Overcoming Darkness

When one has found the path towards the divine, he/she will continue to trek it so to find the real essence life. The journey could be difficult. One of the most difficult persons to confront who will hinder the attainment of the goal is the inner self. We understand how we project ourselves since we define who we are according to our needs and projections. We could be aware of our ego part and we could be in control with it once we do reflections and introspection. But, what about The Shadow?

According to the celebrated Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung (1963), The Shadow is the unknown “dark side” of our personality. It consist predominantly of the primitive, negative, socially or religiously depreciated human emotions like sexual lust, power striving, envy, selfishness, greed, anger or rage, and due to its unenlightened nature completely obscured from consciousness.

In our faith, we call it the presence of evil in us…

It has been constantly encouraged these days for us to perform reflective episodes since these allow us to evaluate and and weigh the actions that we do. It is often difficult especially to those people who consider solitude as equated to loneliness. They often complain how boring it is to be with no one else but oneself. This might be the starting point of the so called repression of the Freudian theory of projection when we can combat the id by projecting or “casting” it away from us. Without such reflective moments, we also miss the development of appreciation which is an attitude so difficult to attain. Since it is only in reflective moments when we can count our blessings.

So, is it safe to tell that those who wallow in distress, self-pity, envy and other negative intentions are being taken over by their Shadow? It might be. That is the reason why there are PATHS that we need to take. We need to take the time to meditate and reflect. If the path we take is that of Catholicism, we are encouraged to do this during the Lenten season. We are given the chance to utilize this path even during the Holy Week where there are lots of time going to confession and meditative prayers. (On the side note, people are now filling in these BORING days by going to resorts and binge parties. They could not stand the silence…)

If you are of different religious denomination, it is the same. There are casting sessions, meditative reflections based on the bible. Islam allows our Muslim brethren to embrace the divine through Allah. There are those who go out of their comfort zones by preaching the word since they are fulfilling their ministry - a path to be of service to others, denouncing worldly needs through humility.

That is the reason why religion should not be argued. It is a path in attaining the need to be one with the divine. Religion is self-consuming. It must be understood by the individual for him/her to arrive to the direction of combating The Shadow. If your religion allows you to be a better person, so be it. There is no need for one to insist in converting others to be “saved”. It is a personal struggle since there are even those who are not not attending church services yet they are enlightened beings.

We then continue to be one with the divine. We take time seeing what is within us. Serenity comes when we understand that the worldly lures are but fleeting. We could keep our quiet to those noise that we hear from people who are constantly claiming what is holy and what is not. We take our time slowly. Even Jesus went out of the wilderness to reflect. We do the same. We take our paths.

Who knows in the end, we will see each other there where serenity is eternal and The Shadow is defeated.