Ego Defense: Shadow Projection
Shadow projection is the way in which you can easily spot what human
traits are in your shadow. Your shadow self is that which is unconscious. As we are complete in our potential experience, anything which we deny as being part of us becomes unconscious.
What the ego (self-image) does is project these unconscious traits out onto the world including specific people you come across.
This is all the work of the brilliant psychologist Carl Jung who coined the term the shadow. Why this is cool is that you can use this knowledge to be vigilant and responsible for ALL that you experience, including they way you experience other people.
can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. Carl Jung
What the ego seems to do is take anything that we learned not to be, such as rude and mean, and project that out onto someone or the world as a whole. Anything that is repressed within does not go away. The trick is to see and accept exactly where it is coming from rather than where it appears to be coming from.
If you don’t accept that a part of your potential and experience is being rude then someone or a group of people will be burdened with your shadow projection of this rude trait.
It happens all ways. It is tricky to see and even trickier to remember when we are faced with another individual who grates against us.
If someone is annoying to you or you think you are so much better than them or so much inferior then the challenge is for you to contemplate what is it that you are projecting onto them.
What word would you use to describe them that perfectly fits why you have this contraction away from them. Ordinarily in a perfect world you would accept everyone as they are and experience peace in
their presence. If you are not then there is something about YOU causing you to experience this absence of peace. Once you have this word that describes what it is about them you dislike or like then you go within and recall situations where you have been that trait.
This is no time for further ego defense but rather brutal honesty. The type of honesty that comes from impartial watching. Just as if you were a scientist observing the data you observe yourself and accept that in the past there have been one or two times when you have done the same thing, or, accept that given a certain set of circumstances you would behave the same as the person who is the subject of your projection.
Rather than being a certain, fixed, object it might be better to think of yourself as potential. Given your environment and your influences you have the potential to be anything from a thief and murderer to the holiest saint. You are not one way. You are not an object that is called Jane, Julie or Dave. This is why you need to accept everything about yourself and everything that you could imagine ANY human being doing.
Each time you move a potential trait from the darkness (unconscious denial) to the light (conscious acceptance) it removes the need for the ego to project this trait onto anyone else and this is the process of healing the shadow. This allows you to experience more peace inside and out.
Shadow projection seems to be a strategy by the ego to maintain the illusion of being a certain way. It probably does this because you have no awareness of being connected to the whole being that you are.