Shadow work is a psychological and spiritual practice that involves exploring and integrating the unconscious aspects of the self, often referred to as the “shadow.” This concept, popularized by Carl Jung, refers to the parts of ourselves that we repress, deny, or reject because they are deemed unacceptable, uncomfortable, or inconsistent with our self-image. Shadow work aims to bring these hidden aspects into conscious awareness, fostering self-acceptance, healing, and personal growth.
Shadow work can take many forms, including journaling and self-reflection, therapy, meditation, creative expression, ritual and ceremony, somatic practices like hatha yoga, tai chi, and breathwork, exploring interpersonal dynamics, or incorporating shadow integration as part of a spiritual path like tantra, alchemy, shamanism, Kabbalah, or Integral AQAL Integral Life Practices.
The strengths of shadow work include increasing self-awareness and supporting personal growth by uncovering hidden beliefs, emotions, and behaviors; emotional healing through confronting repressed emotions such as anger, fear, shame; improved relationships by reducing projection and developing greater empathy and understanding for others by recognizing and integrating one’s shadow; and supporting spiritual development and creativity.
Despite these important benefits, shadow work does have some limitations. First there are those which are rather generic. Shadow work can be emotionally overwhelming for some people and can lead to retraumatization. It is easy to misinterpret shadow aspects, leading to unexpected negative consequences such as self-judgment or further repression. Shadow work is not a “quick fix,” but is better understood and approached as a lifelong process requiring consistent effort and introspection. It also includes the potential for spiritual bypassing, or the avoidance of practical issues or responsibilities by using spirituality as an escape. While shadow work can be done independently, the reality is that we are subjectively enmeshed in our own assumptions, expectations, interpretations, scripting, and world views. The result is that most of us require the guidance and support of a therapist, coach, or spiritual guide to navigate the process safely.
In addition to the above limitations, there are those which are made obvious by transpersonal approaches, such as Integral Deep Listening. Integral Deep Listing (IDL) is a transpersonal dream yoga that supports shadow work, clarifies some of its limitations and adds important elements that reframe it from “shadow work” to a form of Dream Yoga.
Integral Deep Listening includes and supports aspects of shadow work by reducing internal conflicts, eliminating nightmares, reducing the projection of internal conflicts onto relationships, clarifying the nature of “shadow” aspects and generating recommendations by which the healing of shadow can be tested. It has been shown to be effective at reducing all sorts of anxiety disorders, including panic attacks, phobias, and post-traumatic stress disorders. It is also effective in supporting general development out of toxic scripting, emotional drama, and cognitive distortions and into the transpersonal. Integral Deep Listening is similar to shadow work in that it asks the subject to “become” self-aspects, allowing them to speak and explain who and what they are. If that was all it did, Integral Deep Listening could rightfully be considered to be a variety of shadow work. In addition, IDL emphasizes a number of elements that shadow work typically does not:
It is phenomenalistic
The first way in which IDL includes and then transcends shadow work is that it is phenomenalistic. Phenomenalistic approaches surface and then table assumptions that underlie healing, balancing, and transformation.
Shadow work is built on a number of assumptions that IDL surfaces and tables. To “table” an assumption is to suspend it temporarily so that it does not act as a filter that distorts information. IDL interviews elements from dreams, waking life, and mystical experiences. These can be heard more clearly, without being filtered through our assumptions and world views, when our assumptions are surfaced and tabled.
Our approaches to healing, balancing, and transformation commonly contain multiple assumptions that we are unaware of. They may include things like the unconscious, both personal and collective, archetypes, self-aspects, “parts,” “sub-personalities,” spirituality, deity, sacredness, the secular, conflictual, soul, Self, reality, illusion, truth, and falsity. These assumptions may or may not be helpful and true. To suspend them is not a statement that they are not true, helpful or relevant, but only a recognition that they act as filters that can get in the way of listening to our experience and that of others. In the case of IDL interviewing, such assumptions can filter what is said by interviewed perspectives. The result is something of an echo chamber: we have mirrored back to us either our own assumptions about what is real and true or else we are confronted with their opposites.
IDL suspends such assumptions because they are not widely shared by interviewed elements and therefore do not adequately reflect their perspectives and world views. Rather, our assumptions are parts of our waking scripting and worldview, which we are likely to outgrow in time.
