Recently, two members of my family got into a fight and it’s unclear if they will ever make up. Although it was practically a fight about nothing, they each got so triggered by the other person that it escalated to the point where they may never talk to each other again.
After reading The Dark Side of the Light Chasers: Reclaiming your Power, Creativity, Brilliance and Dreams, by Debbie Ford, it seems even sadder to me because I see that these two individuals are so similar. Each is so quick to anger and so unwilling to take any responsibility for the fight. To each of them, it is all the other person’s fault. The simple truth is that whatever difficult interactions you have with others, it is not about them and what they did to you; it is all about you, for your learning. Another person will only bother you when they display qualities that you cannot accept or acknowledge in yourself.
At first, the title of the book sounded a bit creepy to me. I probably would not have picked it up myself if it had not come highly recommended by a friend. I had heard of shadow work before, having had an acquaintance who had spoken of “owning his shadow side” (a phrase that no less creeped me out). However, I didn’t know what shadow work was until I read this book.
It is simply that, in order to become a happier, more powerful, more whole person, we must recognize and accept qualities of which we are unconscious. If we are unconscious of these qualities, how are we supposed to recognize them? Again, they are the qualities we project onto other people. So anything that drives you crazy about another person is a quality that you yourself possess, but are unaware of and will probably deny. The book contains many examples of people Ford has helped in her workshops (who sometimes have needed persistent confrontation to bump them out of denial and into remembering a time when they experienced this quality within themselves). The process of realizing you do have a quality within you frees you from its grip on you. After all, getting irritated with people and denying that you have a quality you can’t tolerate takes energy.
Within ourselves, we are like a hologram of the outside world. The whole world is within us, and we need to become conscious of our hidden parts; we are powerless if we see them only in others and not ourselves. This includes positive traits that we admire in others. These are our “light” shadow; we project upon others positive traits that we feel we are lacking, but they are truly within us and we must find them consciously. As Ford says, “whatever inspires you is an aspect of yourself. Be precise about what you admire in someone and find that part in yourself. If you have the aspiration to be something, it’s because you have the potential to manifest what you are seeing.”
Sometimes a negative shadow for you can be a positive quality. There was a story in the book of a tough woman who wouldn’t have minded if you called her a bitch. She owned tough and mean, but not a soft side. So Ford called her a mushpie, and the woman’s eventual acknowledging this hidden part of her led to profound healing. I related to this story on a lesser magnitude. I’ll admit I am somewhat less comfortable with the idea of soft and feminine than I am with toughness. For that reason certain people bother me, and in reading this book, I have finally figured out why. One person I’ve encountered recently is a woman who has always come across as exceptionally sweet and nice. But for some reason, something in me didn’t like her, and I felt like an ogre for disliking such an obviously good person. I wasn’t sure if I distrusted her or was jealous of her, but it wasn’t until I read this book that I realized she displayed qualities I had hidden deep inside, a kind of softer feminine niceness that I rejected as a child and that stayed hidden until now, manifesting only as a dislike of perfectly lovely people! So now I have to learn to acknowledge that it is there, and that I am that.
The book is full of exercises to help you uncover and integrate your shadow qualities, formal exercises at the end of each chapter as well as others within the chapters. I did some of the exercises and skipped others. Simply reflecting on the reading was helpful to me, as was making it a practice to recognize qualities that annoy me or inspire me in other people, and to think about in what instance I am those qualities. Some of the exercises I liked the idea of, but probably could use a more formal supportive setting like one of Ford’s workshops in order to actually make myself do them.
Now I like the title, Dark Side of the Light Chasers. It implies you can make only limited progress by trying to be all good qualities, by only going for the light. As Ford says so eloquently, speaking of affirmations in the absence of shadow work, “if we put ice cream on top of poop, after a few spoonfuls we will taste the poop again”. Best analogy ever.
