Facing Reality

The Shadow is the Truth of your existence.  It's the Self you push down beneath your awareness and project on others when you see your own darkness in them.

When released, it must learn through correction, trial and error, that which your higher nature holds to be self-evident.

We live in a denial of truth and the illusion of light.  The Shadow is the hidden self, the uneducated, unpolished, neglected child of consciousness.  You know you must face the inner mind, you must conquer your faults, but the child remains hidden behind the facade of your persona, the face you present to the world.

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Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it. Furthermore, it is constantly in contact with other interests, so that it is continually subjected to modifications. But if it is repressed and isolated from consciousness, it never gets corrected.

“Psychology and Religion” (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.131 C.G. Jung