The Shadow Within Us or Why the end of Wars might start with You and Me

We are living in the midst of multiple wars, ethnic conflicts and closer to home crime and domestic violence and it is hard not to wonder why ?
‘Why are we humans so violent, and why do we attack each other on so many levels ? Are we basically ‘bad’ as some philosopher and religions assume ?
In this blog I will turn my ‘reflections’ on the subject of
the ‘shadow’ side of our human nature symbolized in the Star Wars Saga in the character of 'Darth Vader'.

On my own journey within I discovered different inner ‘voices’ or ‘energies’ or ‘parts’ or ‘aspects’ that at different times I assume are ‘me’.

Let us imagine our lives as a play - different circumstances bring up different ‘characters’ on the stage.
During the day, different ‘actors’, ‘voices, show up on the inner stage, mostly in response to the environment.
On top are our coping voices/layers:
For some of us we are funny and witty or a bit sarcastic when we engage.
Then we have an ‘image’ voice/layer, which attempts to shine and polish ourselves, wanting to look good and be seen as successful, powerful, loving, religious or spiritual depending on the environment we are facing.
This outer ring of our personality is our ‘nice’ façade.
Just underneath the layer that awaits to be activated is the ‘frustrated/agitated one’ in us.
For example if the plane is late or we find ourselves stuck in traffic or a situation at work, all can bring this voice/layer up.

These “voices/ actors” that we don’t want to see within ourselves or show to others were labeled by J.G. Jung as the ‘Shadow’ or Schatten (in German).

I would like to distinguish to major forces within our shadow:
First, the ‘Attacker’:
That voice screams out of our mouth when the frustration reaches a certain degree. Suddenly we attack the airport agent who tells us that our flight got cancelled or we lash out at our children/ friends or partner when we feel worn down, exhausted, hurt.
This part in us is intolerant, impatient and erupts like a volcano. It’s a hot and angry voice/layer within - in some form or other we attack, from the perspective of our ego, we attack back, we defend.
That is the Shadow layer that takes us over, and this can occur both at the individual and collective/societal level.
To understand Violence and War we can use Jung’s understanding of a ‘collective consciousness’ that is made of all our individual consciousnesses.
We have both a personal ‘Shadow’ and a ‘collective Shadow’ that we all share.


Then, there is an even deeper layer, which we call in the Diamond Logos School: The ‘Beast’.
In its extreme, this voice is all about ‘Hate’ and ‘Power’: Everything is in its way. It is calculating and cold. It wants to annihilate everything that IS. The Beast in us IS hatred.
It wants just to destroy, to destruct - the good, the bad, the ugly, the light, God…It wants to blow up everything in its madness.
We can find the ‘Beast’ in action thru the centuries when whole villages got burned, no prisoners were taken, when one tribe took revenge on the other, when one religion in the name of God killed the members of the other religion.
It was the Beast in the psyche of the terrorists that planned to attack the Twin Towers at the time when people where working, the Beast that threw the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima, the Beast in Hitler that made the Germans attack and then hold out, when all was lost, leading to more deaths in the last year of world war II…..

AND, the Beast acts so cruel and cold, just like the ‘Attacker Layer’ because it is right on top of an immense wounded ness in the psyche.
The Shadow in us gets activated, when an inner wounded ness gets ‘triggered’.
Of course the cultural environment contributes dramatically to the appearance of the ‘Attacker’ and ‘Beast’ layers too. Relaxing the regulations on torture gave permission for the appearance of the Beast layer in those soldiers in Iraq.

There is a deep woundedness in our psyche – a kind of core wound that we all carry deep within our psyche. In some form or the other, this wound stems from drama from pregnancy, birth, and early childhood – often fostered by feelings of abandonment, separation and in some cases more obvious reasons like abuse and violation.

To different degrees, we all carry trauma layers within.
Whenever you find yourself ‘lashing out’ or feel the ‘Beast’ awakening inside, look within and you might find what I found within myself:
Somehow, this situation is activating a wounded/hurt layer in me and now my psyche either reacts or wants revenge – eye for eye – you are hurting me, you will pay for it.
Although we listen to the teachings of the New Testament,
‘Love thy neighbor like yourself’, it is the Old Testament’s teaching of ‘eye for eye’ in the recesses of our psyche and in the limbic folds of our brain that in moments of deep stress takes over.

Our conscious ego structure lives in fear and spends a lot of energy to keep this ‘Shadow’ energy hidden – we are afraid of our Schatten. So many times when I have invited people to participate in inner work, this is what some of them admit: ‘I am afraid that I find something bad/evil inside of me’.
Yet what we are afraid of has power and control over us.
What we resist – persists.
We individually as humans avoid facing our shadow and that’s why the shadow takes suddenly over:
Young American soldiers torture prisoners, the German soldiers participated in the Holocaust, the Arabic nationalists become terrorists and so on.

From this perspective Wars can be understood as the result of collective Shadow energies.
And the collective is based on individuals.
Ultimately, only our willingness on an individual level, to confront our own shadow and make it conscious, will bring these destructive energies out of the hidden in our psyche into the light of our consciousness, and help us come to grip with violence and war.

Working with our Shadow is a challenge and takes immense courage, yet the integration of our
‘Shadow self’ leads to a more peaceful life, with more creativity and aliveness, because the energy that we spend in fear of our own ‘dark side’ is now free to enliven us to live a life of joy and wonder.

For those in the Washington DC area, a weekend on ‘integrating the Shadow’ takes place as part of the ‘Essential Pilgrimage’ teachings Saturday, Feb. 28 and Sunday March 1st.
For more information on this program and other offerings regarding ‘Shadow Work’ you can contact the author directly at michaelijs@gmail.com or call 415-990-5629.
Thanks for being interested in this profound, yet neglected subject.
May you and I heal our Shadow, may we all heal our collective Shadow.