Message from the Backseat

Limitless

While this trailer only shows an action thriller, watching this movie through a lens of understanding the individuation concept, this movie is brilliant.  It has addiciton, it has the danger of knowledge in the wrong hands, it has the viciousness that is the modern world in it's pursuit of power and influence over others for personal gain.  The main character goes in and out of his "complete" state similar to the way we experience confidence and paranoia or doubt.  I was really surprised that this movie delivered at such a high level of content regarding a direct interest in the animus.

The King's Speech

The King's Speech is possibly one of the greatest movies I've ever seen.  It is entirely about a man's way of regaining his confidence so that he may be useful to the world.  What more could you ask for?

Notice the quote, "He's scared of his own shadow."

The Shadow Aspect

A Jungian concept that refers to dark aspects of ourselves that we don't recognize and haven't accepted or integrated as being some part of ourselves.  As we grow and our personalities develop, the shadow develops side-by-side with the ego; it is part of the maturation process.  Aspects of ourselves that adults teach us are innappropriate or not to be expressed are disavowed and move from ego to shadow.  Shadow is understood as being both personal (pertaining to an individual) and collective (pertaining to a nation or culture).  One of its values is that those aspects of ourselves which we have learned to neglect or suppress also make it possible for us to cultivate their opposing strengths and virtues.

Every person's psyche is motivated toward wholeness or integration.  This can only happen when shadow aspects of our personality are once again recognized and accepted as equally important parts of all our developmental experiences.  In fairy tales this is most often expressed when "ugly" or misshapen characters (guess who?) turn out, in the end, to have been transformed princes or princesses, who can only become their true selves after someone loves them.

Often our first recognition of the shadow, if we are an observant adult, occurs in seeing qualities that we dislike most about ourselves being expressed in someone else.  We don't recognize them as an aspect of ourselves, rather our experience is usually one of not being able to tolerate some aspect of that "different" or "difficult" person (see projection).

When shadow aspects are released (expressed alchemically as transforming lead to gold), energy that was used to keep them hidden from the ego often provides or supports a great burst of creative energy.

We Were Once A Fairytale: Kanye West and Spike Jonze

Kanye West is an artist whose career has an amazing amount of content that puts his identity and his therapy as the content.  This video is a little difficult to watch because of the level of immaturatiy that he portrays of himself.  The clip ends with an amazing scene in the club's bathroom showing Kanye cutting out part of his inner-something (shadow) and he watches it use a little knife to slice itself open and then die on the counter.  It is very much a modern day adult fairytale.

No Man is an Island- John Donne

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

-Meditation XVII
Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions
1624

The Last Shadow Puppets: My Mistakes Were Made For You