part0015

The origin of wetiko disease is to be discovered within the psyche. The wetiko pathogen originally manifests as a disturbance in the field of the collective unconscious of humanity itself, creating the psychic ley lines upon which world events are erected and energized. Because of the psychic nature of wetiko, it serves us to understand the psychological underpinnings of the virus, that is, how it affects our day-to-day relationships and lives. We begin to “see” the bug when we are able to get in focus and recognize its psychological signature in both ourselves and others. The fact that the source of the wetiko germ is within the psyche means that the cure for this disease lies hidden within the psyche as well.

Wetiko psychosis is at the very root of humanity’s inhumanity to itself in all its various forms. As a species, we need to step into and participate in our own spiritual and psychological evolution, which means that we must focus our attention on and contemplate this most important topic before this virulent madness destroys us. Up until this point in our history we have been too easily distracted by the ruses of the wetiko bug itself. The disease itself is now demanding that we pay attention to it, or it will kill us. Its cure is the most pressing and fundamental issue facing us today. Author and environmental activist Derrick Jensen writes in his foreword to Forbes’s book about wetiko psychosis, “ Columbus and Other Cannibals is, I think, the most important book ever written on one of the most important topics ever faced by human beings: why is the dominant culture so excruciatingly, relentlessly, insanely, genocidally, ecocidally, suicidally destructive?” 1 A civilization usually doesn’t die from being invaded from the outside, but unless it creates culture which nourishes the evolution of the creative spirit, a civilization invariably commits suicide. As if possessed, our civilization is, trancelike, sleepwalking in a death march toward its own demise. The most pressing and inevitable question of our time is not just “Why?” but more urgently, “How can we stop this out-of-control, self-destructive, hell-bent part of ourselves?” Speaking of present-day man, Jung asks when we shall “in all seriousness seek ways and means to exorcise him from possession and unconsciousness, and make this the most vital task of civilization.” 2 When, in other words, shall we make our most vital task “waking up”?

The “problem” of the evil of wetiko is intimately bound up with the problem of the shadow , both personal and archetypal. The shadow, a term coined by Jung, is a living part of the personality. We all have a shadow, as everything substantial casts a shadow; it is what makes us human. The figure of the devil is a variant of the shadow archetype, that is, the dangerous aspect of the unrecognized dark half of the personality that represents and embodies the potentially evil powers of the unconscious. One of the inner meanings of the name Satan is the “shadow of the Lord.” The Anti-Christ corresponds to the shadow of the self, the darker half of the human totality. Lucifer, the highest of the fallen angels and the bringer of light, chooses the shadow by which to reveal himself. The very name Lucifer reminds us of his luminous origin as well as his abysmal darkness, thus recalling the bipolar character of all symbols. The shadow follows after, is inseparable from, and co-arises with the light. Psychologically speaking, the shadow is typically conceived of as the underdeveloped, undesirable, and inferior parts of our personality, the aspects of ourselves which we repress the most; it is the part of ourselves we are least proud of and want to hide from others. It is the “other” in ourselves; in terms of family systems, it is likened to a darker brother. If we consciously identify ourselves as being a good, kind, spiritual person, for example, then imagine the polar opposite of this perspective—this is what comprises the contents and informs the point of view of the shadow side of our psyche. The less the shadow is embodied in an individual’s conscious life, and the more one-sidedly the person identifies with a bright persona, the darker and more destructive the shadow becomes. Unless we are “working on our shadow” by making consistent efforts to become conscious of it, we typically relate to it by classifying it as not-self and reflexively projecting it outside ourselves onto others. Shadows are intimately related to light, in that shadows only manifest when there is light; the deeper and darker the shadow, the more powerful is the light that is casting the shadow. It is an archetypal, universal idea that the highest value is to be found in the lowest, that the blessing is to be found in the curse, and that wisdom is to be found in ignorance. Paradoxically, the inner light of our soul is discovered in the shadowy parts of the psyche that we deny, dis-own and marginalize. In alchemy, the mystery of the self is to be found in those parts of ourselves of which we are ashamed, have revulsion for, and turn away from in disgust. The secret and basis of the entire alchemical opus is referred to as the prima materia, which has to be found before the work can begin. The elusive, unique, and enigmatic prima materia is the chaos, darkness, and raw material out of which the “gold,” the awakened mind, is born. The aspects of ourselves of which we think the least, despise the most and reject are the very parts which contain the precious jewel.

