Jung to Live by by Eugene Pascal

Author:Eugene Pascal [PASCAL, EUGENE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Self-Help / General
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2009-11-29T00:00:00+00:00

The Shadow, Sin and Guilt

The shadow is the entity that we first encounter in our dream-work and our journey into the unconscious. No matter what its nature, it offers us an initial view of the repressed parts of our personalities. It has been said that, when transformed, the darkest shadow is eighty percent gold. The means for this alchemical transformation from lead to gold, as it were, will be discussed at length in chapter 12.

Jung’s psychology is ethical (stemming from the feeling function of typology), and in this it differs somewhat from other schools of therapy. Ethics is firmly based on the understanding that one’s own happiness can never be had at the expense of someone else’s. In fact happiness achieved at the expense of another is not genuine, nor can it be long-lived. Exploiting or taking advantage of others will merely turn them into enemies who will eventually want revenge or to set things aright by force, causing all sorts of mischief for us. Common sense dictates that the end does not justify the means.

Classically in our culture the negative shadow qualities were enumerated as the Seven Capital Sins, namely pride, envy, greed, lust, gluttony, anger and sloth. The antidote to these seven poisons was broken up into two pairs, one of seven and the other of nine. The group of seven, called Gifts of the Holy Spirit, are wisdom, understanding, prudence (supernatural common sense), fortitude, knowledge, piety and awe before the Absolute. The group of nine are called Fruits of the Holy Spirit, namely, charity, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, mildness and temperance. If we understand the Holy Spirit to mean the transcendent Self, then these healing states of consciousness, these Gifts and Fruits, are evoked by our strivings toward wholeness and by sensitizing our egos to the subtle movements of the transpersonal Self within, the very essence of wholeness, and they will generally keep us out of a lot of psychological trouble. They must be “prayed out” of ourselves.

Before we feel better concerning our negative shadow sides, we must expect to feel worse—downright depressed in fact. Surmounting the first barrier, withdrawing projections and focusing on the darkness within, is simply a depressing experience. Such a withdrawal is accompanied by a shattering of self-illusions and the feeling of having lived a false and hypocritical existence. In Jung’s experience, Roman Catholics fared better at this initial stage than Protestants since from the age of seven Catholics ritually confess their sins to a priest, including misdemeanors on the levels of thought, word and deed. Sharing one’s dark side, in what is called the Sacrament of Reconciliation, with another sympathetic human being is in itself a healing activity, albeit a humbling one. It is a tool, and the healing depends on how and with what attitude one uses it. And, no matter what our outer achievements, it reminds us that we are all still only human. Clinically as well, by revealing pathogenic secrets (for example, incestual desire, murder, perverse activity) to the nonjudgmental therapist the patient makes an emotional breakthrough toward healing.

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