Expect shadow in "advanced" people, starting with yourself
Treat spiritual or developmental advancement as no guarantee against old patterns, in teachers you admire and in yourself.
Why it works
If waking up does not clean up, then people far along a contemplative path can still carry unexamined patterns, and their standing can make those patterns harder for them and others to see. Expecting this protects against two opposite errors after a disappointment: deciding the whole path was a fraud, or explaining the behaviour away as higher wisdom. The more useful move is to ask what the disappointment shows you about your own blind spots.
How to do it
- Think of someone you regard as spiritually or psychologically advanced, including anyone whose behaviour has disappointed you.
- Separately name what they genuinely seem to have realized and how they actually treat people. Let both be true.
- Turn the same two questions on yourself: what have I genuinely realized, and where might I be using it to avoid something ordinary?
- If an old feeling or pattern turns up in that answer, take it to shadow-work practices rather than more meditation on it.
- Notice whether you want to put the person on a pedestal or throw them off it, and leave room for something in between.
Evidence
Brown and Engler (1980) wrote that enlightenment "does not mean a person becomes conflict-free" after finding fears, dependency struggles and other conflictual themes in the Rorschachs of advanced practitioners. Welwood (1984) named the tendency to use spiritual practice to avoid unresolved personal and developmental issues "spiritual bypassing," observing it among members of spiritual communities and in himself. Engler (1984) writes that many meditation students, "and even some teachers," seem to be trying to skip the work of building a stable self. In Integral Spirituality Wilber argues that even advanced meditators often carry shadow material that others can see more clearly than they can. (observational)
This rests on a small Rorschach study and on clinicians’ and teachers’ observations, not on systematic data about how often advanced practitioners behave badly. It does not justify suspecting everyone, only not assuming anyone is exempt.
Sources
- Brown, D. P., & Engler, J. (1980). The stages of mindfulness meditation: A validation study. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 12(2), 143–192.
- Welwood, J. (1984). Principles of inner work: Psychological and spiritual. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 16(1), 63–73.
- Engler, J. (1984). Therapeutic aims in psychotherapy and meditation: Developmental stages in the representation of self. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 16(1), 25–61.
- Wilber, K. (2006). Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World. Integral Books.
Common mistake
Using other people’s shadow as a reason to stop looking at your own. Spotting it in a teacher is the easy half.
Practice this with IX Coach
More practices for Waking Up, Growing Up, Cleaning Up, Showing Up: Four Kinds of Growth That Do Not Move Together
- Audit where your growth has actually gone
Look back over the last few years and name, honestly, how much of your effort went into waking up, growing up, cleaning up and showing up.
- Notice the gap between the cushion and the kitchen
Compare what you touch in meditation with how you actually treat the people you live and work with.
- Be somebody before you try to be nobody
Before chasing the dissolving of the self, check whether you have done the ordinary work of building one.
- Add waking up when you have only grown up
If you are mature and capable but have never trained attention on awareness itself, give the contemplative strand a small daily place.
- Pick the neglected strand and take one concrete step
Choose the dimension you keep skipping and commit to one small, specific practice in it for a month.
- Test your growth where it has to show up
Check whether what you have realized and matured into is visible in your body, your close relationships, your work and your community.
- Borrow other people’s eyes on your four strands
Ask people who see you in different settings where they think you are strong and where you are not, because the neglected strand is the hardest to see from inside.
Related concepts
- Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory (AQAL), Made Practical
Five elements for catching what your view of a situation leaves out, held as a map rather than a truth
- Shadow Work
Meeting the parts of yourself you have been ignoring
- Terri O’Fallon’s STAGES Model, Made Practical
Twelve stages built from three repeating questions, and how to work with the one you are in
- Non-Dual Awareness, Made Practical
Effortless mindfulness and the recognition of open, aware presence
- Kegan’s Subject-Object Theory, Made Practical
Moving from being run by your assumptions to being able to examine them
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