Through the Mirror Darkly- Culture and the dark side of projection

Soullab and Everyday Shamans
Everyday Shamans
Published in
11 min readOct 29, 2020

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“Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” — Walt Whitman

As October heralds the darkness of winter, it stands in direct contrast to the fresh hope of Springtime and the fertile fields of Summer. It is a time of reflection on the past, taking account of our lives, paying homage to the dead, and facing whatever darkness we’ve been avoiding with our busy lives.This is the time of year where we face our demons. It is the time of year where we allow ourselves to face our darkness. In fact we are compelled to amplify it.

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.” (Carl Jung)

Halloween is upon us. It’s the time of year where we try to scare each other with frightening masks, a refreshing departure from scaring people without them. How could Halloween possibly outdo what 2020 has already provided us?

Having partially weathered a pandemic and preparing ourselves for an election that promises very little relief and even more challenges and uncertainty, it is absolutely the right time to embrace the season and take account of who we are, where we are going, and what we need to let go of to survive the winter of our cultural experiment and strive to upgrade our cultural operating system.

And it’s fitting that the upcoming election should happen in the month of Scorpio. According to the doctrine of brutal compassion that Scorpio embraces, “Whatever can drown should drown.” We are collectively taking account of our civilization’s misdeeds, unsustainable norms, and dismal outlook in the midst of a presidential election, choosing between brutish domination and unsustainable hubris.

“When you shed the cultural operating system, then essentially you stand naked before the inspection of your own psyche.” — Terrence McKenna

If culture is the operating system, what happens when the reflection grows miserably dark? What happens when we see our world and it reflects the darkness that we’ve tried to avoid, deny, or pretend-away?

“Well, what’s wrong with the operating system that we have? Consumer capitalism 5.0 or whatever it is. Well, it’s dumb! It’s retro, it’s very non-competitive. It’s messy, it wastes the environment, it wastes human resources, it’s inefficient, it runs on stereotypes, it runs on a low sampling rate, which is what creates stereotypes, low sample rates make everybody appear alike, when in fact the glory is in everyone’s differences, and the current operating system is flawed. It actually has bugs in it, that generate contradictions. Contradictions such as we’re cutting the earth from beneath our feet. We’re poisoning the atmosphere that we breathe: this is not intelligent behavior, this is a culture with a bug in its operating system that’s making it produce erratic, dysfunctional, malfunctional behavior. Time to call a tech. And who are the techs? The shamans are the techs.” Terrence Mckenna

“The most intense conflicts, if overcome, leave behind a sense of security and calm that is not easily disturbed” — Carl Jung

It’s our task to face the darkness in our lives with compassion, grace, and courage. We are collectively being asked to work on our shadows. In shadow work, we focus on the things we fear, dread, and avoid the most because it is in these uncomfortable realities that the answer lies. It is in the poisons of our lives that the medicine is created.

Carl Jung wrote about our shadow nature in the wake of World War II. He saw it as a fertile ground for understanding the more troubling aspects of our nature as well as the opportunity for redemption. In Jungian practice, we face our shadows to transform them into allies. It is the same in the shamanic traditions where we embrace our darkness to integrate it into our waking life.

“Complementary to Jung’s idea of the persona, which is “what oneself as well as others thinks one is” [CW9 para 221], the “shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors…If it has been believed hitherto that the human shadow was the source of evil, it can now be ascertained on closer investigation that the unconscious man, that is his shadow does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses etc “ [CW9 paras 422 & 423].

“This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.” -William Shakespeare

I’ve worked as a therapist, healer, and coach for more than 30 years. Much of my work with clients has been based in shadow-work and transformational journeywork. In this approach, we journey into the heart of what is most disturbing with the goal of transforming inner shadows into something valuable. It is a process of turning lead into gold- Alchemy. Here, the dragons of our lives are seen as our ‘allies in disguise’ like the fairy godmother disguised as an old crone, our solutions are often hidden in our problems. All things are redeemed with courage, conviction, and a bit of magic.

Personal challenges are nothing new. We all have our issues to work on. However, it seems we are all being increasingly drawn into an awareness that ‘all is not well’ in our worlds and things once strategically hidden within are forced to the surface of awareness because of all the uncertainty, anxiety, and fear in our world. Our level of comfort has peaked for many of us and the environment that once contained promises of success and luxury is now asking us to prepare for a planet in crisis and communities in turmoil. The question that I constantly face is, “in the midst of so much noise, how do we find our center and our power”? The answer is different for each of us but central for us all is asking the right questions.

To ask the proper question is half of knowing. -Roger Bacon

The most challenging question that I get when in talks with clients is, “Are we living in a simulation? Is this the Matrix?” Considering the essence of the work is based on the power of imagination to construct reality, it is a logical query. While the complexity of reality leaves more questions than answers and laughs at all sense of certainty, the ‘simulation hypothesis’ is a useful metaphor. It addresses the illusory nature of reality that is, by its nature, incomprehensible and ultimately unknowable. If this is a simulation then it is us that is being reflected in our world as the very challenges that threaten us.

And as Einstein said, The mind that causes the problem is not the mind that solves the problem. We need to be reminded of what we aspire to as people and what difficulties we face along our journey of individual and collective development. If this world is an illusion then it is our illusion that must be transformed.

There have been many cultures before ours that have come to a similar conclusion. Whether it was understood as the karma of Samsara in Buddhism, the personal reactions to life as Dukha in Tibetan Buddhism, or the wayward and troubling virtual reality of a deranged demigod in Gnosticism, myths and teachings have directed us to a most uncomfortable truth, that we live within a constructed world and our experiences here are as much a reflection of what is within our own nature as what is ‘real’ in the world around us. It is our place to exorcise the darkness that no longer serves us and transform the old evils into new hope, and the vestiges of propriety into a living compassion for the world soul.

