It is generally accepted that the first step in healing is to recognize the wound, that which needs to be healed. According to Thomas Keating, “Easter, with its grace of interior resurrection, is the radical healing of the human condition. Lent, which prepares us for this grace, is about what needs to be healed, [forgiven and celebrated]. Oftentimes, our deepest wounds become part of our shadow, those elements of ourselves that are hidden, even from our own awareness. Jungian analyst Noreen Cannon and theologian Wilkie Au offer the following ways to help us identify our shadow. Reflecting or perhaps journaling about them can help you befriend your own woundedness:
Projection: “When we have a strong positive or negative reaction to someone, that person is likely to be carrying an aspect of our shadow.”
Inner Voice: “During times of decision making or inner conflict, that other voice engaging us in an inner debate may be the shadow voicing its desires. To make good decisions, we need the views of this ‘other.’ Bad choices or errors in judgment are often the results of not listening to the shadow.”
Freudian Slips: When we say one thing and we mean to say another, this may “reveal a hidden hurt or anger, some feeling that the shadow has carried for us until it found an opportunity to express it.”
Humor: “If we examine what we say in humor as well as what evokes our laughter we can often detect our shadow.”
Dreams: Observing our dreams closely, “we will see our shadow played out nightly and learn much about our unspoken motives, hidden faults and failures, unacknowledged virtues and vices, and undeveloped or unrealized potential.”