The imperative of seeing the shadow I have, recently, been trying to understand more clearly why it is that I feel it's so important that people recognize their dark sides. I find that some of the current ethos' approach to life is a willful march into blissful ignorance. When our commitment to positive thinking turns from 'I will welcome the challenges the world throws at me, take responsibility for my own existence, and make the best of any situation' to 'If I think positively and exclude the negative aspects of reality from my awareness, then conditions themselves will become positive', we are trading constructive self-reliance for panglossian delusion. Also, for many, recognizing the darker sides of our own nature is one of the first steps on the path of self-discovery.

In "The Undiscovered Self," by Carl Jung, I found the following a clear explication of the broader importance of individually confronting the darker aspects of our psyche:

Since it is universally believed that man is merely what his consciousness knows of itself, he regards himself as harmless and so adds stupidity to iniquity. He does not deny that terrible things have happened and still go on happening, but it is always "the others" who do them. And when such deeds belong to the recent or remote past, they quickly and conveniently sink into the sea of forgetfulness, and that state of chronic woolly-mindedness returns which we describe as "normality." In shocking contrast to this is the fact that nothing has finally disappeared and nothing has been made good. The evil, the guilt, the profound unease of conscience, the obscure misgiving are there before our eyes, if only we would see. Man has done these things; I am a man, who has his share of human nature; therefore I am guilty with the rest and bear unaltered and indelibly within me the capacity and the inclination to do them again at any time. Even if, juristically, we are not accessories to the crime, we are always, thanks to our human nature, potential criminals. In reality we merely lacked a suitable opportunity to be drawn into the infernal melee. None of us stands outside humanity's black collective shadow. Whether the crime lies many generations back or happens today, it remains the symptom of a disposition that is always and everywhere present - and one would therefore do well to possess some "imagination in evil," for only the fool can permanently neglect the conditions of his own nature. In face, this negligence is the best means of making him an instrument of evil. Harmlessness and naivete are as little helpful as it would be for a cholera patient and those in his vicinity to remain unconscious of the contagiousness of the disease.

  ¶ 1:05 PM