Meeting ourselves, who we really are, always involves a meeting with our shadow. Coming to terms with the shadow is so important that Jung says, “The future of mankind very much depends upon the recognition of the shadow.” 3 To deny the shadow is to unwittingly feed it and become possessed by, and thus an instrument of, its potentially destructive aspects. The inevitable result of not discovering, embracing, and integrating the shadow is, on the personal level, to be compulsively driven to never-ending interpersonal conflicts, and on the collective level, to be driven to create and perpetually be involved in endless wars. The only struggle genuinely worthwhile is with the power-drive of the shadow within ourselves.

One of the main opportunities for wetiko to become empowered within us is when we are unconscious of our shadow. People who are split off from and unaware of their shadow, who think they are too wonderful and have an overly positive image of themselves, will unwittingly be taken over by and act out their shadow in the world. The extent to which we are unconscious of our shadow is the extent to which we are unaware of our potential to unwittingly enact our unconscious in ways which could be hurtful. The evil of which we are unconscious in ourselves will be secreted and insinuated into the surroundings and there it will work its discordant effects.

Psychologically speaking, “shadow projection,” that is, the projection of evil, is at the very root of wetiko disease. Shadow projection is itself the unmediated expression, revelation, and playing out of the shadow. Shadow projection is a process in which, without conscious awareness of what we are doing, we split off from and project out our own darkness onto others. It is an outer reflection of the initial process within ourselves of our be-night-ed effort to exterminate our own darkness. Shadow projection is our misguided attempt at a “final solution” to the problem of the evil within ourselves, and it actually deprives us of our capacity to deal with evil. Projecting the shadow opens up the door and invites in the vampiric entity of wetiko to make itself at home in the most intimate spaces of our psyche. It is through the dynamic of shadow projection that the wetiko bug digs in and entrenches itself within our psyches, where it is then able to commandeer the executive function of the psyche for its own ends. When we project the shadow, we unwittingly become a conduit for evil to possess us from behind, beneath our conscious awareness, and to act itself out through us. Projecting the shadow, while seeming to deliver us from the specter of evil haunting us within ourselves, is the primal act which generates the very evil that we are attempting to avoid in the first place. In a nefarious form of the repetition compulsion, the only way to prevent a return of the projections is through their continued projection. Wetikos need an enemy and will even create new ones to ensure that they don’t have to look at the evil within their own hearts. Putting evil outside of ourselves, however, is the primary sign of its presence working within. We have already committed the evil act when we leave our evil for other people to carry. Jung simply refers to shadow projection as both “basic evil” and “the lie,” which by association is related to the symbolic figure of the devil, whose meanings include “the accuser” as well as “the liar.” Shadow projection is truly of the devil, being a project(ion) of the devil, who sinisterly lurks behind the projection and guides it in deceptive ways that divide us against ourselves, keeping us truly in the dark. We can’t project, however, what we don’t already have within ourselves.

In the act of shadow projecting, we perpetrate violence (psychic and/or physical) not only on ourselves, but also on the “other” who is the receptacle for our shadow projection. Paradoxically, the recipient of our projections embodies our own weakness, while simultaneously representing the malevolent other. Though neither physical nor quantifiable, projections are palpable things with a subtle body all their own that affect their recipients. At the heart of the occult arts of witchcraft and black magic, shadow projections can negatively burden the recipients, even making them physically sick, as well as insinuating into the atmosphere and evoking out of the recipient the very qualities being projected upon them. When someone throws negative projections onto others, it is as if they are darting poisonous projectiles into them. In shadow projection, we split off from and try to get rid of a part of ourselves, which is a self-mutilation that is actually an act of violence simultaneously against both self and other. We then react violently when we encounter an embodied reflection of our shadow in the outer world, wanting to destroy it, as it reminds us of something dark within ourselves that we’d rather have nothing to do with. This act of external violence is an outer dramatization of our inner process of doing violence to a part of ourselves changing channels and expressing itself in, as, and through the external world. The darkness inside of us is trying to get rid of the darkness in the outside world, as if the darkness is trying to get rid of itself, which is the very act that generates, and is generated by, the darkness in the first place.

