“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” Carl Jung
Afternoon found me on the N train today, the voices of psychoanalysts reverberating in my momentarily music-less brain. I have been thinking about morality lately, in particularly as it pertains to Carl Jung’s theory of the integration of one’s shadow-self.
Over the last few years I’ve become incrementally disgruntled while observing my approach to morality. I once thought outwardly moral actions were moral. I even thought denial and repression of certain types of thoughts and urges to be moral. Lately I’ve come up against real, life-stopping contradictions to this approach. Under the guise of obedience to a moral code, I’ve denied parts of who I am for fear of what lies beyond laying my defenses down. I abandoned many facets of who I am, which led to projecting those unclaimed characteristics on the world around me. I’ve come face-to-ulgy-face with the reality that for me, a lifestyle of projection and codependency is far from sustainable.
I now know one cannot be truly moral until they have opened the doors within them and observed every detail they see. They must look and admit that they are capable, even desirous of their utmost aggression, sexuality and suicide. They must pull from their unconscious and name all the characteristics they repressed, which are not always darkness, but can be attributes such as one’s assertiveness, openness, self-acceptance, expression, creativity, etc. This reclaiming allows oneself to accept every corner of their psyche and personality. Inhabiting all space within will nourish them with the facility to be self-reliant, foster intimacy in their relationships and to accomplish their goals. I’ve observed a myriad of ways actions can play out over a lifetime. So far, I conclude that the price of building walls (that are destined to crumble and ruin what else you have worked for) all around and within your psyche is tenfold greater than the price of taking responsibility for who you are. And that seems to be the only morality worth affording.