Dr. James Hollis

Typical shadow issues include our capacity for jealousy and for envy, for aggression, for greed, et cetera, et cetera.

We don't want to acknowledge those things, but since when are we exempt from the human condition?

The wisest thing ever said about the shadow came from the Latin playwright Terence two millennia ago who said, nothing human is alien to me.

Now, I think that's important to recognize.

In me, I carry the entire capacity of human nature to express itself.

Some of those forms of expressions will be acceptable to the society or to my psychological culture, and some will not be.

And that's the shadow material.

And, you know, there's the personal shadow and there are group shadows because nations can be possessed by bloodlust, for example, or a fashion is a shadow issue where everybody has to look the same way and dress the same way and so forth.

You know, the more insecure I am as a person, the more likely I'm going to try to look around me for what are the clues so I can fit in, be like others, and therefore I'll be acceptable, you see.

That's not a federal crime.

That's a very deep complex that is left over from childhood.

I'm not here to fit in.

I'm here to be who I am, which at times will fit in and other times it won't.

But that's okay because I'm at least in good relationships to myself at that point.

So typically the shadow manifests as being unconscious, therefore it just spills into the world through us.

A perfect example of shadow issues, as I mentioned before, is parents expecting their children to grow up and have, you know, the same kind of values that I have, for example, same religious views, marry somebody that I find acceptable, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, that's not really loving the otherness of the other, is it?

It's not really loving a child for their own journey.

That's them carrying some piece of their own unfinished business.

Secondly...