Trying to kill our shadow as it appears in the outer world is itself the embodied reflection of our original inner act of splitting off from, projecting outward, and trying to destroy the dark part of ourselves that we despise, which is the impulse at the root of shadow projection in the first place. In other words, our present-moment “inner” activity of projecting the shadow outside of ourselves is being dreamed up and played out in the seemingly “external” world with “real world” consequences. The outer world is the canvas upon which our inner process embodies and incarnates itself. We are literally acting out en masse on the world stage our inner process of disassociating from, projecting out, and trying to destroy our own darkness. The inner psychological process of shadow projection is spilling outside of the boundaries of our skull (i.e., our inner life) and is manifesting and revealing itself in the outer world through collective world events. Just as in a dream, our inner psychological process is projected outside of ourselves, and both literally and symbolically dreamed up into materialization in the seemingly outer world.

How can we possibly see straight and benefit the world if we don’t see our own darkness? When we shadow-project, we hypnotize ourselves into believing that our shadow exists outside of ourselves. Originating in the depths of the archetypal psyche, shadow projection is typically imbued with and carried by religious, archetypal energies. In its extreme form, the enemy is seen as the devil, the principle of objective evil in incarnate form, while we identify ourselves as the heroic agent of God, the principle of divine goodness and justice. This polarization is an expression of the extreme split and dissociation between the psychic opposites within the one projecting. Like a narcotic, shadow projection produces only an apparent relief, however. In reality, our shadow can’t be cast off from ourselves, because it ultimately belongs to us. Even when we project the shadow outside of ourselves, we are still unconsciously fascinated by, fastened together with, and linked to it, as if an elastic connection exists between the cast-off shadow and ourselves. Becoming fascinated by our externalized shadow as it appears projected out and dreamed up in the world serves to distract and protect us from dealing with the evil within ourselves. Projecting the shadow onto an “enemy” conjures up and empowers the enemy, as our projection carries the fear we involuntarily and secretly feel for our own evil over to the other side, considerably increasing the formidableness of its threat. The dreamlike nature of this world is such that if we project out our own darkness, the world will shape-shift to provide convincing evidence that the evil actually does exist in concrete and verifiably real form outside of ourselves, which serves to confirm to us our delusion in a never-ending, self-generating feedback loop with no exit strategy.

In shadow projection, we attempt to master and experience power over the internal condition that originally proclaimed to us our powerlessness not by becoming conscious, but rather by unconsciously identifying with, becoming, and then acting out the power to externally destroy. This is a state in which thanatos, the death instinct, has become eroticized. Unconsciously identified with and possessed by the death force, we self-righteously use destruction for the gratification of our unfulfilled power urges and sadistic drives. Unconsciously acting out unbound power in an orgasmic, blissful, massive discharge of inner frustrated destructiveness freed from all restraint is our perverse way of defending against the internal breakthrough of feelings of abject helplessness. Our acting out in this way is to void all inner tensions, as well as our attempt to attain the complete reversal of our inner condition. Evacuating and relocating our inner darkness outside of ourselves by demonizing the “other” seemingly protects us from feeling our vulnerability and pain. Our inner anxiety about our existential “power to be” attempts to resolve itself in the power to act free from restraint. Unconsciously acting out like this is an unmediated expression of our disempowered inner condition; it neither surmounts the need for compulsive repetition nor heals our trauma, however, but rather it preserves and cements our trauma even further. Wetikos’ modus operandi, their “M.O.,” becomes to root out and kill everything that feels tender, vulnerable, and alive within themselves, thus systematically murdering anything and everything within them that could possibly melt or produce a crack in the ice that encases their heart.

