Addictions, low self-esteem, mental illness, chronic illnesses, and various neuroses are all attributed to the Shadow Self. When the human Shadow is shunned, it tends to undermine and sabotage our lives. In Jung’s own words:Įveryone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. So where did the Shadow Self idea originate? The concept was originally coined and explored by Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Carl Jung. This hidden place lurking within your unconscious mind also contains suppressed and rejected emotions such as rage, jealousy, hatred, greed, deceitfulness, and selfishness. ![]() Your Shadow is the place within you that contains all of your secrets, repressed feelings, primitive impulses, and parts deemed “unacceptable,” shameful, “sinful” or even “evil.” What is the human Shadow? In short, the Shadow is our dark side our lost and forgotten disowned self. What DOES touch the very depths of your being, however, is exploring your Shadow. Instead, it leaves you superficially hanging onto warm and fuzzy platitudes which sound nice, but don’t enact any real change. And while it might provide some temporary emotional support, it doesn’t reach to the depths of your being: it doesn’t transform you at a core level. So many people in today’s world follow this path. It’s very easy and comfortable to focus only on the light side of life. In fact, I’ve learned through a lot of deep inner work, that not only is focusing solely on the “light side of life” one side of the equation, but it is actually a form of spiritually bypassing your deeper, darker problems that, let me assure you, are basically guaranteed to exist. Focusing only on “love and light” will not heal your wounds on a deep level. Not just wrong, but completely and utterly off the mark. It’s a sort of “Recipe for Well-Being” dictated by our culture.īut a few years ago, after battling ongoing mental health issues, I realized something shocking: I’m sure you were raised believing a similar story as well. Whether through the family environment I was raised in, or the cultural myths I was brought up clinging to, I once believed that all you really needed to do in life to be happy was to focus on everything beautiful, positive, and spiritually feel-good. Why Focusing Only on the Light is a Form of Escapismįor most of my life, I’ve grown up firmly believing that the only thing worthy of guiding me was “light” and “love.”
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