The Interlocking Puzzle of the Shadow
By: Alex Coleman
Tags: Spiritual Growth, Spirituality, Shadow Work, Shadow, Spiritual Healing

The Interlocking Puzzle of the Shadow

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the shadow and it’s projections onto other people. I knew that when we judge others it is a shadow projection of a part of ourselves that we are denying, but I didn’t fully understand this because objectively I could see that people were not exactly like those they were judging. So how did this work?

For example, my father spends a lot of his thoughts being angry with Trump and others like him, but when I confronted him with the idea that this was a shadow part of himself, I didn’t really have a clear answer as to how he was like Trump. But today it hit me: they are each other’s shadow, like an interlocking puzzle. The parts they deny in themselves they see and judge in the other.

The loud, proud, boisterous, independent part of Trump that is out there for everyone to see is a part of my father that he denies in himself. He prides himself on being compassionate and doing no harm to others. But in that compassion he is denying himself the freedom to say what he truly thinks, loudly and proudly, out of fear that it will harm others (and truly he is afraid of their anger and rejection).

Now the important piece of this is that he wouldn’t just judge anyone who is loud and proud this harshly; Trump is his equal and opposite. He isn’t just loud and proud, he is loud and proud and discompassionate. If he was boisterous in his expressions of passion for others or the planet, like Greta Thunberg, perhaps he wouldn’t judge, and might even sing his praises. But because Trump has both this unabashed persona that my father denies in himself, and Trump denies the compassionate parts of himself that my father prides himself on, they are perfect equals and opposites: perfect shadow projections of each other. If Trump met my father I’m sure he would have just as much disdain for him, because of these compassionate parts of himself he has denied and shoved down out of fear of weakness and not getting his way.

This is how the shadow really works—when you judge someone else, when you’re jealous of someone else, when someone just irks you or drives you crazy or rubs you the wrong way, you are seeing your shadow. You are seeing the parts of yourself that you have denied, and you are angry that someone else is not doing the same. You’ve hurt yourself to fit in to the world and be safe. It hurts to deny a part of yourself. And when you see that someone else didn’t do that, that they’re doing just fine without causing themselves the harm that you have caused yourself, you get angry. It’s not fair, you say to yourself. This is not the way the world should be. You need them to be punished. You need to be cut down to your level. You need them to live their life like you live yours, because the way they are living is far too painful a reminder for them to exist in your world. You see, it’s not really about them at all. It’s about you.

We need to stop doing this to ourselves. We need to be brave and face our fear of rejection, and integrate these parts of ourselves that we have been so painfully denying all of our lives. I know it’s hard. I know it’s scary. I know it hurts. But it must be done in order for us to heal and to grow and to move forward. And it will feel so good once we do so. Those aching parts of your heart, those wounded, festering parts of our soul will finally be allowed to heal. It will hurt. But it will be the kind of pain that brings relief, the good pain, the refreshing pain of an intense workout or a deep massage. It won’t be the kind of aching, stagnant, harmful pain we are already in.

Be brave. Face yourselves and others and love yourself, love all of us. We will be ok — on the deepest level you are truly invincible and can never be destroyed. Love yourselves and be honest, we are all in this together.