Unconscious feelings of guilt are one of the major causes of shadow projection, as well as its result. Unwilling and unable to consciously experience their sense of guilt and remorse of conscience, full-blown wetikos are afraid of being exposed, of being found out, which is an outer reflection of the terror that the wetiko parasite within us feels at potentially being illumined. A misguided attempt at absolving ourselves of our guilt, when we shadow-project we secretly feed an unconscious sense of guilt, because we inwardly know we are not in our integrity. This sense of guilt itself is the very feeling from which we split off and from which we try to hide. Our guilt does not allow us to consciously feel our guilt, which in a vicious cycle is what we secretly feel guilty over. Unable to consciously experience our guilt animates more shadow projection, which further fuels the wetiko pathogen in a continually self-regenerating feedback loop. To the extent that we aren’t able to consciously experience our guilt, we become caught in an infinitely perpetuating double-bind in which we project out our guilt and darkness, which just perpetuates the very thing we feel guilty about, ad infinitum. To the extent that we are unwilling and/or unable to consciously experience our feelings of guilt, we are guilty of unconsciously enacting something to feel guilty about. Like Shakespeare’s Macbeth, in order to live with this guilt we are compelled to repeat the very thing about which we feel guilty, increasing its scope each time, as if this would magically undo the original error. This process continues until we are no longer troubled by it consciously, which is to say the guilt is then sealed away in the crypt of our deepest unconscious and we have become psychically deadened to feeling. Atrocities may now be condoned, even celebrated, which would normally horrify the human heart un-anesthetized by the wetiko pathogen. Deep down in the depths of our unconscious, however, we feel guilty about what we are doing, as we are “missing the mark” so completely that it is the very hallmark of the idea of “sin.” Consciously feeling their guilt is the last thing someone afflicted with wetiko would want, because to feel their guilt is to initiate a process of self-unraveling.

To quote Jung, “Increasing psychological insight hinders the projection of the shadow, and this gain in knowledge logically leads to the problem of the union of the opposites. One realizes, first of all, that one cannot project one’s shadow on to others, and next that there is no advantage in insisting on their guilt, as it is so much more important to know and possess one’s own, because it is part of one’s own self and a necessary factor without which nothing in this sublunary world can be realized.” 4 The part of us that consciously experiences and witnesses our guilt is the guilt-free (innocent) part of us. When we consciously experience our “feelings” of guilt in a real, “full-bodied way” (compared to an “intellectual” way, in which we only experience the “idea” of our guilt), the underlying guilt, as if released from being stuck in a frozen block of ice, begins to melt, move, and transform. Interestingly, consciously feeling our guilt and remorse of conscience, the very feelings that someone stricken with wetiko is unable to feel, is the very inoculation from the germ. Fully experiencing one of the opposites, our feelings of guilt, constellates its opposite, as we become introduced to the part of us that has always existed in primordial purity. This innocent part of us has simply been temporarily hidden by our unwillingness to experience our own evil and corresponding guilt. To the extent that we’re not awake, we are all complicit in what is being dreamed up in our world, which is to say we all share a collective guilt. Paradoxically, the tragic fate of consciously experiencing our guilt, shame and sin, and thereby experiencing a genuinely remorseful conscience, introduces us to the part of ourselves that is innocent. We have to feel our guilt as our possession before we can offer it; we can’t surrender if there’s nothing to let go of. Jung writes, “One can miss not only one’s happiness, but also one’s final guilt, without which a man will never reach his wholeness.” 5

When we are not owning and taking responsibility for our shadow, we will dream someone up outside of ourselves to live out our shadow for us. Shadow projection doesn’t happen in a void—the universe simultaneously calls forth the projection. When someone is unconscious of their shadow, they will literally attract others’ shadow projections onto themselves, as if they have become, in Jung’s words, “psychic flypaper.” Their unconsciousness of their shadow ensures that they will unconsciously act it out, which offers a “hook” on which others can “hang” their shadow projection. The recipient’s hook perfectly draws out the other’s unconscious shadow projection, which has a potentiality for becoming conscious, and hence uses the indirect and circuitous method of projection onto an outer object so as to express itself in some way.

When there is mutual shadow projection between individuals, groups or nations, each side has an unconscious investment in the other playing out the projected evil so as to prove their own self-righteous innocence, a vicious cycle which engenders even more indignation at the other’s indisputable evil, ad infinitum. This dynamic binds them together, becomes self-reinforcing, giving both parties clear justification to feel like victims, thereby continually feeding the diabolical polarization in the field. The wetiko bug, which covertly inspired the conflict in the first place, is then able to gorge itself on the polarization, as it strengthens itself on the very divisiveness and discord that it generates. Mutual, reciprocal shadow projection is a cardinal symptom of collective madness while, at the same time, being the very act which generates the collective madness of which it is a manifestation. When mutual shadow projection happens en masse, it is as if the archetype of evil becomes activated in such a way that it emits its toxic radioactivity underground, through the shared unconscious of the collective. This evil infiltrates and progressively fractures the psychosocial matrix of humanity, eventually manifesting itself collectively as conflicts, oppression, waves of criminality, war and destructive psychic epidemics.

