Welcome to the Mindfulness in Depth: Healing our Shadow. My goal for this series is to expand your knowledge of depth psychological concepts, and to make them practical and accessible through integration with mindfulness practice and Buddhist philosophy.

Disclaimer                    

Before we get started, I'd like to add a quick disclaimer about exploring psychological topics through a course. Ideas like the "shadow" and other concepts we'll be exploring here have typically been reserved for the one-on-one psychotherapeutic container: you and a professional therapist. Meanwhile, spiritual teachings have typically been given in group settings.

Part of my motivation to do this series is that the two aren't as different as they may seem. As shown by the work of Willoughby Britton and others, meditation can unearth difficult psychological issues. Integral psychologist Ken Wilber, who has written extensively about the need to integrate psychological and spiritual approaches, estimates that 80% of the questions that come up during meditation retreats are best served by psychotherapeutic techniques.[1]

To me, that is all the more reason to have direct knowledge of psychological concepts to complement the knowledge and inner habits that your meditation practice is already cultivating. In fact, I'll show you how your mindfulness practice is essential to psychological work, and how they are not really separate.

That said, shadow work can stir up difficult emotions and having self-awareness of your inner state through mindfulness is essential. If you sense that the material is becoming overwhelming, I encourage you to pause and seek direct support with a psychotherapist if possible, or with a good friend who you feel safe with. You can learn a lot through a course like this, but it also has limitations. Okay, that's the disclaimer – let's dive in.

Shadow work = complex work

This course is called "Healing our Shadow." The idea of "shadow work" has been increasingly popular in recent years, but its use can often be quite vague or inaccurate.

This course will lean heavily on the work of Carl Jung, one of the founders of psychology and the originator of the concept of "shadow" as it is used today. In 1945, he gave the most succinct definition of the shadow when he called it "the thing a person has no wish to be."[2] It's the parts of ourselves that we'd rather not acknowledge and usually we are quite successful at denying it, as if our shadow doesn't even exist.

But that's the whole problem: the shadow is part of what depth psychology calls the unconscious, whose very meaning is that it is completely out of our conscious field. It is not even subconscious, it's unconscious.

Why do shadow work?

So, why do shadow work? Why venture into the darkness of the shadow? You likely already have a good idea if you're taking this course, but I'll quickly give three huge reasons. First, our shadow causes self-harm and is underneath things like our judgmental inner voice. Second, our shadow isn't just held within us – it harms all our relationships. And third, if we think collectively, shadow is behind things like mob mentality which is rampant today.[3]

Our shadow becomes even more of an obstacle if we are trying to grow as people – it is what stands in our way. As Jung wrote: "How can I be substantial without casting a shadow?"[4] In other words, becoming more whole necessarily means growing our consciousness to embrace what was previously in our shadow.

It's no wonder depth psychologists compare venturing into the shadow to answering the hero's call.[5] A friend of mine jokes that we like the idea of transformation, but really just want to become caterpillars with wings. We'd like to avoid the darkness of the shadow, but without it, transformation is impossible.

So, thank you for having the courage to take on shadow work. Jung wrote that relatively few people could take on true shadow work on, but those that do are "the moral leaders of humankind."[6] I think it is becoming much less rare, and by the end of this course, I hope you will understand more completely how incredibly valuable shadow work is for ourselves and everyone around us.

Complexes: contents of the shadow

Let's switch gears and talk about what's in our shadow. One way to think about it is: How does our shadow do harm if it is "out of sight"? Well, the problem is that our shadow does not remain out of sight. Stuff tends to pop out of our shadow and into our consciousness at the least expected and least opportune times.

But even then, blaming our outbursts or out-of-control moments on "our shadow" doesn't really help. While it's a useful concept, it is also broad – "everything we think we aren't" is a whole lot.

We need a more specific concept to work with and that's why the key point for today's lesson is that: to understand our shadow, we need to understand our complexes. There is no "shadow work" without working on your complexes. That's why this lesson is called the "complex-ity of shadow work" and why you'll be hearing me talk a lot more about complexes than the shadow in this course.

If our shadow is like our inner cosmos, then our complexes are like the stars within it. Like stars, they vary in size, brightness, and power. That's why Jung called complexes "the living unit of the unconscious psyche."[7]

A note on psychological theory

Before we get too much further, and especially if you are newer to a psychological approach to inner work, I want to add a quick note on psychological theory. I've already talked about 'shadow' and 'complexes' as concepts that may be new to you.

The important point is that the psychological concepts, models, and theories that I will talk about are essentially abstract. They are 'real' in the sense that they were conceived based on studying many people's experiences over time. They function as essential metaphors that give us an entry point to work with our psyche, but we also need to hold them loosely. If we understand them too literally, it can be counter-productive to our healing and growth. For example, we can become overly identified with having a certain complex, rather than holding it as one model among many of how to understand ourselves.

A brief history of complexes & the word association test

Before telling you precisely what a complex is, I'd like to briefly tell their origin story because it will give you a sense of how simple they are, in a sense. The term "complex" was used by a couple of psychologists prior to Jung, but it is Jung and his followers who have most extensively expanded the research.[8] It became so central to his theories that he originally wanted to call his branch of psychology: "complex psychology."

