Scared of Our Shadows (an exerpt)
By Chuck DeGroat
Lent invites us to consider a very stark reality about ourselves - that we're a mixture of dark and light. The darkness - what some psychologists call the "shadow side" - is often unknown to us, remaining just beneath our awareness. We often think it's better left there, anyway. We're scared of those dark shadows.
Do you want to know your shadow side? Just ask someone who knows you well - a spouse, a good friend, an employee. Consider this. A boss asks his employee, "How do you experience our relationship?" She says to him, "When I'm around you, I feel imperfect, unqualified, under-performing." Now, it might be true that the employee is sub par, but the wise employer will ask himself, "What part of my own shadow side am I projecting on to her?" Perhaps he'll discover his own perfectionism. Or, maybe he'll see his profound inability to trust others.
In many religious traditions, this self-knowledge is rightly called "wisdom." However, today we're often scared to reveal our shadow. How many employers ask, "How do you experience me? How do I make you feel?" How many spouses check in regularly with, "How is my own psychological baggage impacting you?"
What we learn, if we consider our shadow, is that much of what we judge others on is what we, ourselves, have not yet dealt with in ourselves. Our baggage is readily transmitted when unexamined, unacknowledged, unexplored. Chances are, if you're ready to blame or critique, even now, your own shadow might be more powerfully operative than you think.
This is why the early Christians envisioned a season of Lent, a "springtime" of the soul offering new life through an honest acknowledgment of our heart's dark deception.
There is soil to be turned over, depths to be explored. And in that most scary, shadow place, you might be even find a ray of light called Truth, with the smile of a forgiving Savior right behind it...
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