“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
~ Carl Jung
In general anything I post, whether here or elsewhere on social media, has a positive flavor to it. There’s far too much focus on the doom, gloom, turmoil and trouble as it is without adding to it myself. Plus, opening the door for other people to embrace a more positive perspective in their world is where the juice is really at for me.
At the same time, there’s a danger in insisting that everything should have a warm positive glow, because that’s a great way to repress part of life. And what gets repressed has this sneaky tendency to pop out in the most inopportune ways.
In our own lives, that can create what Carl Jung called the shadow. As this article on the shadow describes it:
“The shadow, said celebrated Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung…is the unknown ‘‘dark side’’ of our personality–-dark both because it tends to consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions and impulses like sexual lust, power strivings, selfishness, greed, envy, anger or rage, and due to its unenlightened nature, completely obscured from consciousness…Whatever we deem evil, inferior or unacceptable and deny in ourselves becomes part of the shadow…”
In short, it’s what we want to pretend isn’t there. For example, I want to see myself as a caring, giving person. And I am. But if I’m honest, I’m also selfish and self-centered. And to the degree that I try to shove that quality out of sight and pretend it doesn’t exist is the degree to which I create a shadow.
Just because we don’t see it or want to acknowledge it doesn’t mean it’s not there or that it won’t impact our lives. It will. From dramatic examples like the uber-conservative preacher caught with drugs and a male prostitute to more mundane examples like road rage or binge eating, the shadow can wreak havoc on your life.
So you can bring it into the light and integrate it or shove it down below the surface and deal with the myriad ways it pops up anyway. The choice is yours. As tempting as it is to pack your life with love and light, if you don’t pay attention to what lies in the shadow – and work to integrate it – somehow it’s going to come around and bite you in the ass.
One excellent book I recommend if you want to dive in to some shadow work is Debbie Ford’s Dark Side of the Light Chasers. I worked through it last year, and found it really enlightening (no pun intended). I have a lot of work to do yet, but it was a great start.
Here is a video with an interview where Ford talks about the shadow and doing shadow work. It’s a good primer, and worth watching.
I’m all for light and love, fluffy bunnies, and fields of sunshine and daisies. But if you want to minimize the risk of a train wreck in the middle of it all, spend some time shining a light on your shadow.
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