Tag: spirituality

Shadow

November 3rd, 2024

I have definitely been watching too many horror movies this October. In the spirit of Halloween and to provide a fitting denouement to my previous two posts, I want to discuss Shadow. Despite the creepy imagery the word evokes, it has become a framework used in psychology and therapy.

Carl Jung was the first to discuss shadow work. Your shadows are the parts of your subconscious that unknowingly influence your life choices.

For example, you tell yourself you play video games because it’s fun. But subconsciously, you don’t feel heroic enough in everyday life, so you need to get that fix. You give your kid the iPad because it has an educational game for her to play. But, really, she is annoying the crap out of you. You sabatage good relationships because you are attached to imaginary relationships and so on.

One of the hard lessons kids must learn while growing up is that people have hidden motivations. They say one thing while doing another. It’s not just our own internal world that is dissonant with the external appearance we show off; it’s everyone elses too, which makes dealing with society insane. It’s a complex problem.

It’s not just that we misrepresent ourselves to others; worse still, we lack self-awareness of our motives.

So goes the inspiration for virtually every horror film. There is something hiding from you. Sabotaging you. Stalking you. And you don’t understand where it came from.

Every monster, ghost, and ghoul are bursting from some unknown place to make their presence known in the external world. But, Horror films are no exception to my False Dawn post. The external world is a reflection of the internal journey.

The monster is hidden in your own subconscious.

The monster is some part of yourself you don’t want to face. Some hidden belief you don’t want to admit to. Some trauma you are avoiding.

So, what is the solution? Other than the hero’s journey mumbo jumbo, I incessantly bore my readers with.

Shadow work.

The process of pulling your subconscious into your conscious. Integrating the parts of yourself, you don’t like, are ashamed of, and are controlling your perception of yourself. Who knows how to deal with it? There are a million ways. But you can’t start dealing with self-sabotage until you acknowledge its existence.

Using myself as an example, when asked what I am looking for on a date, my refrain goes, “Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.” Along with a short monologue about what those principles mean to me.

It’s a great elevator pitch, but is it true?

If I wanted to, I could write down 500 things I look for on a date. Some of them correspond with my principles. Others wouldn’t. Others still, I would be embarrassed to admit.

That act itself is Shadow work.

This gets us back to my last post about our “standard of living” outstripping our standard of living.

Human beings are finite creatures with infinite desires. Happiness comes down to our ability to control and prioritize those infinite desires. Try to capture their essence in a thoroughly practical world.

As Arthur Brooks repeatedly puts it in the podcast, the goal is “moving things from your limbic system to your pre-frontal cortex.” Putting the CEO part of your brain at the wheel and the animal part of your brain in the backseat.

Your subconscious and emotions are not bad, but there are a lot of traps. Patterns of behaviour that keep you from being the person you want to be that have to be understood at the CEO level.

But, really I was looking for a way to shoehorn my psychological babblings in a spooky seasonal way. Happy Halloween!

Life Update:

The Setting Ducks lost in the championship, further delaying my elusive volleyball title, despite the endless leagues I have played in.
The “Spark”

June 2nd, 2024

The Spark has a branding problem.

When talking to people in 5+ year relationships, they almost uniformly dismiss it out of hand as romantic nonsense. To single people, they say, “Why don’t you date this person X? Or person Y?” Most often, the answer single people give is they just don’t feel any attraction or chemistry towards person X or Y.

Dating podcasts/books/coaches are similarly frustrated by the spark. Cynically, this is because the spark cannot be easily manufactured, controlled, or integrated into self-development strategies. However, their frustration comes from a real place.

Experience says that the spark is just as likely to turn into an explosion that burns your whole life to the ground as it is to develop into a comforting fire that warms you on a cold night.

The problem is that our intuition is not always tuned for success. People with avoidant/anxious attachment styles are susceptible to the spark leading them to harmful relationship patterns.

Sometimes, we only want what we can’t have. In this case, someone right for us comes across as boring.

Searching for the spark can doom us to a scarcity mindset.

Since it is so rare to feel the spark, we do anything possible not to mess it up when we do feel it. This leads to desperation. Suddenly, we allow our boundaries to be trampled upon, become people-pleasers, and move all of our plans to see this person. This lowers our value to the other person. When the other person starts pulling away, we double down and panic to try and keep them.

Dating podcasts call these common patterns ‘trauma bonding.’ We’d like to bond with a partner based on kindness, consistency, and mutual giving, but instead, we bond through jealousy, fear, and insecurities.

Add to that, some people are naturally charismatic and ‘sparky.’ They just have a way of getting people to fall for them. Usually, these people leave a trail of broken hearts through fake bonding.

Worse still, psychologists believe we can become addicted to this sparkiness, where we relentlessly chase and worship the feeling instead of the object of the feeling.

In other words, the reputation is well-earned. However, the baby cannot be thrown out.

Despite its bad reputation, most singles feel that lack of chemistry is holding them back. Love is not a primarily rational thing. It’s difficult to think yourself into spending your life with someone. That’s why most successful relationships start with ‘It just felt right.’ Trusting your intuition is much easier than reasoning your way into it.

I entirely admit this is a different process, depending on the person. Some expect love at first sight and instant chemistry. Others look for the slow burn and will grow more sure with time. For some, love must be passionate, spontaneous, and adventurous. Others just want to feel safe and comfortable. Some people aren’t very intuitive and find spark talk foreign.

However, for most people, that intuitive ‘just feels right’ feeling is a healthy and necessary part of building a long-term romantic relationship. Being in a relationship means that you are bonded to that person. Otherwise, when things get complicated, you will leave.

It just doesn’t do to be indifferent to your life partner. That’s settling.

I don’t know if there is an ultimate solution to this problem. For me, I focus on living by my principles and being dead honest with myself about who I am. Life is best when my intuition and analytical brain are in sync.

Often, we can feel when our intuition is out of tune. It doesn’t align with our best selves. That’s when you have to do some digging.

If I intuitively feel something is not quite right with someone, it takes me some time to understand why. But, usually, my head and heart come to an agreement.

Don’t chase feelings. Don’t deify them. Don’t ignore them. Try to get to a place where you can trust them.

Update: My team won the Pickleball championship. It’s about damn time. I have done so many of these freaking social leagues to finally win one. Very fun season!

This summer, I will be taking a break from the journey as I have a lot of travel planned. I am going to San Francisco for an AI conference and have a couple of family vacations planned.

Tag: spirituality

Shadow

The “Spark”