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

In this book we will examine some of the odd places in which the water of life is flowing these days. As always, it is free, and it is fresh, as much the living water as ever before. The main difficulty is that it is to be found where one least expects it. This is the meaning of the biblical phrase “What good could come out of Nazareth?” Nazareth is now holy to us, the birthplace of the Savior; but in biblical times it was the wrong side of the tracks and the least likely place to find an epiphany of the spirit. Many people fail to find their God-given living water because they are not prepared to search in unusual places. It is likely to turn up in Nazareth again—and be as ignored as before.

One such unexpected source is our own shadow, that dumping ground for all those characteristics of our personality that we disown. As we will see later, these disowned parts are extremely valuable and cannot be disregarded. As promised of the living water, our shadow costs nothing and is immediately—and embarrassingly—ever present. To honor and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.

The ego is what we are and know about consciously. The shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know.*

Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides. To draw the skeletons out of the closet is relatively easy, but to own the gold in the shadow is terrifying. It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character than to find out you are a bum.

No one can escape the dark side of life, but we can pay out that dark side intelligently.

In German there is a term, doppelgänger, meaning one’s mirror image, one’s opposite. Goethe was profoundly affected when he approached his home one evening and was met by a vision of his doppelgänger, the other one who lived in his personality. Few of us have so vivid an experience of our shadow, but whether we know it or not our psychic twin follows us like a mirror image.

Most people presume that they are the sole master of their house. To acknowledge and then own one’s shadow is to admit there are many more sides to us that the world generally does not see. Dr. Jung tells how he first intuited the presence of “another” in his psyche.

The more refined our conscious personality, the more shadow we have built up on the other side.

This is one of Jung’s greatest insights: that the ego and the shadow come from the same source and exactly balance each other. To make light is to make shadow; one cannot exist without the other.

To own one’s own shadow is to reach a holy place—an inner center—not attainable in any other way. To fail this is to fail one’s own sain...

India has three terms describing this place of sainthood: sat, chit, ananda. Sat is the existential stuff of life (mostly the left side of the balance); chit is the ideal capacity (mostly the right side of the balance); ananda is the bliss, joy, ecstasy of enlightenment—the fulcrum of the seesaw. When sat and chit are paired together, and sufficiently...

wreckage? It is possible to live one’s ideals, do one’s best, be courteous, do well at work, and live a decent civilized life if we ritually acknowledge this other dimension of reality. The unconscious cannot tell the difference between a “real” act and a symbolic one. This means that we can aspire to beauty and goodness—and pay out that darkness in a symbolic way. This enables us to do the upkeep on the left side of the balance. Biblical custom states that if one can achieve this before sunset or at least before the Sabbath, one can maintain one’s inner harmony.

If I do my shadow upkeep after having difficult guests, I will not land my shadow on some unsuspecting stranger. I have to honor my shadow, for it is an integral part of me; but I don’t have to push it onto someone else. A five-minute ceremony or acknowledgment of my shadow accumulation after my guests depart will have satisfied it and safeguarded my environment from darkness.

The central symbol of Christianity, the cross, is a double seesaw with the two axis crossing at the center. It provides the framework for balancing the right and left and also the high and the low. If one can honor this equilibrium and the inclusiveness implied in it, one will be truly catholic (meaning whole or complete). This word needs to be brought out of its sectarian narrowness and given the breadth of its original meaning. Then it will offer a most wonderful revelation.

Western Christianity reveals its own imbalance by making one arm of the cross longer than the other. Since we accentuate the spiritual element of reality more than the earthy, feminine, and feeling elements, we unconsciously compensate for this by making the bottom arm of the cross larger than the other three. The Greek and Eastern Orthodox churches know better than this and have equal-armed crosses.

Wherever we find ourselves, we need to honor the part of life that lies in shadow, to redeem those qualities we have forgotten or ignored.

accidents. We are presently dealing with the accumulation of a whole society that has worshiped its light side and refused the dark, and this residue appears as war, economic chaos, strikes, racial intolerance.

At times, the conscious observer in us stands back and says, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Jung used to say that we can be grateful for our enemies, for their darkness allows us to escape our own.

It is this rubbing together that brings them both back to their original wholeness. This is nothing less than healing the split between heaven and hell. Lucifer (another name for our shadow) was once part of the heavenly host, and he must be restored to his rightful place by the end of time. This vast mythological statement applies to the individual psyche as well: it tells us that it is the task of every man and woman to restore the shadow and redeem our rejected qualities.

