When I spend time with very athletic women, I sometimes ask them when, and how often they weigh themselves. I feel like it has psychological significance. And the two most fit women I know say never. Maybe once a year at their annual physical. Our Yoga teacher said that somewhere like a women's college cafeteria there had been a sign saying, "Don't weigh you self-esteem." So the answer of whether and how we weigh ourselves is gonna vary for everyone but that's a nice koan.
PS: Off-Topic: Another nice koan my dad says about skiing is, "Never take the last run."
How can you go into these studies with only the best of intentions and also acknowledge the shadow side?
As they say Jesus said, "If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will help you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is in you will destroy you.”
You don’t want to dabble in the occult, says Animal Communicator Susan Deren. And I sure don't. So how do we stay in the light but acknowledge what’s going on with our shadow self? Mostly by Owning Our Stuff. Looking at our idiosyncrasies, tendencies, quirks and personality traits.
Maybe we balance it by getting rid of some blocks: make them milder and replace them with the joy of loving, giving and contemplation, or for instance, the Brahmahivaras from Burmese Vipassana:
Very often before the 2008 Election you would hear a Republican say, "Cheney was evil. But John McCain will be different!" It was not just Cheney who was evil. Evil was pervading the whole political system by that time. Without such a big financial apparatus Cheney would never have gone as far or as high as he did in politics.
That's why it's true that people coming from the same circumstances, e.g, PTSD and other mental illness, brain damage(psycopathology), etc. may not all choose evil(or the dark side) and yet I think we must acknowledge the contexts for evil behavior in our cultures and societies.
But not only that. We want to explore and illuminate- not crush- what our shadow-sides teach.
Fellow blogger, Urmimukherjee, has sharedpoetic ideas of shadow-healing light: