“Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic feature of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.” - Carl Jung

We are who we are at birth based on our energy at that moment in time (time, place and date) and one of the ways this will continually play itself out is as our personal shadow complexes.

Our complexes (strongly emotional charges of energy that activate autonomously both positive and negative) in the psyches of everyone is a concept of Carl G. Jung.

So, our shadow self is everything about us that is unconscious, unacknowledged, undeveloped and denied. Let’s take each one of these words separately as to why these complexes are created in the first place and why it behooves us to continue to do inner work and come to know ourselves.

Many of us marry when we are in a state of romantic euphoria.

This surge of energy we feel around a particular person is that an unknown aspect of ourselves has been projected onto them. This is what generates the remarkable “spark” that gets ignited.

The intensity and intoxication we feel are clues that this transference of our own energy has occurred. Because it’s unconscious, we think we are relating to them.

Dr. Carl Jung, world renown psychiatrist explained that what is missing in us will be highly attractive when we see it in someone else and relating is how we get to know ourselves.

We all mistakenly believe we know ourselves but what we know is only what we are conscious of which is like the tip of an iceberg. No one knows their whole self. It really is a life-long process to bring unconscious contents to consciousness.