposition that "All men are created equal." Yet our society has been plagued from the start, and continues to be plagued by the shadow of racism that makes a mockery of that sentiment. Racism is an obvious shadow.

We have stood, on principle, as a people opposed to imperialistic control of countries over against other countries. We have joined in wars to stop such imperialism, and we were the inspiration behind the founding of the United Nations to promote international respect of sovereignty. Yet our record on the international scene has included overthrow of governments by covert and overt means, as well as economic control of vulnerable nations. To a country that respects international cooperation, as I believe we genuinely do, imperialism has been our shadow for at least a century.

The shadow is obvious in nations. The shadow is also obvious in other individuals. It is not difficult to see it in our close friends and family. We often know much better than they do what their unconscious and repressed qualities are. We have seen them act them out from time to time in uncharacteristic ways. We see the shadow in others.

What is most difficult to do is to see the shadow, and to face it, in ourselves. Jung describes the difficulty as a moral issue, and presents it this way:

"The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy - all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ. But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in the need of the alms of my own kindness -that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then?"

The object of seeing our own shadow is to learn to love our whole self, in spite of those parts that we find difficult to accept. If we can accomplish that task for ourselves, imagine how much easier it would be to love others in spite of their shortcomings. The imperative found in most religions is precisely that we should love others in this way. The imperative for religion from the perspective of this Jungian concept of the shadow is that we need to deal with ourselves in the same way, with the same respect, and with the same generous heart that we are told to have for others.

Jung began by observing that there is far more to us than our conscious ego. The self within us is more vast and extends much deeper than we are aware. We are more than we can ever know. The imperative taught by Socrates to "know thyself" is the very same lesson of seeing the shadow. Neither Socrates nor Jung suggested it is easy to do.

It is, in fact, the shadow that makes us human. The only way to live without the shadow, whether physical or psychological, is not to be human. To learn to love ourselves, as deeply and as genuinely as we love anyone else, means to accept the fact that we cannot always live up to our expectations, and that we sometimes are not what we want to be. To learn to love ourselves, in other words, means to learn to love our humanness.

I am not here this morning to detail before you my own shadow. About much of it, of course, I remain ignorant. Yet I know that in my life there have been specific moments, critical moments, when I know I have seen my shadow. Those moments remain vivid over the years. I discovered the fragility of my own ideals; I discovered that I am not immune from doing injustice, and I have parts of my shadow I have not yet discovered.

I don't think I'm unique, or even unusual. I know I'm not unusual, for I have had others share with me their own encounters with their shadow.

Like the groundhog who appears today, when we see our shadow, we tend to run and hide rather than accept it as an extension of ourselves. That is our impulse, but it is not how we should learn to treat the shadow.

Jung points to our conscious experience as our ego and our unconscious experience as the Self. We are whole persons, conscious and unconscious. Religion has a word for the whole person, a world I find quite helpful. It is the word "soul." Jung does not avoid that term, though he uses it in a far more specific way. The task before us is to accept our whole selves, our souls - including all that we are, all that we like about ourselves, and all that we don't like. This is a religious task, a spiritual task, and in that Jung agrees.

I'll close with this comment from Deena Metzger on how she views our encounter with the shadow.

"The shadow self is not separate from you, not even as separate as a sibling. This is the shadow you cast, the one who is always with you. Examine the portrait of this person, consider the life that he or she is living, from the outside, but also from within.

"The shadow, of course, never dies; we always cast a shadow. But how we relate to it, and it to us, depends on whether it is known. Once known, we have inevitably lost an innocence that can never be recovered. What replaces it is a knowledge of the complexity of our nature. Sometimes we are fortunate, and this knowledge elicits a kindness and tolerance in us for others -even, perhaps, for ourselves."