Human Shadows
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The mother repressed the problem of evil, which in her case had taken the form of a completely destructive power animus.
She split herself off from her destructive animus by using the Bible as a trick, not as something to read or meditate upon or to incorporate in any way, but as a kind of outer magical, technical trick to keep herself from a confrontation.
Thus the whole problem of evil and of having it out with her animus was put onto her children.
That is why I do not use the words black or white magic, because even the Bible can be used for black magic against dark powers.
Whether magic is white or black depends on how and with what attitude you use your weapon
— Marie Louise Von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales,
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I read the Book of Job last night — I don’t think God comes well out of it.
— Virginia Woolf
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Only when we can know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognize our shared humanity.
— Pema Chodron
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So please, we are not instructing you what to do. We are not disseminating systems. That is all too childish. But we are together, together, and I mean together, we are walking together on a very complex road and one must be free to walk. And in that walking one discovers the enormity of existence — not the problems of existence — the immensity of life, the immensity and the beauty of living.
— Krishnamurti
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I do not literally paint that table, but the emotion it produces upon me.
- Henri Matisse
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It’s obvious to me that joy and enchantment heal our wounds and give us strength to live, but it’s also obvious how our projected darkness injures us all and increases our suffering. We belong to a culture that fears human complexity, that tries to banish it in favor of a forced goodness, on threat of fire and brimstone. We end up walled off from large parts of ourselves, victims of our own unconsciousness and the unconsciousness of our parents.
