There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Carl Jung
The shadow is the darkest part of you that works against soul-centered living. Sometimes you are completely blind to it, and sometimes you turn a blind eye to it intentionally because to confront it – to confront yourself – creates too much unrest. Too much cognitive dissonance. And so you suppress, deny, rationalize, diminish, blame shift, judge – anything but confront yourself.
And so you live in the shadow, which inherently produces a state of being that the Hopi Indians sum up in a single word: Koyaanisqatsi. Life out of balance. Off center. The Scriptures also have a similar, single word to describe not only the life out of balance, but also the shadow that produces it: amartia – or missing the bull’s eye. This single, amazing word conjures the full scene of an archer selecting an arrow, drawing the bow, taking aim at a target, releasing the tension, and watching in dismay as the arrow fails to hit the center of its intended target. The result is that the arrow now rests off center.
The only solution is re-centering.. Not trying again. There is no try. You must re-center your life from the soul. There you will find light again, exposing the shadow and placing you perfectly in the bull’s eye.
This is called shadow work. And it’s not easy. But remember, we are on a hero’s journey to the center of the soul. And every hero in the making must face his biggest fear to continue.
The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for. It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Joseph Campbell
Let’s begin the descent and see what we find.
Source Scripture
Expose’: Luke 2:21-40
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