“Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our own shadow.
Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations.
The same way old painters would sit in a tiny dark room and trace the image of what stood outside a tiny window, in the bright sunlight.
The camera obscura.
Not the exact image, but everything reversed or upside down.”
― Chuck Palahniuk
To see ourselves as others see us? How about to see ourselves as we are and to see others as they truly are with the shadows stripped away? What would it be like to be so clear in ourselves that we can look at another in full joy and awareness of them rather than as the distorted reflection of things we need to work out in ourselves? That self-clarity is what I work towards every day and what I try to invoke in myself for what is ritual for but developing self-knowledge of each aspect of our existence so that we can work it out without having to use another person as a guinea pig? My big push in this next year will be to gain as much of that clarity as I can both with myself and others and to cast the most minimal shade possible.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
At Peace Among Strange Omens by G A Rosenberg
Shared Vision by G A Rosenberg