TrueLife - Floating on the Stream of Consciousness - The Shadow

Episode Date: October 11, 2022

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Today we continue our journey into the mystic tradition with an incredible individual Dr. David Salomon. Mysticism is popularly known as any kind of ecstasy or altered states of consciousness which is given a religious or spiritual meaning, but may refer to becoming one with God or the Absolute. It also refers to the attainment of insight in ultimate or hidden truths, and to human transformation supported by various practices and experiences.http://www.davidasalomon.com/https://davidsalomonblog.wordpress.com/https://www.abc-clio.com/ABC-CLIOCorporate/product.aspx?pc=A5537Chttps://www.amazon.com/Seven-Deadly-Sins-Influenced-Middle/dp/ One on One Video call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkg

Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark. fumbling, furious through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Tuesday and you know what that means. That means you have George and David on the beautiful stream of consciousness on which you are all invited to grab a floating device and come on with us. David, I'm so stoked to you here with us today. Would you be so kind as to reintroduce yourself as you do on every Tuesday? Of course. Thank you, George. Thanks for having me again. It's been a real treat to be with you every

Tuesday like this. So I am David Solomon. I'm the director of undergraduate research and creative activity at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. I have been a professor of medieval religion, literature, and culture for the past 25, 30 years. Written a few books. My most recent book is on The Seven Deadly Sins. And do a lot of research and a lot of reading in a lot of areas and a lot of things that overlap with the interests of my friend George here. And so we get to chat about that. Yeah, I always look forward to Tuesdays.

And before we got started, we had talked about how we begin on a talk. But sometimes we end up on a little tributary or a tangent or something like that. And I've got a lot of feedback from people that are enjoying the conversation. And I don't know if you've noticed, but I was looking on your LinkedIn page and there's all these comments that say more David Solomon. Have you seen that? Are you kidding? There is no. I think that there are.

I think you should be looking at it. It's pretty impressive. I'll have to take a look. I'll take a look. I don't go on LinkedIn all that often. I got to admit. Yeah. We're here today to talk a little bit about the shadow.

Do you have any opening thoughts? Yeah. What do you think about it? I queued this up because I think it's just perfect. Hopefully you can hear it. There you go. That is beautiful. So that's the opening, of course, of the shadow, the old radio serial.

And actually that particular version of it, I think that's Orson Wells, actually, who did the opening for a few years. But yeah, so we're going to talk a bit about this idea of the shadow and what that means to us as humans and why it's important. Yeah. Yeah, I think that we both have a fond and tremendous respect for the youngian idea of the shadow. And I think that both of us have probably been faced with some pretty dark times where we were forced to incorporate or at least stared down. down our shadow if we were unable to integrate it. But what do you think?

When you first hear the shadow, like what comes to your mind? Yeah. Well, I mean, it was a revelation to me personally when I discovered this idea in young early on when I started studying young because it seemed both very relevant and also potentially horrifying to have to deal with aspects of yourself. that are negative slash dark, that are the kinds of things which, you know, Freud would describe as repressed. But Jung has a very different approach to it, and his approach is that you really can't repress these things and grow as an individual. You need to confront them and basically work through it.

And if you don't mind, I pulled out Jung's very short. I mean, it's what, three pages in his book, Eye on, his piece that's called The Shadow, which is kind of, I mean, for me, the definitive spot to go for what he says about this. And there's a paragraph in particular where he is just spot on for me. He says, the shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego personality. For no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge, and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance. Indeed, self-knowledge as a psychotherapeutic measure frequently requires much painstaking work extending over a long period.

And it just reminds me because we were talking last week a little bit about about the importance of, of quote unquote, doing the work. And I think that that is really integral to what Young is talking about here when he talks about the shadow self and dealing with those aspects of your personality that, quite honestly, most of us would rather ignore. Yeah. In a weird way, a lot of us growing up were always. taught to sort of repress it and I don't know if that's a societal thing but I found that especially men right George I mean in our culture definitely right I mean you know if you if you're just going to equate it with you know and and the the stereotype of dealing with your

emotions you know men were are traditionally taught to to swallow all that and be more stoic and and and rational whereas women stereotypically were looked at as being, you know, the emotional sex, right? I mean, they're able, they're allowed to do that. They were committed to do that. Whereas, you know, we largely as men were, we're not. Yeah. And that manifests itself in all kinds of problems.

It seems that when we don't want to assimilate what we despise, then we project it onto other people. And I think that that's what we teach young guys when we, when we just tell them to suck it up, or don't be violent, or we have all these things that are probably good advice, but we don't explain how to do that. We just say don't do it. Absolutely. And you're absolutely right about projecting it onto someone else.

