0
SPEAKER_01
Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
0
SPEAKER_01
Today s guest is Jungian therapist and author Connie Zweig, author of many incredible books about the shadow.
0
SPEAKER_01
Hi, it s Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread.
0
SPEAKER_01
On this show, we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we re here.
0
SPEAKER_01
Pulling the Thread is about big questions.
0
SPEAKER_01
Why we do what we do, how we can understand our own experiences within a larger spiritual and historical context, the ways in which we might begin to understand ourselves and each other better, and what s required to heal ourselves and our world.
0
SPEAKER_01
I ll be joined in conversation by luminaries and wise elders, those who have laid tracks on their work and lives to help us bring meaning and understanding to a world that often feels chaotic and overwhelming.
0
SPEAKER_01
My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow.
0
SPEAKER_00
If you have a reaction to a stranger or someone in the media or someone in politics or someone who s just this kind of blank slate because you don t really know him or her, then it s a projection.
0
SPEAKER_00
And yes, there s often a sensation in the body that s negative.
0
SPEAKER_00
It could be fear.
0
SPEAKER_00
It could be distrust.
0
SPEAKER_00
It could be disgust, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
And then there s the flip side.
0
SPEAKER_00
There s positive projection, which happens in the spiritual universe a lot.
0
SPEAKER_00
When someone is looking for a charismatic leader, then they re going to project their own awakening, their own compassion, their own wisdom onto the leader, the clergy person.
0
SPEAKER_00
So the content of the projection can be anything.
0
SPEAKER_00
what we view as negative, what we view as positive.
0
SPEAKER_01
So says Connie Zweig, a Jungian therapist and author who has focused much of her career exploring and teasing out the implications of the shadow, which is how Carl Jung referred to the unconscious.
0
SPEAKER_01
Chances are that you ve been hearing more and more about shadow work.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s having a moment, for sure.
0
SPEAKER_01
In part, I m convinced, because it s a concept whose time has come.
0
SPEAKER_01
As I ve written about a lot in my Substack newsletter, we are swimming in collective shadow, unable and unwilling to process our share of it.
0
SPEAKER_01
When we don t take on this unconscious material or darkness, our tendency is to then project it onto other people and groups to get away from it as quickly as possible.
0
SPEAKER_01
But of course it doesn t work like that.
0
SPEAKER_01
Our shadow is ours.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s our blind spot.
0
SPEAKER_01
When we re willing to face our shadow, to access it, to allow it to emerge, we often find that it s full of gold.
0
SPEAKER_01
In fact, Jung believed that the shadow is the source of all of our energy, the main mechanism for growth.
0
SPEAKER_01
Ask anyone who has gone through hard or dark times and they will likely tell you that the experience propelled them forward in unexpected ways, often for the better.
0
SPEAKER_01
Connie and I explore all of these concepts and then some, as she is one of the most prodigious writers in the space.
0
SPEAKER_01
She co-authored Meeting the Shadow and Romancing the Shadow, which are essential anthologies and texts, and then more recently she wrote Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, which explores what happens when the shadow, or darkness, is unresolved in spiritual and religious communities.
0
SPEAKER_01
She is also the author of The Inner Work of Age, Shifting from Role to Soul, which is an exploration of the shadow of aging in our ageist culture.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m hoping she comes back to the podcast soon so we can discuss that book at length.
0
SPEAKER_01
Okay, let s get to our conversation.
0
SPEAKER_01
I m thrilled to talk to you, and thank you for your work.
0
SPEAKER_01
It s funny knowing a little bit about you.
0
SPEAKER_01
I ve listened to you on a handful of shows.
0
SPEAKER_01
I loved Meeting the Shadow, obviously, because it s so many thinkers that I love to read.
0
SPEAKER_01
But I loved the introduction.
0
SPEAKER_01
And so I m thrilled that now, I know you did that book a while ago, but that you, from that point on, started writing your own books.
0
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, Meeting the Shadow was a collection.
0
SPEAKER_00
that came together when I worked in publishing and we published it at our house.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then later I ended up getting my PhD in depth psychology and I had had a career as a journalist, so I was really familiar with writing.
0
SPEAKER_00
So, Romancing the Shadow was about the method of shadow work that I developed with my colleague, Steve Wolf, and wrote the book with him.
0
SPEAKER_00
And it s about how we
0
SPEAKER_00
can work with these parts of ourselves in relationships, romantic relationships, friendships, workplace relationships, parents, kids, and so on.
0
SPEAKER_00
That part of us that sabotages us, that acts out, that might get lost in addiction or depression, criticism, moods, habitual patterns that we feel we lose control of.
0
SPEAKER_00
Those are unconscious parts of ourselves that are emerging spontaneously and often repeatedly in relationships.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so I really wanted to kind of wrestle with that in romancing the shadow.
0
SPEAKER_00
And later I wanted to extend that into these other arenas.
0
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, well, I m pretty sure that everyone listening is familiar with Carl Jung and shadow, and you gave a bit of a definition there.
0
SPEAKER_01
But do you mind defining the shadow for people or blind spot or however you like to do it?
