This article keeps on resonating deeper and deeper.
I've known this for a long time. Perhaps since my first acid trip. Knowing and seeing the presence of Shadow in all humans, it made me (precariously) cocky enough for me to approach it and feel into it.
Our communities of neo-pagan-tribal-hippies are so enamored with beauty and bliss -- as perfectly illustrated by the festival scene and the music scene -- and so ill-equipped with the tools necessary to handle Shadow that a veneer of dogmatic spirituality covers everything as a warm blanket, leaving it up to a few people to wrestle with the Shadow of the whole community, including the demons we create so we can cast them away in the illusion that it will make everything better. At the same time, we cannot ask for each and everyone to always wrestle with Shadow because we feel that they need it. We certainly cannot effectively blame, shame, guilt, belittle, or demonize others in doing so. When we do, we engage them with our own Shadow.
DEEPER INTO SHADOWS
Shadow is messy and possibly one of the least sexy thing you can imagine.
It is also inside each of us.
You encounter yours during an experience or journey, or you may encounter someone else's when you catch them in an unspeakable act or they tell you a story that points to it.
The deep primal or emotional turn off you feel should give you a clue that you touched it.
Something alien. Something ugly, sometimes terrifying, that will leave you confused and at a loss for words. A vague vile disgust you'll want to steer away from. Enough to kill any illusions you might have of yourself or another person. In fact you may find that the image you perceive of yourself or them is diametrically opposite. You'll never look at someone quite the same way. It is the dark belly of the underworld, different from what you see out there in the media because the media would crumble if it really showed us Shadow.
Superhero and other movies make it look like a short single simple phase in the hero's journey, but the reality is much more layered, rich, and disturbing. It is the dark recesses of a fractal multi-dimensional maze of beliefs and values you can never fully escape because your sanity IS the maze, and escaping it would mean madness.
Shadow is at best touched carefully and knowingly, and integrated slowly, for if you swallow too much of it at one time it will turn you inside out and eat you alive and spit you out at the other end, leaving you with nothing. From there, integration will give power if it doesn't erode you over time. Some simply avoid it because they've either seen too much of it already -- trauma, abuse, oppression taking their tool -- or they live in a life blissfully unaware until the day they rub up against it and open their eyes.
Enter at your own risks.
Read the underlying article here.