Embrace Your Shadow - Issue 69 - 9th July 2023
Carl Jung said “everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it” (3). Our shadow sides are those parts of us that we are most frightened to confront. It’s that traumatic event in our past that we store away in a locked cupboard in the dusty attic of our minds. However the contents of that cupboard do not simply gather dust like old records, but they fester, they grow wounds that infect the cupboard and eventually after years of rejection the attic falls through the house.
If you sit with darkness long enough and become friends with it, the light will join you
The shadow could be what you are most self-conscious about, what you least like about yourself or what prevents you from acting productively and healthily. Without fundemtnal confrontation, this shadow side only hinders you, consistently pulls at your trousers like an upset child who doesn’t want to go shopping. It prevents us from striding forward or it slows us down, making the journey towards where we want to be longer and more arduous. The earlier we confront our shadows, the quicker the light will numb it’s effect. Just as when the night turns black, stars begin to appear and eventually the sun rises, our confrontation of our shadows will be darkest at the outset as we acknowledge what we least want to acknowledge, small beams of light will then appear as hope for our future sprouts before, eventually, we emerge basking in the light of our true and full selves, dark amongst the light. The shadow could simply be acknowledging our capacity for evil. The majority of people fail to or do not want to admit that we are innately capable of evil. The best evidence comes from Germany in the 1930’s. We can all agree that what the Nazis did during World War Two was nothing short of evil. The worst suffering any humans have ever endured was caused by other humans. Although our shadows differ somewhat, the one commonality amongst all of our shadows is that we are all capable of evil. We all have the capacity in us as human beings to be Nazis. This of course is a hard pill to swallow. However that pill has a silver lining. The capacity we have for evil is balanced by the same capacity for good. By recognising our shadow, confronting it, we can shine a line over it and be a force of good rather than evil but that light is only as bright as the darkness you confront.
The first step, like the first step of healing addicts, is to first acknowledge the problem. Denial is a common starting point as we do not want to believe that we have any such problem but let me be clear: we all have a shadow. Those who live meaningful and fulfilling lives have confronted or are at least aware of their shadows.
Keep On Struggling,
Gregor
Your Struggle Short For The Week
Quote to Ponder
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt - Bertrand Russell
References
1) Image Credit - RawPixel
2) Sun Image - Unsplash/Jonathan Duran