“Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
C.G. Jung, Collected Works 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335
How to make the “darkness conscious” is the work, the study and the meditation. So much of our satisfaction, meaning and sense of well being remain as potential, just outside of conscious awareness. Whether it is the darkness in the world or the darkness in each of us as individuals, it appears as the enemy, but in fact, it is a simple misunderstanding based on “ideal conceptions”.
We hear these common phrases:
“What you hate in another you hate in yourself.”
“It will come back to bite you in the butt.”
“What is this dream trying to tell me.”
“He is like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“She’s afraid of her own shadow.”
“Something we were withholding made us weak,
Until we found it was ourselves.”
Robert Frost
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”
Carl Jung
“One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.”
James Baldwin
“Man stands in his own shadow and wonders why it is dark.”
Zen saying
“We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourselves to put in the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again.”
Robert Bly
I list these quotes as pointers into that darkness, so we can all become a little more familiar and accepting of something that is there and with us, wherever we go. Usually, others can see it in us but we cannot see it in ourselves because we are “standing in our own shadow”. As Robert Bly pointed out, we spend our younger years adapting by putting “parts of ourselves” “in the bag” or in the shadow. It is so difficult to accept and integrate these parts because of their vulnerable nature. They are based on a child’s interpretation of the world.
If there is one thing I could say I do as a therapist, every hour, with every client is to help them unpack that bag. And every part of themselves that was packed away was misunderstood and rejected based on an “ideal conception” of what it means to be a woman, to be a man, to be spiritual, to be good, to be bad, to be some ideal or another; to be something other than our authentic self. What ideal conceptions keep you in the dark?
Next Post: The Shadow: How to make use of it
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