Fishing For Shadow Intensive – July 2025, Latvia

FISHING FOR SHADOW

I went out to the hazel wood,

Because a fire was in my head,

And cut and peeled a hazel wand,

And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,

And moth-like stars were flickering out,

I dropped the berry in a stream

And caught…….??????

Fishing for Shadow’s Dangerous Gifts is a newer offering that is preparatory, in some ways, for the Sweet Darkness intensive.

We will explore Shadow — the hidden, deep, and dangerous realm of our psyches. The Shadow has sinister or negative aspects as well as positive or golden qualities. And it also has golden characters who wear some very sinister masks. It is dark and slippery terrain.

The Shadow is NOT what we know about ourselves and don’t like (and perhaps keep hidden or suppressed) but, rather, what is true about us but know absolutely nothing about — and would sincerely deny if accused.

During this intensive, we’ll discuss and explore personal shadow, the difficult and immensely rewarding dynamics that come up so often in life, like those overpowering emotional charges triggered by other people and by our encounters in the other-than-human world. We will also explore our Outcasts, who we might incorrectly believe to be elements of our shadow. Outcasts are often casualties of our childhood survival strategies, elements of our psyches we rejected in order to be accepted by others.

In addition, we might also dip our feet into other shadows, those that might be personal and also familial/ancestral, racial, organizational, national, and of specific collectives.

We might ask several questions:

“What gift comes to me when I begin to befriend the dark of my psyche?”

“What lies at the bottom of a stagnant well, a deep river, or a deep crack in the floor of the ocean of my psyche?”

“What being or quality is desiring to come out of the shadow and be brought to the surface of my psyche so that I might begin to discover and embody its gifts?”

We will also discuss how to respond when we project upon humans, those seen as “other” and the more than human others.  And, we will discuss what we might do when other humans project upon us.

It might be that since early in our lives, we – our protector parts of our ego — have been tossing aspects of our Self into the deeper waters of our psyche so as to not risk abandonment or shame from our conformist-requiring uncivil civilization. We will work with how our Subpersonalities want to block our work of exploring our shadow, and will go fishing exactly where they wish us not to approach.

We won’t intentionally be exploring our core wounds and vulnerabilities, but who knows what we might catch during our exploration within the dark depths of our psyche? Might we catch the salmon of wisdom, or a fishy beloved as Yeats did in his dream poem referenced above, or an angler-fish that knows how to lure those waiting to die to its mouth, or an erotic moray eel, or…..?