Shannon's Journal

[Shannon]

Shannon are you familiar with the shadow archetype? It's a jungian term which means a part of our unconscious mind that contains repressed weaknesses and aspects of ourselves that we attempt to hide. I've been reading about it lately and it goes along with the idea of acceptance and making peace with yourself.

Now this is something I've come to realize after asking myself many questions and listening for the response from my subconscious. I may be just making it up consciously, but when I ask myself these questions I don't think, I merely respond to myself without censorship or limited conscious interference. Anyway I was thinking about subliminals and my desire to improve myself when I realized that I'm striving to become something so I can distance myself from the aspects of myself that I have grown to hate. I kind of feel like I'm not accepting myself for who I am, which creates a struggle in my head.

There's this duality in my head that I can't understand. The way I have seen things is people approach self development in one of two ways. One is the notion that we have negative beliefs that need to be cleared, acceptance of who we are, learning to befriend our demons(shadow aspects), and the notion that we are perfect and just need to remove the garbage so to speak. The other is that we can improve ourselves, use affirmations, hypnosis, subliminals, we add onto ourselves and change our beliefs in order to change our reality and we can continuously get better. This could very well be my black and white thinking however. But one seems to be about stripping yourself of negativity in order to achieve an end result or goal of being authentic and the other seeks to add and replace until old habits are gone and new ones introduced and you become the person you have always wanted to be. One seems very spiritual and the other is more scientific and physical.

I remember my statement about saying acceptance is first then letting go. You told me that it was dangerous thinking. I think the same holds true for this. There is so much emphasis on accepting negative aspects of oneself or befriending it or becoming one with it. But wouldn't it be more effective if we just changed it or let it go? I think more people are comfortable with the idea of accepting a part of themselves than changing it for the better. Change is something that every human being has at least some aversion to, so it makes sense that I view subliminals as "artificial" at times. I'm just always looking for the right path for me and sometimes things are so unknown that I don't know what to think.

Accepting yourself as you are can be very good, and it can be very bad. If it leads to you simply accepting and being what you are, and not doing anything to change that for the better... it's a bad thing. It's kind of like saying, "Okay, I'm an alcoholic, I accept that." and then using that as an excuse to be an active alcoholic for the rest of your life. "It's a disease," they say. "It's out of my hands. I can't change it because it's a disease." Which of course is a truckload of bullsh*t if there ever was one.

Now of course there's also positive acceptance, which is to say, you have to acknowledge a problem, or a weakness, before you can seriously begin working to change or improve it. "Okay, so I have a problem with controlling my alcohol intake, now I need to fix that part of my behavior and make it reasonable."

You see the difference? The problem is that, at least in America, "acceptance" is all too often an excuse to be hugely obese, or to be an active alcoholic, or to be an active drug user, or whatever else you may have to accept about yourself, instead of being the first step to self improvement.