Activating other people's shadow-selves

Apart from a host of other problems, I find that one is particularly painful. I seem to unintentionally activate the shadow in other people (especially those of the opposite sex). I'm always alert, perceptive, inquisitive, demanding, questioning, poking and just being me. I have been raised to be polite, but it doesn't help much when that thing in me emerges. I seem to say or do just the very thing that person doesn't want to hear or acknowledge. I'm not saying that this doesn't also help me to see my own shadow and whatever behaviour requires improvement.  But to always have to play the role of an adversary or a “holy fool” is not funny, but rather depressing. Does anybody recognize this in their own lives?

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

ya i used to argue with my parents a lot a few years ago with that same undertone. i saw that it was useless to continue on ranting about making changes that weren't possible in the immediate future.  so i tried getting along more even with certain things that didnt seem reasonable to me at the time. eventually, i broke out of that routine, since it seems like things still we're going that well and it was like my voice wasnt being heard and i was being disrespected.

so these days i try to be truthful about how i feel but still respectful of other peoples opinions and beliefs, knowing that we're all connected in this so we have to get along and work together that causes the least amount of friction. what i noticed these days, is the less i argued with myself about certain topics, the less important it was to argue with others like i did before. i guess its as the saying goes, it all starts with peace within ourselves , before we can make any meaningful changes on the outside world.

take care

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

I feel for ya viva-mari.  Although a needed skill I can grasp how tiring it can also be to play that role.  Do you have a second to choose before you see it happening or does it surprise you everytime?

I often found that once I'm aware of something in myself then there is this reoccuring pattern which becomes more subtle as I explore it.  First I'm aware and saying “see there it just happened again”.  Then I start to have an option of what I can say and it helps to have the choice whether to do it or not.

It may sound hokey yet I believe if you try to stay intentional about interactions being for the highest good of all and do the best you can then you can't do much more than that and don't have to worry about what occured either.

Blessings.

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

viva-mari, i have been good at that too, which is partly what has just got me removed from my church board! :) our challenge is to become more skilful and to continue our own shadow work, meditation and deep study to connect more helpfully with others.

namaste,

nicole

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

I caught myself doing the same thing on a post on the Vision Force forums.  I've included an excerpt, but the complete post is at:
http://www.visionforce.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52&page=2

Position vs Stand

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

beautiful, jim! it's hard for those of us who are so strong and so out there to do this… but listening is so important.

love,

nicole

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

Jim - So well and truthfully said.  Me too.  I've found more and more just letting someone else know I hear them is more important than my 15 cents.

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

I remind myself often that a belief is simply a thought which we have invested with the aura of truth (for us). Thoughts, and therefore beliefs can be changed. I find that doing a simple belief inventory from time to time is a useful practice….it helps me see how much and how often my own beliefs have changed and morphed over the years….it also helps me see how my values, those things that matter the most to me, have changed as well…Seeing as how most of us are walking around with many layers of beliefs and values all tiered into the subconscoius mind from all the 'authorities' in our lives who have told us what we should be believing and valuing, it is vitally important for us to step back and take a look at this stuff once in awhile. Most of the time, those junctures in our lives where we are feeling stuck will often turn out to be an internal conflict in these hidden layers…

It appears that we each have our own internal map of reality based on what we have 'sorted' for…so, from that perspective, what constitute 'absolute' reality? In the likelihood that there is in fact NO absolute reality, or at least no possibility of anyone being able to determine what that is, ANY belief would ultimately  be merely an opinion that works (more or less well) for us. For this reason alone, though I have many beliefs I am quite fond of, I treat them lightly and have no need to force them on others. I offer them….and I entertain the perspectives of others in turn…this is one way we refine our own internal map…for myself, I am interested in the variety of maps, just as I am interested in the variety of all else in this grand place….variety is the spice of life after all, at least, that is what I believe….;-)

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

It was great to see that my pledge brought about some responses, and all of them containing insight. I can see what you are getting at. At a point in time, if we continue on our spiritual quest, there will most likely be equanimity. A state of mind where we are no longer reactive to other people's standpoints. I think we all agree on that? However, the road to reach such almost utopian awareness sure is a bumpy one! I know we create our own reality, but on the other hand since we are all interconnected, it would seem strange if we could fly around above all of what is going on in the world and not have to get personally involved. One of my personal challenges has been to dive into the chaos of reality as perceived by the collective mind. I navigate somehow, using my common sense, my intuition, and deep thinking. I try and observe my own patterns of behaviour and seek ways to change them. Yet during this process, I also have to live and co-operate with others. I'm not the type to piss others off, not in general. But when a person has a strong mind and some perceptiveness to see what is wrong with a lot of things, and often feels disrespected, then it's hard not to put a foot down and say no, I won't accept this. It's not always the wrong thing to do. Chögyam Trungpa also says in “Cutting through spiritual materialism” that saying yes is not always the answer, sometimes saying no is going to help the other person much more.