There's a wonderful piece by Ursula Le Guin, the science fiction writer, although she's much more than that, called The Child and the Shadow. And she's actually talking in this piece about Hans Christian Anderson's piece called The Shadow. He wrote a short story called The Shadow. But then she progresses from there and she starts talking about Jung. And she says, unadmitted to consciousness, the shadows projected outward onto others. There's nothing wrong with me. It's them. I'm not a monster. Other people are monsters.

I'm not a communist. Other people are communists. All foreigners are evil. All capitalists are evil. It was a cact that made me kick him, mummy. right? It's this projecting of everything on to others. And in many ways, it's part of what I talk about in the book on Seven Deadly Sins was shifting the blame. It's not accepting the blame for your own transgressions. And instead placing that on someone else's head. And we see it in the Genesis story in the Garden of Eden. I mean, God comes down to Adam and Eve and says to Adam, you know, what did you do? And Adam says, well, that woman you gave me, you know, she gave me the fruit to eat. And then he goes to Eve and he says, Eve, what did you do? And she says, well, the serpent tempted me, made me eat.

And so there's this recurrent shifting of blame, an inability or an unwillingness, really. And I think it may be a little bit of both at this point, to accept responsibility for our own actions. And that's really what the shadow self is all about because it's accepting responsibility for actions that, you know, they're not the kinds of things you want to put on your resume.

Yeah, without a doubt. And it's so metaphorical to me because the shadow's dark. You know, when I think about your book The Seven Deadly Sins and we went in depth about that book, it seems that there's a dark and a light side of those sins. In some ways, integrating those sins or learning about them is a way for you to understand how to live an effective life where the way they become real mortal sins is when you project them or when you don't understand them, you know, like that's when you get really deep in that stuff. Well, and I think because I think part of the whole point of the concept of the seven deadly sins and

really the concept of sin itself is that those are the negative aspects of what make us human beings, but they are part of what make us human beings. And so without them in some sense, we are in a way less human. But dealing with that and understanding how to deal with those kinds of things, I mean, understanding, for example, how to deal with your own individual sense of pride can be incredible. I mean, it's an incredible growth experience as an individual to deal with that. But as we have said before, I mean, it's also, it takes a lot of work. And it also can be very painful because you are going to be sitting there looking at yourself in the mirror for quite a while in quite a very deep way.

And I don't know about you, but I hate mirrors. I don't like living on myself. And I, you know, I despise hotel rooms where they've got so many mirrors all over the place. I don't want to see myself. But it reminds me of the scene in Hamlet where Hamlet tells his mother to sit down and look at this glass, the mirror, and really look at yourself, look at your soul. And when she does that, she's horrified. She says, I can't.

You know, I see, I see black spots on my soul, she says, which are the indications of sin. Yeah, it's like when you know deep down, you're doing something wrong, but you just don't want to face it, you know, for whatever reason. Maybe it's pride or maybe it is guilt or whatever it is. It's, you know there's a problem. And I think that that is symbolic of your, like when you look down on a sunny day, you see your shadow follow. you. And like there's so much knowledge, like you can't get away from it. It's always there. And then sometimes, you know, you can look down in your shadows elongated. Like, uh-oh, what does this mean? You know, or sometimes we hear people, wow, you cast a pretty big shadow on people.

There's all these references that if you just stop and think about the way they're being talked about, you can really assimilate them into your life or how you're living and or even seeing your shadow and other people. You can, I'll never forget when a few years ago I had gone through some pretty big tragedies. And that was the first time I really began to see my projections in other people. I'll give you an example. I was at work one day and I was talking to this person. I was in a bad, I was in a foul mood. And this person was probably just reflecting back to me how I was acting to them. And I'm like, this person is just such an arrogant, condescending knucklehead. And I know what they're doing. They're saying all these things to me because they want me to do this other thing.

And I'll never forget, I just put my head down. and I looked back up and it just hit me like a ton of bricks like that's me I'm the arrogant knucklehead I am the one you know and like that was the revelation of the shadow for me yeah but I mean that that level of self-awareness is not common it it takes a degree of of work with who you are to be able to realize that but then also to then admit it and deal with it Right? So, I mean, there's various parts of this. There's the one of recognizing it. This is the other of, okay, well, how do I fix that then? And, you know, again, not to be repetitive, but it is, it's hard work. And it takes time.

