The Dark Side

Jean Wimmerlin, Unsplash

How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow? I must have a dark side also if I am to be whole — Carl Jung

“The Shadow is, so to say, the blind spot in your nature. It’s that which you won’t look at about yourself. This is the counterpart exactly of the Freudian unconscious, the repressed recollections as well at the repressed potentialities in you.” — Joseph Campbell

“ It’s the sandpaper in your psyche that rubs you raw until you make it conscious.” — Jaqueline Small, The sacred Purpose of Being Human

“To honor and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.” Robert Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding The Dark Side of The Psyche

Until recently my mind stayed pretty much in the present or in the future. That’s where it still resides in the daytime, but at night I am visiting decisions and events in my past. Something in me seems to want a more comprehensive vision of myself and the life I have made. I see that I have not only made a life, I have made a self.

This self-making effort shows itself to be a lifelong construction project which is still unfinished. I remember times when I have been wrong, where I have been petty, where I have failed to be…