My point is, is that it's not always bad to activate somebody's shadow-self. This is what I think. I think someone has to do it so that other people's shadow-selves can come out in from the dark and be healed by the light of consciousness. Maybe even Hitler “had” to come and do what he did so that it would get people thinking more deeply about certain moral values.

The trick for most of is is surely to know when it's better not to be assertive or offensive or just whatever that could bring about bad blood, to have discernment enough to see that the person in question is not at a point where they can actually get the message. I'm thinking that there has to be some balance between our own personal-self control and a spontaneous way of being. I personally feel that both ends of the stick are detrimental. So what about the “middle way”?

I think that when you actually do know a little bit more about the deeper meaning of life and where we are heading to than a lot of people around you, then it's a really tough place to be, because more awareness kind of also implies more responsibility for your actions. No? You can't put yourself above others, because evolution is not about ego-tripping. So one has to try and tune oneself down, check the ego-issue all the time, be careful, and as one of you said, think a moment before we react. (In my case I've needed to learn to be less cautious, and actually show anger when it's appropriate and not later when I can no longer make a stand!). Still, we cannot excerpt ourselves from the humdrum and chaos of life with other people. We will be activating other people's shadow-selves, whether we like it or not. I hope I'm not just making excuses for myself but I guess this is what I meant. That there's also a mission in the fact that we influence others and help them become aware of their issues. I mean that it just happens, it's not something you can decide and say something like “well somebody had to tell you what you're doing”. That would be arrogant. It's best to just be whatever you are in this moment and fix yourself as much as you can but also accept that you're playing a certain role in the game called human life. Am I making any sense ? :-)

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

The trick would be to stop placing your value in others opinion of you in that instance, State your “opinion” in nonjudgemental way that doesn't insult the recipient.  Give them the right to persist in their ignorance.  Question their points rather than preaching yours so that they are led to the irationality of their beliefs with a mind still open enough to see alternatives.  You are not diminished by their ignorance or lack of understanding.  Anger only creates anger, and a consequent persistence in ignorance and conflict.

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I think your making tons of sense Viva-Mari.  I feel I've worked back and forth with these issues for years and there's no end in sight to that work.  I don't think there is supposed to be.  As I started working on myself I learned about parts of me I didn't know where there and actions I'd automatically take.  As I accepted others had these too I tried not to be so arragant to always be saying “look here, and here, and here at your behavior.”  As I tried to decide when I should be quiet and when I should speak up I had to learn even more about what was inside of me and what I believed. 

It's subtle and never ending growth for me and all of us.  I'm thankful to have been blessed through life and here at zaadz with folks to share the ongoing process with.

One of my favorite quotes from Thomas Hoving for the past 20 years hinging on this issue.

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

I totally agree that we have our own reality with our own personal sets of beliefs. It's good to keep in mind that it's all relative. But we have to live in this world somehow and what often happens to good little girls (like myself) that we are being used as a doormat. That's hardly conducive to spritiual growth. So we have to make clear to ourselves what we really stand for and then actually stand for it, if under attack.

But not all situations in life are confrontational so the activating of other people's shadow-selves can happen in a subtle way. Maybe you invested a lot of energy in a relationship and then you get dumped because you wanted to grow but the other one didn't. It hurts. But maybe the other person did learn something from the experience in the end. Who knows. All we can do is play along. But the deeper you go into opening your own heart up, the more it also hurts when you meet resistance or have to back off because you're not dealing with a situation correctly. Learning through the difficult experience of being said “no” to or being rejected even though you're doing things right (or so you think at least), or having to say “no” when somebody is manipulating you,  is part of “growing up” and it hurts.

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

I think you put an important issue in a nutshell, Jim. It would be good to get away from the constant need of acknowledgement and positive feedback from other people. So many of us have not been seen enough as children to have a strong sense of self. Or then we are struggling for recognition for some other reason. One of my favourite quotes from a transpersonal psychologist has been “you have to be somebody before you can be nobody”. No point in dreaming away about enlightenment (meaning liberation and no more ego-bonds) before we have become real persons, that is people with a sense of self. I risk sounding bookish but what I remember from Sartre's philosophy was the idea that we become somebody only in the eye of the other. I've carried that idea with me all these 20 odd years, and it helps to justify the pain that goes on in the interaction with other people. And as Heyok is pointing out, it's probably a never-ending story! Or at least it is a really long story. Some of us are working a bit harder than others. I believe we made that choice on some other level of existence, but anyway, the point is that we probably need to make clear to ourselves by whatever means necessary that we have to respect each other and the level of being and understanding that the other person seems to be at. I'ts pretty obvious that without that respect the planet will go under, isn't it?

