still workin'....

a friend got me thinking the other day.
always a good thing for a friend to do.

he and i sorta bonded over the theme of darkness and light.
so it seems natural that our conversation would head to our shadow sides after awhile.

if you're not familiar with a shadow side, you can google it.
it's a term jung came up with and then a whole lotta people ran with.
or maybe he took it from freud and changed it around a bit.
not sure.
just saw a lot of different angles to it as i read about it all.

i even saw the 'golden shadow' which i liked a lot.

so i read all this stuff and tried to figure out what parts of me made up my shadow.

i came up with some stuff.
not done yet.
but one of the things i came up with was something i know darn well i carry around
every single day and try to suppress. so i already knew about it. this just gave me
a new way to look at it. a new angle.

and once i had this new angle, darn it all if i couldn't stop seeing how much this
piece of shadow played with me and my life.

great.
i spose seeing it and really watching it is a good start.
and i know it's a step further into the awareness i already had.
i know that's good too.
but when i felt it kinda whip me around inside this last time,
i wanted to do more than just see it.
i wanted to work with it so it'd stop with the whole flinging me and my insides
all over the place.
and no, i have no plan.
no idea on what to do.

so i went and looked around again. and i found this quote -
and reading this actually made me excited.
because it reminds me this isn't easy stuff to figure out,
but it's worth it.

i get discouraged sometimes.
think i should have something down more than i do.
not be so controlled by things way down deep.
and then i remember - that's how we work.
that's what makes us human.
we stumble, we goof, we have no idea why, if we're lucky we start to see the pattern,
we begin to understand ourselves, we get more confused, find some compassion,
stumble again, and get right back up and try again. all the while, if we're lucky, we're
making progress that's so slow we barely notice. but there are days we do notice.
there are days we do see the progress. and we hold that and keep goin.

cause it's worth it.

this quote reminded me of that, and held me by the shoulders, looked me in the eye,
and told me to keep at it...

If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious problem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against… Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.

“Psychology and Religion” (1938). In CW 11: Psychology and Religion: West and East. P.140