Artists & Ascension  

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is
embodied in the individual’s conscious life,
the blacker and denser it is.
At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag,
thwarting our most well-meant intentions.
— Dr. Carl G. Jung

Hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself, both good and bad, which the ego has either repressed or never realized. Rejected aspects of ourselves, and also undeveloped potential. Jung said our shadow was 90% gold!— Rebeca Eigen

From Nancy Wait's blog post on www.artists-and-ascension.com

My first conscious experience (though not consciously aware) with the shadow was when I was twenty-three in London and very much alone. I had just moved into a gloomy bed-sitter in Chelsea and right away I began having a new kind of nightmare. In this dream I was being followed by a man in a hat and cape who chased me through a dark damp tunnel full of mist and the sound of water dripping. I always managed to outrun him, waking up in a cold sweat of fear and dread.

In those days I thought it was the room I had just moved into. The nightmares began on my very first night there, continuing into the second night. It was natural to assume that maybe something had happened to a previous tenant in that room, and I was picking up the vibes.

And for all I know, something could have happened there.  Something not so nice. And ghouls were still hanging around the place.  But it doesn’t matter if they were or not, because I was having the first encounter with my shadow, and he (it was always a he) would continue to follow me in various forms until I took the trouble to paint what was going on inside me.  Putting it outside of myself onto the paper or canvas so I could take a good hard look at what was coming from my subconscious.

So first I saw it (the shadow) as outside myself. It threatened me, causing me a great deal of fear in the dream, and then a feeling of wariness, sadness and malaise in my waking hours.  After a few months in that room on Oakley I began to think of jumping off the Albert Bridge and putting an end to it all.  Instead, I moved to a far more cheerful place in South Kensington.

The shadow is the same yet different for all of us. It is always personal, yet almost everyone can relate. It has been described by minds far better than mine in explaining such things, so I won’t even attempt to go there.  I prefer thinking of the shadow as just that, a shadow. Something dark lurking about. For me it has always been very visual and literal. A stranger following me. A picture of fear, anger, or longing.

Longing to be somewhere else, be someone else, be outside if I was inside, and inside if I was outside.

I was never able to get in touch with my deeper self through talking therapy – in a productive way. Talking just sent me spiraling into depression. Art, however, was a different matter. When I began tackling my inner life through painting and drawing pictures from my imagination, however awful the subject matter – fear and loneliness, loneliness and fear – I could somehow make it palpable if the picture had beauty. If it had harmony.  If it was like a sad song.  I can listen to sad songs quite happily. I can stare at sad pictures for long periods of time quite happily.

The first sad pictures I ever saw were those in an art book we had when I was a child, paintings of Christ on the cross.  The Crucifixion is a whole other topic I don’t want to get into now, but I need to mention it because it is a scene of terrible suffering and pain, and yet oh so beautiful!

There are collective shadows, cultural shadows, shadow projections, etc., and I have posted several links here to marvelous explanations in the Favorite Articles section.

Meanwhile, I am better sticking closer to home, speaking from personal experience as it is what I know best. My shadow turned out to be my friend. The threatening stranger who followed me in those early dreams, later managed to kill me in another dream.  When I woke up the next morning it was like I rose from the dead.

...........to be continued

Nancy Wait

http://artists-and-ascension.com/