But one more question: I have a relationship with a person who gets very angry at some things that unassumingly jump out of my mouth.  He defends his outburst by saying that I shouldn't have said that thing in the first place. Obviously I cannot be controlling everything I say. Gee, some pardon please! Obviously he also cannot help that I touched on some sensitive area in his mind. We both end up feeling wronged. This is just to show how hard it can be to get out of a pattern with someone. Yes sure, I believe I should fix myself first then maybe others follow, rather than the other way around. But how can I do this? Surely I also deserve to be respected as someone who still has issues to work with. If I care about the person who acts this way in my company then the solution may not be to just walk away. I wouldn't want for people to walk out of my life just because I have a stubborn behavioural pattern.

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

Vivi Mari, 

I am reminded of a note I saw on a clock at a friend's parents house when I was young.  It was: Friends are people who know everything about us and like us anyway.

I was raised in a staunch Babtist home, on a farm in southern, Iowa.  My mother had an air of sanctimony around her that I found very  demoralizing.  She used  to gossip about all our neighbor's ” sins” with an air of disdain and disgust.  I see now that that was evidence of low self eseem, not high self esteem.  Her self rightousness was a shield she used to hide her own sense of “badness” from herself.  She evidently felt better about herself by degrading our neighbors.  Not exactly the best foundation for self worth.

I was still very young.  I hadn't developed a set of predjudices and criticisms to apply to others in a vain attempt to better my own opinion of myself.  I liked our “sinful” neighbors.  I thought they showed a joy and spontaneity that my mother should have taken lessons in.  Actually their “sins” were minor.  If their “sins” harmed anyone if was only the sinners themselves.  My mothers “self righteous indignation” was far worse than their “sins” in my humble opinion.  She was intentionally hurting others.

My mother took great pride in her religiosity.  She prided herself on her spiriuality, but in truth it was all a sham.  Her gossip hurt the people she gossiped about.  It hurt their reputation, and was entirely mean spirited.  She was actually proud of hurting people and called it “witnessing for god”.  I saw this “religion” as hateful, mean and nothing to do with love or god.  There is I think a Jewish proverb that says, “Harming someone's reputation is worse than murder.”  I'm not religious, but I think this may have a grain of truth in it.

In my opinion the worst form of character assassination is the character assasination directed toward someone's own self opinion.  As an fully enlighten being we know that it is silly to find our “internal” self worth in “external” others opinions.  But this is much easier to grasp intellectually than to apply internally.  Self worth is from… guess who? - YOURSELF. 

Xaviera Hollander once said in Pentouse column……I read such drivel when I was much younger….”The only reason for being with someone else is if they make your life better.”  This makes sense to me.  There may be some past unresolved pain from criticism that you are trying to resolve by picking a critical friend.  But just keep being yourself, personality warts and all, others' disaproval says a lot more about them, than you.

In time with thought and meditation, you will truly internalize the beauty and wonder inherent in being human.  You will see that beauty and wonder in yourself, and even in your critical friend despite his criticism.  Perhaps. so clearly that he will see it in himself, and as well as you and desist from his criticism.  Paint your feelings about the situation, then analyze the painting. You will have your answer.

He isn't angry for the reason he thinks he is.  You are unintentionally triggering an association to past situation that is fearful or painful to him.  He isn't aware that he is merely a human robot responding to an internal program likely hardwired in childhood fear or pain or other traumatic experience.  It's literally a life and death instinctual reaction, doesn't the reaction really seem a little excessive in the current context?

I found great help in The Course in Miracles.  You can find it free on the Web.  It talks a  lot about God and personally I found that “God Talk” offensive.  So I simply change the word God to subconscious mind, infinite intellegence, genius, or universal mind.  I'd read a lot by then and just read the first twenty lessons and light bulbs flashed in my head.  Whether you go about it through a belief in “God within You”, genius or unlimited potential within you.  enlightenment is within YOU.

All those Bible verses my mother had pounded into me flashed through my head at light speed ” I am the truth and the way.”  Suddenly I understood  that I was my own truth.  If there was a god it had to be one within me.  Suddenly it  (whether or not there was a God) was irrelevant, the cure was within me.  The god that I follow and that seems to bring me peace is my conscience.  Not external Gods, Dogma's and Creeds.  I believed for the first time in my life that I was good enough, warts and all, no damnit I was awsome.  Believing that  honest truth did set me free.

Over the course of the prior year, I lhad listened to a lot of positive affirmations and did past pain work.  The resultant Belief in Myself gradually transformed my life emotionally, at a time that I had some extremely difficult personal crisis in my life.  I was my own highest power. 

