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Wrestling with my Shadow-Self

One night, eight or so years ago, after a period of (what is known within Christian circles as) backsliding, I was reading a recently acquired translation of the Upanishads, when I came upon the opening Upanishad in a translation by Juan Mascaro. You can read the Isa/Isha Upanishad here, but here’s a brief excerpt from Mascaro’s translation:

The Spirit filled all with his radiance. He is incorporeal and invulnerable, pure and untouched by evil. He is the supreme seer and thinker, immanent and transcendent. He placed all things in the path of eternity.

Mascaro, Juan ‘trans’, 1965, ‘The Upanishads (Isa Upanishad)’, p.49 (Penguin classics)

During my reading of the Isa Upanishad, I had a ‘revelation’ of a sort, a spiritual re-awakening that God was indeed very real.

you can check out my first Christian encounter with the divine, if you want.

In Mascaro’s translation he uses the word “Spirit,” referring to The Absolute, the Brahman, Atman, that is, the Supreme Self, that according to Hindu belief, is ultimately what we truly are. In my mind I was still thinking Holy Spirit and therefore the God of the Bible.

Up until this point I was basically living to feed my own desires, which sadly amounted to nothing more than playing endlessly on the Nintendo 64 and Playstation and smoking vast amounts of cannabis.

I knew I needed to get back to God, and so there and then I decided to quit smoking (which I managed to keep up for three months.) That night I had a dream that I was wrestling with a ‘demon’ (the only way I could describe it at the time) that had seized control of my body. And it was damn realistic. I remember banging on the wall screaming for my neighbours to help me as this ‘demon’ continued its attempt to seize control over me (as no one came to my rescue I can safely assume I was in fact dreaming). I find this very reminiscent of Aquilla’s recent post: Crystal Veil, where she recalls her fear of encountering dangerous wild beasts in dreams (Which, I think she equated with the shadow-self, which is a Jungian concept: a dark component of our unconscious mind that is our repressed selves, I think).

Somehow due to my Divine Awakening and the Dream experience I became empowered, and was able to relinquish my own desires and ego and follow God, as it were.

Despite my SA, I managed to hold down a job for three months. Rather than describing myself during this period, read Slade’s post over at Shift Your Spirits: Channelling Spirit in Your Everyday Life. Basically that was what I was like! I wasn’t totally fearless. I wasn’t Jesus after forty days in the wilderness, or like Buddha after his encounter with Kama-Mara; I still had my Social Anxiety, but it wasn’t controlling me as powerfully as before.

Incidentally, over at Traditio et Virtus: Beliefs V: Principalities and Powers, blogger Griff, shares his insights regarding our struggle “against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” Ephesians (6:12).

To Be honest I’m not massively familiar with Jung’s concept of this Shadow aspect of ourselves, and so I did a little surfing and came across this statement:

The first thing we have to do in order to begin to see our Shadowsides, is to take 100% responsibility for our lives. This is a very difficult thing to do and no one does this overnight so we have to be patient with ourselves.

The Shadow Dance: Understanding Repetitive Patterns in Relationships (Taking Responsibility for Our Lives)

Well, for me, assuming I was wrestling, not with a demon, but rather my own Shadow-Self, it totally was an overnight experience…but it didn’t last. After three months I had totally burned out. And it was some time afterwards that I began to challenge Christian dogma and eventually reached the point were I was a liberal Christian. Still a believer, but without the power, that enabled me to fight my Social Anxiety so powerfully as before.

I could go on, but I think I’ll leave it there for now.

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