Personal insight into the shadow

[Carl-Richard]

I went for an evening walk some days ago and felt like truly laying down my defenses and experience my authentic self at that moment. What I felt as my heart opened up was a flood of memories and moods from a very specific time of my life, before I was a teenager, and along with it a feeling of emotional vulnerability and the need for intimacy.

Then last night, I watched this video of Ken Wilber talking about shadows and explaining them through an evolutionary lens that I've previously not seen the full implications of:

 

 

He talked about how all evolution follows the motions of "transcend and include", and that either one of those can get out of order (you can either transcend too much and forget to include, or vice versa). If you transcend too fast without properly including earlier aspects of yourself, you'll split off that part of yourself as an unconscious sub-personality, which will actually have that age of when it split off.

So then it clicked, that what I experienced that evening as I peeled back my defenses, was that former piece of myself that I had split off: the emotionally vulnerable part of myself that desired personal connection and intimacy. It was visceral, as I literally felt like I wanted to hug and hold someone, and again, as a rather young version of myself, around the time I actually had girlfriends.

Then I started thinking about why I split it off. Then I started thinking about how I've been trying to integrate what I call "Red Andrew Tate energy", which I also know I've been repressing, but not in the same way (it goes much deeper). Was maybe my path to asserting my need for vulnerability through exactly that — assertiveness? How counterintuitive is that? Maybe I was always too vulnerable and too lacking in assertiveness, and the defense mechanism was to close it off and hide it away, rather than letting it flow outwards ("internalizing" instead of "externalizing"; a classic pattern for me).

So then, my path of integrating the shadow (my understanding of it and how it has been shaping my life), has become even more clear: I have to develop my assertiveness in order to regain my vulnerability. It's almost paradoxical, but it makes the most sense that way.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Carl-Richard

[Tyler Robinson]

Do shadow work. Sit down silent. Ask yourself a set of interrogative questions. Keep probing. Keep ego aside. Answer your questions as honestly as possible. Keep opening up. 

I did this 4 years ago and I had a flood of tears. Repressed memory came back. Went to the psychiatric office. Got diagnosed with PTSD. Game over. 

 

 

[Nilsi]

?

I think I literally have the same shadow lol.

Edited September 23, 2022 by Nilsi

[ValiantSalvatore]

He is an 8 in the enneagram. My post was stuck for like 4 times. 

There is a stage red drive of vulnerabillity and also creation I did a course at integral where I could explore it. Interesting conclusions thanks for the post! 
 

Edited September 26, 2022 by ValiantSalvatore