Dear People Whom God Loves,
Chapter 6 in Ken Wilber’s book Integral Spirituality is titled “The Shadow and the Disowned Self.”
He makes the important observation: “…an understanding of psychodynamic repression as well as ways to cure it, is something contributed exclusively by modern Western psychology.” Consequently, it is possible to be a good meditator or spiritual teacher and still suffer from the psychopathology of this disowned self. This then makes us quite dangerous. In this case, meditation is not a substitute for psychological therapy.
Now what is meant by this disowned self? My disowned self is a part of me that I do not recognize as belonging to me. That is called putting it into the shadow. Carl Jung was the great beginning of understanding this condition.
Here is how it works. It can happen with any feeling, emotion, or impulse. When we have any feeling, emotion, or impulse that is not acceptable to us, we will work (consciously at first) to tell ourselves that we don’t have it. We believe that it is unacceptable because we learned that from our family, our church, our group, or our society. My self image is that I am not like that.
I will use anger as an example. If I think that it is bad to be angry, I will begin by suppressing it. We are still aware that we are angry, but less aware than before. But then something deeper happens. I repress it. That is not a conscious process. We really don’t know that we are angry. We don’t own our anger. Our angry feelings have been split off from us. We have disowned them. I really believe that I am not angry. We now have the pathological condition of a shadow self or a disowned self. We are emotionally sick and don’t know it; but it may show itself, for example, in depression, irritability, or obsession.
Next, we will see how we project this disowned self onto others and then see what needs to be done for healing. Some of what I have written is mine, so don’t blame Ken Wilber for it.
Smile, God Loves You,
Father Clay
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