These two roles—the “projector” of the shadow and “recipient” of the shadow projection—are interdependently co-joined, not existing in isolation from each other, but rather, in intimate and inextricably entangled co-relation to each other. Both roles reciprocally co-arise together, interdependently conditioning, implying, evoking and mirroring each other. Etymologically, the word “mirror” means the “holder of the shadow.” Jung’s close collaborator, Marie-Louise von Franz, has pointed out that Spiegel , German for “mirror,” is cognate with the Latin word speculum , and goes back to Old High German scukar , “shadow-holder,” from skuwo , “shadow,” and kar , “vessel.” 6 Mirrors don’t lie, they show us not our persona, but our true face. The violence that is being perpetrated between these two polarized agencies couldn’t happen without their mutual cooperative antagonism. They are secretly tied in a timeless embrace, each role unable to exist without the other, for they are inseparably interconnected. They go together so deeply as to not be two isolated roles joined together; rather, they are indivisibly one and comprise a greater whole system. These two roles, projector of the shadow and recipient of the shadow projection, are parts of one and the same process, like two sides of the same coin, informed by, contained in, and united in a deeper unified and unifying field. A deeper archetypal process is revealing itself to us as it becomes visible through their interplay. Mutual shadow projection graphically illustrates how the shadow plays itself out and incarnates itself via our relationships, whether with other people or the world at large. This process reveals to us how the shadow of wetiko works, keeping itself employed through the ultimately spurious “self and other” dichotomy. Mutual shadow projection is also showing us, if we have eyes to see, how we dream up, while at the same time are dreamed up by, the universe (see the dreaming-up process in the Glossary). This process is critically important to understand if we are to find the way out of the insidious and entangling trap laid by wetiko.

In mutual shadow projection, each side needs an adversary who embodies the shadow so as to justify their compulsion to project the shadow outside of themselves, and vice versa. The projector of the shadow and the recipient of the shadow projection are simultaneously playing both roles, as the projector of the shadow is the recipient/embodiment of the other’s shadow projection, and vice versa. Mutual shadow projection becomes an insidious self-generating and self-fulfilling feedback loop, as the more we project the shadow onto someone, the more they embody the shadow we are projecting, and the more they embody the shadow, the more we feel justified in projecting the shadow onto them, ad infinitum and vice versa. Once we fall under the subtly blinding spell of projection, we not only don’t know we’re projecting, but are convinced that we are clearly seeing the other for who they truly are. It is this dual conviction of our innocence combined with the presumption of the objectivity of what we are seeing that seals the spell and makes it so hard to see through and snap out of. Both parties, the projector of the shadow and the recipient of the projection, unwittingly coordinate themselves and behave in such a way as to provide convincing evidence to each other that makes it appear that their shadow projections are objectively true. Because of the self-entrancing nature of shadow projection, both parties become fixed in their belief that the other really has the attributes that they are ascribing to them. Once we convincingly experience the evil outside of ourselves, we have all the evidence we need to further strengthen our conviction that this is objectively true, which only strengthens the shadow projection.

The people, groups, or nations we project the shadow onto simultaneously embody and play out the very shadow we are projecting, and it is impossible to tell which came first or caused what—their manifesting the shadow, or our projecting it. In a circular, synchronic cybernetic feedback loop, our adversaries are concurrently pulling the shadow projection out of us by embodying the shadow, while we are evoking out of them the very shadow we are projecting. This acausal and nonlinear process is beginningless in time, with no first cause. The process of projection happens at the speed of light, and since it is well known in physics that time stops at the speed of light, this is to say that this process happens in no time. It is an atemporal process that exists outside of time, that is then experienced by the observer as if it is manifesting in time. All parties are reciprocally evoking (dreaming up) and being evoked by (dreamed up by) each other in a self-generating, synchronistic feedback loop (the aforementioned “dependent co-arising” of Buddhism, see this page ). Once the reciprocally co-arising nature of the situation is seen, the argument of who “started” it reveals itself to be beside the point. A much more relevant question is: who is going to have the integrity and courage to step out of the vicious cycle and stop the endlessly self-perpetuating violence? As far as any individual is concerned, the responsibility to break this cycle is always our own, as it is only our own self over which we ever really have any control.

