Your Shadow Is Your Superpower

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious- Carl Jung

To become aware and then integrate the shadow into one’s personality is a difficult and sometimes a heroic endeavor. But failure to do so can create chaos in one’s life.

According to Carl Jung, The shadow self (or the dark side of the Self) is your animal nature that lives behind your social persona. This includes the usual suspects like our fear, anxieties, envy, lust but also positives like instinct, intuition, compassion, and spirituality. The less you know it and own it, the denser, deeper, and more unpredictab... See more

The whole Self — made up of the Ego, the Persona, and the Shadow. Together, they create the unique You on this planet. Jung called this journey of integration- Individuation.

A persona is a compromise. a secondary reality, in making which others often have a greater share than he. It is a social mask that each of us `wear’ in our interaction with others in society. — Carl Jung.

The aim of individuation is nothing less than to divest the self of the false wrappings of the persona, on the one hand, and assimilate the `gold in Shadow’ on the other. — Carl Jung

Jung remained of the opinion that while “no one should deny the danger of the descent...every descent is followed by an ascent ... enantiodromia;” and assimilation of — rather than possession by — the shadow becomes, at last, a real possibility.