Jung started studying complexes in 1904 using something called the Word Association Test.[9] It is a very simple experimental method where the subject is read a series of words, and after each word, they just need to say the first thing that comes to mind. For example, if I was taking the test, the experimenter may say the word "man," and I might immediately say "woman."

Now the secret of the Word Association Test is that the actual word that the subject says in response does not matter. The experimenter does capture the response word, but also records the time delay, and any other reactions to the stimulus word.

The Word Association Test might seem very primitive compared to modern testing methods like fMRI brain scans, but since it taps into an essential aspect of the human psyche, it still works. I remember when I took the test, even though I knew the purpose and thought I could "game it," I still reacted to certain words differently. The experimenter that I worked with recorded reactions to certain words that I scarcely remembered, like laughing before a response, or involuntary physical reactions like touching my face.

The idea that certain situations will cause us to "glitch" is essential to understanding complexes. The usual continuous awareness of our ego-consciousness is disrupted, even if just for a moment.

So, you can already start to see how mindfulness is essential to shadow work. The moment-to-moment awareness that you cultivate in mindfulness practice is vital to catch these "glitches," or else they remain unconscious and fully in our shadow.

What is a complex?

Okay, before the end of today's lesson, I would like to give you a formal definition of a complex, directly from Jung. The definition may sound slightly technical, but I think it is also fully relatable, and will give you an overview of key aspects that we'll be diving deeper into in future lessons. According to Jung:

[A complex is] the "image" of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally and is incompatible with the habitual attitude of consciousness. This image has a powerful inner coherence, it has its own wholeness, and a relatively high degree of autonomy. The complex can usually be suppressed with an effort of will, but not argued out of existence, and at first suitable opportunity it reappears in all its original strength.[10]

There are a few key aspects of that definition that I wanted to highlight. The first is the emotional component – complexes are not just theoretical concepts, when they are activated, they grip us emotionally. Because of the emotional aspect, mindfulness will help us greatly in working with them.

The second is the idea of coherence, wholeness, and autonomy – coherence indicates that complexes are like a grouping or cluster of psychic energy, similar to how stars are clusters of matter in the cosmos. Coherence is key because our complexes are not random. Even though they pop up in different life situations, they ultimately exhibit patterns, and that's what allows us to unearth and heal them.

Finally, the idea that they can usually be suppressed by our egos. Suppression is not something we necessarily do consciously. It comes naturally, but as the definition says, complexes rear their heads as soon as they are given the opportunity. Since mindfulness allows us to work with our ego strength consciously, we can also use our mindfulness practice to our advantage.

Comparison: Buddhism’s three poisons

Before concluding today's lesson, I'd like to briefly bring in some Eastern philosophy to provide another viewpoint. The Buddha taught about the three poisons, or what my teacher in Tibetan Buddhism, Geshe Kelsang Gyatso translated as the three root delusions, which are attachment, anger, and ignorance. In other teachings, those three are often expanded into a longer list, including mental states like jealousy, fear, deluded pride, anxiety, or depression. Those could be seen as fundamental examples of the grouping or clustering that complexes exhibit.

I'll be weaving in more Buddhist and mindfulness philosophy and practice as we go.

Conclusion: Complexes are normal patterns that we can uproot

That brings us to the end of our first lesson. I want to conclude by noting that you may have a sense so far that complexes or the shadow is inherently "bad." They can certainly be quite harmful, especially if we have no awareness of them. Jung wrote that "a complex becomes pathological only when we think we have not got it."[11]

But we don't need to fear them. Jolande Jacobi, who was a student of Jung's, said that everyone has complexes[12] and that they are a healthy component of the psyche.[13]

In later lessons, we'll eventually go a step further and learn to see our complexes as a treasure. The more we get to know them and work with them, the more valuable they become.

As a quick recap of lesson one, we covered what the shadow is and why healing our shadow is important, how we can't heal our shadow without working on our complexes, and finally we looked at the history of complexes and a basic definition.

Before the next lesson, please take some time to consider what motivates you to do shadow work. This motivation will ground your ongoing courageous effort. I'd like to encourage you to keep a running journal of your homework after each lesson so that you can make this course practical and personal.

Journal Prompt

What motivates you to do shadow work? What would it mean for your life to genuinely heal your shadow? Where does your courage to do this work come from?

Lesson References

[1] Wilber, The Religion of Tomorrow, 70-71.

[2] Jung, CW 16, para. 470.

[3] Jung, CW 10, para. 449.

[4] Jung, CW 16, para. 134.

[5] Shalit, The Complex, 78.

[6] Jung, CW 10, para. 451.

[7] Jung, CW8, para. 210.

[8] Shalit, The Complex, 1-2.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Jung, CW8, para. 201.

[11] Jung, CW16, para. 179.

[12] Jacobi, Complex, Archetype, Symbol, 20.

[13] Ibid., 25.