Embracing The Shadow

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." - Carl Jung Within each individual exists two poles of being: the highest ideal to which we aspire, the light, and a conflicting state which pulls us in the opposite direction, the shadow. The shadow appears to be responsible for all the negative sides of our personality: gluttony, lust, envy, sloth, anger... traits we are taught to suppress to maintain a harmonious society. This is reinforced in schools, churches, mosques, twitter discourses and by our own subconscious desire to be accepted and loved by society (a desire often absent in some special people). When we are born, this part of us is present as impulses and primal instincts and it is how we navigate the world but it is slowly trained out of us for the greater good of the society. As a result, a part of us is sacrificed and pushed down to the farthest regions of our subconscious but it never really goes away. It continues to grow in the dark often manifesting at our lowest points or in freudian slips, but we never really accept it as part of who we are. We say things like "The devil made me do it" and so we continue to push it even further down and it continues to grow still, its weight pulling us down with it. We suppress it in ourselves and violently rebuke it when it manifests in other people. We shun, we cancel and we burn at the stake. Our desire to be the best versions of ourselves has robbed us of an understanding of an integral part of our being and as such we are never truly whole. All yin, no yang. Until we come face to face with our darkest truest selves we shall continue to stumble and fall in the light, blinded by its discriminatory glare. ***** First Collector also receives physical drawing.