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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 ou...
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these disowned parts are extremely valuable and canno...
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our shadow costs nothing and is immediately—and embarrass...
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To honor and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spi...
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It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important exper...
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The persona is what we would like to be and how we wish to be seen by the world. It is our psychological clothing and it mediates between our true selves and our environment just as our physical clothing presents an image to those we meet. The ego is what we are and know about consciously. The shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know.*
But the refused and unacceptable characteristics do not go away; they only collect in the dark corners of our personality.
When they have been hidden long enough, they take on
a life of their own—the shadow life. The shadow is that which has not entered adequately into consciousness. It is the despised quarter of our being. It often has an energy potential nearly as great as that of our ego. If it accumulates more energy than our ego, it erupts as an overpowering rage or some indiscretion that slips past us; or we have a depression or an accident that s...
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The shadow of one culture is a tinderbox of trouble for another.
Some of the pure gold of our personality is relegated to the shadow because it can find no place in that great leveling process that is culture.
Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides.
but to own the gold in the shadow is terrifying. It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of charac...
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Ignoring the gold can be as damaging as ignoring the dark side of the psyche, and some people may suffer a severe shock or illness before they learn how to let the gold out.
The word religion means to re-relate, to put back together again, to heal the wounds of separation.
This evolution, though it seems gratuitous, is worth all the pain and suffering that it costs.
The only disaster would be getting lost halfway through the process and not finding our completion. Unfortunately, many Westerners are caught in just this difficult place.
True sainthood—or personal effectiveness—consists in standing at the center of the seesaw and producing only that which can be counterweighted with its opposite. This is far from the sentimental view of goodness that has been set up as our ideal.
The
more refined our conscious personality, the more shadow we have built up on the other side.
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 sainthood and to miss the purpose of life.
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.
To refuse the dark side of one’s nature is to store up or accumulate the darkness; this is later expressed as a black mood, psychosomatic illness, or unconsciously inspired 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.
The tendency to see one’s shadow “out there” in one’s neighbor or in another race or culture is the most dangerous aspect of the modern psyche.
Our Western tradition promises that if even a few people find wholeness, the whole world will be saved. God promised that if just one righteous man could be found in Sodom and Gomorrah, those cities would be spared.
Shadow work is probably the only way of aiding the outer city—and creating a more balanced world.
A whole generation can live a modern, civilized life without ever touching much of its shadow nature.
Unless we do conscious work on it, the shadow is almost always projected; that is, it is neatly laid on someone or something else so we do not have to take responsibility for it.
It is not uncommon for people to keep a pet to carry their dark side.
Probably the worst damage is done when parents lay their shadow on their children.
This is so common that most people have to work very hard to throw off their parent’s shadow before they can begin their own adult lives. If a parent lays his shadow on a young child, that splits the personality of the child and sets the ego-shadow warfare into motion. When tha...
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the cultural shadow that all of us carry), and he will also have a tendency to put that sh...
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you wish to give your children the best possible gift, the best possible entree into life, remove your shadow from them. To
we do not usually have this kind of wisdom until we reach middle age.
Usually when you receive a shadow projection, your own shadow erupts and warfare is inevitable.
When your shadow is like a gasoline can waiting for a match to fall in it, you are fair game for anyone who wants to irritate you.
To refuse another’s shadow, you don’t fight back, but like a good matador you ...
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To be in the presence of another’s shadow and not reply is nothing short of genius.
This story shows the power of waiting while others do their shadow work.
As the shadow is drawn up into consciousness, it becomes softer, more pliable, more gentle.
Better said, neither ego nor shadow can be redeemed unless its twin is transformed.
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. People are as frightened of their capacity for nobility as of their darkest sides.
First, we do damage to another by burdening him with our darkness—or light, for it is as heavy a burden to make someone play hero for us.
If you can touch your shadow—within form—and do something out of your ordinary pattern, a great deal of energy will flow from it.
First you must have the contents of both your ego and your shadow in your two hands—a difficult task to accomplish!
Ceremonies the world over, and from every age, consist mostly of destruction: sacrifice, burning, ritual killing, bloodletting, fasting, and sexual abstention. Why? These are the ritual languages that safeguard the culture by paying out the shadow in a symbolic way.