And it takes not just that kind of self-reflection, but almost self-dissection, where you start to take apart who you are and try to understand why you're doing certain things. And, you know, I mean, I've done the same thing in my life, George. I mean, seeing, you know, now after working through a lot of that, being able to see some of those things in other people and recognize it and say, oh, yeah, that's, I recognize that because that's, that was part of my shadow of self. And I dealt with that. I understand who that, what that is and who that is. But I think you're right. I mean, you know, in some ways. And I think, you know, this is a very youngian approach.

as well is, I mean, the shadow, it's part of who we are. Right. And everyone has it. You know, without a shadow, you're not a person, right? I mean, as you say, I mean, you're walking around outside. I mean, there's a shadow. And that is part of who we are. And I suppose, you know, the real trick here is how we learn to deal with it, how we learn to work with it. And I think that's also part of what Young is trying to say, which is, you know, don't fight against it. You need to understand what that shadow self is and be able to, in a ways, reconcile yourself to the shadow self so that you can understand better how you can move forward. Because I think that, you know, and the danger here is to look at, and my students do this sometimes, to look at the shadow self and say, well, purely negative. Shadow self is evil. No, it's not. It is the parts of yourself that are dark.

And we all have parts of ourselves that are dark. And that's not necessarily a horrible thing. That, again, is what makes us human. And so, you know, reconciling ourselves with those things, I think is only going to increase our humanity. Yeah, that's well put. And it's interesting. I think the very idea that a lot of people say this part of me is completely negative is exactly what shuts them off from it. Because that means, so you've got the student or the people that believe it's all negative, they got it halfway right. But that's the very wedge that is driven between them that won't let them integrate because if they say it's part of me, then they have to acknowledge that they're a little bit of darkness and that they're capable of some horrific acts. And I think that in some weird way, the only way to truly have empathy is to integrate your shadow, because the truth is we are all capable of some horrendous things.

And we probably, if we're honest with ourselves, have all done some pretty horrendous things. Yeah. No, definitely. I mean, I've been reading this small book, which was written in 1944, I bet by the, I would call him a philosopher, Denis de Regiment. He wrote some really important books on love in the Middle Ages. And this book, which he wrote in 1944, I'd never even heard of before last week. It's called The Devil's Share. And it's basically, it's really about Hitler.

He's really addressing the questions about Hitler and Nazism and their relationship to evil and the devil. And it's really interesting because I'm about three quarters of the way through it. And much of what he's saying is that it's a projection of things that we already have inside of ourselves, that in some sense we created this monster. And it brings me to something which I've had written on the whiteboard in my office now for probably two years, and I haven't been able to get to this because it's something, I can't wrap my head around it yet. And I got this out of reading Jung, which is, is it possible that the devil, Satan, is God's

shadow self? And I think that there's something there about that. And if anybody steals the idea, I'm coming after you. But I've had this written on my whiteboard because it popped up the last. time that I taught my course on Jung, which now is about, I think it was before the pandemic. And I think that there's just something very interesting about that idea. And Jung touches on this in places in his work that the devil is really an aspect of the divine. That in some ways it's the shadow self of divinity.

Now, of course, that for pure, you know, Roman Catholics and other devout believers, that's blasphemous because it turns God into a person, anthropomorphizes them. And we don't want to do that. We want to keep the divinity as a divinity. But I think that's the difference. When you start looking at Young, and you're talking about religion and theology in Young, it's more about culture and archetypal criticism than it is about pure theology. You know, I mean, I consider myself a scholar of religious studies. I'm not a theologian.

You know, what's the difference? Well, a theologian, theology, is the study of theos, of God, and it assumes the existence of its subject. it already assumes God exists. Religious studies studies religions from in theory a more objective viewpoint, inside or outsider. And I don't think Jung, even with his Christian background and the fact that he was, his father had hoped that he would become a pastor, even with that still there, I think that in many ways what he's doing with religion is, is really looking at it from a very, very different perspective. And it's incredibly interesting to me.

I think we had mentioned a couple of weeks ago, what he has to say about the mass and the transformation of the wafer and the wine. And, you know, it's just incredible stuff, but it's more on the level of mythology and culture than it is theology. And of course, today, people have kind of a hard time separating those things, I think. At least my students often do. You know, if they come into class with a Christian background, it's difficult for them to kind of put that on hold and look at something with a different viewpoint.

They can't get out of their own set of eyes and their own perspective growing up. raised religious. And, you know, I've dealt with that over the years. I teach a course on the Bible called the Bible as literature. And students will always come into that class thinking, oh, I know the Bible. You know, because they were raised Christian and went to church, and they think they know everything about it. And first of all, we start with the Old Testament, which most Christians are, if not illiterate,

certainly less literate in. And even when we get to the New Testament, a lot of times we see things and they look at things and they're surprised. So they realize that it's because my approach to teaching that is not from a theological perspective. We're looking at those stories. We're looking at the history of it. And so it's a very different take on things. And I think that's what Young is doing as well. Yeah.

