Owning Your Own Shadow: A Jungian Approach to Transformative Self-Acceptance, Exploring the Unlit Part of the Ego and Finding Balance Through Spiritual Self-Discovery

by Robert A. Johnson

To consent to paradox is to consent to suffering that which is greater than the ego.

The mandala is also found in the rose window in Gothic architecture, and it appears frequently as a healing symbol in Christian art.

A mandorla is that almond-shaped segment that is made when two circles partly overlap. It is not by chance that mandorla is also the Italian word for almond. This symbol signifies nothing less than the overlap of the opposites that we have been investigating.

These banished elements make up our shadow, but they will not stay in exile forever, and about midlife they come back like Old Testament scapegoats returning from the desert.

To make any well formed sentence is to make unity out of duality.

A sentence is something like a mathematical equation with the verb representing the equal sign. A correct sentence says that the subject equals the object and annuls the quarrel between the two. The split inherent in duality is healed.

You can give another person a precious gift if you will allow him to talk without contaminating his speech with your own material. Given the right container, we can make mandorlas of speech and cure many things.

if we can endure it, the conflict-without-resolution is a direct experience of God. A mandorla is a prototype of conflict resolution. It is the art of healing, if you will.

If these two extremes can be woven together to make a masterpiece, perhaps I can bring the ragged, disjointed elements of my own life together.

The space between these two opposing elements is a place of healing. The message is unmistakable; our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and evil, light and dark.

the old symbol for Christ—the two lines indicating a stylized fish—is a mandorla. By definition, Christ himself is the intersection of the divine and the human. He is the prototype for the reconciliation of opposites and our guide out of the realm of conflict and duality.

I think I have won (or superseded) some very serious spiritual debates in my inner life by giving credence to both sides, until a superior point of view could be achieved.