“We should question why we as Americans continue to celebrate him without knowing the true history of his legacy, and why a holiday was created in the first place,” Dr. Leo Killsback, a citizen of the Northern Cheyenne Nation

We have reached a cultural state of being where our darkness is up for us. What has once been projected onto our enemies is now found within ourselves, our culture, and our society. It seems that shadow-work is never done.

“Who are You?”

In Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Caroll revealed a backwards world that was contrary to our everyday world. All logic is reversed. Like a mirror, it shows us ourselves in reverse, aspects of ourselves that shouldn’t be but in reflection, are. In this alternative view, we see our whole world upside down, inside out, and backwards. Certainly, he was revealing to us the existence of our shadow side. In this world, we see the absurdity of our faulty logic, the delusions within our beliefs, and the silliness of our prideful arrogance. Much like our beloved Halloween, the looking glass provides a ‘mirror darkly’ that offers us a chance to face our shadows, shed some light on our challenges, and seek solutions.

In the series Black Mirror we find a modern Twilight Zone that reflects the many macabre challenges that we face in this exponential advancement in technology. The computers that once promised to make our lives easier have only complicated our lives. The visions of a technological world that would allow us to slow down and enjoy living has given way to a reality where we find ourselves servants to our phones, our computers, and to an ever-growing data-field that constantly reports on our progress, our health, wellness, and productivity. Black Mirror reveals some of the most existential and metaphysical horrors of our present trajectory that are imaginable.

“No one gets to vote on technological advancement.” Bill Gates

The show’s creator, Charlie Brooker said that the name of the show Black Mirror referred to “any TV, and LCD, any iphone, any iPad- something like that- if you stare at it, it looks like a black mirror, and there’s something cold and horrifying about that, and it was such a fitting title for the show.”

“As within, so without. . . ” Hermes Trismegistus

“The premise of the series is that technology can mirror and even magnify the ugliest (blackest) aspects of human nature, evidenced by social-media witch hunts and a desperation for constant “likes” and public approval.

The news has impressionable young Tweeters, many of whom have just realized their glittery smartphones are feeding their demons and fueling their downfalls, thoroughly “shook.”

These are truly dark times yet they did not occur in a vacuum. This darkness has been with us for a long time, hiding behind the curtains of propriety and hegemony. “The pathologies of the world continue. In December 2013, the BBC reported the results of an international Gallup poll showing that the United States was regarded as the greatest threat to world peace by an overwhelming margin. No one else even came close. Fortunately, the Free Press spared the American public this further evidence of global backwardness.” Noam Chomsky

Confessions of An Economic Hitman- John Perkins video

How did our world go so wrong? As the ‘Gordon Geckos’ and the “Art of the Deal” just show conmen and conjobs, we know we have been collectively ‘punked’. And the truly shitty part of all of this is that ‘they’, the awful men who do awful things for profit, power, and prestige are not anomalies. They are us. More importantly, they are our collective darkside that landed on this continent more than 500 years ago. George Carlin once said that ‘we say we hate politicians because they don’t represent us. What we really hate is that they represent us too well.’ They represent our darkness. When someone says, “Make America Great Again”, it is worth asking what greatness looks like to them. We would all do well to explore our own subconscious darkness that is projected into the world as a long history of unenlightened acts.

The Covid-19 pandemic delivers its own grim prognosis. With climate change shifting our world around to reveal hidden viruses and germs once frozen in time are now being released into an atmosphere that is under constant attack from global industries that pollute and deplete our planet while creating a toxic environment. Our technological advancement continues to feed off of resources and can’t be sustained.

Yet we speed exponentially faster with the intoxicant of invincibility and the illusion of infinite progress blasting open ever-new pandora boxes. What is our world becoming? Where are we headed? With all of the wonderful promises of technological advancement we have a difficult time facing the demons that it releases.

The heaviness and fear of the pandemic has turned to a place of undoing. It’s a place where we feel like we’ve almost reached a safe place, but the frustration of the uncertain journey has left us unsure, exhausted, and nervous. With each technological advancement from AI to Data Mining, we face issues of personal freedom, privacy, and self-determination. Equally, we each face a crisis of meaning. What is the point of all of this? Where is this headed? No one seems to know. Most are still too mesmerized by the shiny things of our techno-information age to care.

In the spirit of Samhain and Halloween, let’s invite our dark sides to come out and play. It is time that we ‘own our shit’ so that we can begin to make fertilizer out of it. In the Catholic tradition it is believed that the path to redemption begins with confessing our sins. In the pagan and animistic traditions, all of life arises from the darkness. The dark world that we fear is the fertile ground that our lives rise out of. To deny our responsibility to face our fears and our darkness is to abdicate our responsibility to make the changes in ourselves and our world that are badly needed, that are painfully necessary.

How do we heal our world soul and redeem ourselves in the process? How do we face the chaos, confusion, and impending darkness that our civilization has inherited, sustains, and advances in a way that is productive and progressive? These are the questions that must be faced.

Living in constant reactivity to challenging times serves only to stoke our survival instincts. However, we are much more than our primitive instincts. We are endowed with intellectual gifts and consciousness that provides free will and nuanced responses to challenges. We can change the future if we can own and integrate our darkness.

So, in this season of goblins and ghosts hold space for the discomforting and the alarming to resolve into some new form, some new insight, some new way forward. Each of us is called to participate in the future of our world. Our cultural operating system has changed many times and it will continue to change. What it changes into next will be influenced by each of us individually and collectively.

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