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Like plants, so men also grow. Some in the light, others in the shadows. There are many who need the shadows, and not the light.

None of us are as good as we like to think.

We possess animalistic drives for sex and power.

We have a cruel and aggressive side that can do great harm to others,

and we tend to deny our flaws and weaknesses.

But what we deny does not disappear. It sinks into the unconscious

and congregates in what Carl Jung called the shadow. In this video we are going to explore

how confronting the shadow and integrating its elements into our personality is a means to

rejuvenate our life and heal a divided world.

Only the man who goes through this darkness, writes Young, can hope to make any further progress.

For a shadow to be cast, an object must impede a path of light.

The object that casts our psychological shadow is our persona.

Persona is a Latin word signifying a mask worn by an actor. In Jungian psychology, the persona

represents the metaphorical mask we wear in the social world. It is the collection of character

traits we want others to believe define us. Or as Jung

writes, the persona is a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon

others and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual. The construction of our

persona begins early in life as we learn which elements of our

...