As Within, So Without: Carl Jung and Occupy

I have written on this theme before, but I thought I’d include some Carl Jung discussions of the Shadow and why it matters to our world. Awareness of this concept is a primary motivation for my November Special, Shadow Work Tarot to Heal Karmic Ties. I have found my own work so valuable that I decided to offer this process to others. Please note: I am changing the deadline for this special from November 22 to November 30th, in order to reach more people.

Exactly what kinds of personal work have I been doing? In response to the Occupy Movement and increased censorship and police brutality, I have asked, “How are these events even in my reality? What unhealed parts of me have projected this stuff onto the outer screen?” I’ve been working on my own, inner terrorist. My own, inner LBPD (Laura Bruno Police Department). In what ways do I try to censor or oppress those inner parts of me? In what ways do I pepper spray my shadow for voicing its desires? Where do I beat myself with criticism batons? In what ways do I find it acceptable to push myself so hard that my 1% threatens to take over my entire soul? What are the demands of MY 99%?

As within, so without. “Whatever is not conscious will be experienced as fate.” ~Carl Jung

And now, some additional Jung for your consideration:

“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. He lives in the ‘House of the Gathering.’ 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.” ~Carl Jung

“Taking it in its deepest sense, the shadow is the invisible saurian tail that man still drags behind him. Carefully amputated, it becomes the healing serpent of the mysteries. Only monkeys parade with it.” ~Carl Jung

“When we must deal with problems, we instinctively resist trying the way that leads through obscurity and darkness. We wish to hear only of unequivocal results, and completely forget that these results can only be brought about when we have ventured into and emerged again from the darkness. But to penetrate the darkness we must summon all the powers of enlightenment that consciousness can offer.” ~Carl Jung

“Projections change the world into the replica of one’s own unknown face.” ~Carl Jung

“No, the demons are not banished; that is a difficult task that still lies ahead. Now that the angel of history has abandoned the Germans,* the demons will seek a new victim. And that won’t be difficult. Every man who loses his shadow, every nation that falls into self-righteousness, is their prey…. We should not forget that exactly the same fatal tendency to collectivization is present in the victorious nations as in the Germans, that they can just as suddenly become a victim of the demonic powers.” ~Carl Jung (in a particularly accurate warning about our own times and the fascist Shadow Government(s) pulling the strings)

“The ‘other’ may be just as one-sided in one way as the ego is in another. And yet the conflict between them may give rise to truth and meaning-but only if the ego is willing to grant the other its rightful personality.” ~Carl Jung

“To confront a person with his shadow is to show him his own light. Once one has experienced a few times what it is like to stand judgingly between the opposites, one begins to understand what is meant by the self. Anyone who perceives his shadow and his light simultaneously sees himself from two sides and thus gets in the middle.” ~Carl Jung

I selected these quotes because they seem most obviously related to the current state of our world. It almost feels like Godzilla himself has arisen in an insatiable gobbling of human rights. In the midst of such darkness and self-imposed terror, I also see evidence of much Light. The projected Shadow has made so many more people aware of the Law of Attraction, the possibility (and responsibility) of Self-Sovereignty, the value of real, non-GMO foods, and the potential, nay, the inevitability of human evolution or extinction. I leave you with a William Edwards Deming quote: “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” We have the freedom to choose and the tools and power to create. What do you choose? What kind of change will you be?