Meeting the Shadow

Whether the shadow becomes our friend or enemy depends largely upon ourselves. As the dreams of the unexplored house and the French desperado both show, 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 lov

This was Jung’s finding, too: the human psyche consists of light and dark, masculine and feminine, and countless other syzygies that coexist in a fluctuating state of psychic tension. Like the Taoists, Jung warned against resolving this tension by identifying with only one pole (for example, trying only to be productive in life). He felt that overv

If we flee from the evil in ourselves, we do it at our hazard. All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation. To live without the creative potential of our own destructiveness is to be a cardboard angel.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you. JESUS

Good loses some of its goodness, and evil some of its evil. As doubt of the “light” of consciousness increases, so the “darkness” of the soul appears less black. A new symbol emerges in which the opposites can be reconciled. I am thinking here of the symbols of the Cross, of the T’ai-Chi-Tu, and of the Golden Flower. For the individual, the emergen

Referring to the medieval idea of the “daemonic,” Jung writes that “demons are nothing other than intruders from the unconscious, spontaneous irruptions of the unconscious complexes into the continuity of the conscious process. Complexes are comparable to demons which fitfully harass our thought and actions; hence in antiquity and the Middle Ages a

Jung believed that God, the living God, could be found only where we least want to look, the place we have the most resistance to exploring. This living God is entwined with our own darkness and shadow, woven in our wounds and complexes, laced with pathologies. On the other hand, the God of Belief, the God removed from creation and from everyday li

For the early Greeks, the daimon was both evil and creative; it was the source of destruction as well as spiritual guidance, much like those primitive demons described by Freud. The word daimon was sometimes used by Plato as a synonym for theos or god; and mighty Eros was also a daimon. Daimons were potentially both good and evil, constructive and

There are three ways in which the individual can attempt to solve the problem. He can renounce one side in favor of the other; he can retire from the conflict altogether; or he can seek a solution that will satisfy both sides. The first two possibilities need no further discussion. The third seems at first impossible. How can contradictory opposite