The Split and our Shadow

There is a universal principal that we are all one; that everything is connected. People talk abut “what goes around comes around”, there is the Buddhist belief in karma where we get back whatever we put out and in Christianity there is the lesson where we are told to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto yourself.’ On some level we know that we are connected.

And yes, OK, it is a bit like we are all connected to a Matrix, as in the film. The point is that we have forgotten this truth and we need to remember it.

The Delusion That We Are Separate

Christianity has the story about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. When they are there everything is fine, they don’t know that they are different to anything else and they can communicate with everything, even animals like the snake - they are all connected. However once they eat the apple from the Tree of Knowledge everything changes. 

They are thrown out from the Garden of Eden, but something else comes with this disconnection. They become aware that they are now separate from everything else. This is symbolised through them suddenly recognising their nakedness (which had been fine then they were in the Garden of Eden); being naked is judged to be wrong, so they are ashamed and cover themselves up. 

This is the beginning of what the Buddhists call delusion. They are under the delusion that they are separate. This delusion was brought about by them gaining knowledge and thus the ability to judge. As soon as you start to judge things they have to be separate: good and bad, wrong and right, better and worse. 

Back in Eden there was no judgement, instead there was acceptance of everything just as it is.

 

So we are all under the delusion that we are separate from each other and from everything else in the universe. 

This separation is repeated inside ourselves - each of us has separated from our True Self through delusion and once we remove the delusion we can then integrate ourselves to become whole, that is our True Self. 

Once we are whole again we will rediscover our connection with the universe.

Yes, that may seem a lot to swallow at once, but everything is repeated at all levels. The earth is part of the galaxy, as humans we are part of the earth, our organs are part of our body, our cells make up our organs  and so on. If one of our organs gets sick, the whole of our body is sick; once it recovers, the whole of the body recovers. And of course the sickness in an organ started with sickness in one cell, which then spread to the whole organ….

…. so everything is connected, but it is like we have put on special glasses and see it all separately.

Being Our True Self

Back to being our True Self. 

As we experience life we react to it; as a child we are focussed on being loved and cared for. So if something happens to disturb our world, we interpret it as a threat and do whatever we can, in our child-like way, to try and put things right. As a child we cannot do much about our environment, we can only change how we behave, so we adapt our behaviour in order to cope; but adaptation can come at the cost and the cost is often not being true to ourself.

For example - A child in the 1960s might not have had much parental attention or love, even though that is what a child craves. Parenting was different then. The child would then focus on doing what they thought would please their parents which might well be, doing well at school. 

The social standards of the time meant that teachers thought it their job to push children to work harder, calling it encouragement. For this particular child, every school  report was mainly good, but the focus would be on the few could do betters. The parents would then take these reports and haul the child up in front of them when they would concentrate on the 10% where top marks were not being achieved, ignoring the 90% that was pretty good. No mention would be made of the good things. 

Over time the child would begin to believe that they should do better, adopting the judgement that they weren’t good enough.

[Compare this to the contrasting view that would accept the child, just as they were. True love would accept them and would certainly not strive to make them feel that they were not good enough. Because of course they are good enough- we are all good enough - just as we are.]

What’s the point of this story?

The child has to become split. Part of them wants to be their true self, good at some things, not good at others. Probably high spirited and light hearted, playing for fun. Just a kid, really. 

However they realise that this does not get them any positive attention from their parents, so they hide that part of themselves away and focus on the opposite half. The part that is serious and works hard and tries to be good, all the time pushing themselves to be something that is not really them.

Another thing happens. The judgements made by the parents are internalised in the child. It is ‘safer’ if you make the judgment for yourself as this way you avoid causing displeasure in a parent. So the child becomes a critic of themselves, working to someone else’s standards. Everything they do will be held up against impossibly high standards and judged to be not good enough.

Then, as the child grows up, all this remains, even after they have left home. They continue to judge themselves as not good enough and to everyone else they become well known as hardworking and serious. They even believe that the side they show to the world is who they truly are.

This is of course only one example; we all have many, many splits from different causes. But how to find them?

A key way, that takes quite a bit of self awareness, is to think of what triggers you.

For the child we talked about, they are putting a lot of effort into being seen to be serious and hard working, which means that their light hearted, easy going side has to be kept pushed down. It is seen as bad. 

So perhaps when they see someone lounging about, or not taking things seriously, they will feel irritated by them. The irritation is the key. Whatever irritates you in someone else, is pretty likely to be an issue of your own.

Yes - who wants to own that one?

So many times I have thought “that is not my issue”. But of course, after careful reflection, it was.

So that is a big step in becoming whole again; identifying where your splits are. At a later point we can talk about how to reintegrate the lost parts in order to make yourself whole.

Activity

Over the next week, note down when someone irritates or annoys you. Think about what it is that upsets you and can you see it in yourself, otherwise can you recognise the opposite of their behaviour in you? (Be honest!!)

Even if you can’t see it in yourself at the moment, be open to the possibility that it might be in you, even in a small way and perhaps in a slightly different way.

Be as honest as you can be with yourself and try it with a few things. (It took me years to admit to some of my shadows. Absolutely years.)