Dealing with Hoocha: The Shadow that Emerges Along the Spiritual Path

Saturday, September 6th, 2014

If someone had asked me years ago, I would have said that I didn’t believe in evil. If the idea that we attract whatever we focus on is true, then acknowledging that evil exists would in fact create it. Although I agree in the law of affinity – like attracts like – through my years training as a Jungian analyst and the work I have done with Andean paqos, and Adolfo, I am aware that evil exists. Jung once said that the process of individuation requires bringing light into the darkness. Working with the shadow is the first phase of Jungian analysis. In Jungian psychology the parts of ourselves that are uncomfortable to look at, that we do not want to identify as ours is the shadow. In Andean medicine hoocha refers to dark or dense energy inside and outside of your selves.

Everyone has a shadow and everyone carries hoocha, however, we are often not conscious of the hoocha we carry and the shadow aspects of our psyches. Jungian psychology works a little different with the shadow than the way paqos work with hoocha. In analysis it is bring the dark parts of our psyche into out conscious awareness so that they are not projected on to others. Andean medicine sets intention to focus on connection with Pachamama and the Apus, and by filling ourselves up with light we begin to release hoocha that we may be holding in our manos wasi or energy body.  Adolfo has said that by focusing and filling ourselves with light through being in connection with Pachamama and the Apus that we can protect ourselves.

Hoocha comes in many forms. It can be in our lineage that we carry from our ancestors. Hoocha can come from mal intention, negative thoughts and actions, or addiction. Hoocha can also come from outside of us. Sometime if we are not aware we can take on hoocha from other people, or places that carry negative energy from traumatic events from the past, or bad spirits.  We need to recognize that we can take on hoocha from the outside world and that also we may be generating hoocha in ourselves and projecting it on to other people.

Often hoocha is the result of a need for power. Jung said where there is love (Eros) there is not a power shadow. Similarly, Andean medicine people say that when we live in ayni or right relationship, in loving connection we experience abundance and do not try to gain power for ourselves through force or manipulation. As a Jungian analyst, I recognize that often this need for power is often compensation as the result of trauma that occurred in the past perhaps linked to not feeling good enough, or feeling afraid of being abandoned, or feeling angry about being hurt. Some people feel tired, develop an addiction, of have pain or illness in their physical bodies. When people are secure and have worked with their own shadow they feel a connection that they source from. Jung called this the Self or the mother archetype, which Andean medicine people call Pachamama. Sometime people feel week and they invite negative energy to feel more powerful.  Sometimes people become taken over by negative spirits and lose their will. Jung would have called this being possessed by a negative complex. A negative complex is a cluster of feelings surrounding a deep wound, that Jung would say carries powerful archetypal energy.

Working with our shadows and/or clearing hoocha can be painful. As Freud suggested, sometimes people use defense mechanisms to avoid the pain of facing shadow material. Sometimes they deny it exists, or repress it so that they no longer remember it consciously, sometimes shadow material is projected on to other people, or introjected into other people so that someone else carries it for them. Sometimes traumatic shadow material is so overwhelming that it results in disassociation, fragmentation, and soul loss – so that it is less painful for the person feeling it. Sometimes people use drugs, sex, alcohol, money, and food as a means of self-soothing to feel a void. The problem with these defenses is that they are all ways of blocking out the truth.

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