Wilber on Shadow

'...One of the things that's great about shadow work is it doesn't just have you say, feel into your feelings, get in touch with feelings, how do you feel about it, etc. It actually takes the opposite of how you feel and says “OK, feel that.” Because that's pretty much what your shadow is, is the opposite of what you're consciously aware of. So as I say, using the monster example again, if you are out of touch with your aggression, your anger - and, incidentally, for Buddhists to say, “well, you're never supposed to feel anger,” the point it, well, if you're unconsciously feeling it, you have to consciously feel it first, and then you can try to transcend it or transmute it - but for you to just go around saying, “I'm not going to feel anger now,” that just seals your repression. So the worst possible thing you can do if you have repressed negatives like anger or aggression is to get caught up in one of those practices that say that aggression is the root of all evil because your shadow loves that kind of stuff.

So what you do then is: the monster shows up in your dream, your projected anger shows up in your dream as this monster that's trying to attack you, and what you feel is fear; so we don't say get in touch with your fear - I mean you can if you want to, but it's an inauthentic emotion. [laughs] We say identify with the monster, feel the monster, now what does the monster want to say? The monster is not afraid of you, I assure you. [laughs] You're not going to feel fear, you're going to feel, “I hate you so much I want to kill you” or “I'm so angry at you I could rip your head off” or something like that. So that's the way that you can - to some degree, on your own, and at least as a sort of introduction/initiation into it - you can get a sense of your shadow, because it's really helping you feel almost the opposite of what you think you're feeling. Like I say, just feeling your feelings and getting in touch with your feelings and all that, that won't get you in touch with your shadow, because your shadow is the opposite of what you feel, and that's just a pretty good definition of what the shadow is - the opposite of what you're consciously feeling....'

From a transcript of a recent conference call with Ken Wilber. Transcribed by Arthur Gillard. Thanks to Julian for heads up. Read the whole piece here (a lot more in the transcript, not limited to shadow).

AND, there's a free audio where Ken is asked "How would you define what you do?" Listen to find out what he answers. To download go here.