0
SPEAKER_00
So when we re growing up, and we re seeking the love and approval of adults in our lives,
0
SPEAKER_00
We notice that certain traits or behaviors get love and approval and certain ones don t.
0
SPEAKER_00
They get disapproval, maybe even punishment or abandonment.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so we learn very quickly and unknowingly.
0
SPEAKER_00
We re just little sponges and we re taking in these messages.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s good.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s okay.
0
SPEAKER_00
Be polite.
0
SPEAKER_00
Look happy.
0
SPEAKER_00
be generous, take care of your mother, whatever it is that you get rewards for.
0
SPEAKER_00
And then we also learn what doesn t work.
0
SPEAKER_00
So don t cry, don t get angry, don t touch your body, don t act out at school, don t rebel, don t question authority.
0
SPEAKER_00
And as we re growing,
0
SPEAKER_00
Our conscious personality, what we call the ego, takes on all those traits that are approved of and rewarded, and everything else gets stuffed into the shadow, the personal unconscious.
0
SPEAKER_00
The shadow is the name that Carl Jung gave to the personal unconscious.
0
SPEAKER_00
So the ego and the shadow are developing in tandem, and the process is inevitable.
0
SPEAKER_00
Because we can t express everything.
0
SPEAKER_00
We can t live out every trait and every talent and every
0
SPEAKER_00
feeling that we ever experience.
0
SPEAKER_00
And so there s bound to be a certain amount of material that goes into the shadow.
0
SPEAKER_00
And people tend to think that it s negative, but it s only negative in relation to the ego, in relation to what the ego feels and judges about it, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
Whether it s shameful for the ego.
0
SPEAKER_00
So our natural talents can go into the shadow if they are not rewarded by the family,
0
SPEAKER_00
So if the family only approves of academic performance and someone is naturally artistic and really wants to paint or draw, but that s devalued, then that talent gets repressed, it gets buried in the shadow.
0
SPEAKER_00
So all kinds of things, all kinds of treasures
0
SPEAKER_00
can be hidden there.
0
SPEAKER_00
Feelings, the full spectrum of feeling is rarely explored in a family, right?
0
SPEAKER_00
Parents can t tolerate it.
0
SPEAKER_00
if kids lose control, whether in anger or sadness.
0
SPEAKER_00
So a lot of feelings get sacrificed into the shadow.
0
SPEAKER_00
So this is an inevitable and a natural process.
0
SPEAKER_00
It happens with everybody, every human being, developmentally as we grow up.
0
SPEAKER_00
And we notice, you know, as teenagers, kids often become more rebellious and act out some of what was forbidden before that.
0
SPEAKER_00
And at midlife, some of us have experienced time is running short and there s so much I haven t lived out.
0
SPEAKER_00
So I m gonna crash and burn my life, leave my marriage, leave my career and move my location and completely live out a different life.
0
SPEAKER_00
That s the shadow material erupting in a midlife crisis.
0
SPEAKER_00
And often a similar thing can happen in a late life identity crisis.
0
SPEAKER_00
When we re in our 60s or 70s, for example, and we begin to feel regret.
1
SPEAKER_02
about the life we have not lived and we begin to go seek out different kinds of self-expression.
1
SPEAKER_02
So this process is with us all through our lives, but nobody really guides us on how to recognize unconscious material.
1
SPEAKER_02
and how to work with it to make our lives deeper and richer.
1
SPEAKER_00
That was beautiful.
1
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
1
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, this idea that it s negative.
1
SPEAKER_00
I mean, Freud held that belief, right, that the shadow of the unconscious was negative.
1
SPEAKER_00
Was that sort of one of the reasons that there was a schism between
1
SPEAKER_00
Jung and Freud, where Jung was like, actually, this is maybe the most important stuff of life, what s in the unconscious that s begging to emerge, be integrated, be part of who, well, it is part of who we are, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because I think that s how so many of us operate.
1
SPEAKER_00
Like, I can just project it.
1
SPEAKER_00
I can disown it.
1
SPEAKER_00
This is in my shadow, in my blind spot.
1
SPEAKER_00
not perceptible to me, even though it might be glaringly obvious to anyone who sees you, right?
1
SPEAKER_00
We just sort of drag these trash bags along behind us, convinced that we re not those things?
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, so the poet Robert Bly, beautiful, great poet, described the shadow as that long bag we drag behind us.
1
SPEAKER_02
And if we spend the first half of life filling it up, and the second half of life taking things out.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, nice quickie image to get the process.
1
SPEAKER_02
He was good at that.
1
SPEAKER_02
You know, there s a sense of between Freud and Jung, there were a number of issues that they disagreed on vehemently.
1
SPEAKER_02
One basic one was how they viewed the unconscious.
1
SPEAKER_02
And Freud tended to focus on sexuality,
1
SPEAKER_02
and sometimes aggression, and was sort of much broader than that in what he thought was unconscious.
1
SPEAKER_02
But there was also the idea of the collective unconscious and mythology.
1
SPEAKER_02
And, you know, Jung ended up exploring that more.
1
SPEAKER_02
And there were other disagreements, but I would say that, you know, none of psychology would have happened without Freud.
