Owning Your Shadow and Paradox

I liked the short and deep book Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert A. Johnson. It
advances my idea of yin yang balance. One must embrace their shadow. It aids, I’d say,
in getting what you want, being authentic, and weeding out undesirable people, places
and things. One thing he writes that is great is that, if one embraces their shadow, they
can also have the most beautiful, powerful parts shown to themselves, and then revealed
to the world. I will look more into that.

Below are some great parts of the book:

The center of the seesaw is the place or enlightenment. To me, this harkens to the central
line of the yin yang circle.

It would have been “sheer genius” had Marie Antoinette honored a peasant task like
milking a cow like her refined life, and may have stopped future events.

Page 8: “it is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character than
to find out you are a bum. Of course you are both; but one does not discover these two
elements at the same time." LOL

Rituals such as sacrifice, bloodletting, fasting and sexual abstinence safeguard the culture
by paying out the shadow. We must integrate the shadow in modern times rather than
sacrifice. Interesting…

Sometimes, the more refined our conscious personality, the deeper or darker our shadow.
This may be true, I think, if one is not aware by mediating and working out. IF one never
curses, I am suspicious.
Children sometimes carry the dark side of creative parents, like the proverbial naughty
preacher’s child.

Events such as wars, economic crises, etc. represent a repressed shadow.

Page 26 The Christian cross was originally balanced horizontally and vertically. It
mobilizes balancing: right, left, high, low. If one can do this, they are catholic or whole.
Lucifer was cast away, but we can embrace “him”.

People used to be at the mercy of land and more connected to nature and sexuality. Now
in cities (most of us), we are not as much connected.

To refuse the dark side may lead to black mood, psychosomatic illness or unconsciously
inspired accidents.

George Bernard Shaw said that art is the only alternative to war. That’s great!
Page 31 “Unless we do conscious work on it, the shadow is almost always projected; that
is, it is neatly laid on someone or something else we do not have to take responsibility for
it. This is the way things were done five thousand years ago, and most to of us are still
stuck in this medieval consciousness.”

Page 37 This is thought: ‘You can refuse a shadow projection and stop the endless cycle
of revenge if you have your own shadow under conscious control.”

Page 40 “’Love’ is the one world in our Western tradition adequate to describe this
synthesis of ego and shadow. Faust shows with great power that the redemption of the go
is possible only as the redemption of the shadow parallels it. Faust’s character is filled out
by the addition of his shadow. He is made whole by his encounter with Mephistopheles,
and the same is true in reverse. Better said, neither ego nor shadow can be redeemed
unless its twin is transformed.”

Page 43: “It is very puzzling to examine our capacity for projecting our best qualities. It
is as if we rear that heaven might come too soon! From the point of view of our ego, the
appearance of a sublime trait might upset our whole personality structure.”

Page 45: jack Sanford, Episcopal priest: “There are, in my view, two ‘shadows’: (1) the
dark side of the ego, which is carefully hidden from itself and which the ego will not
acknowledge unless force to by life’s difficulties, and (22) that which has been repressed
in us lest it interfere with our egocentricity and, however devilish it may seem, is
basically connected to the Self.”

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.

Page 46: 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.

The Tao or middle way is a creative synthesis. Page 48: “One cannot stay very long in
this middle place, for it’s a knife-edge, outside space and time. A moment of it is enough
to give meaning to long stretches of ordinary life. India warns that if one touches that
place fore more than a short time one will lose one’s orientation and die. There is a small
danger of this to most of us, however.

Page 52: “…the most terrible things go on ceremonially in the Mass, but the altar rail is a
container, and the priest, who is almost inhumanly close to the drama, is robed to protect
himself from the too-great power of the event. He also does his rituals in the sacristy
before and after the Mass, to protect himself from the superhuman force he has involved.
Remember, a symbolic or ceremonial experience is real and affects one as much as an
actual event.”

Creativity and vitality can come from accessing your shadow if correctly handled. If
incorrectly handled, it can lead to destruction.

At times like a marriage breakup or being fired, we can take shadow energy and use it
correctly.

Parrots learn the meaning of curses more easily than other words because they sense the
energy vested in the curses.

If two people meet and there is a potential for a relationship, egos cause power wards.
When the two can listen to each other, hear each other out, what they each say
complements the other, and a mandala is formed. God is present in the unresolved
conflict. I add: If there is a commitment to grow and develop with one another.

Many people say they are religious, but don’t’ have religious values in day-to-day life.
Life is full of paradoxes: Love without power is insipid and weak. Power without love is
cruel. You be (receive, yin) and do (action, yang). “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. Here is a list of paradoxical religious
and practical values from pages 78-79.

Religious Values Practical Values

losing winning
outgo income
fasting eating
passivity action
giving earning
selling all and
giving it to the poor owning poverty possession
repose activity
celibacy sex
observation decisiveness
obedience to authority freedom
duty choice
obedience democracy
meditative sharp
consciousness consciousness
ecstasy sobriety
vision focus
belief that less belief that more is better
is better