IDL supports identification with interviewed perspectives
Role playing assumes we are more real than the “roles” we take in life. While that is true, is it possible for us to inhabit perspectives that are just as real, or perhaps even more real, than we are? This is the concept behind the descent of Greek Muses or daemons, or possessions by the spirits of others in spiritualism. It is the idea behind hierophanies and kratophanies. Becoming perspectives surfaces and tables the assumption that we are playing or taking on a role, because, how do we know? Isn’t it better to let the character express where it is on the scale of imaginary self-aspect to full-blown transcendent other? We do not commonly treat deity as a role but as something transcendent. Any perspective you take on is potentially sacred. To assume it is less is to filter out that possibility from our encounter with it. Why would we want to do that? Role playing is a subtle discount of the reality, autonomy, and beingness of the others with which we identify. These are the reasons IDL does not assume interviewed perspectives are roles or that IDL interviewing is role playing.
Interviewed elements are emerging potentials, not self-aspects
IDL does not view interviewed perspectives, regardless of their source, as self-aspects, “parts” or “sub-personalities.” It is not that they do not or cannot be parts of yourself or personify important aspects of you. They certainly do. However, these terms limit their reality, beingness, and authenticity to being sub-aspects of ourselves. How do we know that is true? When we interview characters they may or may not be self-aspects, but they are always emerging potentials for us. Even if they spring entirely from within, when interviewed we discover that they personify potentials that are emerging into our awareness.
A collection of common assumptions
Let’s look at each of a number of common assumptions in turn in order to understand how they are assumptions and what they assume.
The unconscious
The concept of the unconscious is an assumption because it is a theoretical construct rather than a directly observable entity. It is inferred from phenomena like slips of the tongue, dreams that reveal hidden desires or fears, and behaviors that contradict our conscious intentions, such as self-sabotage. We assume that these phenomena are caused by underlying processes outside of conscious awareness. By definition, the unconscious operates below the threshold of conscious awareness. This makes it unverifiable through direct observation, relying instead on indirect evidence. It is notable that some schools of psychology, such as behaviorism and cognitive behavioral therapy, do not make the assumption that there is an unconscious.
The reason why IDL Dream Yoga temporarily tables this assumption is because interviewed perspectives, either originating in dreams, life issues, or mystical experiences, don’t typically view themselves as dwelling in any unconscious. They generally view themselves as conscious as you and I are. Therefore, to assume that they exist in the unconscious is to project our perspective onto them. In Integral Deep Listening, the object is to listen to their perspective, not to project our assumptions and perspectives onto them, regardless of how accurate or true ours may be.
The personal unconscious
The concept of a personal unconscious assumes that the unconscious contains repressed memories, desires, and conflicts that the conscious mind cannot handle. However, automatic behaviors and cognitive biases like confirmation bias or the Halo Effect, can be explained as cognitive processes without invoking the unconscious.
What this means is that the concept of personal unconscious, as accurate or useful as it may be in some circumstances, is not essential. In addition, as with the concept of the unconscious, interviewed elements may or may not say they dwell in your personal unconscious, or they may say they do both, or that they do neither.
The collective unconscious
The collective unconscious refers to a shared, universal layer of the unconscious mind that is said to contain inherited memories and structures common to all humans. While the collective unconscious is inferred from recurring patterns across cultures and time periods, such as myths, symbols, and rituals, it cannot be directly observed or measured. Consequently, its existence is not scientifically verifiable. The idea assumes that recurring themes in myths, dreams, and symbols across cultures are evidence of a shared unconscious structure. However, these patterns could also be explained by shared human experiences (e.g., birth, death, relationships) rather than a universal unconscious. The collective unconscious implies a non-material, universal aspect of humanity that transcends individual experience. While that may be true, it remains a metaphysical assumption that is not grounded in empirical frameworks that are objective and subject to collective validation.
Concepts like “collective unconscious” may indeed be useful for understanding interviewed perspectives after the fact, after they have been interviewed. While IDL has its own interpretations, it has no problem with anyone applying their own explanations and interpretations for the interviewing process and what it implies. However, because IDL Dream Yoga is phenomenolistically grounded, it tables the assumption of collective unconscious during the actual interviewing process.
