This Is Why We Do Bad Things to Others
By: Clifford Jones
Tags: Happiness, Self Help, Leadership, Personal Development, Family

And What to Do About It

“The bogey man will get you if you are not good."

How many of us as kids were told this baloney by unknowing parents and grandparents?

Me!

Here’s the genesis: The phrase is a euphemism passed down through the ages by unconscious parents and grandparents as a means to frighten a child into being good by describing an image of bad, or evil.

Evil is what Carl Jung called “the shadow.” It’s the dark side of the human psyche that plagues us all.

Most of us don’t know the shadow exists, or how to honor it. As a result, we unconsciously go through each day ripping each other’s faces off on Facebook, in parks, at work, and in our homes, and we even “kick the dog.”

The Realm of Duality

In this world, light would not exist without dark, nor good without evil, nor hot without cold, nor love and hate; it’s the realm of duality.

The realm of non duality would be what most of us call heaven. And unless we learn how the inner game of the human psyche works, we will go to the realm of non duality without every waking up to our truth as humans; we can’t be good without honoring the bad within us.

When we study psychology, men like Carl Jung, we learn that goodness can’t exist without the dark side within us; they coexist. We learn how the early Catholic (to be whole) church unconsciously reconciled the darkness with the light. Now, most of us, including myself, will reject religion and blow off going to church, because we fail to know how Christianity for example, helps is reconcile evil with good; devil and God.

If we don’t consciously recognize and honor the dark side, we will unleash it unconsciously. This is why we almost always need at least one black sheep in every family, workplace, and neighborhood. It is why the most creative among us appear to be the most conflicted. It is why the top producing salesperson can be so toxic to everyone around them. It’s why we are nasty to those we love the most.

What happens when the collective shadow of any society goes unrecognized and not honored in rituals? We start new and atrocious wars of global proportion.

Every war man was started by virtue of the unrecognized, collective shadow of mankind, and until recently, I hadn’t a clue as to why. That’s why I was compelled to write a short article about it today; to help you know what I wish I knew before I became a husband and father to two amazing sons now grown and on their own. Were it not for my amazing wife of 35 years, Janice, my family has remained together. Most families will self destruct because of the unrecognized shadow.

The Solution

If we don’t become aware of our dark side, the shadow as Carl Jung calls it, it will reveal itself in the form of unleashing, projecting, vile behavior towards others. All of this happens unconsciously. We will self destruct and not know why.

I experienced a massive implosion in my early forties after selling a small business and then, unknowingly, losing my mind, all of my money, going bankrupt, and living on a walker before going into a lower back surgery I now know I could have avoided if I had known more about the shadow, my inner game, and what was really going on.

One solution is to get therapy. I certainly did so more than once. But not one therapist explained how or why the shadow does what it does, and always has, and always will. I had to read many books to crack the code myself. I’m almost 60 and just figuring all of this out.

If you can’t afford therapy, you could do the reading and learning to apply what you can on our own. However, this could be akin to conducting your own surgical treatment which is why getting help from a qualified professional who is a good fit for you is the better course of action.

What about life coaching? This is a big deal these days. Life coaching as we know it emerged in the early 1990’s from people who I believe in most cases are a very poor facsimile for a licensed, qualified therapist. Again, finding the right therapist is like finding the right teacher; one must choose wisely or suffer the consequences.

Highly-Creative People Have the Biggest Shadows

The shadow is most prevalent within uber-creatives like Robin Williams, Jimmy Hendrix, John Belushi, and so on. In all of is, the shadow will take us out of the game unless we do the work of the inner game.

For normal people, the rest of us, we go about our day dealing with untreated stress, loneliness, anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts and deeds. If you pay close attention to how we treat each other, the collective shadow untreated will eat us alive in nuclear dust.

The shadow compells us to read nasty news headlines, play murderous video games, hit, punch, and kick our siblings and friends, and in it’s most insane form, start new, big ass wars.

Do the Work Yourself and See How It Goes

If you want to learn the rest of the story, read Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert Johnson. It’s a short book that is easy to read. The book is so good that I just ordered another of his books.