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“It’s not about you, Dad!”

After some time, when first hearing this from my daughter (see July 27th posting), it’s come to me that as an individuated soul, she’s right; it’s not about me; it’s about the soul. What I identify as me is just the vehicle. The ego-self (me) adds personalization where there may be none. Most of my upsets aren’t really about me, either. They belong to others trying to navigate their own lives. It’s about their ego interpretations and the daily events that they experience. 

This reflexive need to occasionally interpret the actions of others as being about me can get a bit old, and sometimes, it can get in the way of compassionately responding to others’ experiences and how they are dealing with them.

All too often, I create my waking dream experience in a nightmarish way when there’s little that relates to me directly. Unresolved experiences of earlier similar events in my life still get triggered as though they are current and have little to do with what’s going on with the other person I am relating to at the moment.

As with a sleeping dream, when I can step back to gain another perspective on the events in my waking dream, I can better interpret their meaning and deal with them more appropriately.

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Want to know what the Dark Knight looks like?

It was a dreary, overcast morning when I entered the local coffee shop down the street. It was Saturday, so the usual bustle of people going in and out of the shop was reduced to almost nothing. This was the end of a long and painful walk I had taken that morning, having gotten up before the sun to take advantage of the early morning coolness.

“How are you doing today?” the barista asked as I ordered my coffee. 

My mind was just finishing up with a poor-me-diatribe born of a bruised ego conversation I’d had with one of my daughters earlier in the week. What I wanted to say was…

“As my daughter keeps saying, any time there’s an upset, “This isn’t about you, Dad!” Never mind that I have feelings and thoughts; they’re irrelevant to what’s going on. But she’s probably right. I don’t feel very relevant these days, and wonder if I never was, but my ego was too busy to notice. 

Another side to my irrelevant self says, “So what?” Who’s to care if it’s not about me?

I want to think I’ve lived my life with at least giving and taking in equal measure, if not a little more to the giving side. Still, I’m not the determiner of that because the ego nearly always tries to weigh its experience toward the self-interest positive end of the spectrum. 

Others in the family will write the story of my life that will be handed down, and from what I hear, I’ve failed miserably to live up to their expectations. It also seems a universal opinion that I failed and made it too much about me. But so what? I can’t change it now; soon, my ego will be dead, and how relevant I was won’t make any difference; the damage was done. I’m also not sure that the soul cares one way or the other, either. 

It’s starting to feel like I’ve wasted my once-only time here. But again, that’s the ego talking, and the soul doesn’t care; the ego did its job by giving the soul a vehicle for entering the world.”

But all I said was, “Fine, just fine. How’s yours been going?” And then I thanked him for my coffee and said, “Have a good one!” as my ‘irrelevant self’ walked out the door. It was no use wasting a perfectly good ‘poor me’ and spreading my “down-eristic” self on an innocent barista. 

I have had these Dark Night experiences many times throughout my life. For many years, I used to run from them, which only got me mired and stuck, but now I periodically embrace them as a means of transcending them and moving through into the light.

“How’s your day going so far?”

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The empire of the Shadow-self

 

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“I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you, which shall be the darkness of God.”

 –T.S Eliot

 

In the Game of Thrones the story line is about political intrigue and the shadow creatures in this fantasy melodrama are always extensions of the people portrayed. All the human emotions of lust, hate, anger, greed and betrayal are played out with only one goal, to survive and conquer. Of course this kind of human drama has no end (witness real life dramas of war and greed).

Just as the Game of Thrones is but a tale of the Shadow Empire of the ego-self so is the everyday day life of our selves. Why are we so fascinated by this darker side of humanity? Is it because we can see what is also in our self but do it in the safety of arms length?

I spend a lot of time talking about and working with the shadow aspects of myself. I do this because I’m fascinated by the shadow-self, its genesis and how it affects the everyday of my life.

I’ve learned that within me, as in all of us, resides both the light and the dark, aspects of what I approve of and identify with and those that I reject– the seemingly dark, hated, betrayed and unbearable characteristics of myself and my life.

The Shadow-self resides in the unconscious mind. I put them there so that they wouldn’t be, well, conscious.

Most of them I put there as a child– when I had limited resources and experiences to figure out what the traumas meant (a trauma can be as small as a hurt feeling) that were hurled at me or that surrounded me.

But these shadows don’t just reside peacefully within us they actually affect and inform our conscious actions.

They are why we have certain addictions, failures (both in relationships and careers), negative thoughts, judgments, and self-criticisms.

They are why we can’t seem to just “make it” or that we keep choosing the wrong mate or love interest, or continuously make the wrong choices. They represent all those dark impulses and desires, selfishness, hostility and greediness we sometimes experience within ourselves. They are what prevent us from loving and acknowledging ourselves. No matter how successful we become there is often a dark hooded figure that is quick to criticize and bring us down.

 

“Between the conception
 And the creation
 Between the emotion
 And the response
Falls the Shadow.”

—T. S. Elliott

 

None of us want to climb down into this cesspool of dread, sorrow, and childhood fears. It’s why we created the underground sump of the unwanted in the first place i.e. to stop the hurt!

Our ego-selves are designed to figure things out then decide that which will make things better, run smoother, and lessen the pain and hurt vs. that which makes things harder– one is accepted while the other is rejected and all of this is designed to enhance ones ability to survive.

It’s the ego-self that determines when something is real, but sometimes this “reality” is a negative decision about the self such as, “I’m no good” or “I have no talent”, or “I don’t deserve happiness” or “I’m weak and vulnerable, not pretty/handsome, not smart…” and so on and on.

Once the “reality” is locked in place anything that refutes it is then rejected as “not real”. It’s why it’s so hard to change ones self-concept or to accept another persons acknowledgment.

Essentially, the ego-self becomes attached to these so-called “realities of the self” and it is this attachment that leads the ego-self to go it alone and shun any real help because no one can ever know the ego-self and its reality and needs better than the ego-self.

In this way the ego-self cuts itself off from others and from the spirit and soul.

It’s interesting that Alcoholics anonymous refers to the word EGO as an acronym for “Easing God Out” because that’s exactly what the ego-self does, it divides us from our soul and our inner spirit and too often this is to our detriment.

One of my greatest longings, and I suspect yours as well, is to find the true essence of myself i.e. who am I really? It’s got to be better than this! When I fantasize I’m always the hero of my story, I’m always magnificent and awesome (though humbly so). But why can’t I see me that way in my everyday life? Why can’t I identify with a “me” beyond my negative beliefs of self, my self-judgments and criticisms, my hopes and experiences, my anger, desires, impulses, imagined needs and expectations (from self and others)? Why is it so hard to find and embrace this self?

I suggest that it is because we’ve buried it and barricaded it behind all the shadow material that we’ve stuffed into the unconscious sump and refuse to deal with. We’ve given the shadow-self and its lackey, the ego-self, power over how we feel and over what we do by over protecting ourselves.

Bottom line, our nature is both light and dark and the rejection of one over the other through denial or opposition (control or destruction of) only leads to self-destructive behaviors. The ego-self is designed to protect us from the world outside, but often it does this by sacrificing the inside, the very thing it is designed to protect.

Life can be lived without denying the shadow but by choosing the light, choosing to live your life in the light. You can only do that if you know what the dark is, where the absence of the light resides.