Page 9 - September 2022
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knowledge, and it therefore,
as a rule, meets with
considerable resistance.
Indeed, self-knowledge as a
psychotherapeutic measure
frequently requires much
painstaking work extending
over a long period of time.”
—Carl G. Jung, AION:
Researches Into The
Phenomenology of the Self,
paragraph 14
As part of our initial
ego development, we Think of Life Like a Teeter Totter
each seek to embody a
certain image of what As we’re growing up, we split ourselves in half. One
we want to be and all the side of the teeter totter has all the acceptable traits
characteristics that could that we can identify with (both + and -), and the other
have become part of our side of the teeter totter holds all of the exact opposite
conscious personality traits. Yes, there is a paradox in life. Everything in the
that we rejected early on Universe is in opposites. Up/down, black/white, hot/
constitute our shadow. cold, happy/sad, loud/quiet, selfish/unselfish, etc. I have
As long as we continue said this in a previous issue, but I am going to repeat it
to deny our shadow because it is important: the biggest and first hurdle is
traits, they will remain to recognize that there are people inside us that we do
in the unconscious, and not know.
therefore will have a
more distorted the biggest and As we are growing up, the good girl
or primitive or boy was told to be good, and all
expression first hurdle is to the bad people are over there on the
than if we were recognize that there other side of the teeter totter. This is
conscious of are people inside how the split in our psyche begins.
them. Our shadow us that we do not Naturally, we all want acceptance
characteristics are and approval, so we tell ourselves,
often infantile, know. “I have to be good all the time,” and
mainly because they we try to live up to our values of
are undeveloped. idealism. Only now we are setting
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