1
SPEAKER_02
He was a unbelievable pioneer.
1
SPEAKER_02
And Jung in some ways stands on his shoulders
1
SPEAKER_02
and just expanded the terrain, as did other people, as did many of the early psychoanalysts that each went in their own direction.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m Rachel Martin.
1
SPEAKER_01
After hosting Morning Edition for years, I know that the news can wear you down.
1
SPEAKER_01
So we made a new podcast called Wildcard, where a special deck of cards and a whole bunch of fascinating guests help us sort out what makes life meaningful.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s part game show, part existential deep dive, and it is seriously fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
Join me on Wildcard wherever you get your podcasts.
1
SPEAKER_01
Only from NPR.
1
SPEAKER_00
So there s the collective unconscious, and as you mentioned, that s sort of where our mythology comes from, these archetypal images, stories that we can locate in our own lives and in the wider culture.
1
SPEAKER_00
And in your mind, is that the same as sort of the cultural shadow or different?
1
SPEAKER_00
Because maybe every era feels this way, but it feels like we have some major cultural shadows too that we re dragging around looking to sort of
1
SPEAKER_00
figure out who the enemy is, who s the bad person, who can we project all of our anxiety, dismay, bad feelings, discomfort, lack of certainty onto?
1
SPEAKER_00
Are those different concepts?
1
SPEAKER_02
So, you know, the personal shadow or the personal unconscious forms, it s embedded in a family.
1
SPEAKER_02
So there s actually a family unconscious.
1
SPEAKER_02
So if you look at families and their secrets, you start to see how as little universes, they carry their own unconscious process.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then the family is embedded in a community.
1
SPEAKER_02
It could be a neighborhood.
1
SPEAKER_02
It could be a church or synagogue.
1
SPEAKER_02
It could be all different kinds of community, an ethnic community.
1
SPEAKER_02
And those groups have their own shadows.
1
SPEAKER_02
What s forbidden, what s unacceptable in that community that gets hidden.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then those communities are embedded in larger, let s say, California or the West or Moscow and the Soviet Union or some kind of national shadow.
1
SPEAKER_02
Israel has its own shadow issues.
1
SPEAKER_02
Palestine has its own shadow issues.
1
SPEAKER_02
And then there s global issues in terms of humanity as a species.
1
SPEAKER_02
and what s collectively in the shadow, unexpressed, hidden, outside of awareness.
1
SPEAKER_02
So there are these layers and most individual humans like me can t really perceive all that stuff directly.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s too complex.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s bottomless really.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s too complex.
1
SPEAKER_02
Jung wrote about objective evil when he was trying to understand the collective dark side.
1
SPEAKER_02
I don t use that language.
1
SPEAKER_02
I think that that language, because it s theological, is really charged and kind of dangerous.
1
SPEAKER_02
So you mentioned projection a couple times, Elise.
1
SPEAKER_02
So projection is when we unknowingly attribute this unconscious part of ourselves that s in our own shadow to somebody else.
1
SPEAKER_02
And we walk into a party where we don t know anyone.
1
SPEAKER_02
And we look at that person and we say, oh, wow, she s really seductive.
1
SPEAKER_02
Or he s really lazy.
1
SPEAKER_02
Or he looks like an alcoholic.
1
SPEAKER_02
Or she looks like XYZ.
1
SPEAKER_02
And we attribute to them something that s in ourselves that s in a blind spot.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so they become a mirror.
1
SPEAKER_02
for our own shadows.
1
SPEAKER_02
And when we begin to work with our projections, we begin to learn a lot about ourselves.
1
SPEAKER_02
So groups do that too.
1
SPEAKER_02
And we can see this playing out really intensely all over the world right now.
1
SPEAKER_02
In Ukraine, in Israel, archaic, timeless, enemy-making, where groups, communities, religious tribes, cultural tribes are projecting
1
SPEAKER_02
demonizing, turning other human beings into other so that they can then kill them and feel no guilt.
1
SPEAKER_02
And so shadow projection takes on these huge dimensions and these political consequences that can be really startling and tragic.
1
SPEAKER_02
The immigrant is carrying a lot of projection in our culture now.
1
SPEAKER_02
People of different races project onto each other.
1
SPEAKER_02
Ageism is another unconscious bias that carries the stigma of projection.
1
SPEAKER_02
Homophobia.
1
SPEAKER_02
So this is all, from my point of view, shadow projection.
1
SPEAKER_02
And it leads to a lot of our cultural and social justice issues.
1
SPEAKER_00
No, I agree very much and have tried to sort of dig at this in newsletters and otherwise.
1
SPEAKER_00
I definitely think there s a lot of projection against white women as well and the carnification of our culture.
1
SPEAKER_00
You can just find groups, right, who tend to hold the trash bag for other people, who become safe targets for all of our dismay.
1
SPEAKER_00
On the personal level,
1
SPEAKER_00
How do you know when you re projecting?
1
SPEAKER_00
I wrote a book, it s called Honor of Best Behavior.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s about women and the seven deadly sins and the way that we ve been conditioned for quote unquote goodness.