Archetypes
Archetypes are the universal, primordial images or patterns within the collective unconscious that shape human experience and behavior. Examples include the Hero, Mother, Shadow, and Wise Old Man. Their existence is inferred from their manifestations in myths, art, and religion. While archetypes are described as innate templates or patterns, they are not tangible. Jung argued that archetypes are universal, yet their specific expressions vary across cultures. This variability raises questions about whether archetypes are truly innate or simply culturally transmitted patterns.
Archetypes are identified through symbolic interpretation, which is inherently subjective. For example, the same symbol, like a snake, might be interpreted differently depending on the context, making archetypes difficult to define or validate scientifically.
As you interview characters, they may remind you of this or that archetype. Such associations may not only “fit,” but be helpful. However, because the interviewed elements themselves may or may not view themselves as archetypes, IDL withholds such associations until after the interview is completed. However, you will find that if you enquire of a character, either during an interview or thereafter, if it embodies the archetype of the Hero or Fool, it may well provide you with its own answer.
Self-aspects, parts, sub-personalities
“Self-aspects” refer to the different roles, traits, or identities a person embodies, such as “parent,” “friend,” or “professional.”.
“Parts” represent distinct inner voices or elements of the psyche with their own emotions, desires, and perspectives. They are often used in therapeutic frameworks like Internal Family Systems (IFS).
“Sub-Personalities” are more developed and distinct than parts, resembling mini-personalities within the self that may act autonomously, like “inner child,” “critic,” or “protector.”
That other perspectives, objectively real or subjective and imaginary, are merely “parts” is an assumption that discounts the relative autonomy of dream perspectives or of anything that one labels as “shadow.” That assumption is also surfaced but not tabled, because it is essential to testing the phenomenological methodology itself.
Shadow work assumes that interviewed perspectives are roles and/or aspects of oneself. It further generally assumes that these “self-aspects” are disowned, repressed, or sources of conflict or potential conflict. IDL assumes that those assumptions may well be true, or that they may not be. While interviewed characters may not give definitive or truthful answers, they provide additional perspectives that are both relevant and that we may not have previously considered or taken into account. Therefore, IDL does not assume that interviewed perspectives are either aspects of oneself or wholly other and autonomous.
In practice, IDL has found that interviewed perspectives fall on a line or spectrum, with a greater or lesser degree of subjectivity and objectivity. Some are more to one end while others are more to the other. However, all interviewed elements are found to contain some degree of autonomous “other” and are also found to contain some degree of subjective identification with self.
Spirituality
Spirituality encourages personal growth, meaning-making, and connection to others or the universe. Involving a search for meaning, purpose, or transcendence, spirituality is an assumption because it is based on personal experiences, feelings, or intuitions that cannot be objectively measured or verified. It also assumes the existence of dimensions of reality beyond the material or physical, such as a higher power, energy, or universal consciousness. These may or may not exist, and if they do, they may not be important or relevant for this or that interviewed character.
Spirituality assumes there is a deeper or transcendent reality beyond the physical world, that human life has inherent meaning or purpose tied to this transcendent reality, and that personal experiences of awe, wonder, or connection point to something beyond material existence. All that may be true, and these are assumptions that can certainly be meaningful and helpful. The meanings and expressions of spirituality are shaped by cultural, historical, and personal contexts, suggesting it is not a universal truth but a construct.
In addition, the concept of spirituality is hopelessly ambiguous, leading to confusion and misunderstanding. Is spirituality the highest state of consciousness, enlightenment? Or is spirituality a developmental process? Is spirituality one line of development among many or is it all lines? Is it a feeling of bliss? Is it an altered state of mystical oneness? Is it a transcendent, ineffable state of non-duality that defies all description? Is it the sacred as opposed to the secular, or is it both? Is it transcendent or immanent, or both? Is it all of these? Is it none of these? Which of these meanings is the speaker referring to? How do you know? Does it matter? How important is clarity of communication when it comes to spirituality?
