Roger's presentation should be interesting. 

The theory of shadow can run in circles.  Someone once asked Jung to define the shadow, probably the millionth time he'd been asked this question, and he answered impatiently, "All this talk about the shadow, the shadow is the whole of the unconscious!"

In spiritual circles, people still routinely adopt the Freudian project, even terminology, of making the unconscious conscious .... we want to "increase consciousness," to "become more conscious," to "be a more conscious person," all of which imply increasing the amount of consciousness in our life.  I personally don't think consciousness can properly be increased or measured using a term denoting volume.  I think all these descriptors are off-base, and somewhat insidious for implications they carry.

Closer, IMO, to what actually happens in "expanding" consciousness is expanding the regions of one's inner landscape (whatever the underlying process might actually be) available to conscious recall, dialogue, activation or perception.  In being made available as such, those regions, IME,  become integrated, their energy, in part at least, becomes available to and can work in accord with the larger personality, and one feels more at ease as if some measure of one's previously stepping on gas and brake has lessened.  God knows how any of that works, but it does.  But back to my point: shadowwork doesn't increase you, it integrates you.

Hence in ILP shadowwork, one attempts to first find then bring into dialogue a split off aspect of the personality, so that that aspect can be brought into the fold.  3-2-1-presto: one is then "more conscious."  Note the previous sentence's use of "one" as a substitute for "I."  It doesn't make natural sense to say "two is then more conscious." Integration seems the game for everyone.

To go a little deeper into the mistermed "more," notice that what happens in shadowwork is that, IMO, and speculatively, some autonomous aspect one's being, something like a dynamic software program written into one's neural/bodily structure, is somehow integrated into the overall personality structure, the latter, for its part, being something of a pattern similarly scribed in memory, in some fashion and of whatever sort.  In this understanding, so-called higher levels of consciousness do not refer to some "increased" awareness, but to higher orders of being-integration which consciousness reflects, like the way a mountain (being) reflects light (consciousness) and, voila, there it is, in view.  A reflection will look more highly ordered and subtle, in this understanding, when the substrate is more more highly ordered and subtle.  By consciousness work, one's being becomes more subtle---the pattern comprising one's being becomes more finely graded, and permanently so, ie, written in memory, ie, it will be there tomorrow when you wake up, it has been incorporated as a new "stage."  It becomes more finely graded in part through introducing into its overall pattern the split-off aspects.  I suspect the integration works somewhat on holographic principles, such that each addition to the overall pattern (the personality) repatterns the pattern.

To get a picture of this, one can take as an analogy learning to play a piano.  The difference between me and Keith Jarrett is not that Keith has "more piano consciousness," but that he has written into his memory structure, via sustained attention no doubt (attention being the effective writing element), a certain memory he can access via his consciousness.  That memory, which is a dynamic memory of some unheard-of complexity, contains Keith's ability to play how he can.  The function, if you will, does not reside in consciousness, is not measured as an increase in consciousness, does not mean Keith is more conscious than me.  Moreover, the way he plays will undoubtedly be "Keith-like," his songs will evidence a representative stamp, his piano hand movements will carry the Keith stamp, his piano playing is infused with Keithness.

The overemphasis on consciousness---presuming to measure it in "volume" terms, using language that sees some ongoing "increase," saying Everything Is Consciousness---is IMO a harbinger of dualistic anti-body theories still lingering from days of yore, so deeply were they written into memory, ahem.  Even KW is moving to some such realization, that is, of the masculine-favouring dualism in his work, I would say, as his latest understanding is moving toward expressing that consciousness of every sort needs a body.  Well, a simple glance at evolution would suggest that more subtle forms of awareness are phenomena evolved in parallel with more complex bodily undersupports and correlates: the two cannot be separated.   The conclusion seems foregone to me.

A less dualistic view of consciousness---a consciousness viewed to work hand in hand with body, to arise with and as body, to be not not the body, and in its functioning to reflect happenings and results of processes describable in bodily terms also---will put to rest certain questions about shadow and the so-called unconscious, and will help reintroduce long-needed feminine perspectives back into inner work (even to call this work spirituality is to shade toward masculinization) ... in other words, to be more integral, unified, whole.  : ) 

If some should say my emphasis on body is "reductionism," my response is that your view of what body is is too small.  Transcend and include---I don't like the word "transcend," but will use it because it's familiar---transcend and include implies that, if you will, atom + time = everything we see, therefore everything is atom, oak in the acorn, etc.  If some should then further say I'm being too "Platonic idealistic," my response is that your view of what I call oak in the acorn is too small: the acorn includes all possibilities, including the ability to move spontaneously, later manifested.

I've been appreciating all of the comments.  And I look forward to listening this weekend to Roger's presentation; I will report on it here if it is relevant.

Fairyfaye, Tom answered your questions well, in my opinion, but I will also add my thoughts...

You are right that I am not suggesting that practices have consciousness (or unconsciousness) in the way that human beings do.  I am, of course, just elaborating on Kornfield's ideas here.  He points out, in his meditation on the shadow of practice, that any particular approach or path involves choices about what to emphasize, how to organize or conceptualize experience, how to approach issues and problems, etc, and in so doing, it will inevitably leave some things out, or elevate some perspectives at the expense of others.  I don't think this is a problem; it comes with the territory (of relative truth). 

As I said above, ILP is an orientation which actually may go farther toward raising awareness of these shadows and gaps than maybe some other practices; it is designed to be comprehensive, after all.  But as a system, it still can't cover everything at once in equal measure.  So, Kornfield's meditation invites us to take a meta-view -- not only engaging in multi-modular practice (including shadow-work), but also looking at how we are approaching and holding modular practice, how we are engaging in our shadow work.  Is there a shadow side to our shadow work?

The idea, of course, isn't to single out ILP.  My interest in sharing this was as a helpful meditation to use in relation to whatever practice we follow.  But I don't think we should exempt ILP from this sort of reflection either...

Best wishes,

Balder

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May the boundless knowledge that time presents and space allows illuminate the native perspectives of your original face.

oh balder please please report on roger's presentation whether here or elsewhere .. and on any other presentations u will be attending

how wonderful that u will be there .. and i 've read that arthur and liz will be there too .. any other forum members ?

what i get from kornfield's point .. it that it is exactly the point of integral life practice: cross training

balder we would love if u could share with us what your practices are .. u are one of my heros here and i'd be honored to hear about it

 

I know what you mean. It is easiest for me of thinking of this applied to the gross body, where say for instance someone has been focusing on push ups and sit ups. Then of course they will tend to get hunched over, because they are not using the opposite muscles. So what ever we use, we must compensate for. This goes for qualities too. So the shadow of doing too much developement of your strength is that it can reduce your speed and endurance. The shadow of zen, as Kornfield said, is not being grounded, so something like a walking or standing meditation could help bring balance.
Not that I am recommending flitting from one practice to another without ever really digging into anything. A continually deepening practice is invaluable. But consciously mixing it up, try to work the opposites of what I have been or explore other parts of the spectrum can yield some very interesting results. At the very least it keeps things fresh. As for compartmentalization reducing the flow between practices, I am a big fan of having general quite time that can go from sitting to lying to standing meditation or yoga or whatever form of movement calls to you. There is a term called autokinesis, which is basically body movements that are allowed to flow without conscious control. It's a great way to get used to allowing flow. The hardest part is getting over looking weird, so at first try it somewhere private.