Photo: Martino Pietropoli
“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”
We all know things about ourselves we rarely choose to acknowledge or exhibit publicly. Our inner selves are intimate parts of our consciousness that may or may not be expressed in our dealings with the world at large. And yet, they are important to who we are as people. Without them, we would only get part way to understanding our true nature.
C.G. Jung makes a clear distinction between these different elements of our selves by calling the primary personality we show the world our “No. 1,” and our secondary, hidden personality our “No. 2.”
“No. 1 was the bearer of light,” he remarks in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, “No. 2 followed him like a shadow… Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”
With No. 1, we must go forward “into the world of study, moneymaking, responsibilities, entanglements, errors, submissions, and defeats.”
No. 2 is a link to our more primitive animal instincts, which are suppressed in our early development and superseded by the conscious mind. But our shadowy side is nevertheless critical. Jung writes No. 2 is inextricably tied to the creation of dreams, both in terms of life aspirations, and our sleeping reveries.
Many of us choose to disregard No. 2 as the refuse of the mind—but such a view is foolish. If, as Jung says, our unconscious is composed of, “everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten,” then No. 2 arguably has a deeper knowledge of the greater world than our primary personality.
How can we tap into the power of our shadow selves? The quickest way, Jung contends, is by listening to it when it speaks to us through our dreams, and carefully analyzing their contents.
Our No. 2 uses the same timeless language as myth, religion, and legend—with imagery and symbols that our conscious minds may find confounding. It’s dense, richly-layered material, but worth our time if we wish to understand our deepest drives, desires, and neuroses. “Dreams are,” Jung writes, “after all, compensations for the conscious attitude.”
I used to have trouble remembering my dreams. Then I started writing them down every morning as soon as I woke up. I’m genuinely surprised how much more I remember now. It’s as if I’ve given my No. 2 the microphone, and now he’s starting to speak.
More over, I’ve found that if I pose a question to my unconscious mind before I fall asleep at night, the dreams I do remember bear some deeper wisdom or commentary on the topic. I suggest anyone wanting to tap into their unconscious give this a try.
No. 1 and No. 2 are inextricably linked—two parts of a single mind. Why not try to use this connection to benefit your wellbeing and goals? I’ll leave you with this choice quote.
“Although we human beings have our own personal life, we are yet in large measure the representatives, the victims and promoters of a collective spirit whose years are counted in centuries. We can well think all our lives long that we are following our noses, and may never discover that we are, for the most part, supernumeries on the stage of the world theater.”