You will probably find as you conduct IDL interviews that the concept of spirituality is not very important to many interviewed characters, but to some it may be very important. What this implies is that we cannot assume that IDL interviewing, while a transpersonal process, is also a spiritual one. Everyone is certainly free to project spiritual values and meanings onto the process, and that may indeed be both meaningful and helpful. However, listening in a deep and integral way means that we respectfully create space for each interviewed element to express its own world view, spiritual or not.
deity
Deity refers to a divine being or beings, often characterized as omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, or as forces or principles governing the universe. The concept of deity provides moral guidance, existential purpose, and a framework for understanding life’s mysteries. Deity is often invoked to explain phenomena that are otherwise mysterious, such as creation, morality, or consciousness, making it an assumption to fill gaps in understanding. Because the existence of a deity cannot be empirically proven or disproven, deity is a belief and an assumption that relies on faith, tradition, or philosophical reasoning. Different cultures and religions define deity in vastly different ways, such as monotheistic, polytheistic, or pantheistic, suggesting deity is a human construct shaped by context.
Deity assumes that a higher power or intelligence exists and influences the universe. This power may have a personal relationship with humanity or set moral and existential principles. The universe has intentionality or design, often tied to the deity’s will or nature. That may or may not be true, but that is beside the point for phenomenalism. It surfaces and then tables beliefs temporarily, including any belief in deity. Those beliefs can be picked up again after the practice of empathetic multi-perspectivalism. Note that this is a fundamental difference between IDL and Tibetan Dream Yoga, which very much assumes the existence of deity as a foundation for its identification process.
sacredness
The sacred refers to things, places, or ideas that are set apart as holy, divine, or imbued with profound significance. The sacred helps define values, inspire awe, and create cultural cohesion through shared symbols. Sacredness is often attributed to objects or concepts based on symbolic meaning rather than intrinsic qualities. It assumes that some things possess a higher, non-material significance that transcends ordinary existence, that there is a distinction between the sacred and the profane, that certain things or experiences connect humans to a higher reality or ultimate truth, and that reverence or ritual interaction with the sacred has transformative or meaningful effects. What is considered sacred varies widely across cultures and traditions, indicating that it is a social and psychological construct.
Transpersonal approaches, including most Dream Yogas, and IDL in particular, embrace the assumption that life is sacred. However, during the interviewing process, students are taught to suspend that assumption in order to listen, in a deep and integral way, to the perspective of the interviewed element. It may or may not experience life as sacred. What such interviews do is broaden our understanding of the sacred to include the non-sacred and secular.
the secular
The secular refers to a worldview or societal organization that is independent of religious or spiritual frameworks. Secular approaches promote inclusivity, rational inquiry, and freedom of belief in diverse societies. Secularism assumes it is possible to create systems like governance and education that are free from religious or spiritual influence, which some argue is itself a belief system.
The secular is often defined in opposition to the sacred or religious, making it context-dependent rather than an absolute category. Secularism assumes that human reason, science, and ethics can provide sufficient explanations and guidance without reference to a higher power or transcendent reality. The secular assumes that the material world is primary, and supernatural explanations are unnecessary or irrelevant, that reason and empirical evidence are sufficient to understand and navigate existence, and that religion and spirituality are optional or private matters rather than central to public life. While a secular emphasis is often derided as reductionistic materialism, it may simply be the embrace of naturalism.
You may have discovered that most approaches to dream interpretation differentiate between sacred and secular, transcendent and “real” dreams and mundane, false, and illusory ones. IDL does not make this distinction, primarily because few interviewed characters do. Few either demand their reality and autonomy or have a problem with being viewed as false, mundane, or illusory. Those distinctions, which are basic to reality testing for humans, appear to be largely irrelevant to most interviewed perspectives. What this teaches us is that distinctions, polarities, and dualisms are a perceptual choice which may be important and useful at some times but that having the ability to drop those assumptions can also prove to be very important and useful.
soul
There are many good reasons why many people believe they have an immortal soul. There are also many good reasons why other people do not share that belief. It is a belief that may or may not be true. It also may or may not be important to this or that element that you interview. Because that is the case, over time IDL interviewing tends to detach us from our beliefs, to hold them more lightly and not base our identities on them. This is not agnosticism, but rather an openness to both possibilities and to be comfortable with whichever turns out to be true.
