“Be careful, lest in casting out your demon you exorcise the best thing in you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
Picking up where we ended last time, you should already have an idea what the Shadow aspect of our mind means.
It’s the bad boy, the wild girl in us.
But the question is - How did it get there in the first place?
Have you always had your Shadow side?
Or did you create it?
The answer lies somewhere in the middle
As we already made clear in the Introduction - the Shadow usually represents the darker, meaner and uglier side of us. In the famous novel Faust written by the german author Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Mephistopheles is a devil representing Faust’s own shadow.
Without going much deeper into the rabbit hole of morality, we can perhaps all agree that nobody on this earth is born purely evil or entirely good. We all have the capacity for the former as well as for the latter. People of course differ widely in the nobility of their intentions and overall behavior, but all of us share the same spectrum.
Our inborn capacity for doing morally bad or evil things definitely plays a role in the ways our Shadow leaks to the surface. I deliberately use the word leak here, because that’s precisely how the Shadow works. It manifests itself usually very abruptly, swiftly and without any forewarning. Our temperament has a lot to do with our shadow.
Nevertheless, although our inborn temperament has a very strong influence on the darker part of our minds, the Shadow is to a greater extent created during our lifetime, particularly in the younger stages of our lives.
Our Shadow has developed mainly throughout our childhood and adolescence
As children, we were much more susceptible and sensitive to our environment. Everything was new, our senses were running on 150% and we took up everything that happened to us and around us. The good, AND the bad.
When we were children, we didn’t care much for what’s moral and what’s not. Nor did we have any sense of what morality really means. We operated by the rule - I’ll get what I want and I’ll do whatever I can to get it.
We were ready to achieve whatever we wanted by any means necessary. This type of conduct is basically one of Nietzsche’s main principles called Will to Power. (Hence why the last stage of the Übermensch transformation is the stage of child.”) It's completely natural to every human being, though over the course of life we’re all led to think otherwise.
As we grew older we have been taught by our parents as well as by our schools that certain behavior isn’t appropriate. This is where the shadow slowly starts to form. Morality and social rules are important, but there is a tipping point, where one behaves as if they care for others more than for themselves, although the reality is different. We must not mistake empathy with self-sacrifice.
When we start sacrificing our wants, needs and desires for those of others, just to stay moral or be more liked, the material for our future Shadow starts cumulating. The problem isn’t in doing something beneficial for others, but in the reason why we do this.
Repress your feelings at your own peril
Had we decided that the happiness of the other person is momentarily more important to us than our wants, say helping your grandmother with groceries instead of going for your scheduled coffee with your friend, then that’s completely ok.
But if you decide not to take this or that T-shirt because of what others might say or if you decide to not speak up even though your so called friend mocks you in front of others for the third time in row this week, then that’s sacrificing your ego, the very center of your being, which is exactly how the Shadow comes into existence.
When we repress our own wants and existential needs and pretend that it’s “no big deal”, when we hide our pain, our self-esteem takes a hit, whether we realize it or not.
When we start lying to ourselves, when we try to convince ourselves of something that contradicts our innermost beliefs and values, the truth rears its ugly head much later in our life, often in a very drastic form.
So what exactly happens when you do that?
That’s gonna be the subject of our next episode…
Thank you for reading,
and until next time,
fellow thinker! :)
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