Meeting the Shadow Quotes

“The Taoists realized that no single concept or value could be considered absolute or superior. If being useful is beneficial, the being useless is also beneficial. The ease with which such opposites may change places is depicted in a Taoist story about a farmer whose horse ran away.

His neighbor commiserated only to be told, "Who knows what's good or bad?" It was true. The next day the horse returned, bringing with it a drove of wild horses it had befriended in its wanderings. The neighbor came over again, this time to congratulate the farmer on his windfall. He was met with the same observation: "Who knows what is good or bad?" True this time too; the next day the farmer's son tried to mount one of the wild horses and fell off, breaking his leg. Back came the neighbor, this time with more commiserations, only to encounter for the third time the same response, "Who knows what is good or bad?" And once again the farmer's point was well taken, for the following day soldiers came by commandeering for the army and because of his injury, the son was not drafted.

According to the Taoists, yang and yin, light and shadow, useful and useless are all different aspects of the whole, and the minute we choose one side and block out the other, we upset nature's balance. If we are to be whole and follow the way of nature, we must pursue the difficult process of embracing the opposites.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“In order to protect its own control and sovereignty the ego instinctively puts up a great resistance to the confrontation with the shadow; when it catches a glimpse of the shadow the ego most often reacts with an attempt to eliminate it. Our will is mobilized and we decide. "I just won't be that way any more!" Then comes the final shattering shock, when we discover that, in part at least, this is impossible no matter how we try. For the shadow represents energically charged autonomous patterns of feeling and behavior. Their energy cannot simply be stopped by an act of will. What is needed is rechanneling or transformation.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The cure of the shadow is on the one hand a moral problem, that is, recognition of what we have repressed, how we perform our repressions, how we rationalize and deceive ourselves, what sort of goals we have and what we have hurt, even maimed, in the name of these goals. On the other hand, the cure of the shadow is a problem of love. How far can our love extend to the broken and ruined parts of ourselves, the disgusting and perverse? How much charity and compassion have we for our own weakness and sickness?... Loving oneself is no easy matter just because it means loving all of oneself, including the shadow where one is inferior and socially so unacceptable. The care one gives this humiliating part is also the cure. More: as the cure depends on care, so does caring sometimes mean nothing more than carrying.”
― James Hillman, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The shadow, when it is realized, is the source of renewal; the new and productive impulse cannot come from established values of the ego. When there is an impasse, and sterile time in our lives—despite an adequate ego development—we must look to the dark, hitherto unacceptable side which has been at our conscious disposal….This brings us to the fundamental fact that the shadow is the door to our individuality. In so far as the shadow renders us our first view of the unconscious part of our personality, it represents the first stage toward meeting the Self. There is, in fact, no access to the unconscious and to our own reality but through the shadow. Only when we realize that part of ourselves which we have not hitherto seen or preferred not to see can we proceed to question and find the sources from which it feeds and the basis on which it rests. Hence no progress or growth is possible until the shadow is adequately confronted and confronting means more than merely knowing about it. It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are, instead of as we wish or hopefully assume we are, that we can take the first step toward individual reality.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“Hence no progress or growth is possible until the shadow is adequately confronted—and confronting means more than merely knowing about it. It is not until we have truly been shocked into seeing ourselves as we really are, instead of as we wish or hopefully assume we are, that we can take the first step toward individual reality.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“There are at least five effective pathways for traveling inward to gain insight into the composition of our shadow: (1) soliciting feedback from others as to how they perceive us; (2) uncovering the content of our projections; (3) examining our “slips” of tongue and behavior, and investigating what is really occurring when we are perceived other than we intended to be perceived; (4) considering our humor and our identifications; and (5) studying our dreams, daydreams, and fantasies.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“To admit frankly, our capacity for evil hinges on our breaking through our pseudoinnocence. So long as we preserve our one-dimensional thinking, we can cover up our deeds by pleading innocent. This antediluvian escape from conscience is no longer possible. We are responsible for the effect of our actions, and we are also responsible for becoming as aware as we can of these effects.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“In the Bible Jesus said a sentence that in my interpretation makes a very important point. Speaking to his disciples he taught, "Do not resist evil" (Matthew 5:39). Let us examine this. The resistance itself is the evil. When there is no resistance, energy is unobstructed and flows. When there is resistance, movement stops, backs up, stagnates the organism. Resistance suffocates the emotions, deadens energy, and kills feelings. Resistance is bred of caution, a thinking mechanism — thinking not in the sense of abstract thinking but of organizational thinking.”
― Larry Dossey, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The “central defect of evil,” says Scott Peck, “is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it.”1 What we cannot face will catch us from behind. When we gain the true strength to acknowledge our imperfect moral condition, we are no longer possessed by demons.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“the shadow is not necessarily always an opponent. In fact, he is exactly like any human being with whom one has to get along, sometimes by giving in, sometimes by resisting, sometimes by giving love—whatever the situation requires. The shadow becomes hostile only when he is ignored or misunderstood.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“f the lion in us wishes to roar but the goat bleats instead, we must pay for this substitution in one way or another. Payment will vary: For some, it will be experienced as depression, a loss of energy and enthusiasm, or a growing unconsciousness. For others, it can be uncontrollable, seemingly irrational behavior, during which life, fortune, profession, or marriage may be risked. In its most extreme form, the price may be a physical breakdown that can lead to illness or even death.”
― Hal Stone, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“And so it is that through playing our opposites, through giving the Shadow equal time, that we eventually extend our identity, and thus our responsibility, to all aspects of the psyche, and not just to the impoverished persona. In this fashion, the split between the persona and Shadow is "wholed and healed.”
