Jung At Heart

I just stumbled upon some fascinating stuff while doing personal research on how the f*** to get my life together.

Shadow work by Carl Jung. The theory behind it is that you have to look at the dark things in yourself, the things you don't like about yourself, the things you don't want to admit are there; you have to examine and understand them to make yourself whole. You may even draw power from this understanding.

Fighting or ignoring these things is doomed to failure because they are part of you, they cannot be denied and they will surface in dark and destructive ways.

I just discovered this theory 4 minutes and 37 seconds ago so I got nothing to go on. I'm gonna read a lot of Jung and see where it leads.

But in tripping over this, I discovered a bunch of quotes from psychiatrists and philosophers that really resonated with me.

"Beneath the social mask we wear every day, we have a hidden shadow side: an impulsive, wounded, sad or isolated part that we generally try to ignore."  Connie Zwieg

"Shadow wants to be heard, simply that. But if it isn't, it turns nasty. It becomes a veritable demon, witch, or son of a bitch demanding its pound of flesh........ in very painful real time, not dream time."

Katya Walter

"Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well meant intentions. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."    Carl Jung

"The shadow is both the awful thing that needs redemption, and the suffering redeemer who can provide it."  Liz Green

"The core of shadow work is this: To know yourself fully, from as many angles as are required, in order that you might dare to let yourself go free. Being neither judge, jury, prosecutor, nor defender - you give no explanations, nor do you require any. You are at home in your place between the sun and the moon."  The Reconnections

I feel like calling in sick so I can spend the day reading up on this. Truthfully that would be the healthiest thing I could do, because going to that job only serves to feed and poke and probe  my dark side.