1
SPEAKER_00
I didn t really realize it at the time, but another Pacifica young yin was like, oh, this is kind of a book about the cultural shadow of women and everything that we ve been conditioned to disown.
1
SPEAKER_00
or disassociate from, and then we tend to judge and criticize other women who are, as you said, seductive, sexual, lazy, gluttonous, is the way to determine if you re in a projection or you re projecting when someone is just irrationally chafing your hide, when you have that discomfort in your body that you then, there s a passion.
1
SPEAKER_00
that you want to get rid of?
1
SPEAKER_00
Is that how you can tell?
1
SPEAKER_02
It s an exaggerated, irrational, emotional response that s not based on knowing someone.
1
SPEAKER_02
So if you have a reaction to a stranger or someone in the media or someone in politics or someone who s just this kind of blank slate because you don t really know him or her, then it s a projection.
1
SPEAKER_02
And yes, there s often a sensation in the body
1
SPEAKER_02
that s negative.
1
SPEAKER_02
It could be fear, it could be distrust, it could be disgust, right?
1
SPEAKER_02
And then there s the flip side.
1
SPEAKER_02
There s positive projection, which happens in the spiritual universe a lot.
1
SPEAKER_02
When someone is looking for a charismatic leader, then they re gonna project their own awakening, their own compassion, their own wisdom onto the leader,
2
SPEAKER_01
clergy person.
2
SPEAKER_01
So the content of the projection can be anything, what we view as negative, what we view as positive.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s almost like we all have a little bag of quivers on our back.
2
SPEAKER_01
And every once in a while, we shoot out an arrow, and it hits the target.
2
SPEAKER_01
And sometimes the target fits, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
That person really is wise or really is lazy.
2
SPEAKER_01
And sometimes the target doesn t fit, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And the arrow like falls off and you have to go, hmm, okay, maybe I have to rethink this and I m not perceiving it correctly, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
But the point is we re giving something away.
2
SPEAKER_01
When we re in projection, we re giving away something in ourselves.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when we fall in love and we think to ourselves, oh, this guy is never gonna do what my father did, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
Whether it s leave me or yell at me or whatever it is.
2
SPEAKER_01
This guy s different, he s present, he s available, he s committed, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
He s smart, he s kind, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And so we have all these positive ideas about this guy after six months of knowing him and we get married and what happens?
2
SPEAKER_01
The man gets triggered.
2
SPEAKER_01
The man gets triggered and he s angry and he s verbally abusive and oh my God, she s with her father again.
2
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, so there s a perfect fit between her shadow and his shadow.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s a fit.
2
SPEAKER_01
This is what romancing the shadow is about.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so, you know, from my point of view, that s the reason that so many people get divorced.
2
SPEAKER_01
We have such a high divorce rate because everybody s triggering everybody s shadow material and nobody knows how to work with it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nobody knows how to make a conscious relationship
2
SPEAKER_01
and a commitment to accountability for our own shadow material and understanding of the other person s shadow so that we can communicate about it in a way that s constructive and not hurtful.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how much time you spend on social media.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m trying to increasingly move away.
2
SPEAKER_00
I wrote a newsletter about this last night, actually, about how there s this instinct right now.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you can tell me, but maybe as depth psychology becomes less and less and less available to people,
2
SPEAKER_00
we re getting more increasingly ill-equipped to deal with this, but I m seeing a level of policing, and again it goes with the positive projection and the negative projection around wanting the world to conform to our preferences and our opinions and our views, and then a level of aggressiveness
2
SPEAKER_00
around how dare you not feel or think the same about every single issue as I do, I would like you to conform to my preferences.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s really interesting, but it s terrifying too when we think about how our world only seems to become increasingly complex.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s so little within our control.
2
SPEAKER_00
Certainly not other people.
2
SPEAKER_00
Other people are not within our control.
2
SPEAKER_00
But it s, to me, alarming.
2
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if you ve seen an increase or if you think that this is a through line and maybe I m just more conscious of it.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think that Western postmodern, post-industrial culture is being more and more tribalized.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that within our tribe, we want everyone to be a perfect mirror of us.
2
SPEAKER_01
And that s a kind of narcissism.
2
SPEAKER_01
We want the reflection back, that our beliefs are correct, our positions, our values.
2
SPEAKER_01
We want the validation.
2
SPEAKER_01
That then allows the people in the other tribe to be the bad ones.
2
SPEAKER_01
And this has been, you know, very exacerbated by Donald Trump.
2
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s one of the consequences of his sociopathy that s emerged.
2
SPEAKER_01
So, you know,
2
SPEAKER_01
In Meeting the Shadow on the Spiritual Path, I write about spiritual communities.
2
SPEAKER_01
And one of the reasons that people are drawn to spiritual groups is what you re describing.
2
SPEAKER_01
They want to be with people who are like-minded and like-hearted and live with less uncertainty and less doubt.
2
SPEAKER_01
and less anxiety because their values and priorities are being mirrored by the teacher and the group.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so they feel okay about themselves.
2
SPEAKER_01
They feel a sense of belonging, a sense of fit in those groups.