There's some great points in there. I think with the amount of time that you've had that on your whiteboard, I think that you're going to come up with some really good material from there. You know, in some ways, and then to follow up on what you said, I think that a lot of people that are raised in a specific religion are raised in the shadow of their parents' belief of that religion. And that's why it's so dark, like it's darker around. And they can't see the other aspects of different religions

because they're in the shadow of these giant ideas that were thrust upon them. And it's such an early age, if you were, if the doors are shut around, you, then it doesn't leave a whole lot of light to get in. Well, it's part of what we talk about when we talk about getting a liberal arts education, right? The liberal and little arts is freedom, right? You're being freed of preconceived notions. And most often, as you've known, I mean, that comes from family and from parents.

And we're not looking at that and saying that's a negative thing. We're just saying we are trying now for you to as a thinking critical adult. to make some of these choices and these decisions on your own without the influence of your parents. And that can be a really hard thing to do. And it's the old stereotype about going to college to find yourself, right? But that's what we're talking about. It's about finding out who you are separate from your parents, who you've always been connected to. So, yeah, I think that that is absolutely true.

And as we say, I mean, for some people, that's very hard to do. Because, you know, essentially, you've been ingrained with these ideas from birth, from the people that you live with who've raised you and have basically told you what you're going to believe as a young kid. and then the the awkward stage of now well no i don't believe that this is what i believe that can be um it can be painful yeah through that yeah you know it brings me to another a couple points that young was talking about he i believe oh gosh i can't quote the exact book it was from but i wrote down wrote down some notes that that had said he talked about two types of

shadow, the personal shadow and the collective shadow. The personal shadow being the unknown dark side of our personality and the collective shadow being the unknown dark side of society and how the personal shadow can be a bridge to the collective shadow. And we recently addressed like World War II Germany how you could say that Hitler or some aspects of that society were operating from a dark part. And so they began to act out and on the approach. people for whatever, for whatever reason, you know, you could see the collective shadow,

the dark side coming to the top because maybe it was never integrated. And I wonder if maybe technology today or the world we live in is sort of like the shadow is showing its head because we have failed to integrate. And I think, what do you think about that? Yeah, no, I think you're you're on the right track. I mean, certainly, you know, let's talk a little. bit about the personal and the collective first. Sure.

So the parallel there is the distinction for young between personal unconscious and the collective unconscious, right? The personal unconscious is our individual experiences as human beings. And the collective unconscious is the accumulation of the experiences and all of the stuff of us as a collective, as humanity, as a species. And it's the reason why he can connect things that have happened to, human beings 10,000 years ago with what you're experiencing today because we're all humans, right? So the personal shadow and the collective shadow are parts of that same kind of idea.

Certainly, I think that part of what has gone on especially, and it's funny because as much as I read these writers who are writing around World War I and around World War II and talking about what was going on in the world. And I read them today in 2022. I'm always struck by the fact that I read them and I say, that's today. And I don't know if that's, I don't know what, I mean, in some ways that is sad because you think we're going to get past some of these issues that are so negative. But, you know, in this book on the devil's share, De Rojemant is talking about the rise of

Hitler and I mean, it sounds like so much of what's going on in democratic societies around the world, not just in the U.S. And I think you're right. You know, it gives rise then to oppression. And when people feel that sense of just not inadequacy, but unsettledness and insecurity, I mean, I look at what's going on, for example, in Iran right now with the protests in the streets, with these young women. I mean, it's just amazing to watch, but it makes me wonder, you know, why now? And yeah, I mean, there was one case,

one young woman who had been arrested by the morality police that I believe was executed. And that was the reason, the impetus for this most recent uprising, but I don't know about you, but I never remember an uprising like this in Iran in my lifetime. not since the Shah, especially from women who are in the streets burning their hijabs and cutting their hair. Wow.

But what does that say then about the society and the governmental structure there at a higher level? And it seems to indicate when something like that happens, just this instability. And instability can be good and it can be best. I mean, I think about the instability here in the U.S., for example, after George Floyd was killed. And we had our situation with the rioting and the protests and the reaction by our government. And I mean, I remember sitting at home watching that stuff on CNN and really being not only unsettled but afraid that this was. because it's going to break out into all anarchy. And it's funny because now when I go to D.C.,

which is not far from me, and I walk over to the White House and walk down what is now Black Lives Matter Plaza and stand right in front of that church, it's hard to believe what had happened there just not that long ago. And that's the same reason, I'm sure, why people are taken to traveling and visiting

the concentration camps, for example, you know, to be at the site where that had occurred and to reflect on it. But it's not going away. I mean, the shadow self, the collective shadow self seems to be rearing its head fairly often these days around the world. And I don't know if that's partially because we as a collective are unwilling to, willing to deal with it and are trying to ignore it, or there's something else going on that, you know, sociologists might be able to tell us about. Yeah, it's, that's a big question.