It is important to differentiate mutual shadow projection from the fairly rare and exceptional situation where one party is projecting the shadow onto an “other” and the recipient doesn’t respond in kind. When we are the receptacle of projections, it almost always induces counterprojections on our part (analogous to the transference/counter-transference dynamics in analysis). If the recipient of the projection is able to bring to consciousness the “hook” within themselves that has attracted the projection, and metabolizes the counterprojection that has gotten activated within them, then they aren’t compulsively driven to take part in the dance of mutual shadow projection. Not getting hooked by the shadow projection thrown their way (which is to not “buy into it” and secretly agree with the projection), they are then potentially in the role of “healer” if they can allow themselves to be the screen for the other’s projection without reacting in kind. This can create the space for something other than the reciprocally self-reinforcing black hole–like vortex of violence and hall-of-mirrors madness of mutual shadow projection to occur.

There is a danger, however, in the process of attempting to recognize, own, and withdraw our shadow projections. Until integrated and made conscious, the shadow, by definition, is always trying to obfuscate and conceal itself. Even the part of us that wants to integrate the shadow so that we can be free of it might itself be an aspect of the shadow, as the shadow can usurp even our most well-intentioned efforts to serve its nefarious agenda.

The shadow itself is not “bad,” it is a mere “shadow” with no substance. It is our turning away from and avoiding our shadow which is the very act that is both created by and creating the darkness from which we are turning away. In making the shadow conscious we must be very careful that the unconscious does not play yet another trick on us and prevent a real confrontation with the shadow. We might see the darkness in ourselves for a moment, but the next moment convince ourselves that it is not so bad after all. Or we might be seduced to wallow and indulge in our self-pity, remorse, and melancholy over seeing unbecoming parts of ourselves. This dishonesty, this refusal to see, ensures that there will be no real confrontation with the shadow. Yet if there were an actual coming to terms with the darker parts of ourselves, then with increasing consciousness the good and the positive features would come to light too. In the process of embracing and integrating the shadow, so much darkness can come to light that our inner being eventually becomes permeated with light, and consciousness necessarily gains in scope and intensity. If we don’t deal with our shadow, which entails confronting our own capacity for evil, we cannot be responsible for its manifestations within ourselves, which at the same time unknowingly incapacitates us from truly claiming the good that lies within us as well.

As paradoxical as it sounds, when we are compassionately mirroring back someone’s shadow, we are actually introducing them to their light. Being in genuine relationship with others can help us to cultivate our soul and genuinely see our shadow. For example, when we feel that our unconscious shadow is seen by our intimate partner, we know that we have been seen with our hand in the cookie jar of our own unconscious, and this fact affects us. Having our unconscious being seen by someone outside of ourselves is very different than when we are alone and momentarily see and subjectively experience our own shadow, which can quickly turn into a mere intellectual insight and “idea” of our shadow. Inwardly registering that our shadow is seen “objectively” by someone outside of ourselves activates a deeper process within our psyche of seeing our own darkness, as if the other person seeing our shadow is a reflection, a projection in the outside world of the part of us that’s beginning to see our own darkness within ourselves.

The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow doorway, whose painful constriction none of us are spared who want to know ourselves. A benefit of recognizing and withdrawing our shadow projections is that this act empowers us to more directly and effectively deal with the evil that is manifesting in the outer world. When we recognize the shadow within ourselves, we become more immune to moral decay and psychic infections such as wetiko. If we learn to deal with our own shadow, we have truly done something real and of significant benefit for the whole world. We have then succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved problems of our day. Whenever we deal with the darkness within ourselves, our realization nonlocally registers throughout the entire field of consciousness, which changes everything. Paradoxically, shadow projection is both a severing from a part of ourselves while simultaneously being the very way in which we become conscious of and potentially assimilate the part of ourselves from which we are dissociating; how things turn out depends upon if we recognize what is being revealed.

