The Dark Half

"There’s a place in most of us where the rain is pretty much constant, the shadows are always long, and the woods are full of monsters." ~ Stephen King, "The Importance of Being Bachman"

"Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar."  ~ C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

________________________

"So, this may sound weird coming from me but... is the Devil attacking you yet?"

This question from my rector was, in fact, not entirely unexpected.  The thing is, now that I'm on this journey of discernment to follow where God wants me to go, which I believe (and fervently hope) involves ordained ministry, there does seem to be some kind of force that doesn't want me to succeed. 

If you believe in devils or demons or other forces of darkness, it makes perfect sense: these beings don't want the forces of light to win.  But I realize that many people, even many Christians, have a hard time with this subject.  It's kind of passe to believe in the devil as a personification of evil, it seems.  We all know evil is real, but to think of it as a sentient being instead of our own selfishness or unjust systems is more and more relegated to the realm of fantasy.

The thing is, fantasy (and sci-fi and horror) often does a better job of helping us to understand the mystical, supernatural, unexplainable aspects of life that have confounded scientists and philosophers.  That could be why I've always been a big fan of movies, books and TV shows having to do with supernatural subjects.  They speak to us on a deeper level, the level of the lizard brain, where we know about those things our rational brains try to explain away. 

There's a voice that I think all of us hear from time to time, a voice that tells us we aren't good enough, that we're stupid, ugly, worthless, etc.  That voice seems to come on stronger lately, even when I know I should be celebrating the fact that I just got my Bachelor's degree (Summa Cum Laude!) and that I've made it through the first step in the discernment process.  Clearly others see that I am smart, capable, full of love for God and other people.  But there's this voice inside telling me that I'm an impostor.  And sometimes I wonder if that voice isn't, in fact, a demon speaking instead of a part of myself.  Maybe someone or something wants me to remain depressed and apathetic, unable or unwilling to work for a better world because it doesn't look like there's any point in doing so.

Or maybe the voice comes from my shadow self.  This is a concept made famous by Carl Jung, "that describes those aspects of the personality that we choose to reject and repress. For one reason or another, we all have parts of ourselves that we don’t like—or that we think society won’t like—so we push those parts down into our unconscious psyches. It is this collection of repressed aspects of our identity that Jung referred to as our shadow."

I'm not going to delve very deeply into psychology here (this article does it better than I can) but suffice it to say that in this theory, our shadows are part of us, the part that we keep repressed so far down we aren't even aware of them most of the time.  Doing "shadow work" and understanding our unconscious impulses can help to deconstruct the harmful patterns we can fall in to.  While I've been "doing my own work" these past two years with a therapist and a spiritual director, I've learned that harmful patterns don't have to rule my life.  Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

But still.  There's a voice telling me that my hope will be all for naught, that I will be trapped in despair for ever.  Is it my own shadow, or is something hiding in my shadow and trying to convince me that it's part of me?

If there's one thing I know from classic literature though, it's that you don't want to try to banish your shadow.  Dr Jekyll tried to do that and ended up creating Mr Hyde.

John Barrymore in the silent film of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.  The opening subtitle reads: “For each of us there are two natures, the good and the evil.  All of our lives there is a fight between them.  But in our own hands is the power to choose between the good and the evil…”

We need shadows in order to define the light.  We need negative space in order to see a full, balanced picture.  Trying to rid ourselves of our shadows, or banish them entirely, can give them a horrific life of their own.  But we need not define ourselves solely by the darkness we see.  Our identity needs to be rooted in how God sees us: beloved.

Indeed, our sins - hate, fear, greed, jealousy, lust, materialism, pride - can at times take such distinct forms in our lives that we recognize them in the faces of the gargoyles and grotesques that guard our cathedral doors.  And these sins join in a chorus - you might even say a legion - of voices locked in an ongoing battle with God to lay claim over our identity, to convince us we belong to them, that they have the right to name us.  Where God calls the baptized beloved, demons call her addict, slut, sinner, failure, fat, worthless, faker, screwup.  Where God calls her child, the demons beckon with rich, powerful, pretty, important, religious, esteemed, accomplished, right.  It is no coincidence that when Satan tempted Jesus after his baptism, he began his entreaties with, "If you are the Son of God..." We all long for someone to tell us who we are.  The great struggle of the Christian life is to take God's name for us, to believe we are beloved and to believe that is enough. ~ Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday

So I keep on traveling this journey, knowing that dark nights always end and the sun always comes back around and rises again.  That's the resurrection message of my faith - darkness and death and despair don't get the last word.  We need to be aware of our shadows, but we can't get lost in them.  They are not the ultimate source of our identity.  They are simply one aspect of a complicated but beautiful picture of human nature.



Sources:
Carl Jung and the Shadow: The Ultimate Guide to the Human Dark Side
Jekyll and Hyde silent film info
Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving and Finding the Church by Rachel Held Evans