And I hope we find the answer. You know, maybe we can look for some clues in the past, or we can look for some clues in young, or better yet, we can look for some clues in ourself and understand that whatever we repress comes back stronger, whether it's a feeling, whether it's a class of people, whether it is a silly law, whatever it is that we repress is something that's going to come back and bite us unless we deal with. You can't ignore these tragedies.

And in some ways, I wonder if, you know, it takes a tragedy. Sometimes, like if you look at people in your life or yourself that have gone to counseling, it takes a tragedy to bring it to the forefront because you have gotten so good at repressing it. Maybe that's manifested itself. and being overweight or being rude or manifested these crazy symptoms, but it takes a tragedy in order to bring it to the head.

And I just hope that we can get to the point but we don't have to go through a world tragedy in order to deal with it. I would hope so too. But I mean, if you look historically then, and historically I'm just saying in the last hundred years, and look at what we went through collectively as a society after World War I and World War II.

And we thought that we had come out And, you know, I mean, World War I for the longest time was called the war to end all the wars. You know, that was wrong. And so I don't know about that. But what you say is interesting because I had a therapist once, probably the best therapist I've ever had. And we, I remember talking about certain things. And we hit on a topic. And she would say, okay, you know, do you want to explore that?

And I would sort of dance around it. And she'll say, okay, you're not ready to do that yet. And I said, well, why not? And she said, well, you're not, you're not in enough pain. You know, you had to get to that point, unfortunately. You have to be pushed to that point. And certainly one hopes that just collectively, as a species, as a world, we don't have to be pushed to that point.

I've been reading a lot in the last couple of days about, you know, Biden's mention of Armageddon and the rise of nuclear weapons and the use of nuclear weapons in North Korea and Russia. And, you know, I think Biden said the other day this was the most serious nuclear issue that we've had since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And that's stunning. because most people would agree if you study the Cuban Missile Crisis, and we were right on the brink there. So, you know, it's a matter of understanding who we are as human beings. I mean, as I said before, I mean, all of my work comes down to, you know,

how do we understand each other better as human beings and appreciate each other as members of human beings, and when I see what's going on, for example, in Ukraine in these last couple of days, I mean, what the heck is going on there? These are people. These are people. And the way that politics has grown to become so divisive globally now, not just here in the U.S.

You know, to be sure, you know, we've always had an issue with that, but it seems to be more incendiary today. And maybe it's because of technology and the speed with which we lead our lives. I mean, if you study the history of the American Civil War, I mean, that was slow, you know, and things don't happen that slowly anymore. You know, so much is made about the holiday of Juneteen. because, you know, the slaves in Texas finally heard that they were free. How many months was that after the Emancipation Proclamation was actually issued?

You know, now it's just, it's instant. And that is good and that is bad, right? I mean, I know myself personally, I cut back on the amount of news that I watch on TV dramatically in the last nine months. I just couldn't do it anymore. It was just it was too much And it's not that I don't want to know the news I mean I'm still I read the print news I read a lot of print news

You know I read some online stuff Although I try to stay away from that as well But I'm not watching nearly as much TV news as I was My default when I used to go home Was to turn CNN on I don't do that anymore It's just it's overwhelming

And it doesn't mean I don't care. It's just the constant pounding of all of this just bad news is, I don't think it's beneficial in the long run to us individually. I agree. It's, in some ways, it seems to me like it's the shadow being projected onto us, It's like so much negativity is just being bombarded on people. And I've noticed it in my community where people are really short with each other.

And you start talking to, I had a bad day. My car broke down. I had this. And it's like, wow, that doesn't really seem like that event that you have warrants the attitude that you have. But when you step back and you realize how much pressure people are under, then it begins to make sense. And if you do start, and it's a weird, it's a weird thing because people want to pay attention to things they care. about because they're good people. But then when the information gets reflected back to them, it's almost like their

angers being channeled in a certain way. Hate these people. Hey, this person. Look at all these people you could hate. But on some ways, it's forcing you to look in another direction instead of look at yourself. Like, oh, you know what?

I kind of have this idea. You know what? That brings me, this whole idea of news and the shadow brings me to, there's a piece by Edward Bernays in this book. called propaganda. And I think it's it's it's really relevant. It says we are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society has been organized. It doesn't mean it has to be organized that way, but it means that in some ways propaganda,

I'm not saying the news is propaganda, but a lot of it is trying to get their opinion out there. And if you look at it from just that particular couple sentences, we are governed, our minds molded, our taste formed, our ideas suggesting. I think that that is a form of the shadow. You know, it's an unrealized look at the world. When you don't take time to realize the light, the truth that could be happening, instead you give in to the easy idea that's given to you, then it's, it's dark for so. many reasons. It's dark because part of you realize is it's not your truth. That's someone else's true. That's someone else's pain. And you can't fix someone else's pain. And so all that's left is the darkness there. And when I look at the world folding today, there's no difference between Ukrainian

people and Russian people and American people. And it's not the people that are doing this. It's a handful of leaders that are fighting over resources for non-government organizations and family the offices and, you know, leg, this idea of legacy. Personal egos. Are you kidding me? It's the people that haven't integrated their shadows. But the interesting thing in that Bernays quote, and Bernays is the, this is the guy who, the advertising guy, right?

