Facing The Shadow
Always wondered why I’m so afraid of robots, but one reason is that they do it so much better than I. I am a perfectionist. Trained from birth to reject my own humanity.
Making mistakes is unacceptable. Severely punished. It doesn’t matter how you feel, it matters what you did. And if what you did came from a place that wasn’t pure, you have failed. You are unsalvageable.
When I feel joy, I don’t analyze it. I do not over-think. Having fun with friends, sharing a joke with someone, going on an adventure. My mind does not take time out to go into why I feel joy. It just accepts and allows it.
When I feel sorrow, guilt, regret, despair, I dive into it like an ocean with no bottom. I plunge into the darkness, underprepared, ill-equipped, into the unknown. Into the shadow self. I face the dark side without choice. I grant myself no mercy, no break.
I see terrible things. I have horrifying thoughts. I consider the world; it’s pointlessness. The futility of life. The errors and motivations I have made and acted upon that taint my ego.
Sometimes I go so far I doubt I’ll ever see the surface again. That it will consume me. That I will become incapable of good, incapable of light.
Yet I look at others as flawed beings, capable of anything and forgivable for all. Come to me and I will accept you without a whiff of religion or higher power, for what little I have studied and noted in humanity means — more and more — than I can accept the animal that we are. More than that, I can love them.
But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all beggars, the most impudent of all offenders, yea the very fiend himself - that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of my own kindness, that I myself am the enemy who must be loved - what then? — CARL JUNG
Well. Exactly. What then?
All I know is that I looked in the mirror the other day and saw a slice of reality.
I saw a human — just like those ones I look at every day. An animal, capable of incredible or terrible things. Something far more complicated than a monster, something far too flawed to be an android. For the first time, relief and horror washed over me in equal measure.
And so I descend back into the abyss. But this time with purpose. Not dragged down with panic attacks and disappointment, not choked with shock and guilt. But to face my shadow. To accept it.
One thing is for certain. I will never be the same again.
