Manipulation & Feigned Innocence
We are exploring the shadow side of the magician archetype.
How do you try to manipulate and control others?
How do you keep others from knowing what you know?
How do you play innocent when in fact you are playing an underhanded game of control?
The authors of “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover” make a direct connection between the way these shadows play out in our personal lives and the destructive impact that human presence is having on the planet. Our magic is unconscious, so it has run away with itself.
This shadow part is also the part that keeps us detached, stuck in our heads, separate from the possibility of connection and authentic relationship. It shows up as an effort to control that which should not be controlled.
Where manipulation is a power move, feigned innocence is a passive move. But it is still reflective of a man who:
Does not want to take the responsibilities that belong to a true magician.
Does not want the task of helping others
Does not want to be a steward of sacred space
Does not want to know himself
Does not want to make the great effort necessary to become skilled at containing and channeling power in constructive ways.
The ‘Innocent’ One’s underlying motivations come from envy of those who act, who live, who want to share. Because the man possessed by the “Innocent” One is envious of life, he is also afraid that people will discover his lack of life energy and throw him off his very wobbly pedestal. His detachment and his ‘impressive behavior,’ his deflating remarks, his hostility toward questions, even his accumulated expertise, are all designed to cover his real inner desolation and hide his actual lifelessness and irresponsibility from the world (p 115).
Take a close look at yourself as you prepare for Monday’s call. Be unflinching in your self-assessment. You might even find the courage to ask a few loved ones to tell you about the ways in which you manipulate or feign innocence.
It is by looking at the shadow that we come into the light of consciousness.
Read pages 111 to 115, The Shadow Magician: The Manipulator and the Denying “Innocent” One, in “King, Warrior, Magician, Lover.”
See you then.
Abrazos,
Gibrán