Heal the Split

You can find your passion and motivation, orient yourself differently towards your obstacles, learn why you’re here, and move into action. You can develop and increase your relationship with your deeper selves. and improve your relationships with others.

About a year and a half ago, I learned some things about my life purpose, about why I am here and what I am here to do. A core aspect of my purpose is to bring what’s in the unconscious to consciousness, both for individuals and for collectives, large and small. Doing this requires a perspective that goes beyond what we generally see with the conscious mind, and an ability to work with what we can’t see directly. I underwent extensive shadow work, learning how to work with some of what’s in the unconscious. And extending that work, I developed an understanding of the architecture of the psyche.

While this may sound rather heady, most of the work is experiential. And while the descriptions below may also seem heady, the work I describe is primarily energetic in nature.

A great deal of personal work is done in the Bay area, and a lot of it is transformational. I see there being two types of transformation in the psyche, the main difference being whether we are simply being informed about the shift or are consciously participating in bringing about the shift.

Changing the character of our energy. Most forms of energy work operate directly on the energy, producing a different sort of energy. Most of this work is done to us, and powerful energetic shifts may occur. Through sensation, emotion, or thought, we are informed internally of a shift as or after it has happened. Sometimes we have strong emotional releases, as repressed or unresolved memories are uncovered.

Changing our relationship to our deeper selves. Some of us have a sense of our identity which is a manifestation of the conscious mind, or ego. By itself, the conscious mind cannot produce deep change. Transformation comes about by changing our relationship to what is within us. This involves working with material in the unconscious, most notably the source of our behavior, reactions, motivations, and judgments.

We live in a time in our society where our attention is drawn to anything but the source. Modern medicine treats symptoms, not causes. Physical therapists often focus on the places in the body where the pain is, rather than dealing its source. Much psychological and energy work is oriented towards helping us feel better, to create a shift in our internal feeling state, rather than creating a shift in our relationship to the source of our emotions. So how can we discover the source of our trouble spots, our obstacles, our inspiration, and our motivation?

Ego and shadow

Just about everyone understands that we are made up of conscious and unconscious. Each in turn is made up of parts, also know as energy patterns or selves or sub-personalities. Carl Jung called the collections of these conscious and unconscious parts ego and Self, respectfully, also commonly referred to as the doing and being aspects. Some spiritual teachings suggest that the ego is a delusion or something for us to destroy, dismantle, or outgrow, while others teach that the ego needs to be tamed or trained. Whether the ego is real or a delusion, you spent years developing your ego, and at times, it has served you well. While we can transcend ego states for moments, we continue to have an ego. Without an ego, in an all-being state, we can’t hold down a job, or drive our car, or do anything, really. I’m fond of saying “Don’t ‘diss’ the ego.”

According to Jung, our shadow can be said to consist of energy patterns, known as selves or sub-personalities, that were disowned — pushed down into our unconscious in childhood, as part of our coping strategies to make it through the intensity of our childhood. We are largely cut off from these patterns, so they operate from our unconscious, but we are largely cut off from them, leaving them to operate without anyone minding the store, so to speak. When we have days that don’t seem to go the way we want, one or more of our unconscious selves is getting its needs met, any way it can.

Before we can engage with shadow, our egos must be ready. Our egos — grasping for importance, meaning, to be recognized, to be seen — are actually under-developed. An ego that isn’t healthy, developed, and aware will compensate by grabbing for power and control, which leads us towards isolation and away from being related to others, ourselves, and That Which Is Larger Than Us.

Reprogramming methods such as NLP parts work, operate directly on the unconscious selves, making them responsible for changing the behavior. Such methods rest on the idea of replacing behaviors that we identify as “positive” with ones we identify as “negative”.

In contrast, working with the shadow honors all behaviors and subpersonalities, acknowledging that the disowned selves, including those that sabotage us, are valuable and have often been misapplied throughout a lifetime of habituated behavior patterns. These habituated patterns are familiar and comfortable, and we go through much of our lives imagining that that’s just “the way it is” and “the way we are.”

I’ve learned that fundamentally we can’t change our patterns or our essential energetic nature. What we can do is to change our relationship to what’s there, and that such a change in relationship is what brings the possibility for transformation. Working with our shadow material makes the ego, not the parts, responsible for changing the relationship. In contrast, shadow work involves the conscious and the unconscious working together to bring about change.

True integration involves our ego and deeper selves working together in relationship.

About shadow coaching

Shadow coaching consists of a variety of access methods to consciously and curiously explore, relate, and engage with your rich and vast unconscious. Engaging your heart, your body, your mind, and your energy, methods will vary with each person and situation.

One method I use is Voice Dialogue, in which the facilitator or coach engages in a genuine relationship with an individual self (sub-personality), either in the conscious or unconscious, by having a conversation with that self. It can be quite remarkable to experience a part of you that’s blocking your path or that wields power or that is inspirational, perhaps even feeling heard for the first time, speaking what it needs and wants, and asking for a relationship with you.

Other tools and methods include: meditative practices to increase your awareness; movement to awaken and engage the body; opening to your dreams (the messages from your unconscious); working with our reactions and projections; personal practices to help nurture the relationships with the selves within, and to integrate and bring what you’ve become aware of out into your life; and planning and organizing tools, such as action plans, to help with the practical side of life. Each person’s personality, situation, needs and wants are different; therefore, the access methods will vary.

Last Thoughts

One of my clients became able to be with difficult situations in a mature and grounded way — less reactive, more stable. Although she noticed that others were being different with her, she did not experience a significant internal feeling change, and yet a friend of hers could see a greater difference in her than she herself could. Our internal experience of ourselves often doesn’t match what others can see, as they can see aspects of us that we can’t.

This work is principally a curious and intuitive exploration, and is not about feeling a particular way or having a particular experience. Transformation may not always feel good in the moment as we experience our “growing pains”. When all is said and done, what we’re doing is moving towards wholeness, where everything within us is working and playing together.

(C) 2005 Cal Simone
[First published in Open Exchange, Summer 2006.]