Right, right. He was revolutionary in advertising and subliminal advertising in particular. I think he was related directly to Freud. Yeah, I think so. But the interesting thing in that quote is the form of the, verbs, which all takes the agency away from the individual. Wow, I didn't even catch that. You're right. Well done. He says you're forced to. It's suggested, right? It's nothing that's coming from you.

It's external. And that's incredibly dangerous, right? I mean, I know, I mean, news flash, you know, if you're losing personal agency, then this should be a red flag. Something's going on. And part of it is about the sheep, right, about hurting the sheep. And that's what leaders want to do. And leaders are, you know, presidents and prime ministers and also the heads of corporations. Yes, yes. Who, you know, want sheep because they want everybody to buy this product over that product. And that is, it is very dangerous.

And it's, you know, I think that there's, I think in some ways you can actually talk about a sense of self and shadow self in just about any entity. And that can be in a corporation too, right? Absolutely. I mean, we see corporations that have certainly dark sides to them. I mean, I've been reading a lot in the last couple of weeks about the various large corporations in the U.S. and who and to what causes they're donating money. And I'm never certain how accurate it is what I'm reading. So I'm not going to name any names.

But there were two companies that were mentioned, and I do business with those companies all the time. And I was a little bit horrified to find out that they were funding some of these things that I am completely opposed to. And I want to investigate that further. But, you know, they would say, well, you know, we're a big company. and we don't know everything that's being done and blah, blah, blah, blah. But that seems like an excuse to me, right?

It's an excuse about size. And we see this going on with universities and colleges in the last 10 years who are divesting from various organizations and companies when they realize that they are actually big investors in those companies and they don't agree with their values anymore. Maybe they did once. You know, most recently we've seen it a lot with with investments in companies that have a heritage in slavery. I mean, I don't know if it's going on there out there in Hawaii, but up and down the East Coast within the last three, four years, we've had just school after school be renamed.

Public schools, community colleges, if it was named after someone, who was somehow involved with or even owned slaves, they're renaming the schools. We've had a bunch of them in the area here in Virginia, no surprise, including a community college right down the street, which was named after a guy named Thomas Nelson. I couldn't tell you the first thing about Thomas Nelson, but apparently he owned slaves.

And so the board voted to change the name of the school. Man, it's, I haven't seen a whole lot of it here in a whole, Hawaii. But it's a, it's, you know, Hawaii is just giant melting pot of so much Eastern influence. And, you know, it seems to me that there, there is a different type of, of, minorities here. And, but it, there's also a different type of relationship between different people and different cultures and stuff. So in some ways, it's very beautiful. I could, I could see that happening. I often wonder if that's the right move.

I think sometimes I get, you know, I don't know because I'm not black or I, you know, I'm not part of a minority, at least in Hawaii, I'm part of the minority. So I get a weird looking glass view of it.

But I wonder if getting rid of some historical idea might not perpetrated in the future. Like, you know. I think there's a, I mean, and we've had a lot of discussion about this in the last couple of years in the museum studies world about what to do with all these monuments.

Right. Right. I mean, you know, in Virginia, we've got all these Civil War monuments, and what do we do with them? And they're not memorials, they're monuments. And one of the things that I have to discuss with students is the difference, right? I mean, a monument is something which is erected in order to pay homage to somebody, whereas a memorial is about remembering somebody. There's a subtle difference there, right? But a lot of these monuments have been taken down, and the discussion about what to do.

with them and in general it seems the general consensus is you know they need to be put into a museum or put someplace you know like that not just be on public display like they have been most recently there was one oh i was talking to somebody about this a couple of weeks ago that was taken down here in virginia and i forget where it was or what it was but apparently the somebody bought it and I mean, they've got it in their yard at the moment. Yeah, I mean, oddly enough. And not because they necessarily agree with anything, but it's just a matter of saving the item. But I think that this, you know, and the only thing that I can think of is a Jew, you know,

I wouldn't want to attend Adolf Hitler High School. Right. So, you know, I can appreciate if someone is African American and does. wasn't want to attend, you know, Robert Lee elementary school. And I get that. I do think it's important that we keep our history and that we understand our history. Obviously, we are well aware that if we don't understand our history, we're going to relive it. But by the same token, there certainly is a line there between, you know, what's approach.

