Owning Your Own Shadow: The Dark Side of the Psyche

The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness.

Each of us must be willing to continually explore and expose this aspect of self. Whether you like it or not, if you’re human, you have a shadow.

Karl Jung said this about ‘the Shadow’ in one of his books: ‘It is as evil as we are positive … the more desperately we try to be good and wonderful and perfect, the more the Shadow develops a definite will to be black and evil and destructive. … The fact is that if one tries beyond one’s capacity to be perfect, the Shadow descends to hell and beco

Many of us have spent too much time chasing the light only to find more darkness. “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light,” said Jung, “but by making the darkness conscious.”

We can’t have the full experience of the light without knowing the dark. The dark side is the gatekeeper to true freedom.