Page 8 - September 2022

New Beginnings

Part 6

Reflection Upon Our Emotional Experiences

with Others Promotes Wholeness

Carl Jung showed us the way to People say to me, “I know my shadow,
becoming conscious of who we are and or I’m already done with that.” Well, no,

even more important, where we are out you’re not. No one is. What we do know
of balance with ourselves. He says, about ourselves is only what our ego is
able to tolerate, and our vast unconscious

“Closer examination of the dark holds much more than we can assimilate.
characteristics — that is the inferiorities Our ego’s job is to survive with as little

constituting the shadow — reveals that pain as possible so it is self-protective;
they have an emotional nature, a kind of and unless we have a strong enough ego,
autonomy, and accordingly an obsessive we will not be able to look at ourselves

or, better, possessive quality. Emotion, honestly.
incidentally, is not an activity of the

individual but something that happens “The shadow is a moral problem that
to him. Affects occur usually where challenges the whole ego-personality,
adaptation is weakest, and at the same for no one can become conscious of the

time they reveal the reason for its weakness, shadow without considerable moral
namely a certain degree of inferiority and effort. To become conscious of it involves

the existence of a lower level of personality.” recognizing the dark aspects of the
—Carl G. Jung, AION: Researches Into The personality as present and real. This act is
Phenomenology of the Self, paragraph 15 the essential condition for any kind of self-

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