appropriate, and I use air quotes, and what is over the line when we're being a little too sensitive to everybody's itches and annoyances. In some ways, you know, that's part of life, unfortunately. I mean, I grew up in the Bronx in the 1960s and 70s, and I mean, I experienced anti-Semitism growing up. I remember certain things. I wasn't really aware of what it was at the time because I was too young, but reflecting back on it, I'm like, oh, yeah, that was an example. You know, it would be nice if there was no anti-Semitism. It's not going to happen. You know, it's a part of who, unfortunately, the,

The species is that we have sense of hate for certain groups of people, and that's part of that shadow self. Yeah. Some people are able to deal with that. I mean, you see these folks who, I mean, I guess it's been years now since these talk shows. I mean, I remember Donnyu having, you know, we're formed Nazis on, you know. And, you know, hey, more power to them. if they can do that. But I think it's it was pretty rare that and it's probably even rare now.

But I mean, it is possible. I mean, I can remember one of the first times I visited my friend who's a Cistercian monk in Massachusetts when I visited the monastery. We were walking and on the grounds and the Cistercians have their own sign language. The Cistercian order used to take a foul of silence. They don't anymore. They gave that up. But they had their own sign language, different from American sign language. And we were walking on the grounds, and we passed. An older monk was walking towards us.

And he and my friend signed something to each other, and I'd never seen this before. And once we walked past, I said, you know, what was that all about? And he explained that, you know, that older monk still retains the vow of silence. used as the sign language and I said oh how interesting he said yeah he said interesting story about that guy okay that guy came to the monastery in the 1950s nobody really knew much about him because they took a vow of silence so there wasn't much discussion going on at least amongst the brothers you didn't get to know people the way that you would today and my friend said that it wasn't until the

1980s, after they'd given up the vow of silence, when they started to open up a little bit that they heard about his story, he had been a Nazi. And when he escaped Nazi Germany and came to the U.S., he entered the monastery in order to, as he saw, atone and repent for what he had done. I'll never forget that because it was so true. Wow. Yeah. So, you know, we deal with our shadow cells in different ways. ways, don't we? You know, there's a guy who was dealing with his shadow self, and it must have been, it had to have been torturous. We're talking about doing this without therapy, right? I mean,

he did this on his own, I'm assuming, you know, in a personal relationship, I guess, that he had developed with God in order to reconcile what he had done and move forward with the rest of his life, which was, you know, another 60 years. He's now passed, but I think he lived well into his 80s. It's also a very good way for people to not know who you are. You can't say anything. Sure, sure. And we hear stories about that all the time.

I mean, nuns and monks who, you know, enter that life in order to escape and assume a different, a new identity. Because, of course, when you take your final vows as a monk or none, actually do take on a new identity, a new name. You are in a way, you know, rebaptized. And so you can dismiss the old you and the new you. But, but of course, you know, let's go, we're all all Carl Young on your ass. You ever really do that, you know. There's not, I was just going to say, there's no escape. It's always good. No one is more critical than you on yourself. Yeah. And to be quiet and alone with your thoughts when you've done something horrible. It's got to be. It's,

it's got to be brutal. Yeah. You know, hey, more power to him for doing it. You know, I mean, yeah, maybe the initial motivation was to escape being caught. Right. I don't know. I honestly don't know. But then, you know, as far as I'm aware, I mean, he was in the monastery for, I don't know, about 60 years.

Yeah. And he was, by all accounts, you know, a good monk. He did what he needed to do. and was an upstanding guy. But yeah, it's interesting that the guys who lived with him lived with him for about 30 years before they found that out. Yeah, there's no escaping from your own thoughts. And quite honestly, it's your own thoughts that do you in or make you.

You know, it's nice to have someone to bounce things off of or to console you. Ultimately, when you look at the monsters or the saints of history, It's usually been their own doing that has got them to where they are. Yeah. Well, and that's why, you know, through Jungian therapy, I mean, you're doing most of the work. Yeah. You know, the therapist is a facilitator.

I mean, you've got to be willing to do the work. And that keeps coming up in anything I read about Young. I mean, even the piece that I read you earlier, the little bit from Russell LaGwen talking about, you know, you've got to do the work. you've got to be willing to do the work. Yeah, I read a little blurb on Young and Alchemy, and he talks about dissolve and integrate. And it's great advice for whether you're looking at the world and trying to solve a problem

or you're talking about your shadow or you're trying to understand the archetype and which you inhabit. If you can dissolve it and then integrate it, it's like a metaphor with a philosopher stone, which you could argue you are. Right. And when you talk about young and alchemy, you know, my students are always thrown by that because they think about alchemy and they think about Harry Potter and they're like, he's turning, you know, base metals into gold? You know, it's like, no, we're talking about. I mean, he's using the structure and the science of alchemy in order to apply it to how we can change our selves, how we can transform ourselves.