When we recognize that we are projecting the shadow onto someone, not only do we realize that they are a mirror reflecting the darker part of ourselves, but encoded in this insight is the even deeper realization that they are not just a two-dimensional mirrored reflection—the flat, silvered surface of our mind, so to speak—but truly our “dream character,” a part of ourselves appearing to us in the (dis)guise of “an (embodied) other.” As if in a dream, they are a nonlocal emanation of this darker part of ourselves that we have split off from, projected outside of ourselves, and literally dreamed up into full-bodied incarnation so as to potentially recognize. Integrating this “other” part of ourselves into our own self-image is to literally have an expansion of identity, as we no longer identify ourselves as a skin-encapsulated ego that is separate, isolated, and alien from the world outside of us. Interestingly, in the Apocryphal Acts of John, Christ says, “A mirror am I to thee that perceivest me.” 7 To recognize that the world is a mirror of ourselves is to have an expansion of consciousness and an enlargement of our identity. Perceiving Christ in and through the mirror of the world is, in a very real sense, to be “knowing” Christ, which is to have genuine “gnosis.” As Jung points out, when Christ says he is a mirror, on the one hand, his function is to reflect back our subjective consciousness, making it visible to us. On the other hand, as a mirror, Christ does not merely reflect back the empirical person, but reveals our transcendental wholeness.

Ultimately speaking, shadow projection is potentially revealing to us that we are secretly tied to, interdependently connected with, and ultimately not separate from our own worst adversaries. The paradox of shadow projection is that on the one hand it is divisive and creates separation and conflict, but on the other hand it is revealing to us how we are secretly united with our enemies, and hence can potentially be the very way in which we learn that we all are on the same side. Let’s not shadow-project onto shadow projecting. On the one hand, it is a healing and whole-ing process to withdraw our shadow projections. From another point of view, however, since there seems to be such a strong energy that is animating shadow projections in the first place, there is real value and merit in exaggerating and amplifying our shadow projections within a safe, ritualized container so as to really see, unfold, creatively express, and potentially liberate what is underlying the projections. Shadow projection, the psychological process which is fundamentally an act of imagination, is at the root of war, while simultaneously being the very medium through which we potentially can realize the wholeness within ourselves and our oneness with each other. Encoded in the process of shadow projection is a potential blessing; hidden in the pathology is its own medicine. How utterly paradoxical—once again we see that the root of all of the destruction in our world is itself the very thing that can wake us up. How things turn out all depends upon our recognizing what is being revealed to us, which is to say that how events in our world play out is a function of how we dream it.

Paradoxically, in descending into the depths of the unconscious in order to deal with the prima materia of the shadow, we are simultaneously on the path of ascending to the truly real, as we become introduced to the higher-dimensional light worlds of spirit. Going inward is going upward in consciousness, dimensionally speaking. It is an archetypal, shamanic idea that we have to descend into the unconscious, making a nekyia , a night sea journey, into the perilous depths of our own darkness so that we can discover the “pearl of great price.” The initial alchemical stage is the nigredo, the blackness of death, the darkness darker than dark. The nigredo involves a genuine encounter with the leadlike saturnine aspect of the shadow, which contains the spirit of depression, a downward movement into the depths of the psyche that is felt as melancholia. This is a state that needs to not be medicated out of existence, however, but is actually the seed for the coagulation of the future birth of the living opus.

Acknowledging the psychological reality of evil, bringing this evil to consciousness, and integrating our shadow are all crucial steps along the way to our wholeness. The process of recognizing and withdrawing our shadow projections, however, opens and propels us into an even deeper process of spiritual transformation. When we are involved in the process of integrating the shadow, we become a problem to ourselves, in that other people are no longer the problem—we are. This brings to mind the famous line from the Pogo comic strip, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Instead of identifying with one side of a two-sided polarity and splitting off from and projecting our darker side outside of ourselves onto others, in dealing with the shadow that belongs to us, we are truly carrying “the cross” we were meant to bear. When we withdraw our shadow projections from the outside world that we have cast onto “others,” we get in touch with the “other” within ourselves. The bitterest foe, a legion of enemies out in the world, does not equal our worst adversary, the “other” within us who dwells in our own heart. Judas incarnating as one of Christ’s intimate disciples is symbolically expressing this same deeper, archetypal truth: our true enemy is not a distant enemy, but an intimate enemy, an enemy within our own inner circle. The seemingly outer enemy is actually an embodied reflection of the adversary within ourselves.