2
SPEAKER_01
And one of the reasons that that makes people susceptible to spiritual abuse and religious trauma is because that need to belong is so intense from childhood.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a really early unmet need in a lot of people.
2
SPEAKER_01
And when it gets met or the possibility of it gets met, people can t leave.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they can t stand up and speak out.
2
SPEAKER_01
They don t want to rock the boat.
2
SPEAKER_01
They may witness some kind of physical or verbal abuse or some financial abuse.
2
SPEAKER_01
And they can t stand up because they don t want to lose just what we re talking about, the mere reflection of their own psyche, of their own values, of their own beliefs.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s too daunting a risk to take for most people.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so some of these groups develop cult-like qualities.
2
SPEAKER_01
where nobody s questioning authority.
2
SPEAKER_01
Nobody s doubting the teacher.
2
SPEAKER_01
And the teacher then begins to attain more and more power.
2
SPEAKER_01
And part of it is because of what we were talking about before, about projection.
2
SPEAKER_01
So projection goes two ways, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
So the student is projecting onto the teacher.
2
SPEAKER_01
He or she knows more, wiser, kinder, more evolved, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And then the teacher is carrying all that projection.
2
SPEAKER_01
And in some cases, it s dozens of people projecting.
2
SPEAKER_01
And in some cases, it s millions.
2
SPEAKER_01
In India, there s millions of people projecting onto teachers.
2
SPEAKER_01
Imagine what that feels like after a while.
2
SPEAKER_01
There s an incredible burden in carrying the projection of spiritual leader on from other people.
2
SPEAKER_01
Whether this is a Catholic priest,
2
SPEAKER_01
or a shaman in a psychedelic community, or a Roshi in a Zendo, or a rabbi in a synagogue.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s the same dynamic of projection, of sending and receiving the projection.
2
SPEAKER_01
And often what happens is these clergy people don t have peer support.
2
SPEAKER_01
So they don t have someone they can go to and say, you know, I m getting depressed, or I m getting depleted,
2
SPEAKER_01
I m having sexual fantasies.
2
SPEAKER_01
They can t express their own needs.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so they act them out.
2
SPEAKER_01
Then the shadow takes over and they act them out and there s incredible harm done.
2
SPEAKER_01
And so I wrote about these kinds of allegations in dozens of communities around the world that are happening right now because I needed to understand.
2
SPEAKER_01
I needed to really research this to understand how is this possible?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
How is it possible that people in advanced stages of spiritual development could still act out so much shadow material?
2
SPEAKER_01
Power shadow, sexual shadow, money shadow.
2
SPEAKER_01
How is this possible?
2
SPEAKER_01
So that s why, you know, I wrote Meeting the Shadow in the Spiritual Path.
2
SPEAKER_01
And it s a lot about what we re discussing, this dynamic between the believer s shadow meeting the teacher s shadow,
2
SPEAKER_01
and falling in love, right?
2
SPEAKER_01
And finding that match, that feeling of fit, that feeling of belonging, and then somebody acting out.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a fantastic book, and there are so many people, as you obviously know, who have suffered spiritual abuse.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s so much guru energy in our culture of that sort of outsourcing of authority, outsourcing of decision-making to someone else.
2
SPEAKER_00
And you mentioned Jung talking about evil and avoiding that because of its theological
2
SPEAKER_00
bent.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I think what often happens, right, in spiritual communities is this idea, particularly in our culture that s so fixated on this sort of ascension, dissension, like, we can get out of here, we re going to evolve out of here to somewhere better, that there is an escape from evil, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
When evil is out there or darkness is out there, there is this absolute goodness or light
2
SPEAKER_00
which isn t the point.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I think that s so embodied, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
People fail to see that we re all full of darkness.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re all full of shadow.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s who we are.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re human, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
It s our job to do this processing, do this mixing, do this metabolizing, rather than disavow it.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s no other way through.
2
SPEAKER_00
Is that one of the mechanisms, that certainty of goodness, the certainty of moral righteousness, the
3
SPEAKER_01
certainty of some assured path to salvation that you think is what pulls people, you know, that we don t have to live in this nuanced duality that we can cut right to the front of the line with our spiritual teacher?
3
SPEAKER_01
Is that the pull?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that depends on people s level of development.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in the yoga world, or the meditation world, there are a lot of people who are longing for light.
3
SPEAKER_00
for transcend, for awakening, what we now call non-duality, we used to call it enlightenment.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there are a lot of people who have this, what I call holy longing, this yearning
3
SPEAKER_00
to go beyond ego and connect with something greater.
3
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of teachers say that if you stay with that, if you attain that, your problems go away.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is a solution to everything.
3
SPEAKER_00
This certainly happened to me in my 20s when I started meditating, and that s what the teacher said.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now we have a term for that called spiritual bypass.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we recognize that we actually can t bypass our psychological and emotional development through spiritual development, that they re actually separate lines of development, and that some people can be very advanced spiritually and not good at relating, not good at communicating, and not even empathic.
3
SPEAKER_00
in some cases because of personality disorders.
3
SPEAKER_00
And those personality character issues don t get healed through meditation.
