In depth exploration of Shadow work, bringing the shadow to consciousness, to light, according to Carl Jung’s psychology and Heroes Journey
We didn’t see this when we were young.
If you watch the movie now it is to be clear crystal clear to you also.
Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is actually depiction of jungian path to enlightenment bringing the shadow to light Shadow to consciousness,bringing the unconscious to consciousness and when we are younger we cannot see this but when we are maybe older, it is completely crystal clear if we are familiar with the concepts and shadowwork and then we are also 100% sure that Bruce Wayne survived and Batman didn’t had to fight anymore, trauma was completely healed and shadow was illuminated by the light, brought to consciousnessa, unconscious was brought to consciousness and didn’t have to act out anymore, out of unconsciousness, Bruce Wayne was conscious of his shadow that was healed and didn’t have to fight anymore as Batman that represented his pain.
The concept and the path in the movie is so crystal, that any other ending would collapse the clearly in the movie represented jungian path to enlightenment, bringing the shadow to light, unconscious to consciousness through all stages.
Christopher nolan likes to play with this koncept in much of his work, so it must be the path he is walking on or has walked to the end.
God knows. For clearly he wants to guide his viewers through that journey and help them on their journey to represent that painful not easy path that is living to lightness and freedom of suffering and freedom of suffering, path that we are on maybe.
We can see this in the movie clearly, but only if we watch the trilogy second time, when we are maybe older.
In the third part is depicting the Dark Night of the Soul and conquering of our trauma our worst weaknesses, out guilt through it, so the we no more have to thestroj the darkness outside of us because our shadow is illuminated by the light brought to consciousness and we no more have to fight the darkness outside of us out of that pain.
When we are young, we are focusing on action, fighting, training, fizical endurance and strenght, on explosions, car chases and special effects, but if we watch it now, profound explanation of Carl Jung’s psychology and Pat t of bringing the shadow to light, to consciousness, our unconscious to consciousness just as Carl Jung explained and presented.
It is also story of the heroes journey. Bruce wayne has his first dark night of the soul when he was in the Chinese prison on the Himalayan border.
Then he become his worst fear and became the bat himself.
he heals the great part of his trauma and he’s doing his work as Batman, but still driven by deep pain of the childhood trauma within.
He tries to destroy the darkness outside of himself in great part still unconscious and suffering from trauma within.
And that drives the Batman. But then he meets his worst weaknesses in his demon in the third part, and Bane, who represents his worst enemy within actually does destroy him, physically and psychologically so dthat he descendent in the dark cave, where he was healing for years, his second and most extreme Dark night of the Soul, and he realizes that he shall have to completely heal and overcome all his traumas and pain within, for Bane was embodiment of all his weaknesses, his most deep traumas within and self destructive ego, his greatest weaknesses which.
He heals physically but also psychologically he brings his shadow to light in order so that he can defeat Bane.
But then he ascends from the cave, which represents Ascension of consciousness defeats his words demon within, Bane and because his inner work on himself, his shadows are completely healed and brought to light, he is no more suffering within, conscious of the demon within, that was the stroing him, and is now illuminated on the light, free of inner suffering and guilt, of causing the death of his parents.
He kills the Batman, his shadow, he does not need him anymore but his conscious of him within himself, he brought him to light, he does not anymore need him and he has to fake the death of Batman, sol that bruce wayne can live happy joyful and fullfilled life that he never lived before, without the need to fight the shadows outside of himself, for the inner ones are healed.
In the first part when experiencing first Dark night of the Soul, he climbs on the Himalayas to train in the secret Ninja Temple, where he has to become his fear and anxiety, the bat, Bruce Wayne has to face his fear, overcoming and becoming it, which is the fear of bats, but also his guilt, because of this fear, if he wasn’t afraid of bats his parents wouldn’t die.
But he defeats his fear, but he never defeats that guilt, that trauma, that pain, that is actually causing him to fight the darkness outside of himself, that represent actually his inner demon.
When we are unconscius of our shadow we become our shadow and we are fighting the manifestations of our Shadow outside of ourselves that make our shadow hurt and suffer inside of us and we are fighting the darkness outside of ourselves so that we don’t have to see our own shadow and work to conquer our own shadow.
Darkness outside of us hurts as within and we are fighting it, but it hurts us inside of us we do not understand we are fighting the darkness within us, our trauma.
Batman represents actually archetype of complete identification with our trauma.
He is his guilt that feels that his parents died because of him, he didn’t conquer his trauma and that’s why he’s fighting the darkness and that’s why he is the Batman.
But he conquered his fear of bats and became his fear of bats so he became a bat.
