Your shadow is a necessary aspect of self that brings focus to thoughts and actions that conflict with your desires so that you may address them. Both shadow inflation and shadow deflation invalidate your own power and perpetuate suffering.
Your shadow is an aspect of you that inflates and deflates others. Shadow inflation happens when you think that you can’t get what you want and you project onto others who seem to have the power to do so. In this way, you project your own lack of power onto someone else who seems more powerful than you. Shadow deflation happens when you project onto others that they are bad, flawed, or lacking in some way. In this case, you project your dislike of your own flaws and lacks onto another. That’s right: you recognize the flaws but misidentify them as belonging to someone else. Continue reading