Wleczone ciało leczone było… Czekała na mnie ta książka kilka miesięcy, ale gdy w końcu wspięła się na szczyt czytelniczego stosika i dopadła moich świecących niezdrowo oczu, nie pozwoliła, by się od niej oderwać, nic sobie nie robiła z mojej przeziębieniowej niemocy.
Chudziutka, na ząb, ale gęsta od znaczeń i sensów. Długo się trawi i mieli, by na koniec bezpowrotnie zmienić perspektywę, z której osoba czytająca patrzy na nagłe relacyjne błyski i grzmoty czy światowe wydarzenia, które jeszcze jakiś czas temu nie mieściły się w głowie, a teraz już muszą.
It was said that Dr. Jung’s favorite story went something like this: The water of life, wishing to make itself known on the face of the earth, bubbled up in an artesian well and flowed without effort or limit. People came to drink of the magic water and were nourished by it, since it was so clean and pure and invigorating. But humankind was not content to leave things in this Edenic state. Gradually they began to fence the well, charge admission, claim ownership of the property around it, make elaborate laws as to who could come to the well, put locks on the gates. Soon the well was the property of the powerful and the elite. The water was angry and offended; it stopped flowing and began to bubble up in another place. The people who owned the property around the first well were so engrossed in their power systems and ownership that they did not notice that the water had vanished. They continued selling the nonexistent water, and few people noticed that the true power was gone. But some dissatisfied people searched with great courage and found the new artesian well. Soon that well was under the control of the property owners, and the same fate overtook it. The spring took itself to yet another place—and this has been going on throughout recorded history.
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The tendency to see one’s shadow “out there” in one’s neighbor or in another race or culture is the most dangerous aspect of the modern psyche. It has created two devastating wars in this century and threatens the destruction of all the fine achievements of our modern world. We all decry war but collectively we move toward it. It is not the monsters of the world who make such chaos but the collective shadow to which every one of us has contributed. World War II gave us endless examples of shadow projection.
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The front page of any newspaper
hurls the collective shadow at us.
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Two things go wrong if we project our shadow: First, we do damage to another by burdening him with our darkness—or light, for it is as heavy a burden to make someone play hero for us. Second, we sterilize ourselves by casting off our shadow. We then lose a chance to change and miss the fulcrum point, the ecstatic dimension of our own lives.
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Medieval heroes had to slay their dragons; modern heroes have to take their dragons back home to integrate into their own personality.
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Jung warned us that it would not be too difficult to get the skeletons out of the closet from a patient in analysis but it would be exceedingly difficult to get the gold out of the shadow. People are as frightened of their capacity for nobility as of their darkest sides. If you find the gold in someone he will resist it to the last ounce of his strength.
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There is a curious fact based on this dynamic. Parrots learn profanity more easily than common phrases since we utter our curses with so much vigor. The parrot doesn’t know the meaning of these words, but he hears the energy invested in them. Even animals can pick up on the power we have hidden in the shadow!
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In middle age one gets tired of the involuntary round trips between the two ends
of the see-saw. It slowly dawns on us, if we are alert, that the middle ground is
the best. To our surprise, that middle ground is not the gray compromise that we
feared but the place of ecstasy and joy. […]
One cannot stay very long in this middle place, for it is a knife-edge, outside
space and time. A moment of it is enough to give meaning to long stretches of
ordinary life.
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Wherever we find ourselves, we need to honor the part of life that lies in shadow, to redeem those qualities we have forgotten or ignored.
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I have mentioned there are ritual ways of approaching the shadow and having a
creative relationship with it. […]
In this ritual you must find one of the left-hand contents of your personality
and give it expression in some way that satisfies it but does not do damage to
anything in the right-hand personality. You can draw it, sculpt it, write a vivid
story about it, dance it, burn something, or bury it—anything that gives
expression to that material without doing damage.
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Heaven and skid row are separated only by
an act of consciousness.
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Romantic love, or falling in love, is different from loving, which is always a quieter and more humanly proportioned experience. There is always something overblown and bigger-than-life about falling in love.
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Owning the power that lies in our shadow is a particularly challenging task. We can’t own it in the sense of possessing it, for the ego is far too small a container and will inflate out of hand.
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[…] we have to say that the divinity we see in others is truly there, but we don’t have the right to see it until we have taken away our own projections. How difficult! How can one say that the projection is not true but that the divinity of one’s beloved is? Making this fine differentiation is the most delicate and difficult task in life.
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In the inner life, what good could come from your own shadow? Strangely, the best can come from this neglected quarter.
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Contradiction is barren and destructive, yet paradox is creative. It is a powerful embracing of reality. […] While contradiction is static and unproductive, paradox makes room for grace and mystery.
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The ancient world had no illusions about romance; they knew that these feelings came, fleetingly, as a gift from the gods. There was less inflation here: humans were only carriers of divine energy. Today when this energy is bestowed on us, we need a ritual of thanksgiving to contain it, and a way of returning it to its rightful source.
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We hate paradox since it is so painful getting there, but it is a very direct experience of a reality beyond our usual frame of reference and yields some of the greatest insights. It forces us beyond ourselves and destroys naive and inadequate adaptations.
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The capacity for paradox is the
measure of
spiritual strength and the surest sign of maturity.
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Every single virtue in this world is made valid by its opposite. Light would mean nothing without dark, masculine without feminine, care without abandon. Truths always come in pairs and one has to endure this to accord with reality.
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A
huge amount of energy is wasted by modern people in opposing their own
situation. Opposition is something like a short circuit; it also drains our energy
away like a hemorrhage.
To transform opposition into paradox is to allow both sides of an issue, both
pairs of opposites, to exist in equal dignity and worth.
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If I can stay with my conflicting impulses long enough, the two opposing forces will teach each other something and produce an insight that serves them both. This is not compromise but a depth of understanding that puts my life in perspective and allows me to know with certainty what I should do.
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Formulas or devices are never enough […]. The solution must rise from the dynamics of the opposing energies that are facing each other.
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To view the elements of our life in this paradoxical manner is to open up a whole new series of possibilities. Let us not say that the opposites are antithetical but that they make up a divine reality that is accessible to us in our human condition. It is wrong to say that one of a pair is secular and the other religious. We must retrain ourselves to think that each represents a divine truth. It is only our inability to see the hidden unity that is problematic.
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[…] the pearl of great price is to be found in our everyday conflicts and tensions. No one is lacking in such experiences.
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Conflict to paradox to
revelation; that is the divine progression.
Who has not fallen in love with someone where he or she shouldn’t? […]
Who does not spend much of his time debating whether to do the disciplined
task or to goof off a bit longer
[…]? Neither is holy;
but exactly in the paradox between them lies the holy place.
Robert A. Johnson, Owning Your Own Shadow.
Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche,
HarperCollins Publishers, New York 2009.
(wyróżnienie własne)
I have to honor my shadow, for it is an integral part of me; but I don’t have to push it onto someone else.
(tamże)