So Batman is actually his shadow and his trauma because he identified completely with his trauma and with his fear, with his shadow, and if he was not so deeply traumatized and hurting within, he would not be fighting it outside of himself.
He wouldn’t have to become Batman.
Scarecrow, the Villain of the first movie is just as joker jungian architype, and he’s even saying something about Jung’s scarecrow, for he adopted the persona of that are archetype and he is actually a master psychologist, He iz driven completely by it and is very proud that he can really torture people psychologically well and traumatize them.
He’s proud on being just that, he is mentioning Carl Jung and he enjoys torturing people so well and traumatizing them.
And also joker is of Pure evil embodied, yet not a master psychologist but completely the archetype psychologically destroyed soul that suffered so badly that everywhere outside of himself sees the pain within and has to destroy it.
And Batman is doing everything driven by his trauma, by his guilt and everything what he does as Batman he does out of guilt, out of that trauma, out of pain and suffering within he’s fighting the darkness outside of himself, for within himself he feels guilty for the death of his parents because he was afraid.
He’s deeply traumatized.
And throughout all the movies he is fighting his worst demon in different forms.
In the first movie he is fighting the form of his demon within, that is convincing him, that the only way to destroy the evil in this world the evil people, for their unconscious shadows within is making his own unhealed shadow to hurt.
Ras Agul is complete identification and embodiment of that form of the inner demon, he believes that all people that don’t act in proper way are evil and therefore have to be destroyed and Batman defeats him and becomes opposite to him, protecting the unconscious people and fighting the darkness in this world and defeating that demon.
In the second movie, he’s fighting the Joker, who is again the representation of his worst demon, pure evil that C. Jung says is within us all and carl jung is always saying, that we have to bring desperate of out shadow to consciousness to light and realize that it is that we are capable of worst evil that is within us all, for if we don’t we shall eventually do it and act out of it if we are already not doing it and being completely unconscious of it.
if we shall not bring it to consciousness and realize that we actually are capable, we shall eventually act out of that shadow.
Joker represents being completely traumatized and hurt within so badly, that we are completely unconscious of our shadow of our darkness and only destroying that darkness that we actually now see everywhere and in everyone but is hurting and suffering so deeplly within us so that the killing and destruction outside of ourselves becomes our only meaning and enjoyment and there is no other purpose or intention behind it, but just for the destruction and killing and there is no greed for wealth and power or control driving us but just pure evil which is actually pure suffering.
Joker also tells him that he’s same as him and that without him he cannot exist and that Batman cannot exist without joker, just like our ego is convincing us.
And symbolically Batman by defeating the joker, defeats that evil within himself and brings that aspect of his shadow to consciousness.
Just pure evil, the inner suffering and travma, that becomes so intense that only enjoyment in life becomes causing the worst evil.
Joker and harley quinn are on that level for it is clearly depicted how deeply and intensely they suffer within and everything what they do is driven by that suffering.
Joker is that pure primal evil with no cause, just for being evil, that is actually within us all and C. Jung said that we have to realize that we have a demon within ourselves that is actually capable of worst evil and if we don’t realize it and bring it to light, that we are actually capable of worst things possible, and we have to bring that shadow to consciousness, shadow to light, we may do worst evil in future and we shall not be even aware of it, and out of out trauma and soffering within we are maybe doing already bad things to other, unconscious how our ont trauma based responses affect people around us and we may do terrible things to others just because of our unhealed traumas and Shadow within and are maybe are even doing it already but our trauma response hurt so much the we cannot helpers self, is stronger than our knowing and empathy and we cannot not to follow it or we are doing bad things to others, only because we are unconscious of our shadow and we are completely unconscious, unaware of what we are doing to others.
In both cases we are unconscious of it. If we are not conscious and aware that we are capable of worst things possible that we may the worst.
C. Jung says that there is no other possibility then for us doing it in any way, for we are unconscious of it, our shadows are in darkness, we don’t dare to even look at them to bring them to light, then we are always acting out of them.
But if we are conscious of our shadow we bring it to light to consciousness and then because we are conscious of it we no more do it for we are all the time aware conscious of our shadow so we no more do terrible things out of unconsciousness, we care how we make people and ourselves feey with our actions and we avoid doing harm for others and for ourselves, for we are conscious of our shadow our dark darkness is brought to light so we can avoid it all the time.
