Beauty and the Beast, Two

Beauty and the Beast, Two

 

The shadow consists of all those qualities which are inherent in the potential consciousness of the individual yet, because of their apparent darkness or destructiveness are excluded from consciousness in the course of development. The individual then remains comfortably unaware that these qualities belong to him. We have seen how each psychological type has his “inferior” side, and the components of the inferior function of consciousness colour heavily the nature of the shadow. To this are added other factors, which the individual would find intolerable as components of his own makeup, repressed because of such sources as parental influence and religious training. The shadow generally appears to human consciousness first as a human figure, an image most commonly traceable in those dreams where the dreamer is hunted or attacked by a mysterious and malevolent enemy of his own sex.

 

As a rule the projection of the shadow falls on one’s own sex, and one can gain great insight here by an honest consideration of those qualities which we find abhorrent in others of our own sex…Like the old Roman god Janus, we are all double-faced, and the individual must acknowledge this if he is to have any conscious voice in the matter of whether his dark side or his light is expressed to his fellow man.

 

Sometimes the shadow projection falls on an institution, or a religion, rather than an individual. This phenomenon is readily observable in fanatical ideological hatreds of all kinds. Shadow and Ego put together make a whole, and wholeness, as we have seen already, is not merely or necessarily perfect; it is however complete

 

All of our opinions, when they carry a high emotional charge, are suspect.

 

When we find ourselves the victim of an emotional reaction that is out of proportion to the situation, or where we have such a reaction in regard to some situation that is not really within the range of our concern but is strictly someone else’s business, we should suspect that we are reacting to something of our own that we have not recognized as ours

 

The I and the Not I, M. Esther Harding

 

We have seen how each type, and consequently each astrological element, carries a weakness in the opposite function. When we see these qualities as evil, judge them, and force them into the unconscious, they fester and become precisely as evil as we believe them to be. It is our viewpoint towards the unconscious which produces its apparent enmity.

 

The unconscious has an inimical or ruthless bearing towards the conscious only when the latter adopts a false or pretentious attitude.

 

The I and Not I, M. Esther Harding

 

And one of the most pretentious attitudes of which human beings are capable is the belief it is always someone else’s fault.

 

Relating,

Liz Greene