Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Whatever we’re afraid to look at in ourselves secretly owns us. We can’t live empowered lives if we’re turning away from who we are and only able to acknowledge certain parts of our experience. Our shadows contain important information for us. The magician reaches into the dark space of a top hat to pull out a rabbit. We are tasked with the same challenge in our healing. Our work is to reach into the dark parts of our psyche to retrieve what lives there, pull it into the light and make sense of it.
We’re often afraid of our ugly side. We take 45 selfies to weed out the one we find acceptable. We reinforce the idea that we’re OK, that we’re beautiful even in our pain, that we’re moving toward the light — that this is the point of healing. But what if the point of healing is not to eradicate our pain or overcome the parts of ourselves, our stories, that we dislike? What if the point of healing is to open to our shadow self and integrate her? Make her a place at the table? Hear her out and take her into consideration, authentically?
Carl Jung, one of the master shadow workers of all time said: “To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees…
