Jung first gave us the term โshadowโ to refer to those parts of our personality that have been rejected out of fear, ignorance, shame, or lack of love. His basic notion of the shadow was simple: โthe shadow is the person you would rather not be.โ He believed that integrating the shadow would have a profound impact, enabling us to rediscover a deeper source of our own spiritual life. โTo do this,โ Jung said, โwe are obliged to struggle with evil, confront the shadow, to integrate the devil. There is no other choice.โ
Debbie FordIn trying to express only those aspects of ourselves that we believe will guarantee us the acceptance of others, we suppress some of our most valuable and interesting features and sentence ourselves to a life of reenacting the same outworn scripts. Reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we have relegated to the shadow is the most reliable path to actualizing all of our human potential. Once befriended, our shadow becomes a divine map thatโwhen properly read and followedโreconnects us to the life we were meant to live and the people we were meant to be.
Debbie FordMany of us donโt realize that we have a choice about which aspect of ourselves we will use as the foundation upon which we build our lives.
Debbie Ford