The Archetype of the Shadow

[Keith Millea]

"Alchemical Nigredo"

I had to search for what that meant.I didn't expect to go down the "rabbit hole".Finally crawling back out after several hours of traveling through the Land of Esoterica.This quote by Terence McKenna stands out to me.

http://www.well.com/user/davidu/tmalchemy.html

Well, so then, this is a phenomenon in the physical world and then mind is a phenomenon in the Cartesian distinction, which is between the Res Extensa and the Res Verins. This is the great splitting of the world into two parts. I remember Al Wong once said to me, we were talking about the yin yang symbol, and he said you know the interesting thing is not the yin or the yang, the interesting thing is the s shaped surface that runs between them. And that s shaped surface is a river of alchemical mercury. Now, where the alchemists saw this river of alchemical mercury is in the boundary between waking and sleeping. There is a place, not quite sleeping, not quite waking, and there there flows this river of alchemical mercury where you can project the contents of the unconscious and you can read it back to yourself. This kind of thinking is confounding to scientific thought where the effort is always to fix everything to a given identity and a given set of behaviors.

It is this boundary BETWEEN waking and sleeping,that is the place of my dreams.I stay away from this place.My dreams,although rare, are violent.I am projecting the contents of my unconscious there.I know of where these projections come from.Obviously,from my expierence with WAR.

If I'm reading correctly,Jungian theory of the Shadow reflects that I should embrace this Nigredo.Not being a psychotic,at least so far,I find it much better to just leave the beast alone.I do accept though violence as being a part of the natural world,just as a wolf will devour a young deer.Could it be that by ACCEPTING violence as a natural phenomenon in this world,that in fact I am EMBRACING the shadow also?Any thoughts?:hmmmm: