“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” -Carl Jung
Our problems don’t ever die; they merely relocate into the shadows. The bigger the problem, the deeper it will recess. If not addressed, these dark elements eventually overpopulate the unconscious mind and leak out through every available crack. They show up as hatred, jealousy, and lust. They parade around inside our heads as pride, greed, and depression. The more we repress our negative thoughts, the stronger they become.
In the West, we are not taught much about our psychic shadows. It wasn’t until the work of Freud and Jung began about 100 years ago, that we developed language around concepts like the ego, the superego, and the unconscious—ideas that Eastern philosophers had been exploring for millennia. In Bali, where Hinduism is the predominant religion, each home is adorned with a statue of a wicked deity at its entrance. This serves as a daily reminder to the inhabitants that evil is not an abstraction; it lives inside of us all.
Understanding evil in general begins with understanding it first in ourselves; examination begins with recognizing the evidence of repression. Repression occurs when, instead of accepting a behavior or thought as part of our ego, we push it down into the unconscious depths. This happens automatically in childhood as we develop a sense of self that is compatible with the wider world, but what goes down must come up. As we age into adults the repressed elements show up more strongly, no longer controlled by the parental pressures that imprisoned them.
Repression takes enormous amounts of energy for the psyche to accomplish, so it follows that the more tired, distracted, or frustrated we become, the more our shadow elements come to the fore. Negativity abounds, and we are stuck with two real options: acceptance or resistance. Most choose resistance (i.e. further repression) but we are only resisting ourselves, thus guaranteeing more of the same.
Acceptance of our shadow, however, does not equate to inviting it to run the show. Acceptance means that we choose to listen to what the shadow has to reveal about ourselves instead of reflexively dismissing it. Only through understanding what is contained in the darkness can we make an informed decision about how to act on it. Not all shadow is negative. Sometimes the things that we repress are our own hopes, dreams, and talents. They are lying inchoate, ready to bring greater joy and fulfillment if we would only let them.
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