Collaborating with our shadow side
“The unconscious is our best collaborator. I try to let the participants [in my movies] have downtime before shooting and after rehearsal, so our secret collaborator can do its work. I have learned to trust and encourage that more.”
That perspective of director Mike Nichols [from the page Depth psychology] articulates what many artists know: that our inner depths provide the material for creative expresssion.
But much of what we have in our psyches may be shut away, from suppression and repression, and just not knowing.
There is a lot of reality that demands our attention, and it may take conscious effort to know some aspects of ourselves, especially those considered wrong or evil or otherwise unacceptable.
[The painting is Mask 12, by Robert Peluce - from the page The shadow self 3.]
In her article The Shadow Muse – Gifts of Your Dark Side, Jill Badonsky writes about how much energy we use “to suppress what we perceive to be our undesirable traits – our negativity, judgmental nature, and our other secret peculiarities and struggles.
“Often we do not even allow our shadow side into our own consciousness… In this exercise we not only deny our humanity but we also disable a potent creativity feature – sublimation.”
She notes The Secret is “driving people batty who are trying to stop themselves from manifesting negative things in their lives by stopping negative thoughts. It is like forcing yourself not to listen to the horn section in a song that has a horn section in addition to strings, percussion and a triangle.
“And then they beat themselves up for having a negative thought and then they beat themselves up for beating themselves up. So you see what a waste of energy it is to try and stop negative thoughts especially when both the energy we use and the thoughts themselves have so much potential for creativity.”
Jill Badonsky, M.Ed. is a workshop leader, artist, performer, humorist, and author of the book, The Nine Modern Day Muses.
Aviva Gold thinks “To do our job as artists well, we need to be outspoken, meticulously honest and authentically emotional, which means that we and our art may express rage, grief, destruction, depression, death and sexuality.
“Our art may show up as flamboyant, aggressive, morbid, corny, disgusting, primal, spiritual, provocative and totally outrageous.”
From the book The Soul of Creativity : Insights into the Creative Process, by Tona Pearce Myers.
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