There are certainly statistics which show that most people who become sociopaths, who become homicidal, who become child- abusers, have had a history of incredible suffering. This is what we call the transmission of family sin, in which these unconscious patterns get carried on for generations in a legacy of pain. When they are not brought to awareness and worked through, each generation just automatically enacts them.

Shadow-making happens in families and makes us who we are. It leads to shadow-work, which makes us who we can become.

There is an enemy-maker in each of us. We make enemies of the people we love the most and the people we know the least.

To sin is to be off the mark, that is, to inhibit development, contracting backward into regression rather than expanding forward into growth.

The rewards are profound. Shadow-work enables us to alter our self-sabotaging behavior so that we can achieve a more self-directed life.

The shadow disguises itself in our projections, when we react intensely to a trait in others that we fail to see in ourselves.

As each layer of shadow is mined from the darkness, as each fear is faced and each projection reclaimed, the gold shines through.