Page 23 - NAMAH-Jul-2021

Namah Beholding our dark shadows

are even experienced intermittently. But expecting that this is all we are made of is setting
ourselves up for immense disappointment. There is another realm of existence within all of us
which also greets us, and lives through us. In fact, since Sri Aurobindo tells us that all life is
a
Yoga, we can be sure that irrespective of engaging in a conscious sadhana or not, every human
a
being is obliged to encounter amazing, uplifting states as well as uncomfortable, shocking,
horrible aspects too.

The shadow lies within all of us around the same time as Sri Aurobindo and
the Mother, and whose insights into human
In The Synthesis of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo writes: nature probably come closest to Eastern
spirituality.
“The practice of Yoga brings us face to face
with the extraordinary complexity of our own He conceptualised shadow as that part of our
being, the stimulating but also embarrassing psyche, unconscious to us, which remains
multiplicity of our personality, the rich endless so because it is rather unacceptable to us
confusion of Nature… as soon as we go deep due to reasons of social adaptation. The
within ourselves, — and Yoga means a plunge shadow part of us is composed of all that
into all the multiple profundities of the soul, which is repressed for the sake of feeling safe,
— we find ourselves subjectively surrounded gaining social acceptance, winning friends,
by a whole complex world which we have to forming romantic relationships, living a
know and to conquer (2).” morally sound life, and ensuring that we
don’t ‘disturb’ the status quo in the family
The present article is an attempt to articulate or the larger community. In other words, the
one such realm of our inner selves, those parts shadow part of us is everything which comes
of us which we remain unconscious of till they in the way of achieving our ideals.
make their appearance either in dreams, or
difficult mood states, or any such behaviour In fact this process of repression begins very
which stun us, surprise us and which are early on in our lives, as infants, even before
quite unlike how we usually behave. It is our capacity for language and words. It is a
quite interesting that in the above lines natural process of our psyches, phenomena
from Savitri, Sri Aurobindo uses the term, which no human being can escape, which
‘shadow’ to create an image of something keeps pushing all these aspects of us ‘down
which stays in the dark, whose form and below’ where they simply wait their time, and
structure we somehow cannot see, and which keep making their presence felt in unpleasant
is the opposite of light, opposite but always emotional states (a vague depression or sadness,
its companion. simmering discontent, feeling meaningless,
loneliness, feeling inauthentic, frustrated,
The same word was used by Carl Jung, one anger, jealousies, feeling lost, stagnant, feeling
of the most prominent Western psychologists like we are not living up to our full potential,
of the last century, who was born and lived etc.).

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