Our shadow, formed long ago, contains all the parts of ourselves that we have tried to hide or deny, the parts we believe are not acceptable to our family, friends and, most importantly, ourselves. It is made up of everything that annoys, horrifies or disgusts us about other people or about ourselves. It holds all that we try to hide from those we love and all that we don't want other people to think about us or find out about us.
As the great Swiss psychologist C.G. Jung says, our shadow is the person we would rather not be. From its invisible home deep within our psyche, the shadow wields enormous power over our life.
It determines what we can and cannot do, what we will be irresistibly drawn toward, and what we will do almost anything to avoid. It dictates our attractions and our repulsions and determines what we will love and what we will judge and criticize. Our shadow controls how much success we're entitled to create or how much failure we're doomed to experience. The shadow is an oracle that predicts all of our behaviors, driving the way we treat those around us—and how we treat ourselves. ~~Debbie Ford~~
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I think the main objective of most therapy is to teach the client acceptance of
his/her shadow side. To suppress it takes a tremendous amount of energy, causes many difficulties, including physical illness, it is believed. Whether one believes that illness results from stress, or that illness is "dis-ease"...a lack of 'ease', i.e. a spiritual problem, the result is the same. (To be continued)