Today’s hero is tomorrow’s character.

My good friend Jack Sanford, a Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest in San Diego, was giving one of his finely crafted lectures and, in his usual careful style, made this startling comment: “You must understand, God loves your shadow much more than he does your ego!”

In a showdown God (Self] favors the shadow over the ego, for the shadow, with all of its dangerousness, is closer to the center and more genuine.*

Jung warned us that it would not be too difficult to get the skeletons out of the closet from a patient in analysis but it would be exceedingly difficult to get the gold out of the shadow.

Better suited to our Western life is the concept of standing in the middle of the teeter-totter with two feet planted so we can balance easily. This honors the duality but keeps both elements within reach. Each tempers the and no serious split occurs. This is not a gray compromise but a strong and balanced life.

Heaven and skid row are separated only by an act of consciousness.

Medieval heroes had to slay their dragons; modern heroes have to take their dragons back home to integrate into their own personality.

Romantic love, or falling in love, is different from loving, which is always a quieter and more humanly proportioned experience. There is always something overblown and bigger-than-life about falling in love.

Though no one notices at the time, in-loveness obliterates the humanity of the beloved. One does a curious kind of insult to another by falling in love with him, for we are really looking at our own projection of God, not at the other person.

I recently heard about a couple who had the good sense to call upon the shadow in a prewedding ceremony. The night before their marriage, they held a ritual where they made their “shadow vows.” The groom said, “I will give you an identity and make the world see you as an extension of myself.” The bride replied, “I will be compliant and sweet, but underneath I will have the real control. If anything goes wrong, I will take your money and your house.” They then drank champagne and laughed heartily at their foibles, knowing that in the course of the marriage, these shadow figures would inevitably come out. They were ahead of the game because they had recognized the shadow and unmasked it.

What good could come from Nazareth? What of value could be buried in your own backyard?

One can endure any suffering if it has meaning; but meaninglessness is unbearable.

While contradiction is static and unproductive, paradox makes room for grace and mystery.

The capacity for paradox is the measure of spiritual strength and the surest sign of maturity.

To advance from opposition (always a quarrel) to paradox (always holy) is to make a leap of consciousness. That leap takes us through the chaos of middle age and gives a vista that enlightens the remaining years of life.

Isak Dinesen, the Danish author of Out of Africa, once wrote that there are three occasions for true happiness in human beings. The first is a surplus of energy. The second is the cessation of pain. The third is the absolute certainty that one is doing the will of God.

Ligare, the heart of the religious experience, is to bond, repair, draw together, to make whole, to find that which is anterior to the split condition. Our future lies in this religious vision.

To own one’s own shadow is to prepare the ground for spiritual experience.

Scripture and many stories tell us that the stuff of holiness is to be found in the most common places and events. This is a mythic statement that the pearl of great price is to be found in our everyday conflicts and tensions.

When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. It is precisely here that one will grow. Jung once said, “Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.” The ego is fashioned like the metal between the hammer and the anvil.

A mandala is a holy circle or bounded place that is a representation of wholeness.

We are all poets and healers when we use language correctly. One makes a mandorla every time one says something that is true.

Whenever you have a clash of opposites in your being and neither will give way to the other (the bush will not be consumed and the fire will not stop), you can be certain that God is present. We dislike this experience intensely and avoid it at any cost; but if we can endure it, the conflict-without-resolution is a direct experience of God.

If one makes mandorla in the privacy of his interior life, it is heard for more than a thousand miles.

If you find a person who is particularly peaceful or has a healing presence around her, it is probably because she has done her mandorla work. If you want to affect your environment, don’t get lost in your activism. Stop for a moment and make a mandorla. Don’t just do—be something.

People often asked Dr. Jung , “Will we make it?” referring to the cataclysm of our time. He always replied, “If enough people will do their inner work.” This soul work is the one thing that will pull u...

It is good to remember that 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.

The ancient alchemists understood this process. In alchemy one goes through four stages of development: the nigredo, in which one experiences the darkness and depression of life; the albedo, in which one sees the brightness of things; the rubedo, where one discovers passion; and finally the citrino, where one appreciates the goldenness of life. After all this comes a full-color mandorla. This is the pavanis, the peacock’s tail that contains all the preceding hues. One cannot stop this process until one has brought it to the pavanis, that concert of colors that contains everything.