I see your point. I think you're exactly right. Have you read the book, "Dark Side of the Light Chasers" by Debbie Ford? She examines our 'shadow'. The shadow is the unacknowledged part of us that we will not look at clearly. We can perceive the shadow as positive traits or negative traits. Sometimes we will run from our positive traits as much as we run from our 'negative' traits.

She says that as young children we lived in a magical wonderful castle. The castle was full of rooms - each room had something precious in it and we explored and enjoyed the castle with our whole selves.

Then someone told us that one of the rooms of that castle was not very nice and so we closed the door to that room. And later, we were told that another room was not very pretty and so we closed that room. Slowly but slowly we closed more and more rooms of our castle until finally many many years later, we were living in a one room hovel and had forgotten that we had ever lived in a castle.

Those rooms are parts of ourselves. We've learned that some parts were not greeted kindly and so we shut them down. So much of who we are may be hidden behind the closed doors of the castle. And just realizing that we used to live in the castle is a first big step. Then the slow process on opening door after door and reuniting with ourselves.

Some character traits we had learned to disavow because they were not accepted. For example, if we were too rambunctious, we may have been told that that energy was too destructive so we shut that door. We were not taught that rambunctiousness can be used for creativity and not only destructiveness.

So, we have labeled these traits that we avoid accepting about ourselves in a negative way instead of knowing that those same exact traits can be used in a positive way.

It takes courage and strength to go back to the castle and open all those doors but what's the alternative - live in a one room hovel?