Owning Your Own Shadow: The Dark Side of the Psyche

Two things go wrong if we project our shadow: First, we do damage to another by burdening him with our darkness—or light, for it is as heavy a burden to make someone play hero for us. Second, we sterilize ourselves by casting off our shadow. We then lose a chance to change and miss the fulcrum point, the ecstatic dimension of our own lives.

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.

The more refined our conscious personality, the more shadow we have built up on the other side.

Romancing the shadow is subversive: The culture teaches us to be extroverted, quick, ambitious, productive. Workaholism is lauded; contemplation is shunned. But shadow-work is slow, cautious; it moves like an animal in the night. It moves us against the collective mandate to think positively, be productive, focus outwardly, and protect our image.

Of course we are going to have a shadow! St. Augustine, in The City of God, thundered, ’To act is to sin.” To create is to destroy at the same moment. We cannot make light without a corresponding darkness. India balances Brahma, the god of creation, with Shiva, the god of destruction, and Vishnu sits in the middle keeping the opposites together. No

The shadow, then, consists of complexes, of personal qualities resting on drives and behavior patterns which are a definite “dark” part of the personality structure. In most instances they are readily observable by others. Only we ourselves cannot see them. The shadow qualities are usually in glaring contrast to the ego’s ideals and wishful efforts