I was so excited about that internal perception shift that the next day I wrote my first blog article (13 pages) in one day to capture the route that had taken me there.  A New Paradigm for the World.  I literally typed that monster in one day and I only have one arm.  Trust me I was inspired. 

Hope this is helpful.

Best Regards,
Jim

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

Thank you Jim, that was very well put. I know what you mean and I agree that self-righeousness is one of the worst “sins”. Justifying yourself by means of degrading others is ugly. This connects to the other thread I recently joined about envy.

I guess sometimes we are challenged in cruel ways so that our subconscious crap will really rise to the surface. Many of us have to learn to stand up for ourselves and not accpet all the shadows that other people project on us. That is maybe one way towards a greater sense of self-respect. But what is all this anyway, self-respect, self-love, self-esteem…? I think you can have a sense of self-esteem yet still be challenged in ways that are far more complicated than you could ever have dreamt of or found in a book. Very often there is a hole in the whole, a piece missing from the puzzle that makes it hard to deal with life from a standpoint of equanimity even if the elements conducive to such a viewpoint seem to be there. It would be easy to fix if you could pinpoint exactly what it is. But sometimes it's very hard to get the clues because maybe it's about really deep issues of what Truth really is.

In spiritual or psychological contexts people often recommend that you walk away from people who, as you say, act as robots to certain stimuli. Sometimes it's easy to do that. But sometimes it's really hard to go, because it feels like betrayal. Maybe because we are also repeating a pattern of sticking by our parents as children, or some such incident. Or maybe because we are not really sure if we already got the lesson in its entirety. I often find that when I think I'm clear about one issue, something new and surprising pops up from the subconscious mind. So I have, seemingly at least,  a choice of dealing with all that subconscious content or then turning away from the process and taking the easy road which is to look for a more pleasurable way of existance. However then I wouldn't have much to give to the world. And I think I want to contribute, after all. Try and put up with all the shadows in this “valley of the shadow of death”. Continue to be strong and stand by those who are also unfortunate and in need of support. I can't leave a fellow soldier to die in the warzone. I wonder if it's really bad to be a martyr? To want so much to help that you are willing to risk your own wellbeing and comfort?

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

The key to a rational life is to live in accordance with your values.  I would give my life to spare my children.  But I would not be being a martyr.  I would be acting according to my highest values.  I would be honoring my values.  I would certainly try to find alternatives that would allow me to continue to benefit my children rather than be a sacrifice.

I have problems with conventional ideas of  “sacrifice” that is promoted by some however.  There is no virtue in a life based on self denial for it's own sake in my opinion.  The greatest value we possess is our life, it is like a checking account that deposits are made into each morning and whatever is not spent is gone the next morning with no guarantee of another deposit.  I want my life's epitaph to be like my will, “Being of sound mind, I spent it well.”

Honoring our own values is greatly rewarding and leads to happiness.  Morality is a simple matter of whether or not our actions impinge well or negatively upon others.  I do not believe there is virtue in insuring that our benevolence is personally sacrificial.   Those who practise sacrifice often transfers the belief of its virtue to others and expect similar behavior from them.  I advocate we cannot build virtue on a foundation of destroying value.

I personally prefer a mutually beneficial exchange that enriches both parties rather than one at the expense of the other.  I believe humans are fabulous.  I think that they should be honored, respected, and revered.  I think that to do that we owe our first allegiance to our own well being.  Without that we loose the ability to impact the world for good for others or ourselves. 

I do not think that a system that requires ones to behave against one's well being is sustainable.  It is irrational, and leads to a circular questions for which there are no answers.  I believe it behooves us to celebrate the joy of life with those we contact.  To give sympathy and guidance to those in pain, but refrain from being a victim of their pain. 

All emotional problems: anger, jealousy, fear, worry, etc. are internal conditions.  We should help those who feel them by guiding them gently to look at the true source of their pain inside themselves.  We encourage further irrational thinking if we try to change to fit someone else's distorted picture of the way the world should be.

I truly believe that pleasing others at your expense is not the purpose of life

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

Only you can decide these questions for yourself. Strive for peace instead of upset and I believe the right course of action will present itself from you to you.  Sometimes the right action is to do nothing, but remeber that to is a choice.

Regards,
Jim 

Re: Activating other people's shadow-selves

Thank you, Jim. I think airing out these ideas has been helpful, and thank you for assisting me in this process. I''m thinking today that often when we are in doubt about leaving a certain situation it means we are not done with it yet.

In fact it was my boyfriend who explained to me what you meant by sacrifice. Although he doesn't pursue spirituality, he can sometimes be quite perceptive. He said that doing what you believe is a moral duty is not the same as sacrificing anything. Well, I still fail to see exactly how it can be different but I'll think about it. Take care! Vivi-Mari

P.S if anyone else still has any thoughts on the issue I'm willing to listen :-)