Alex, tried to post this as a response on today’s blog, but it wasn’t having any of it! Post at will if you wish and welcome to the darkside, it’s a fabulous journey!

This guy is brilliant, and extremely funny. Much food for thought and worth watching.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/iG9CE55wbtY" height="400" width="500" /]

Welcome to the underworld/subconscious mind. The subconscious mind that seems so dispicable that we disown it instantly. But Alex you are now at the tipping point. By acknowledging that you have a shadow you now must break down ALL the doors to face it. I am very happy for you! It’s a bit like spitting Dracula out into the sunlight of your spirit, the only way over it, is through it. May you romance your shadow and fall completely head over heels in love with it. Then only true peace can happen.

Some quotes and recommended reading follows:

Carl Jung
1958

“Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow side: an impulsive, wounded, sad, or isolated part that we generally try to ignore. The Shadow can be a source of emotional richness and vitality, and acknowledging it can be a pathway to healing and an authentic life. We meet our dark side, accept it for what it is, and we learn to use its powerful energies in productive ways. The Shadow knows why good people sometimes do “bad” things. Romancing the Shadow and learning to read the messages it encodes in daily life can deepen your consciousness, imagination, and soul.”

from “Romancing the Shadow,” by Connie Zwieg, PhD., and Steve Wolf, PhD.

Jung’s Theory of The Shadow

“The Shadow describes the part of the psyche that an individual would rather not acknowledge. It contains the denied parts of the self. Since the self contains these aspects, they surface in one way or another. Bringing Shadow material into consciousness drains its dark power, and can even recover valuable resources from it. The greatest power, however, comes from having accepted your shadow parts and integrated them as components of your Self.”

from John Elder

WHAT WE DO NOT DARE LOOK AT, WITHIN OURSELVES, WE TEND TO PROJECT OUT ONTO OTHERS………..

“Shadow wants to be heard, simply that. But if it isn’t, it turns nasty. It becomes a veritable demon, witch, or son-of-a-bitch, demanding its pound of flesh….in very painful real time, not dreamtime.
Pay attention to your shadow. If you keep distancing yourself, saying “Heavens, it’s not my fault!”—then heaven help you. Hell won’t.”

Katya Walter

Jung continued:

Everyone carries a Shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Who has not at one time or another felt a sourness, wrath, selfishness, envy and pride, which he could not tell what to do with, or how to bear, rising up in him without his consent, casting a blackness over all his thoughts, and then as suddenly going off again, either by the cheerfulness of the sun or air, or some agreeable accident, and again at times as suddenly returning upon him? Sufficient indications are these to every man that there is a dark guest within him, concealed under the cover of flesh and blood, often lulled asleep by worldly light and amusements, yet such as will, in spite of everything, show itself… It is exceeding good and beneficial to us to discover this dark, disordered fire of our soul; because when rightly known and rightly dealt with, it can as well be made the foundation of heaven as it is of hell.”

- William Law, The Grounds and Reasons of Christian Regeneration (1739)

More Quoteables

The range of what we think and do
is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice
that we fail to notice
there is little we can do
to change
until we notice
how failing to notice
shapes our thoughts and deeds.
–R.D. Laing

” The shadow is both the awful thing that needs redemption, and the suffering redeemer who can provide it”

–Liz Green

Robert Green Ingalls said: “in nature there are neither rewards nor punishments–there are consequences.” We aren’t being singled out for punishment, we are merely experiencing the consequences of our own rigidity. If we choose security over change, we have to suffer the consequences. As Gail Sheehy summarizes succinctly: “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we are not really living. Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.”

We can learn how to recognize our own rigidity and how to correct it. It takes honesty and courage, but the rewards are immense. First, the suffering stops. This is the surest sign that we have chosen the right path again: the unnecessary suffering stops. More importantly, new possibilities open up everywhere in our life. Where everything seemed sterile and barren, and there seemed no possible answers, now everything seems possible. The possibilities may be scary, because each offers a path that we have never taken before, but it’s a good kind of fear, like the fear that a fine pianist experiences before a concert.

from “Shadow Dancing” by Robin Robertson.

[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.”

(A. I. Allenby describing a conversation with C. G. Jung.)

“The secret is out: all of us, no exceptions, have qualities we won’t let anyone see, including ourselves—our Shadow. If we face up to our dark side, our life can be energized. If not, there is the devil to pay. This is one of life’s most urgent projects.”

Larry Dossey, M.D., Author of “Healing Wounds”

“Each psychology is a confession, and the worth of psychology for another person lies not in the places where he can identify with it because it satisfies his psychic needs, but where it provokes him to work out his own psychology in response“.

James Hillman

“He (Great Spirit) governs the flowing of all waters, and the ebbing, the courses of all rivers and the replenishment of springs, the distilling of all dews and rain in every land beneath the sky. In the deep places, He gives thought to music great and terrible; and the echo of that music runs through all the veins of the world in sorrow and in joy; for if joyful is the fountain that rises in the sun, its springs are in the wells of sorrow unfathomed at the foundations of the Earth.”

J.R.R. Tolkein, “The Silmarillion”

The Core of Shadow Work is this: To KNOW YOURSELF FULLY, from as many angles as are required, in order that you might dare to let yourself go free. Being neither judge, jury, prosecutor, nor defender—you give no explanations, nor do you require any. You are AT HOME in your place between the sun and the moon.

~The Reconnections.

Light to the dark side, Jedi Knight!