3
SPEAKER_00
They require psychological work.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then you can have people who are very advanced spiritually, who are not developed morally.
3
SPEAKER_00
And they may even have written ethical standards, the 10 commandments or something, but they haven t internalized that really in their own development.
3
SPEAKER_00
They feel like they can violate it with impunity.
3
SPEAKER_00
So they can sleep with their students, for example, tell them they will be enlightened by having sex with them and feel no guilt or shame about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it doesn t mean that those teachers are not awake in some level.
3
SPEAKER_00
They can have some spiritual awakening and still be acting out in this very kind of cruel and sexist ways.
3
SPEAKER_00
Some of it is cultural because a lot of them come from very patriarchal monastic systems, you know, and they haven t, as you say, digested or processed that and moved out of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
They still have patriarchal egos.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so that s how they re responding, even though they re in this postmodern setting.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so the systems in those communities are set up in a way that s kind of colluding with the abuse.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like the Catholic church.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, has anything really systemically changed in the institutional systems of the Catholic church since all the scandals?
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t know, but I ve never heard of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve heard of big payouts and diocese going bankrupt, but there s no change in celibacy.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s no change in ordaining women.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s no change in hierarchies.
3
SPEAKER_00
Some of these smaller communities have similar systemic issues.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I write about,
3
SPEAKER_00
two communities that actually took that on to redesign the systems after scandals blew up their communities.
3
SPEAKER_00
So individual spiritual shadow work, which is the second half of the book is about, how to really reclaim your projections, how to reclaim your own spiritual light, your own beliefs, your own bodily sensations, your gut wisdom,
3
SPEAKER_00
your range of feeling.
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember in my 20s in my meditation community, I wasn t supposed to look unhappy.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t supposed to get angry.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t supposed to be sexual.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, a whole range of my humanity was cut off, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
So beginning to kind of take back these lost parts of the self, whether it s from Catholicism or Islam or Orthodox Judaism, you can read many people s stories now of leaving Christianity.
3
SPEAKER_00
People are leaving the church in droves.
3
SPEAKER_00
The recovery process is very similar to alternative communities, yoga and meditation communities, because the dynamic is so similar.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the inner work is quite similar with spiritual shadow work.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then the collective spiritual shadow work on the communities, as I mentioned.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this for me is very personal.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think very timely because so many people are really walking away from institutional religion, Mormonism.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I have people reach out to me, you know, from all over the world, all kinds of organized groups, having been very traumatized, many of them suffering from PTSD.
3
SPEAKER_00
very, very traumatized and having taken years to be able to leave.
3
SPEAKER_01
There are two places I want to go with you.
3
SPEAKER_01
One is you mentioned this nihilistic, narcissistic, postmodern, highly deconstructed moment in culture.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I want to explore that with you in this idea of order, disorder, reorder, and maybe we re in the disorder phase of this triangular cycle.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know.
3
SPEAKER_01
I m curious for your thoughts.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wanna go there and then I also wanna talk about, I know you re friends with Ken Wilber and you mentioned this idea that I think so many of us have been taught that there s this horizontal order, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
That if you can reach a spiritual state, then you are inherently enlightened.
3
SPEAKER_01
And his point is like, that s how you get enlightened Nazis, without the sort of concurrent pillars of development, emotional health, mental health, spiritual health, that these things
3
SPEAKER_01
are independent, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
And must be worked simultaneously.
3
SPEAKER_01
So that was a lot.
3
SPEAKER_01
I defer to you.
3
SPEAKER_01
But those are two places I d love to hear you go.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, you know, Ken describes it as growing up is the psychological work.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cleaning up is the shadow work.
3
SPEAKER_00
Waking up is the spiritual work.
3
SPEAKER_00
And showing up is our service, our contribution.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that s a good kind of quickie way to describe human development.
3
SPEAKER_00
It isn t just one of those strands.
3
SPEAKER_00
I m working with a group called Association for Spiritual Integrity, which is offering webinars and community and peer support for people who are having spiritual breakthroughs, some of whom are teachers and shouldn t be.
3
SPEAKER_00
some of whom are students and want to understand this more, and really exploring how do we include moral development and shadow awareness into this process.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I m hearing a kind of a bias in you and your speech, you can tell me if I m right or not, against hierarchy.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I like holarchy.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I ve been meditating for more than 50 years.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I can say that there are advanced spiritual states.
3
SPEAKER_00
And a state is transient.
3
SPEAKER_00
It comes and goes.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there are advanced spiritual levels or stages.
3
SPEAKER_00
Ken calls them stages, levels of consciousness that are more permanent, that are more lived in.
3
SPEAKER_00
My husband lived in a very advanced stage.
3
SPEAKER_00
of non-duality.
3
SPEAKER_00
And he s still got his neurosis.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s very human, very human.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
We can say that, you know, hierarchically or in terms of the ascent that you mentioned earlier, he has attained something in the spiritual line of development.
3
SPEAKER_00
He s also very psychologically aware.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, he s a psychologist, but he s got his stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I think that we have to kind of stretch to hold all of this, and it s a lot, all of this potential for human consciousness.
3
SPEAKER_00
I know I would say probably a dozen people who are in very advanced stages of their practice, but it doesn t mean that they don t get angry.
3
SPEAKER_00
or they don t get depressed, or they don t get mean, or they don t get triggered.
3
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t mean that.
3
SPEAKER_00
They re still very human, or that they have very undeveloped skills in some areas.
3
SPEAKER_00
We spent a lot of time with a man who was really very, very advanced, who just didn t know how to handle money at all, and ended up cheating us about something.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s this way in which very few people are integrated in their development, are bringing together
3
SPEAKER_00
shadow awareness, spiritual awareness, emotional awareness, and it s more than a lifetime s work.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a big handful.
3
SPEAKER_01
Hopefully that s so relieving for people
4
SPEAKER_01
people to hear because I think that so many of us think I will reach a point in my life where I m unfazed, where I don t get pissed, where I m always kind to my children and my husband.
4
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, we hold this idea of perfection, which is a lie, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
Rather than understanding where we are.
4
SPEAKER_00
No perfect human.
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_00
No, perfect human.
4
SPEAKER_00
Perfect is just the wrong word.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s the wrong vision, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s the wrong vision.
4
SPEAKER_00
So in terms of your other question about disintegration and reintegration and cycles of disorder and order, I don t know that I can comment on that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it looks to me, you know, like we re in a very dark age right now that
4
SPEAKER_00
We re in these giant wars again, and there s so much primitive behavior, primitive belief, primitive projection.
4
SPEAKER_00
And there s a lot of fear as a result, and a lot of retreat from engagement, I think, for a lot of people.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s really sad.
4
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes I cry a lot about it because I feel a lot of grief.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m grieving for humanity right now.
4
SPEAKER_00
I really feel that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m grieving for humanity.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s all, for me, comes down to humanity s level of consciousness, our stage of awareness.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because it s so obvious that most people are kind of alligator stage, just how it is.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I m not sure what the reorganization is going to look like.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what s going to emerge from this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Chaos, nobody knows.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, I know.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just read, speaking of Wilbur, his book about truth and the post-Trump world and trying to wrap my head around spiral dynamics and this hope that maybe as we see, yes, there s so much red and there s so much of that futile primitive energy and there s so much, I would say, green in the shadow.
4
SPEAKER_01
You mentioned my bias towards non-hierarchy.
4
SPEAKER_01
Actually,
4
SPEAKER_01
really think we need order and that knowledge, wisdom, experience need to be revenerated in our culture.
4
SPEAKER_01
Of course, I love sort of the rise of expertise for people who might not otherwise have had an avenue, but it s terrifying, right, that most of us are learning history from TikTok influencers and, you know,
4
SPEAKER_01
being therapized by 22-year-olds.
4
SPEAKER_01
So yes, I am craving the reemergence of a nested, holarchical, not a dominant suppression-based hierarchy, of course, but order, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
A reverence for the systems and structures that ensure our electricity and access to roads.
4
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, I m not an anarchist.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, some of your terminology in this section, I would state as we need the emergence of the noble elder archetype.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Because the wisdom and experience is only with elders.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not with 22 year olds on TikTok.
4
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, the ageism in the culture is another place where that unconscious bias and projection has held people back by the millions and for generations.
4
SPEAKER_00
in the media, the way elders are portrayed, in the workplace, everywhere, in the healthcare system.
4
SPEAKER_00
So when I was in my late 60s and I was thinking about retiring from my clinical practice, I began looking for things to read about the unconscious shadow on aging, and I couldn t find anything.
4
SPEAKER_00
There was not one book.
4
SPEAKER_00
There were lots of books about aging.
4
SPEAKER_00
and where to live and how to find a mate and how to do healthcare and how to do finances and all that stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there was nothing about the unconscious psychology.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I wrote the inner work of age, shifting from role to soul, because it seems to me that we were missing this rite of passage to become an elder.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s how I wrote the book, so that people can kind of walk through it, through the themes and the practices in the book to become an elder.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I really believe that we need elders now to step forward to bring their long view and engage with the crises now, the climate crisis, the democracy crisis.
4
SPEAKER_00
all the interconnected crises that we have that you were describing, like wanting to be sure the systems are in place, the food scarcity crisis, the housing scarcity crisis.
4
SPEAKER_00
We need elders now, but that doesn t mean just older people.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you can be 80 and not be an elder because again, it s a stage, not an age.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a stage of development.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a level of consciousness.
4
SPEAKER_00
and elder awareness requires inner work.
4
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t happen when we get our Medicare card.
4
SPEAKER_00
So that s the connection here with the age book.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think that there s a lot of intergenerational movements happening now in several social justice areas, which is really inspiring of elders working with youth and bringing their experience and youth bringing their energy and enthusiasm.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s, I think, I ve never seen that before really in my lifetime,
4
SPEAKER_00
when I was a political activist in Berkeley, there were no elders having our backs, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
So I think that some of that is really hopeful now, but again, without the inner work, the social justice work can be reactive and angry and not long-term thinking and, you know, all kinds of stuff.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we need our elders now.
