The relationship between Soul, Ego, Shadow, Time and the Status Quo. A life’s Journey.
An Introduction to the inter-relationship between Soul, Ego, Shadow, and the Status-quo.
Every time I write about this I am also clarifying my own understanding of the inter-relationship between these forces or energies in our lives. In MKP (“Mankind Project”) We have Men’s groups called an I group we talk a lot about Shadow in response to drivers of behaviours mostly bad behaviours. However, we cannot speak of Shadow without an understanding of Soul. Ego, Soul, Shadow, and Status quo are considered separately. Without an understanding of the inter-relationship, our understanding of Shadow for example is skewed and does not serve the work an I group (The group of men who meet regularly in MKP) is trying to achieve.
So, down to it. First, we need to travel down the road of the birth canal, the path of entry into this world. This implies that the child came from another world outside of this one. If that enlivening force leaves the body we are unable to get it to return. This is the mystery of Soul.
Soul has a special relationship to this birthing process. It’s Soul’s job to break eternity into time so that we can experience life. Time gives validity to life, without time there can be no life. Soul, Time, and death have a special relationship with each other.
To understand our personal journey through this life we need to understand the components that make it one whole.
So, back to our just-born child. Our first great initiation has just happened, the expulsion from the paradise of the aquatic world of the womb into the vagaries of an earthly air-breathing totally physically helpless being. Much like baby Kangaroos, we are born too soon, initially, we need constant protection and a nurturing mother. We have lived intimately with our mother through the gestation period of nine months and shared her body and the life she leads in the outside world. Like every Hero’s journey ritual begins with “Separation”. The young child gradually has to separate from the mother’s body and psychologically from her as well.
Robert Bly expressed this process this way. We come into this world bringing experiences, gifts, and energies from other worlds, other galaxies, and other places. We come into this world in a whirl of energy, we are a 360-degree person but our mother wanted a nice boy or a nice girl. Enter the Status-quo.
We not only incarnate through our mother’s womb into this world but into her family and the environment that surrounds her. As a very small child a few months old we absolutely depend on her goodwill and her acceptance of us to survive. This need for acceptance will drive us for the rest of our lives.
Some of the energies and knowledge we bring into incarnation will not find a home with mother or with the environment and community she inhabits. So we close down the things that don’t make her smile and push them away. Where do these behaviors, energies, and gifts go? Into Shadow. Sometimes a child has the ability to see and talk to relations who are dead. This is my experience is definitely discouraged with threats and frowns. “just shut up you don’t know what you’re talking about” Sometimes what we offer our parents is too soon the world is not ready for our gifts.
This 360-degree person who first arrived is now at say 3 to 4 years old with about half of what arrived here. Where do these amputated parts go? They go into what we have come to understand as Shadow for safekeeping. Our unconscious. When these energies, gifts, and behaviors go into Shadow at an early age by the time of the second phase of life they can be absolute berserkers when they come out. By the time we are 20 or so we have about 10% of what we started with. I know Ego will want to argue about that, Ego has high expectations of itself as it should.
Where is this Shadow in ourselves? It is another part of our consciousness that is outside the awareness of our Ego structure, like the egg. In fact, Ego is formed for just that purpose, to keep us safe from internal and external berserkers and mainly Ego does a great job of that. Until it doesn’t.
So far we can see how denial of parts of ourselves to survive helped create Ego and Shadow. Ego is our sense of identity, how we want to be seen by others, what we pretend to be, to be acceptable to the community we live in. Acceptable to the Status Quo, our Zebra stripes make us part of the herd and partake of its protection.
Everything I have described above is as it should be. Has to be for the human condition to fulfill itself and its purpose.
Now, we have Ego the sense of identity we offer the world, keeping the world of Shadow safely hidden from view. We also now understand Shadow is Soul content that we had to deny to survive. No foul here. We have to survive to have a body and fit in with a community. To have a life, a marriage, children, a career, and so on. This is a very human condition so what is this about another purpose outside of all of that?
So what is this purpose outside of life’s possibilities?
It is the recovery of denied Soul material, integrated into Ego consciousness. This is the essence of the Hero’s journey and the Night-sea-passage. This is the second phase of life, which can happen at any time. The yoke is out of the egg and the genie is out of the bottle. It is not a one-off thing like a TV set but rather a series of mini-events that bring us to new understandings.
This is the essence of all Hero’s journeys and like the story of “Off with the Rats head”.
This story follows the Hero’s path. Separation from the family and the beliefs of the father and the status quo. The Father wound.
A descent into the West of the setting sun and a meeting with the divine King.
A Nigh-sea-Journey. To meet himself heal with his shadows in three different forms Above, below, and within. The Axis Mundi of life.
A final decision before the sun rises in the East. The heralding of a new day, a new life, a new understanding. A new King.
The land has a risen King to rule and bless the world.
Links for a deeper dive into:
Ego. Iron John Chapter 003 The creation of Ego. The Journey from the enormous forest to the Castle Quo
Sam Sleeman updated January 2025
samsleeman.com
For questions or objections please feel free to contact me.
samsleeman1@outlook.com.
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