And boy, they really struggle with that idea. And it's hard to get through to them that he's talking about really just transforming yourself, which, you know, and I think part of it is that it is going to be as difficult as, you know, turning a base metal into gold. Yeah. Yeah, you know, you can look back at the men of gold, men of iron and men of bronze back in the Homeric verses or, you know, back in the literature, the classic literature. I think you get the same sense of alchemy there. Yeah, definitely, definitely. And I mean, what's interesting is I had a friend who when I was in graduate school did, was doing his doctoral dissertation on alchemy in early American literature.

And he was using a lot of young because he was reading Poe and Hawthorne. And I didn't understand what he was talking about because I didn't know enough about young at that point. I hadn't really done my own deep dive into it. And now looking back on it, you know, it's one of those, oh, now I get it. Now I understand what he's talking about. But I think that, you know, and not to belabor it, but Young is just so rich in personal growth. I mean, you know, the course that I teach on Young, I mean, my students, conventional really love it.

And most of them had very little to know exposure to Young coming into the course. And they have very different reactions to him. But more than that, the reading that we do in the course and the assignments that you do in the course encourage them to embark on that kind of journey of personal growth.

And I think that that's really what they get out of it more even than anything about Young. for our listeners out there, if they're interested in the shadow, what books would you recommend people maybe take a look at? Yeah. Well, I mean, I would read Young's three-page piece on The Shadow and his book, Ion, which is A-I-O-N. It's very readable, very short.

And then there's an, I think it's an appendix, actually, in Eric Newman's book, Death, Psychology, and the New Eth. So Newman was a student of Young, wrote some really some of the more important books of the 20th century on the goddess and consciousness. Two really fantastic books. But this book, Depth, it's hard to say. Depth psychology and the new ethic has an appendix in it at the back. It's the very last thing in the book, which is, I think, about 10 pages long. And it is called Reflections on the Shadow.

And it's a really succinct, good sort of overview of what Young has to say about the shadow and then how it can be then put into good use, whether you are, you know, doing work with yourself or, you know, work as I do a lot with literary characters, right? Looking at literary characters and understanding the aspects of their personalities. That's such awesome advice. I'm so thankful that you're here, and I'm so thankful that you're teaching people, and you're getting the feedback from students like,

oh, they're really liking this. And I really enjoy our conversation. They're really rich and rewarding. You always have these awesome stories about, you know, I don't know of anybody else or, any other podcasts or anywhere else, people can get this information to get to hear these stories about the monk who was a Nazi and like,

you know, like there's just so much awesome stuff, David, thank you for spending time with us. What do you got coming up? What is it blog going to be about this week and where can people find you? What are you excited about? Sure.

So my website is David A. Solomon, s-l-o-m-O-M-O-N.com. And you can find the links to all my books and the blog and media appearances. and my consulting. Just posted a blog last week, I think, about resilience and talking about how we have looked at resilience culturally and think, oh, this is, yeah, we need to be resilient.

And I sort of talk a little bit about how, yeah, it's not a bad thing to be resilient, but we also shouldn't negate what gets us there, right? That we go through some trauma and some difficulty to, arrive at that spot. So that's up there now and working on a next blog post and some other writing pieces and hopefully going to get to talk to some folks up in the New York area next month. Well, is it October already?

It is October already. Good Lord, it's October already. Yes, in November. So I'm looking forward to that. Yeah. I really think that we are emerging out of our shableness. I think it's conversations like this and good people in the world that are going to bring us to the light and help us see the world the way it can be instead of maybe the way it's going. So I'm looking forward to our future conversations.

You know what? A real quick side note, there's a really interesting phenomenon that happens here in Hawaii and I think along the equator. And that is in the height of summer, it might be on the solstice. you can go outside and you actually don't have a shadow because at noon, the sun is directly above you. And I remember I saw it this year for the first time. I was working and I went outside and there was all these people and they go, look, no shadow. And I look up and it was a clear day and I looked down. And lo and behold, there was just my, you know, just right up below me, there was some darkness.

But there was nothing cast to the side. I mean, it was a fascinating little thing right there. Yeah, that really is. That really is. I wonder if that, yeah, I mean, it makes me think of the kinds of things that you can, do, you know, going to Stonehenge in England at certain times of the year when the sun is lined up. Yeah.

That's a really interesting phenomenon. Yeah, it makes me think like, you know, very rarely you can have some moments of clarity where you're not bogged down by the darkness that is everything around you, you know? But it's very rare. You must embrace it when it's there. Yeah. No, agreed. Greed.

So that's what we got for today, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for taking some time for spending. spending some time with us on the podcast, please check out David Blok, read his book. I think you'll like it, read all of his books. He's got another one coming up, and we'll see you next Tuesday. Aloha, ladies and gentlemen.