CannaOnerStar
Well-Known Member
Yep shadow is a tricky thing to master. But Jung did say that taming the shadow is only the apprentices work and the masters thesis is to master your relationship with the Anima. This idea of Anima and Animus is that we all have male and female aspects in our psyche, but the persona(sorta like your social imago) and ego does not(usually) want to relate with the aspects of opposite sex and it is therefore projected onto other people of opposite sex that show similar opposite qualities to ego and persona, which is also what the inner woman or man is like.I'm still on standby... so I dug into this video:
Synchronicity. I've been introspecting recently, where throughout my life it's.. "Oh, your such a nice guy, blah blah fucking blah.".
Before my response was a polite thank you, etc. Last 6 months or so it's been, with a firm smile.. "Well, no really I am not. I am a nice guy until I'm not."
(My shadow is literally screaming at them, "You don't fucking know me, let me just show you who I really really fucking am!")
I've been trying to balance this out. This video is totally getting into explaining this whole existential struggle I am feeling. Fantastic.
I mean literally if I took a psychosis test before I would be a 23-27/50... since getting diagnosed with Aspergers and gaining understanding of that and also I have really begun to explore consciousness, self improvement and spirituality, I have dropped this down to a 10/50. Major changes to lifestyle as well.
Here, some of you may be surprised:
Hare Psychopathy Checklist (Original) (PCL-22)
The Original Hare Psychopathy Checklist is a 22-item psychological assessment tool designed to assess the presence of psychopathy in individuals.psychology-tools.com
That should be posted in the politics section. Although they would all lie about their high numbers.
My approach to shadow is not for everyone and i definitely dont recommend doing the same thing unless you already know yourself well enough to know that this is the way you should go. But what i do is i try not to repress or suppress my shadow at all initially, i let all these shadow stuff enter my consciousness freely, but i dont freely act on its impulses. Instead i also hold the good side of things in my consciousness as well and choose not to automatically go along with the shadow and end up choosing the opposite thing to act out. I listen to it through this and while it is taxing to have all sorts of wicked stuff going through your mind, i find it to be worth it to me. Even tho i dont automatically follow it, sometimes i can figure out very valuable things through it. Not by listening to it and taking what it communicates as some supreme truth to follow, but there is a reason why it does what it does and wants what it wants.
But this is only one side of the shadow. The truth is that there is tons and tons of good in the shadow as well, its not all bad, actually i wouldnt even say that it is bad. What it is, is the aspects of our Self which we are not aware of, because of ego. And its this ego-shadow relationship that is the unhealthy part, which people tend to start with and which seems to control most peoples lives to very large degree for all their lives.
What the shadow is is just things that the ego does not want to relate with, but which still are part of you. The fact that there is violence in the shadow shows that there has been some suppressed/repressed things that relate to ego or persona wanting to be good to others. The thing is that if you are pushed beyond your true boundaries with this whole being good thing, you have repressed the aspect of you that would had wanted to say that "this is too much" or something. This ofc is there with everyone to some degree, but with some people this "being good" complex has grown bigger and this has also made the shadow aspect of this bigger as well.
And the thing with not integrating these aspects to consciousness properly and adapting your ego and persona to have better boundaries about this, the impulse from the shadow might be so strong that it makes you act completely irrational and against the best interest of everyone(including yourself). Maybe you have some times gotten so angry that you have completely lost control, or seen someone have this sort of episode. This is what we could call shadow possession, a short term one.
To avoid this sort of irrational acts that stem from some irrational impulses from the shadow, we need to develop the ego and its relation to contents of the unconscious and shadow. We need to face our shadow in one way or another, or else how would you ever be able to become conscious of it to take charge of it?
But even if you tame the shadow as is, new things come to it over time and you need to not only be conscious of its corrent contents and adapt ego to its contents in healthier way that you can consciously process it. But you also need a healthy relationship between your ego and unconscious in general. This is what the true indepth meaning of Anima/Animus is, even tho its expressed in matters of love, especially the so called "love at first sight" etc. and even tho the relationship of opposites with anima/animus is more to persona than ego and egos relationship of opposite is more on shadow than anima/animus. But the thing is that things that you are unconscious of tends to mix up together and express itself in chaotic manner through impulses to act on.
By the way, here is another great youtube channel:
Sifu Mark Rasmus
Tai Chi, Chi Kung and Hermetic science courses in Thailand. https://markrasmus.org https://www.Vimeo.com/ondemand/markrasmus Workshops in Thailand rasmustaic...
www.youtube.com
It is largely about hermeticism and eastern stuff from hermetic point of view, but its all the same as with gnosticism in its core, with some differences to methodology that i dont think are very important and they dont exclude each others, but more like complement because its same stuff from different perspective, so there is always something you can see from one perspective you cant from another. This is why i think its extremely ignorant to choose one learned perspective on spirituality and believing its all there is and that everything else is just lies from some evil people. The fact is that even the australian aboriginals, despite looking like very simple people with apparently not much smart things to say about, also have very great wisdom in their spiritual teachings. However i dont think it needs to be read literally, like no religion should, but the things being metaphorical truths from one perspective about something that no one can ever explain fully. It doesent make sense that words that our limited minds have invented could express the totality of All that is, was and ever will be.. and do it in a way that other people could understand as the one explaining it intended.
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