With discernment, it allows us to learn from non-example WITHOUT polarizing our identity and repressing parts of ourselves.

#judgment #shadowwork #jungian #repression #integration

Instead, we want to switch from judgment to discernment.

Judgment is about polarizing our own identity to define ourselves as different from who we’re judging.

But discernment is about examining behaviors and saying “Those behaviors don’t get good results. So I won’t do them.”

This is the problem that comes along with any and all judgments where we say “I’m like this and I’m NOT like that.”

We could be judging someone as awful as a serial killer and still end up repressing parts of ourselves.

And that’s not because we have an “inner serial killer” that we’re repressing.

So he is very easy to be around and people find his presence very safe and calming.

But he lacks the ability to go into “fight mode” and use positive aggression to get things done. And people often go over his boundaries because he can’t feel his anger that lets him know where his boundaries are.

And so, he represses away positive expressions of anger like setting boundaries, determination, self-respect, motivation, and the willingness to fight for what he believes in.

And he polarizes into calmness… both positive and negative expressions of it.

And the issue with this is that anger is a neutral quality that can be expressed in positive and negative ways, just like being calm is a neutral quality that can be expressed in positive and negative ways.

But his experience with people expressing anger has been very painful.

But even though he didn’t have rage issues, he still ended up repressing a part of himself in his judgment towards his parents’ rage.

He decided “I’m like this and NOT like that” and he began to identify with being CALM and not ANGRY… seeing calm as an absolute good and anger as an absolute bad.

To give an example, let’s say that John was raised by parents who were very rageful.

And their ragefulness was genuinely contemptible and harmful. And they were always yelling at John and insulting him as a child.

So John vowed to “never be like them.” And he genuinely never had rage issues.

Judgment is like saying “I’m like this and I’m NOT like that”.

Judgment in this sense is a statement about our own identity and ‘who we are’ and ‘who we are not.’

And we identify strongly with one quality we deem as positive, and we repress its opposite.

Relatable! Take me with you! 😄

Jung’s turning over in his grave with this one. 😂

I read The Heroine’s Journey over a decade ago.

And it’s interesting to see a chart of it that matches my life beat for beat, both before and since reading the book.

I was at the “descent/intuition” stage when I read THJ and now in the “healing the wounded Masculine” part of the journey.

I wonder if any patterns or emergent properties can be noticed by looking at the archetypes that are in a triangle formation with one another. 🤔

That’s really cool! I’d love to go there in person!

Hurt people, hurt people.

But of course, that is the supreme value of the insoluble riddle.

In some ways this is true. But in most cases, I see a great many solutions that aren’t being utilized.

However, I do see this as true is in the realm of the ineffable.

And like a Zen Koan, the human mind struggles with the riddle until it collapses from the weight of its insolubility.

#Jungian

Very true. It is the people who believe that they are so fundamentally different from “the evil people” that are the most likely to unconsciously behave in destructive ways and/or be gullibly weaponized in harmful collective movements.