And Joker represents that shadow, completely embodied worst evil, just because of doing evil and having no intentions for power or accumulating wealth, not for conquering anything just pure destruction and eradication of life and intencest perverted enjoyment and euphoria in, coming from deepers payne and suffering within, start suffering that there is no more other enjoyment but that, doing it in a most wicked way with no limitations and restrictions or moral barriers whatsoever, just for the suffering of doing that becomes our greatest enjoinment, becoming we are The Shadow and are identifying with the shadow completely, being completely driven and identified by The Shadow.
And Batman has to bring this Shadow to consciousness to Justice.
Again bringing the shadow within himself to consciousness to light.
Every villain in every story is so much similar to him but in different way.
First one is his ninja teacher. Joker is complete identification with and embodiment of his shadow and trauma just like batman, identifying and embodying the trauma, the pain completely, just like batman, but acting and working completely oposite to batman, completely unconscious, seeing their own darkness everywhere outside of themselves, but Bruce Wayne is as much conscious so that he sees it only in those who are causing evil in this world and fighting them out of his pain just like those villains are doing evil.
Yet he’s so much unconscious still and traumatized and suffering very deeply so that he has to become his trauma his guilt and fight evil in the world.
Yet Joke being pure evil seeing the darkness everywhere in everyone and that is causing him immense pain within, in all movies joker is suffering most intensily and visibly and therefore everyone and everything has to be destroyed, in order to destroy the darkness, for everything and everyone he sees reminds him and hurts him is reflecting the trauma within him so badly and intensely and so painfully, but he is completely unconscious, and is seeing his pain everywhere and is not for the intention of destroying the darkness so that the light and Justice and goodness may prevail, like Ras Agul is convinced and has such a righteous intention and cause, and he’s very much healed, in some extent conscious of his unconsciousness within and mastered, but still driven by his unconsciousness and doing a bad thing for his unconscious of great part of Shadow within him, blind in that darkness he’s convinced that he’s doing good and something honorable and righteous that will bring peace and light in the world.
But Joker with no righteous cause, personal greed for money or power, no intention,, but just for performing and enjoying the worst evil, with no cause, reason, or intension behind it.
For it hurts within so badly. Just pure evil, the inner suffering and travma that became so intense and unconscious that the only enjoyment in life becomes causing the worst evil.
For his suffers non-stop so badly within that wherever he turns his worst pain is triggered.
Joker is that pure evil with no cause, just for being evil that is actually within us all.
And C. Jung said that we have to realize that we have a demon within ourselves that is actually capable of worst evil and if we don’t realizem and bring him to consciousness, to light, unconscious of our shadow we my do evil or even worst evil maybe are even doing it already, in both cases we are unconscious of it, some that they are capable off dolng and may do it it and some that they are actually already doing It, completely unconscious of it.
Call you want us that we should never think that we are not capable of the worst things
,,, for if we do, we can be sure that we are doing bad things to some extent always to people, for unconscious of our shadow we are unaware of how our actions affect others and we may do much worse thing in future.
But if we are conscious of our shadow we bring it to light, to consciousness and then because we are conscious of it we no more do it, for we are all the time aware conscious or our shadow, so we no more cause pain and harm out of unconsciousness, we care how we make people and ourselves feel with our actions and we avoid violating others and ourselves.
And joker represents that shadow completely embodied and identified with worst evil just because of doing evil and having no intentions for power or accumulating wealth conquering anything just pure destruction and eradication of life and intens perverted enjoyment and euphoria in, doing it in a most wicked way for the suffering of doing it be comes our greatest enjoinment, becoming The Shadow and identifying with the shadow completely, being completely driven and identified by The Shadow., suffering so terribly within that we start to enjoy it.
And Batman has to bring this Shadow to consciousness to Justice.
Final and most destructive Dark Knight of the Soul, complete healing, building oneself new and enlightenment
In the third part he experiences the most destructive and final Dark night of the soul that completely destroys his current mind and consciousness, just like Carl Jung said that it has to happen before we completely heal our traumas, bring our shadows completely to light.
He meets the test before enightement that he cannot defeat and it actually destroys him, embodiment of his worst inner demon, all the weaknesses, Bane who is so much stronger physically and psychologically as him and that is in jungian path to enlightenment, described as the final test, final demon we have to face, overcome and defeat and bring all our shadows to consciousness and heal.
our worst demon of worst ego, thatd wants to destroy us psychologically and knows how, always telling us how bad and dirty we are and that we cannot succeed and should be destroyed.
Bane is embodiment of all his weaknesses, he is skilled in everything better as Batman and psychologically so much stronger because he feels at home in complete darkness, that Batman merely adopted and Bane is telling him that that’s why he has no chance against him.
He breaks him physically and psychologically completely down, so that he has to heal his trauma completely in order to defeat him.
