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

If you can hold the tension of opposite points of view in your intimate relationships with people, instead of making somebody right and somebody wrong, you are really taking an evolutionary step.

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.

I remember when the Cold War ended, how quickly the United States was swept by a nationalistic fervor and turned against Saddam Hussein. As soon as we lost our age-old enemy, the Soviet Union, we instantly created a new one.

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

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

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