Self
The concept of a transcendent Self is similar to that of soul, in that both are immortal. However, the Self implies existence in a state of mystical oneness with all, which the soul may or may not do. The idea of such an identity, either as an ever present reality beneath the veils of samsara or earthly existence, or as some future potential and destiny of humanity, is very attractive, and it is not surprising that many wise and good people subscribe to it. IDL takes the position that such a Self may or may not exist, now or in the future. Certainly, to the extent that the Self personifies a state of integration, as Jung taught, it is a reality and is becoming more a reality as humanity evolves.
IDL does not assume that any interviewed characters either embody the Self or lack it. It is up to them to disclose their own relationship to that concept and belief and for us to take in those perspectives and refine our own opinions about the existence of an immortal self, one with all.
reality
Reality is a concept that humans require in order to function. “Reality testing” is a fundamental determination of sanity. Sanity means the ability to know who you are and where you are – whether you are asleep or dreaming, for example. It can be quite disconcerting to some people to discover that many interviewed perspectives are not concerned about what is real or illusory, or whether they exist in a dream or waking state. The implication is that they also do not care if we are dissociated or “crazy.” This is reminiscent of historical traditions of the purposeful creation of altered states, whether drug, ascetically, or meditatively induced. Indeed, every occasion of suspending your sense of self in order to embody the perspective, the world view, or the reality of some dream character or life issue is an act of moving into an altered state, although it is often so subtle as to not be noticeable. Still, that is what is happening. You are suspending not only your reality, but your identity. You are undergoing an imperceptible but very real death, to be reborn as some perspective which is normally alien to you. At that point, during that period, that perspective is your reality, and you are left, like LaoTzu, to wonder if you are LaoTzu dreaming of a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming the life of LaoTzu.
In traditional psychology, such suspension of reality testing is equated with descent into dissociation and disintegration of the self. But IDL interviewing demonstrates that the opposite is the case: these “descents” out of reality generate greater, higher order, transpersonal integration. This is a conclusion which everyone is encouraged to test and evaluate for themselves.
illusion
Interviewed perspectives either don’t regard themselves as illusory or don’t care. What is important to them is their perspective and whether we listen to it or not, not their ontology or reality. Listening to “illusory” perspectives is different than agreeing with them. We are suspending both agreement and disagreement while we listen respectfully. Once we have the information then we are free to form our own conclusion.
truth
Truth is very important to humans; it is less so for interviewed emerging potentials. The reason why is that each one has its own truth. It is the center of its reality, and its perspective has truth for it. It does not follow that the truths of interviewed perspectives are truthful or that we should adopt them. These perspectives are neither all-knowing nor infallible. They are to be regarded with a combination of respect and healthy skepticism. That is why we test their recommendations, to prove their credibility or lack of it, in the fires of our daily life challenges.
falsity
Similar to truth, being able to determine what and who not to believe is critical to our waking happiness. However, truth and falsity make no difference to most interviewed perspectives. They are inclined to simply state their point of view and allow us to decide what to make of it and what to do with them.
conflictual
Notice that insisting on the veracity of our assumptions generates all sorts of interesting and dramatic conflicts. Those in turn create a great deal of smoke but not very much light. That can also be said about the concept of “conflict” itself. For example, to assume that an attacking dream monster or hurricane or tsunami is about conflict because we are attacked makes sense – from our perspective. However, deep listening in an integral and transpersonal way includes suspending the assumption of conflict in order to hear what the monster, hurricane, or tsunami has to say. What we often hear is that yes, we are being frightened, but why? The explanation often comes that we are being scared awake, to pay attention, so we will wake up to some threat bearing down on us. In such cases the issue is not what we think: that the threat is some dream antagonist. Instead, the persecuting perspective is often pointing to something important that we are overlooking or misperceiving. We may or may not be in conflict with the “persecutor” themselves, we just feel threatened and direct our attention to defense instead of listening to why it has appeared in the first place. The conclusion to be drawn is that conflict and its resolution as the subject of shadow work is an assumption to be tabled during IDL interviewing.
It is important to remember that the suspension of assumptions is meant to be a research stance that over time lessens our attachment to assumptions in general, broadening and thinning our identity. Phenomenology is not meant to be an overall preference, because most of our assumptions are either healthy or neutral. It is helpful to assume that fire will burn, gravity will operate, and that other drivers will stay on their side of the road. We can keep and use our assumptions most of the time, but surface and suspend them at other times, when they are unnecessary, assumed, or unfounded. IDL interviewing, unlike most forms of shadow work, is practice in doing so.