Bane reprezents our worst shadow of the ego, that is telling us we are nothing and no one knows us better how to psychologically destroy us, what to tell us that we lose power and confidence and triggers our worst trauma responses.
He breaks his back and destroys him just like in carl Jung’s psychology, our shadow destroys us, our mind completely before enlightenment with our strongest weaknesses.
it mocks us and blames us.
Bruce Wayne never healed his guilt and pain of believing that he caused the death of his parents, for they wouldn’t die if he was not afraid of bats, and is actually fighting evil in this world just because of it.
Bane is the embodiment of the darkness of the night.
Batman became the bat in order to face and conquer his fear but Bane represents the very darkness itself who is telling him that he’s nothing and no one and knows him, the way he acts and knows his fears his strengths and traumas better than himself.
And he tells him that Bruce nearly adopted the darkness but he was born in it and molded by it and is the darkness and that’s why Bane defeats him.
Like in our final darkest night we are faced with our worst weaknesses with our worst demon that mocks and blames us most.
Dark night of the soul actually psyclogically destroys ud and brings all the traumas, shadows, our unconscious to consciousness and we have to heal and rebuild ourselves as new best version of ourself.
Best version of our self.
When our trauma is healed and whatever we do is no more driven by our traumas we no more have to do what we are doing as repentance just like Bruce Wayne didn’t have to be Batman anymore.
Because we have to become stronger than our worst weaknesses and fears and guit that Bane represents and bring him completely to consciousness so that stronger and conscoous we can defeat our worst demon.
But when Bruce Wayne heals his traumas completely, his most deep traumas and rebuilds himself psychologically and becomes conscious of that weaknesses and that consciousness and light becomes stronger than his weaknesses, his deepest pain and his worst guilt, so that he becomes stronger than Bane than he can defeat Bane.
His worst demon that destroyed him. And he defeated Bane with no trouble because now he was stronger than his worst weaknesses guilt and fear, stronger than that ego that is always trying to destroy us and knows how very well.
.
But at that point we are no more hurt by our trauma and there is no more darkness outside of us that would trigger our guilt and pain and hurts as so much that we would have to fight it, darkness outside of our self for we conquered the trauma within ourselves, the pain within ourselves, We see that Alfred realizes that Bruce Wayne repaired the auto pilot on his bat-jet which implies that the plane carriamed he nuclear bump by itself to safety and Bruce Wayne saved himself from his shadow, the Batman.
And on the end we actually see, that Bruce Wayne actually survives, but he released his shadow he brought it to light, he brought Batman to liight and he didn’t no more need him, and conscious of his shadow, free of his pain, being aware of his shadow within and conscious, illuminated by the light, he never had to fight the darkness outside of himself again and he could let the Batman go.
His Shadow was healed, illuminated by the light and conscious of his worst shadows and his worst weaknesses, he no more had to destroy what is outside of himself ever again, for he healed and illuminated the darkness that was within.
Free of his traumas, guilt and suffering within, free of his weaknesses, he didn’t anymore destroy himself with his actions.
So Batman remained inside of him healed and iluminated by the light and when Alfred sees Bruce Wayne drinking coffee, and really being happy, with Catwoman, enjoying himself, it means that Bruce Wayne now could live a life full of happiness joy peace and love, that he always wanted to live as his true self.
In the final scene of the trilogy we see that Alfred sees Bruce Wayne joyfully sitting outside enjoying himself and laughing with Catwoman, and regardless that young people speculate if Bruce Wayne died or not, when you’re older and working on your shadow, you know for sure that he healed his trauma and lives happily ever after.
Only Batman died, bruce wayne from then on enjoyed the life of fullness and blissful happiness Because if we believe that bruce Wayne died then the entire path to enlightenment according to carlJung, that is clearly depicted so profoundly in the movies if you are familiar with it, collapses and Alfred in that case would have seen him the way he always was if it was hallucination, yet he saw him first time happy.
It is crystal clear, for even the viewers who are not practicing or familiar with the concept actually very strongly wonder if Bruce Wayne really survived.
When we are young we do not see this in this movie because we are not familiar with Shadow work and bringing the shadow to consciousness to light unconscious to consciousness, but if we watch it mature, when we are familiar with the concept and Shadow work within ourselves we can see it very clearly and the movie acts as a teacher and guide and there can be no other ending but Bruce Wayne surviving, healing completely and being completely free of his trauma and darkness, free of Batman, enjoying life in fullness and Batman having no more need to act and always resting illuminated by the light within as Bruce Wayne is conscious of him, of his own shadow.
Purna Ananda