― Robert Bly, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“One of the best and clearest examples of the way in which projective identification operates is seen in the totally nonaggressive and never angry individual. This person, who is uniquely devoid of anger, can become aware of angry feelings only as they exist in someone else —in the intimate partner, most predictably. When something disturbing has happened to the never angry individual, and he is experiencing angry emotions, he will be consciously out of contact with them. He will not know that he is angry, but he will be wonderfully adept at triggering an explosion of hostility and anger in his spouse.”
― Maggie Scarf, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“We should be as wary of psychologizing political events as we should be of politicizing psychological events.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“She discovered she had disowned her anger so totally that when she was deeply irritated by her husband, she experienced not anger but overwhelming desire to go to sleep. When she learned her drowsiness was a substitute for natural aggression, she began to search for the anger concealed by her overwhelming fatigue. As soon as she became aware of her anger voice and learned what it wanted, the drowsiness disappeared.”
― Hal Stone, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“It is not only negative feelings that become blocked. The repression extends to more and more of his emotional capacity. When one is given an anesthetic in preparation for surgery, it is not merely the capacity to experience pain that is suspended; the capacity to experience pleasure goes also — because what is blocked is the capacity to experience feeling. The same principle applies to the repression of emotions. It must be recognized, of course, that emotional repression is a matter of degree; in some individuals it is far more profound and pervasive than in others. But what remains true for everyone is that to diminish one's capacity to experience pain is to diminish also one's capacity to experience pleasure.”
― Nathaniel Branden, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“[Y]ou can't make anyone love you. You just have to reveal who you are and take your chances. Oh, sure, you can give a pleasing impression to others, flatter and appease them. Or, you can intimidate other people, threaten and menace them. But whether by cajoling or by coercing, you cannot elicit a gift of love. Instead, you may call forth a reward for good behavior. But then you are stuck with living with the aching feeling in your chest that, if people really knew what you were like, no one would really care about you. Or, if you succeed in getting your own way by bullying other people, then you must live with the dread of retaliation, if ever you should drop your menacing guard.”
― Sheldon B. Kopp, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“Man is a chimera, a monstrosity composed of an indeterminable number of contradictions.”
― Larry Dossey, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“In many societies there was the attempt to live with illness rather than to hide from it. It can be argued, of course, that such cultures did not shrink from illness and death because they could not; and that if they had been as technologically advanced as our own society they would have abhorred disease and death just as we. While there may be merit to this argument, it is more likely that many premodern societies' attitudes toward death and disease were an expression of an organic way of being, a manner of living-in-the-world where acceptance was not a function of helplessness but an expression of a deep understanding of the world.”
― Larry Dossey, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“Evil, then, is a far deeper thing than the moral codes conceive of. It is antilife. Life is dynamic, pulsating force; it is energy and consciousness, manifested in many ways; and there is no evil as such unless there is resistance to life. The resistance is the manifestation of what is called evil. Energy and consciousness in distortion create evil.”
― Larry Dossey, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The more a man plays the strongman for the world, the more inwardly he is compensated by feminine weakness. The less aware he is of the feminine within him, the more likely a man is to project a primitive anima figure on the world, or to be subject to fits, moods, paranoias, hysterias.”
― John P. Conger, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“If you feel an overwhelming rage coming up in you when a friend reproaches you about fault, you can be fairly sure that at this point you will find a part of your shadow, of which you are unconscious. It is, of course, natural to become annoyed when others who are "no better" criticize you because of shadow faults. But what can you say if your own dreams —an inner judge in your own being— reproach you? That is the moment when the ego gets caught, and the result is usually embarrassed silence. Afterward the pain and lengthy work, of self-education begins— a work, we might say, that is the psychological equivalent of the labors of Hercules. This unfortunate hero's first task, you will remember, was to clean up in one day the Augean Stables, in which hundreds of cattle had dropped their dung for many decades — a task so enormous that the ordinary mortal would be overcome by discouragement at the mere thought of it.”
― Marie-Louise von Franz, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“A spiritual life can’t save you from shadow suffering. SUZANNE WAGNER”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The freer he can keep himself of hard and fast principles and the readier he is to sacrifice his ego-will, the better are his chances of being emotionally grasped by something greater than himself.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“[Jung] told me that he once met a distinguished man, a Quaker, who could not imagine that he had ever done anything wrong in his life. “And do you know what happened to his children?” Jung asked. “The son became a thief, and the daughter a prostitute. Because the father would not take on his shadow, his share in the imperfection of human nature, his children were compelled to live out the dark side which he had ignored.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The shadow usually contains values that are needed by consciousness, but that exist in a form that makes it difficult to integrate them into one’s life.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“It is exactly this feeling function, which enables a human being to react with horror at the depths of evil, that was weak in Jekyll and totally lacking in Hyde.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“The problem of our duality can never be resolved on the level of the ego; it permits no rational solution.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“Jekyll’s careless disregard for the powers of evil, together with his desire to escape the tension of his dual nature, paves the way for his ultimate destruction.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

“This is why living out the darkest impulses of the Shadow cannot be a solution to the shadow problem, for we can easily become possessed by or absorbed into evil if we try such a thing.”
― Connie Zweig, Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature