Turning Over Rocks

As individuals and organizations we often do not show everything that we are. Some times we do this for good reasons, waiting for the right moment to reveal important information or to keep trade secrets. Sometimes we don’t because it would seem to be inappropriate in a social situation. Other times we do not show ourselves for less noble reasons including a desire to create a false image in someone else’s mind of who we are as a person or organization or to manipulate a situation to meet our own ends. .

We also hide ourselves from full view of the world for many unintentional reasons. When we lack a full awareness of who we are unknown aspects of ourselves take up residence in our internal darkness.

This is consistent with the thinking of Carl Jung who speaks of the shadow side of each of us as being comprised of repressed feelings, weaknesses and instincts. In this thinking the deeper that we have repressed these feeling the darker and denser our shadow becomes.

We also hide things of which we are ashamed. There are many sources of shame some self inflicted others passed onto us as children in our families but these feelings remain active in our lives as we advance through life.

Organizations also hide behaviors. Often referred to as explicit or implicit behaviors we look to an organization to see what they say they do (explicit) versus what we see them do (implicit). It is not uncommon for conversations about these types of behaviors to go underground and becoming the unspeakable.

Anyone that has ever tended a garden or explored a forest knows that dark damp places under rocks tend to be fertile and teeming with life. Not always pretty life but active life. In our lives and in our families and organizations life is growing in the darkness as well.

What would it take for you turn over these rocks to find the hidden life underneath? What would it take for you to speak the unspeakable?

That which is hidden in the dark to both others and ourselves has the ability to exercise power over us. It is not required that you broadcast what you find in the darkness but some of it may well be worth dragging into the light.