Date: 05-04-2025
Tags: shadow archetypes fear
Source: Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott
“The great writers keep writing about the cold dark place within, the water under a frozen lake or the secluded, camouflaged hole. The light they shine on this hole, this pit, helps us cut away or step around the brush and brambles; then we can dance around the rim of the abyss, holler at it, measure it, throw rocks in it, and still not fall in. It can no longer swallow us up. And we can get on with things…
When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are. The secrecy, the obfuscation, the fact that these monsters can only be hinted at, gives us the sense that they must be very bad indeed. But when people let their monsters out for a little onstage interview, it turns out that we’ve all done or thought the same things, that this is our lot, our condition…
We write to expose the unexposed. If there is one door in the castle you have been told not to go through, you must. Otherwise, you’ll just be rearranging furniture in rooms you’ve already been in. Most human beings are dedicated to keep that one door shut. But the writer’s job is to see what’s behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words—not just any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues.”
Thoughts:
I was reading this last night and I immediately thought of what I’ve been learning as I study Jung about how externalizing our complexes, fears, and shadows frees us from identifying with them and thus being consumed, or as Anne Lamott puts it “swallowed up” by them.
Jung suggests personifying and engaging with archetypes through the use of imagery and active imagination.
”When you can personify unconscious contents, you no longer identify with them and you can begin to have a dialogue and a relationship with them.” - Paraphrased from something Lisa said on this episode of This Jungian Life
In Tarot for Change - Jessica Dore talks about how the Tarot helps us to do this by externalizing the indigestible internal forces within us portrayed in the cards as archetypal images:
“The externalization of internal experience onto a physical object like a card creates some distance that gives us room to breathe, shifts how we relate to ourselves, and offers a new vantage point to look from. The cards allow us to safely see and understand the less palatable aspects our ourselves.”
Link to original
“The externalization of internal experience onto a physical object like a card creates some distance that gives us room to breathe, shifts how we relate to ourselves, and offers a new vantage point to look from. The cards allow us to safely see and understand the less palatable aspects our ourselves.”
Link to originalAnne Lamott has a different take - she suggests that writing, any kind of writing as long as it is brutally honest and gets at the heart of our deepest darkest fears and shame, will suffice as a means of distancing ourselves enough from the shadows so as not to be possessed and consumed by them.
Links to
Panic, and The Indirect Consequences of Repressed Instinct
Tarot - Externalizing Archetypes so as not to be possessed by them