Cognitive and empathetic multi-perspectivalism
In addition to surfacing and tabling our assumptions, IDL differentiates two different varieties of transpersonal approaches to healing, balancing and transformation. Shadow work typically does not make this differentiation. The distinction is between two different varieties of multi-perspectivalism. Multi-perspectivalism is the ability to look at people, events, and ourselves from different viewpoints, perspectives, or world views.
The two types of multi-perspectivalism are cognitive and empathetic. Cognitive multi-perspectivalism involves the ability to recognize different perspectives, be they different states of consciousness, different beliefs or values, different ways of behaving or organizing groups and society. Cognitive multi-perspectivalism is the ability to read “maps” of experience in an objective way, without judgment of this or that one being better, seeing each as being adaptive within its own context. We build improved maps as heuristics to make sense of ourselves and our world.
Empathetic multi-perspectivalism is different. It involves immersion in alternative perspectives. Here are a couple of illustrations of the difference. We all have our conceptions of various foreigners, say Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Palestinians, or Israelis. We generally assume that our conceptions are accurate assessments or “maps” of who they actually are. But how do we know? It is only by going to these different places and immersing ourselves in their cultures and societies that we can claim to have more than cognitive multi-perspectivalism, map reading, and to actually possess empathetic multi-perspectivalism. Otherwise, the belief that we do is another assumption to be surfaced and tabled, and this is what IDL does.
It does so by laying aside our waking identity and embodying, to the best of our ability, the perspective of the “other,” real or imaginary, through the answering of questions in the IDL protocol.
Subjective sources of objectivity
While dream and other perspectives most certainly are self-aspects, in that their existence is subject to how we perceive them, that does not mean that is all that they are or most intrinsically what they are.
Nor does it mean that transformationally autonomous dream elements, like that visitation by your deceased aunt Gertrude or by Jesus are not self aspects. There is rarely any recognition that these perspectives exist on a continuum of autonomy/subjectivity, which is clearly the case. The most subjective of interviewed perspectives express some degree of autonomy. The most objective of interviewed perspectives, such as near death tunnels and white lights, express some degree of subjective self-generation. Integral Deep Listening, calls elements on this continuum not “shadow,” but “subjective sources of objectivity.” They are subjective in that they arise out of our inner experience. However, they are to a lesser or greater degree autonomous because they express opinions and world views that differ from our own, often in highly significant ways.
To not recognize the existence of this continuum is to endorse a variety of manichaeistic polarization: either dream elements are transcendent, autonomous, and wholly other, or else they are self aspects. Polarized thinking is reductionistic and polarized thinking is a core characteristic of early prepersonal perception and personality disorders. What it does is split us off not only from others but from ourselves. It creates unbridgeable fractures and chasms in both our interior and objective realities, in our relationships with others as well as within ourselves.
What is the center of our identity?
Shadow work is typically done from the perspective of waking identity, which assumes it is the core around which integration proceeds. We are the perceiver of our experience, so integration is to occur around our identity.
This is an assumption, and like all assumptions, a transpersonal and phenomenological approach will surface and table it. What does ourselves as the center of our identity assume? While the establishment of a stable, controlling, and confident self-sense is necessary for “normalcy” and “coping,” as well as for further development, and is essential for early stages of development, a solid, integrated self becomes increasingly not only less important but a positive hindrance to growth into the transpersonal.
This is because any approach to integration, including shadow work, that assumes our waking identity is the core around which integration proceeds, is “psychologically geocentric.” Geocentrism is the experience and assumption that the universe orbits around the earth. Psychological geocentrism is the experience and assumption that reality orbits around us, meaning our waking sense of who we are.
Shadow work, represented by Jungian psychology, Gestalt, Wilber’s 3-2-1 process, and various schools of “parts” and “subpersonality” work, is psychologically geocentric. After our identity has become consolidated, to assume that “shadow” elements are only or merely aspects of ourselves, is both mistaken and a hindrance. Instead of practicing listening to the “other,” in a deep and integral way, we end up attempting to control the other, whether by changing a dream to our liking, resolving a conflict in a way that is self-soothing, or ignoring or discounting perspectives that challenge our own.
