Most
people think that shadows follow, precede or surround beings or objects. The
truth is that they also surround words, desires, deeds, impulses and memories.
-Elie Wiesel
In George
MacDonald’s Phantastes *, as we
follow Anodos’ journey through the enchanted forest, we see that everything he
experiences is an outward manifestation of his inner life. What he perceives
(or not) of the world around him is based upon his hopes and fears, his desires
and doubts, his belief and unbelief. The story of his shadow finding him is one
such manifestation. `
Once Anodos’
shadow begins “attending” him, it alters his perceptions of reality, keeping
him from seeing the world and the people around him as they are but, rather,
operates as a projector projecting his shadowy image across the landscapes of
his outer world.
“Once, as I
passed by a cottage, there came out a lovely fairy child with two wondrous
toys, one in each hand….Round the child’s head was an aureole of emanating
rays. As I looked in wonder and delight, round crept from behind me something
dark, and the child stood in my shadow. Straightway he was a commonplace
boy...”
Carl Jung wrote,
“It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side
to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a
positively demonic dynamism …. Having a dark suspicion of these grim
possibilities, man turns a blind eye to the shadow-side of human nature.
Blindly he strives against the salutary dogma of original sin, which is yet so prodigiously
true. Yes, he even hesitates to admit the conflict of which he is so painfully
aware.” ("On the Psychology of the Unconscious.")
The first steps toward enlightenment and salvation require
self-awareness. Hesitation must be put aside, if we are ever to experience
healing. Anodos learned that his shadow side exists and was laying waste to
everything it touched. Jung describes such battles as internecine wars being
waged on two fronts: “before him the
struggle for existence, in the rear the struggle against his own rebellious
instinctual nature.” ("Analytical Psychology and Weltanschauung.").
St Paul said of his own experience, “For I do not do the
good I want to do but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep doing.” The
struggle against our rebellious nature, the battle to “do right,” opens our
eyes to our shadows. The challenge for many serious minded warriors, however,
is in seeing that this war is not primarily an ethical one. The shadow lies
deeper than the arena of doing right via obeying the Creator’s laws. It is our
very being that needs to experience new birth, healing, and transformation. Simply
put: we do shadowy stuff because of the darkness in our souls.
For Anodos, the process of being delivered from his shadow
and the transformation of his soul began with humbly acknowledging the darkness
within. “I learned that it was better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall
and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence.”
He also knew that this victory was only the first battle in a lifelong war, for
our dead shadows often rise again, like a Phoenix from the ashes of its death.
“Doubtless, this self must again die and be buried, and
again, from its tomb, spring a winged child…Self will come to life even in the
slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which
will emerge at last from the unknown abyss of the soul; will it be a solemn
gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child
that finds himself nowhere and everywhere?”
* George
MacDonald, “Phantastes,” Wm Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan,
1964
Copyright, Monte E Wilson,
2014
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