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Embracing Your Shadow Self
by Garima Roy
“A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, the one I feed the most.”
Good and evil exists within us. Carl Jung looked at the subject of good vs evil in a very different light. According to him, one cannot deny the existence of the dark side in oneself. We all are susceptible to negative emotions, consciously or unconsciously, that is why chemistry recognizes so many negative hormones within a human body. Jung named this particular existing “dark side” in humans – Shadow. A shadow is “sum of all personal and collective psychic elements which, because of their incompatibility with the chosen conscious attitude, are denied expression in life.” Jung wrote, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”
Our ego likes to think that we are inherently good human beings and we don’t dwell in any negativity. But then one day when somebody hurts us, we go overboard with anger and resentment. In another situation, if we experience failure or someone unexpectedly points a finger at us, we are suddenly filled with fear, confusion and guilt. Our first instinct in such situations usually is to defend ourselves and protect our identity.
Source: http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2014/08/embracing-your-shadow-self/