4
SPEAKER_00
So to become an elder,
4
SPEAKER_00
We need to know how to do that inner work.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m hoping I can entice you to come back and do a whole episode on the inner work of age and that book and life review because I think particularly in our culture where we re really missing the archetype of older women, I think we ve long venerated older men, but the older women, they re largely missing.
4
SPEAKER_01
from our culture in terms of visibility, and I really want to go deep on that with you.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, not to exclude men.
4
SPEAKER_01
Men are part of this too.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I m very, I guess, curious in some ways about what we ve lost by not having those archetypes present.
4
SPEAKER_01
Although I feel like, as you were saying, I do think there s an emergence.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think that there s, and maybe it s just my own preference as I enter my second half of life and I m looking for role models, but it does seem like we re starting to correct this or rebalance this or address this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think in some circles, that s true.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if it s true in the larger mainstream culture.
4
SPEAKER_00
Probably not, but someone s got to go first.
4
SPEAKER_00
Who can you name as an older woman who s a model for you right now?
4
SPEAKER_01
Is there someone?
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I m loving your work.
4
SPEAKER_01
I feel like Gloria Steinem seems to have endless energy.
4
SPEAKER_01
Same with Jane Fonda, Marianne Williams.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_01
Obviously, we had Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and I m frustrated that Ruth didn t retire.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
when, I mean, I think we all are.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then I also understand why she was like, I have to endure.
4
SPEAKER_01
She was one of our only visible elders and why, you know, Dianne Feinstein didn t retire, etc.
4
SPEAKER_01
Nancy Pelosi.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you can see where my politics probably are.
4
SPEAKER_01
I feel like there are some conservative women as well who are emergent.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, for me, I didn t have a single positive image of an elder.
4
SPEAKER_00
in growing up, not one, not a positive grandparent or aunt or uncle, or it was known in my family that I could internalize that way and say to myself, oh, I want to be like her when I grow up.
4
SPEAKER_00
There just wasn t.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I can remember on television, all the sexism and the contempt and the negativity toward women on TV and in the movies and stuff when I was growing up.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s not quite as bad now.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the anti-aging messaging is just as bad now.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, around beauty and image.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s creating a lot of suffering for people.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I had people in my private practice who just really, really struggled with aging and lack of acceptance, lack of acceptance of the body and so on.
4
SPEAKER_01
I really, I hope you ll come back.
4
SPEAKER_01
I want to go deep.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I sort of feel like, for me, like a Rorsach test in culture was Martha Stewart doing the cover of Sports Illustrated.
4
SPEAKER_01
And my friends were so split between celebrating this idea of like, yeah,
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, like at 70 you can be a sex icon and then the people, I probably put myself in this camp, like no judgment towards Martha, but oh my God, when does this end?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like now we need to be sex icons?
5
SPEAKER_00
Like no thanks.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the continuation into the lifespan.
5
SPEAKER_00
I can t recommend Connie s work enough.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m a mega fan and I ve listened to her in conversation on lots of other podcasts and just, she s one of those people who can just spin wisdom.
5
SPEAKER_00
And she s very careful, which I appreciate about where she feels like she has the knowledge to speak, but I could really listen to her explain anything.
5
SPEAKER_00
And this is from Meeting the Shadow, which is the first book that she did where she wrote the introduction and did a compilation of really incredible essays and pieces from many of our greatest thinkers.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in it, she mentions
5
SPEAKER_00
This Carl Jung quote that you might have heard from 1945, but this is where he said, one does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
5
SPEAKER_00
The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I would add, and I think Connie s work attests to this, it might be hard, it might be disagreeable, it might be unpopular, but it is so essential that we each do our own shadow work, our own piece of this cultural pie.
5
SPEAKER_00
Otherwise it becomes unbearable, an unbearable burden when our culture is already going through so much.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ll see you next time.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you liked today s episode, please rate and review and tell a friend.
5
SPEAKER_00
You can find show notes and full transcripts of the episodes at EliseLuhnen.com.
5
SPEAKER_00
While there, please sign up for my sub stack.
5
SPEAKER_00
I send a short note every Wednesday about topics that are aligned with this show and a deeper dive most Sundays.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or follow me on Instagram at EliseLuhnen.
5
SPEAKER_00
And finally, if you haven t already, please consider picking up a copy of my New York Times bestselling book, On Our Best Behavior, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good, available wherever you get your books.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s an exploration of how women have been conditioned for goodness, men for power, and all the ways we ve been programmed to police ourselves and each other according to these cultural ideas of what it is to be a good woman.
5
SPEAKER_00
I d also like to give a huge thank you to my sponsors who make this show possible.
5
SPEAKER_00
Please support them the way they support this podcast.
5
SPEAKER_00
This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studio.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you enjoyed this episode, please listen, rate, review, and follow Pulling the Thread.
5
SPEAKER_00
Available now for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.
5
SPEAKER_00
I want to give a shout out to Phil Svitek, Lauren Legrasso, Mary-Kate McDonough, Allie Brockman, and the entire Kedans13 team for producing these episodes, and to Valero Duval for my key art.
5
SPEAKER_00
Take care of yourselves.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ll see you next time.
5
you