Our shadow self. How real is it really? Do we need to hang onto it at all? Has it any value?

Tweet

The psychologists tell us that we have a dark side, an inner enemy, or an inner demon even. They give it many other names too, even calling it just our reactive mind, or our unconscious drives, at times. They tell us that we should look at it, examine it, and if we do not do this, they tell us that it won't go away. No, on the contrary, it will just increase in power over the years, controlling us more and more, until we take the time to examine it, or own it, instead of our burying it, and ignoring it, or denying it that it even exists, in some way, or another. Even the Christian bible seems to agree with this idea, or so it seems to me. Have we really got such an enemy within us, is our heart good or bad? Here is a quote from Saint Mark's gospel, chapter 7, verse 21-23. "For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness. All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man." And here is another quote from Saint Matthew's gospel, chapter 13, verse 15. "For the heart of this people has become dull, with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them." The heart represents love, but it also represents non-love. The true heart is full of God's love, which we should follow unconditionally, but when we place conditions onto this love, these additions create evil thoughts in us then, and these then can dull the love, so to speak, so it is (becomes) distorted, and then we will produce these evil thoughts within ourselves, instead of only loving ones, then too. When we are still sinning then, or still holding the results of our past sins within ourselves, we will not be living from, or thinking wholesomely real only perfectly loving thoughts and actions. This is why repentance, as well as forgiveness, are both important for us to go through in our process of being healed by Jesus Christ. The perfect love that we are made of does not have two sides though. It is completely perfectly pure as itself. It has no evil side to it. Love is forever just love, itself. Our dark side, if we have one, is what stops it, the love, from shining completely at full power in our life. This dark side is not just one aspect of ourselves, though. It can be made up of many different parts of us, such as our ego, our personality, our values, our beliefs, our ways of living, and our drives, even our physical body, and our thoughts, everything about us, except for our heart of love, everything else in us, and out of us, shapes this part of us into being a shadow, reaching darkly out, over our light, our real, true self. This will remain so until instead of our being this shadow, or even just partly just the shadow, we become only the light instead, and then there is no shadow anymore. The shadow disappears, when you are solely the light. There is no need to own this part of us, or even to integrate it into ourselves. No, we just have to fully shine forth from our light, and forget about this past shadow part of ourselves altogether then. I doubt if the psychologists, though, would agree with me here. They talk more of our owning of this shadow, getting to know, and to understand it, and so keeping the shadow alive, still within the light. This is like the old tale of us bringing a snake home, because we feel sorry that it was out in the cold. We warm it up next to our fire-place, in our lounge room. It becomes aroused then, and it bites us. No, there is no room in us for any evil, nor for this shadow self to stay alive within us. When we live from the light only, there is no evil, no shadow anymore. We make no more karma. We live solely then from love. What do you think about these types of ideas?