Controlling, based on the assumption that our interests, intentions, and motivations reflect what is best for us, blocks the emergence of empathetic multi-perspectivalism. How do we know that our interests, desires, and motivations are the best for us? We don’t; we merely assume. Once we realize that this is an assumption, a phenomenological approach tables it in favor of listening to the other in a deep and integral way.
Integralists generally assume cognitive multi-perspectivalism – having a good map – is the same as walking the territory from the perspectives of others. It isn’t.
Waking totalitarianism
We attempt to reduce perceived conflict by incorporating it into an expanding, controlling waking identity. We strive to reduce the conflict by colonizing its sources. We do not stop to ask, “What if my perception of conflict is itself mistaken?” “What if, when approached from alternative legitimate and invested perspectives, there is no conflict?”
What that question does is undermine the need for waking identity to colonize and incorporate other states of consciousness, such as the dream state, by lucid dreaming and shadow work.
Viewing dream perspectives as “shadow” is to be about the project of colonizing the dream and imaginative states. Instead of focusing on interdependence, co-origination, emerging potentials, and relative autonomy, the agenda is to incorporate them into waking identity. That is a concrete, functional definition of “colonization,” is it not? Psychologically geocentric approaches are not egalitarian, pluralistic, reciprocating, or respectful. They are grandiose. Does it cross our mind that it would be helpful or even relevant to be respectful toward an imaginary, self-created image?
Respect
There exist very good reasons to demonstrate respect toward all others, including self-created images, by dropping the assumption that they are imaginary and self-created. These reasons are essentially the same as why we drop the assumption that we are “better” than those that are different or with whom we disagree. We are motivated by a desire to move away from prejudice and bias. We understand that assuming that any perspective is trivial or unimportant deprives us of any relevant information it may possess. We recognize that assuming we know better is not reciprocal, in that we don’t want others to assume that they know better than us, particularly about matters that concern us. At some point it is likely to dawn on us that attempting to control others, even imaginary others, by making them conform to our waking expectations, is not compassionate or respectful. We recognize that we are creating conflict by assuming our ontological superiority.
More problematic aspects of shadow work
Reductionistic
When shadow work assumes that dream elements (or anything else) are self-aspects, it risks validating the suspicion that it is reductionistic.
Conflictual
Whatever is treated as shadow is assumed to be conflictual. Because we perceive and experience conflict we want to reduce it. But as we have seen, what appears to us to be conflictual may not be. Conflict may also be a good thing, in that it can result in our letting go of our assumptions.
Accepting responsibility that is not ours
Both assumptions, that imaginary elements are self aspects and that they are objectively real, betray a violation of phenomenalism. There is no surfacing or tabling of the assumption that dream elements are either self aspects or wholly other, objective “spiritual” “transpersonal” realities.
The solution is not to deny that dreamwork has important shadow elements or to deny the usefulness of taking responsibility for subjective dream experiences. Of course both are true. But it is also true that it is grandiose to accept responsibility for those circumstances for which we are not responsible, which are myriad. For example, physiological, familial, cultural, and social scripting are hardly attributable to our personal responsibility. To say or imagine that they are is to strip of responsibility those contexts which gain freedom and power by disowning their own responsibility for the continuing life dysfunctions experienced by others. If we are always to blame for our plight, we risk giving the jailers of our autonomy a free pass.
How do we know what we know?
While shadow work, to its credit, does temporarily suspend waking identity in order to give voice to alternative perspectives, including dream perspectives, it does so in order to incorporate them into a relatively “non shadow” waking identity. The bias is transparent. It is not based on ontological egalitarianism, reciprocity, or respect. It is not fundamentally deep listening in an integral way. Instead, it assumes that waking identity is the correct and appropriate perspective and world view to which the contents of consciousness should conform.
But where is the evidence for the accuracy of this assumption? Just how effective and competent has waking identity shown itself to be in organizing, healing, balancing, and positively transforming its reality? Is there not a great deal of evidence that waking identity is as capable of making disastrous decisions as it is good ones? Does that not point to the need not only for objective sources of feedback but to the need to consult subjective sources of objectivity? Integral Deep Listening, as a phenomenalistic and transpersonal approach to multi-perspectivalism and polycentrism, expands on shadow work in important and effective ways.