In Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark (2018), Robert Augustus Masters defines a shadow as “a storehouse for whatever in us” that, because it once “seriously conflicted with our survival needs” (104), has been “disowned, rejected, marginalized, or otherwise denied” (113). A simple example would be sexual adventuresomeness. If someone’s conditioning tended to favor being moderate and in control, then that one may have “put into his or her shadow” sexual experimentation, thus disowning or rejecting those impulses.

You can, Masters observes, begin to investigate your shadow by paying close attention to strong, often negative emotional reactivity, especially when the latter isn’t proportionate with the events, behaviors, or thoughts. For instance, if you flew off the handle at the mere mention of something fairly innocent, then it’s likely that there is a shadow here for you.

Perhaps on another day I’ll write at length about investigating the shadow. Today I’d like to explore the dilemma of shadow explorations. The dilemma goes like this:

–1. If you don’t explore your shadow, then you can very easily be involved in spiritual bypass.

–2. Yet if you do geek out on exploring your shadow, you can very easily become a spiritual materialist.

Spiritual bypass occurs whenever someone on a spiritual or religious path uses practices like meditation to, well, “bypass” difficult emotional material. Bypassing can entail the kinds of ethical misconduct that has been widely reported in a number of communities and sanghas for the past 30-40 years. An antidote to spiritual bypass has been to engage vigorously in practices of “cleaning up” (to use Ken Wilber’s language).

So far as the above argument goes, I have no objection. Yet the danger lies in making an exploration of shadows into a game filled with endless fascinations. Subtler and subtler nuances are espied and appreciated. More details in the picture are filled in. This form of insight porn, which is just another way of building up drama in the life of the ego-self, is characteristic of spiritual materialism. Besides, if, as the Four Great Vows states, “delusions are endless; I vow to put an end to all of them,” then playing around with endless shadow investigations forestalls a rigorous inquiry into the genuine root of suffering: namely, the alleged existence of a separate self.

Some therapists seem to swing too far in one direction, urging us to carry on endless shadow investigations because, well, such is never-ending. Meanwhile, some spiritual teachers want us to set aside all talk of shadows in order to get to the very bottom of our nature. Could it be said that both are in error?

It seems to me, at least as I write today, that a measured approach is necessary. Whenever something “comes up” (as we say in meditation circles) and whenever that something is especially strong, then it would be good to turn to practices, like investigating the shadow, whose point is to enable us to be as clear as possible about them. I call this “clearing”: to get clear is also to find oneself in a clearing.

If nothing especially strong is coming up, then remaining steadfast in one’s root practice, whose point is waking up, seems the way to go. At which point, if the mind returns to insights about shadows, then it’s just a case, in fact, of excitation, which is one of the Five Hindrances in Buddhism.

What I’m arguing, in effect, is that wisdom can help us discern which is which. Wise discernment is where it’s at.