The Wisdom of Hypatia: Ancient Spiritual Practices for a More Meaningful Life (39 page)

The complexes serve a similar function to the daimons as mediators between people

and gods. The archetypes are
transpersonal
and largely unchanging through adult life, for they are implicit in the brain’s structure. The complexes adapt the archetypes to your individual life. Like the daimons they act as messengers and ministers of the gods.

Complexes develop as a consequence of the activity of an archetype in your life, and continue to adapt as you live your life. In a significant sense they “know” you and your biography because they have incorporated into their structure material from your life, interior as well as external. While the archetypes, like the gods, are impassive and unchanging, the complexes, like daimons, are not, but respond to you as an individual and personalize the archetypes’ relation to you.

It is also worth remarking that there are
group complexes
, that is, complexes that a group of people have in common. They develop through the common experiences of the group,

which causes a similar complex of associations to develop in each group member. A shared culture of beliefs, practices, and so forth can reinforce the shared complex and cause it to persist from one generation to the next. Thus there are complexes shared by families, religious groups, ideologies, ethnic groups, nations, people of a certain historical period, and so forth. From a Neoplatonic spiritual perspective, these group complexes correspond to daimons associated with the groups, either for good or for ill (generally, both).

194 the microcosm and the archetypes

Your Complexes:
Think about the archetypes you considered in the previous exercise (
Archetypal Events
). Based on you familiarity with your own psychology

and your observations of others’ behavior, can you identify circumstances in

your life that have engendered your personal complexes? What are some of

the cultural, familial, and individual factors? For example, if certain things set

you off, but don’t seem to have the same effect on most other people, can you

find a reason in your life history? Do your standards of beauty differ from those

of the culture at large? Why? What about parental complexes (in both roles:

as child and as parent)?

The Shadow

Jung identified one very important complex, which he called the
Shadow
. As we grow up we learn the norms of our culture, community, and family, and eventually we develop our own values. These (often subconscious) norms constitute what we consider right, good, and just. The opposites of these—what we consider wrong, evil, and unjust—along with our own tendencies in these directions, are repressed and form a complex around the archetype of Evil. This is your Shadow. (It corresponds to a person’s “bad daimon,” as discussed by some Neoplatonists.) We all have one, and denying its existence often leads to acting out its inclinations, truly a kind of demonic possession!

For example, personally I find self-promotion distasteful; it is part of my personal Shadow, and as a consequence, I am put off by someone who seems to be bragging. More im-

portantly, when such a person activates my Shadow complex, I risk projecting my entire Shadow onto them, perceiving them not only as boastful, but as having all the bad attributes of my Shadow. I risk perceiving them as “evil” and treating them accordingly. This is unfair to the other person, distorts my perception of them, and may lead me to behave inappropriately. I am blaming them for parts of me that I have projected onto them.

This is one danger of ignoring your Shadow; another stems from the fact that your

Shadow is constituted from natural inclinations that you have repressed. Of course, it is good for ourselves and for society that we don’t act out many of these inclinations; the problem is when we deny their existence. (“Doing such and such is bad, and of course
I
would never do anything so despicable.”) The insidious fact is that when these Shadow the microcosm and the archetypes 195

characteristics are activated in you, you will not recognize that you are “possessed” and will even deny it in the face of evidence. For example, if I ignore or deny my personal Shadow characteristic of self-promotion, then I run the risk of bragging without the self-awareness I’m doing so, or of deceiving myself. (“I’m not bragging, I’m just being honest.”) You have seen that two problems with ignoring your Shadow are that you will inevitably project it onto others and that you may unintentionally act out its inclinations. Therefore it is important to recognize your Shadow, so you notice when it is intervening in your life. “Know your enemy” could be the moral, but I want to go further and encourage you to
befriend
your Shadow. This is because, as Jung stressed, your Shadow possesses many traits and characteristics that you have unconsciously rejected, but may have something positive to contribute to your life.

For example, thinking is my preferred way of dealing with the world; no doubt that

fact has contributed to my choice of an academic career and to my interest in philosophy.

But according to Jung, thinking and feeling are complementary orientations toward the world, and therefore an emotional orientation has been relegated to my personal Shadow.

Other people’s approach to life is more feeling-oriented, with thinking relegated to their Shadows. Neither is better, but both are incomplete.

For example, my thinking faculty has been developed and refined over many years, but my emotional intelligence is relatively undeveloped and unrefined. Therefore my emotional responses tend to be more raw or primitive than those of someone with a feeling orientation, who responds with more emotional finesse. I can become a more balanced person by acknowledging, practicing, and developing my emotional skills, which are owned by my Shadow. Who knows what talents hide in a human’s psyche? The Shadow knows!

The same applies to all of us; we have all unconsciously buried traits and personality characteristics that for some reason we have deemed unacceptable. They have much to

offer us, if we learn to embrace them consciously and not to act them out unconsciously.

The method is to become better acquainted with your Shadow, to discover the gifts he or she can give you, and to recruit his or her aid in becoming a more complete and integrated human being. You will learn the techniques for doing so in the following chapters.

Know your Shadow; befriend your Shadow.