Recognizing and owning the shadow is not an intellectual activity, but a suffering and “passion” which involve the participation of our whole being. When we are bearing and dealing with our own shadow, we are holding the psychic “tension of the opposites” that the cross symbolically represents. To hold the tension of the opposites is to be able to embrace and contain both the dark and light aspects of our true nature simultaneously, without dissociating and projecting the shadow outside of ourselves. To consciously hold this tension is truly a crucifixion for the ego, a genuine “passion play” which activates a deeper process within the core of our being, constellating life in its deepest sense and thereby bringing forth its mysterious and latent powers. This is the deeper symbolic meaning of why holding up a crucifix to a vampire takes away its power, as the cross is a living symbol of holding the tension of opposites which Christ himself suffered. (It should be noted that whenever I refer to Christ, I am not talking metaphysically, but am contemplating Christ as a symbol.) To be holding the tension of the opposites is to be genuinely “imitating Christ,” as to be holding this creative tension without splitting off from our darkness is to be increasingly living our lives as fully and authentically as Christ lived his. No longer intentionally straining after imitation, this is a living experience of the deeper psychic reality represented by the sacred legend.

Holding the tension of the opposites is radically different from when we split off from and project outside ourselves one of the opposites so as to get temporary relief from our ordeal, which always results in developing a symptom, a dis-ease in the core of our being. Bearing the tension of the opposites can energize a thrust forward, potentially propelling us over our edge into a place beyond ourselves. Out of this creative tension can emerge what Jung calls a “reconciling symbol,” also known as the “transcendent function,” a spontaneous manifestation of the spirit whose function is transcendence. The figure of Christ (who unites the heterogeneous nature of God and humanity in one being) on the cross is an example of such a symbol precipitating into and out of the universe itself. His cross is a living symbol in that it represents both the state of being a vessel filled with divine conflict, while at the same time resolving this conflict as it unites the opposites in a greater totality. This transcendent function helps us to overcome our lower nature while at the same time revealing, transcending, and uniting the opposites within ourselves in a more complete totality. We experience this as grace, as an unveiling of our true nature and an expansion of consciousness. This realization is not something we could have thought of by ourselves, but occurs to us with the force of a revelation, as if it comes from something beyond and transcendent to our limited selves. It should be noted that this experience of “grace” does not rid us of the shadow, which is part of our human inheritance, but prevents us from being dominated and overtaken by it.

Seen as a dream, the Christ event was an inner, archetypal process that was playing out within the collective unconscious of humanity that literally got dreamed into materialization as its own self-revelation. Seen as a dreaming process that is playing out in the collective psyche of our species, it makes no difference whether the Christ event actually historically happened or not. The Christ-image is a genuine symbol that has arisen in and out of the human psyche which speaks to, is an expression of, and transforms the imagination itself. It never would have had the powerful effect it did on so many people over two millennia if it weren’t a symbol that touched something alive in people’s psyche. To say Christ is a symbol in no way devalues him or detracts from his divinity. On the contrary, to say that the Christ event is symbolic is to affirm that it points to something greater than itself, that it is an actual portal into a deeper dimension of our being. To say that Christ is a symbol is, alchemically speaking, the highest praise.

Seeing Christ symbolically means to view him as representing something that was, and is, going on deep within the collective unconscious of humanity. The French scholar Georges Berguer writes, “Jesus had incarnated in his death and resurrection an inner experience that had existed potentially for centuries in the human soul, but that had never passed beyond the sphere of the dream [i.e., beyond the realm of the unconscious]. He translated into life the secular dream of the peoples.” 8 Seen psychologically, the fact that an inner psychic process had become externalized and dreamed up into the world (be it the physical or imaginal world) is an expression that a projection is in the process of being withdrawn, being interiorized, and becoming conscious (for those who recognize what is being revealed). Instead of being blindly, instinctively, unconsciously acted out, in the Christ event this archetypal process is being humanized and voluntarily—and consciously —lived out. Christ willingly went to his death; he could have evaded it, but he declined. In a self-sacrifice, he laid down and offered his own life; no one took it from him. Love for others, rather than compulsion, leads him to the cross. Pilate, Herod, and the rest are but dream characters sent by “Central Casting” to play their necessary roles, merely instruments of a divine purpose. Interestingly, it is only by allowing himself to be completely bound by darker forces on the cross does Christ actualize true freedom. Only by not resisting evil, by allowing himself to be taken by darker forces, while still being in touch with who he was—his true, divine nature—was Christ able to possess the forces that possessed him. We can do the same when we connect with the Self that Christ represents. Paradoxically, by seemingly binding us, evil can potentially enliven the part of us that is truly free.