ABSTRACT
In a number of the examples considered so far the shadow has emerged without any warning, as if it has of its own volition determined that it is time to move into the visible light of consciousness. It is not, of course, that our shadow decides that it is time to become conscious, but rather that we are willing and able to perceive something that until now we have kept hidden from ourselves. However, from the perspective of consciousness it is a passive process, we experience it as happening to us because at this point the shadow is ‘other’: it is not experienced as part of ourselves. This sense of ‘other-ness’ is usually profound as it is the basis upon which the split between shadow and ego has been built.
