Viewing Our Shadow: The Poor in Spirit, Book excerpt

Dysfunction

The Chinese word for “bad” is “broken”: hwai- le. It is the same word used for a broken toy. We are not so much “bad” as “broken”. We need to be restored, healed, put back together.

“Sin” is dysfunction. We are surrounded by dysfunction particularly in our relationships. We don’t just have relationships with those people around us. Instead there are 4 basic relationships: to ourselves, to God, to others, to the world of nature/technology. Any and all of these relationships are “hwai le”. Much of Eight Steps to Emotional, Relational, Spiritual Wholeness: The Healing Power of the Beatitude deals with bringing restoration, healing to these relationships.

Relationship to Ourselves

Perhaps one of the most devious relationships that need restoration is relating to ourselves. We are dysfunctional: emotionally, relationally, physically, socially, spiritually, eternally.

One of my students years ago at a children’s home illustrates this concept. I would stop her many times a day from attacking fellow students with pencils, her fists, etc. Finally, I isolated her and put a mirror in front of her and told her she had to look in the mirror, eyeball-to-eyeball, and say, “I have a problem and that problem is me.” She would try but always look away at the point she would be ready to admit that the real problem was herself. After many attempts when she could genuinely look at herself and see she was her own worst enemy, her personality drastically changed. …not permanently, but at least for the rest of the day.

We are “the good, the bad, the ugly” all on the same horse. We are nibbling ourselves lost. As a Chinese proverb says, “one bed, two dreams.” We are disconnected and the result is death, not health. Dysfunction -> disharmony -> disconnection -> distance -> death. All this causes trouble with  Identity, insecurity, inadequacy, inferiority, insufficiency .

I have often OFTEN told my students that our strengths and weaknesses are flip sides of the same coin. If we can start dealing with this concept, admitting that some of our best points are also our worst enemies, and that some of our most abhorred actions can lead to some of our greatest strengths, we can begin to understand being “poor in spirit.”

Often this means accepting our “shadow side”. Jung talks about our mirror image. Not necessarily the “evil” in us, but rather that which is less than attractive: our shadow. (Jung) Our shadow looks like what we perceive ourselves to be, but distorted.  We need to face it, somehow; sometime; somewhere or it will expose itself somehow; sometime; somewhere. [Numbers 32:23c: “And know that your sin will find you out.”] Often we project our shadow on to others and “see” the dysfunction, sin, etc. in others and abhor it, when really it is our own dark side. How often do we “destroy” others or what they believe simply because we don’t want to look at our own ugliest side?

Rather, it is facing our inadequacies, powerlessness, hopelessness, insecurity, inferiority, insufficiency.  It involves looking at the real root of our problems not just the symptoms that hint at our problems. Being “poor in spirit” means we have been able to face that shadow. We have looked in the mirror, eyeball-to-eyeball, and said, “Yes, this is me, too.” There is that old saying, what you are arguing about is not what is really causing the argument. One needs to look deeper, lift up the sheets so to speak. In this case it also means “look deeply within oneself”.

Growth in this is never steady. It is more like stair steps. We make a break through and go up, but then we stay on this plateau (stair) for a while. Sometimes we have to retreat a step or two because we have lost the perspective. Then struggle back up to the same level we just came from, but each time, the step up becomes easier.

Life is like a spiral. We can see ourselves, our lives, our struggles, from the other side of the spiral as we progress. And the next time that situation, issue, comes around in the spiral, we have the advantage of having viewed it from a distance. I guess that is one of life’s big questions: “Are we spiraling upward or downward?”