As we grow, unconscious unity becomes differentiated into feeling, ego, personality and desire. As we grow, we will have initiatory encounters with shadow, demanding the sacrifice of innocence and identification with ego.
The story of Adam and Eve conceives this archetypal experience as the fall. The stories of Job, Faust and even the children’s tale, The Velveteen Rabbit, tell us how we may achieve redemption from a fall. The fairytale of The Black Princess depicts this vividly as the struggle to engage shadow and the need to surrender to something greater, which Jung called the Self.
We experience redemption as grace: the gift of a relationship with the Self. For Jung redemption was part of the work of individuation, a process of reclaiming lost or forgotten parts of ourselves in order to become consciously whole and in relation to a guiding Self.
Dream
“In my dream, my mom and I are in the backyard that is adjacent to a street. We see Jimmy Fallon walking over to us with a baby’s car seat held over his head. Jimmy greets us and my mom asks if she could see the baby. So, Jimmy lowers the car seat, sets it on the ground and reveals that the car seat is filled with this orange liquid that completely submerges the baby. My mom was very excited to see the baby and Jimmy smiles at her excitement. I then panic and ask them if they can’t see the baby is drowning. Although I brought it to their attention they didn’t seem very worried but I wound up tipping the car seat over to discard the liquid.”
