The great psychologist Carl Jung wrote:
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.
This is a profound truth that has been understood since ancient times, as the Sumerian myth of the descent of Inanna reveals. Inanna is a goddess of heaven, but has a dark sister Ereshkigal, who rules over the underworld. Inanna is called to descend to Ereshkigal’s barren realm, a symbolic picture of our common human need to integrate our “light side” with our “shadow side”, if we are ever to become whole.
(Photo of Inanna by Mbenoist - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8784193 )
Nigel Wellings and Elizabeth Wilde McCormick explore this in their brilliant book ‘Nothing To Lose’:
Inanna’s call to descend into the underworld is a template for changes in consciousness. The journey it illustrates, one of death and renewal, is one for women and men alike. It shows how we might let go of whatever has become outmoded in us and reconnect with what has been repressed, rejected or not yet found and that this helps us become whole. In psychological terms this can be understood as the softening of conscious control and the embrace of unconscious life. A journey that has the potential to lead to the ultimate surrender of the investment in a separate personal sense of self and spiritual awakening.
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