Did Jesus Have A Shadow?

We have grown up with the belief that parts of us are just wrong. It is wrong for a girl to be angry; it is wrong for a boy to cry.  Those wrong parts of us don’t just disappear; we suppress those natural emotions – cover them up. They come out later when someone pushes our buttons, but instead of a reaction fitting the situation, we tend to release some of what has been stored. We react with rage, instead of mild irritation, with deep depression, instead of mild sadness.  These suppressed sides of us, which we would rather no one else saw or knew about, are often referred to as our shadows.

During Debbie Ford’s online course, The Shadow Effect, I learned that, unless we can integrate those shadows, which we have been trying to hide, we will not only have difficulty in making use of that natural emotion, but also have difficulty in embracing its opposite light side.

I started to wonder if Jesus had a shadow side.

If Jesus embraced all of his being, including his shadow self, he would have made use of those aspects of his being, which we have been taught to think of as wrong.

Did Jesus express anger? What about when he overturned the tables in the temple? That surely seemed like anger to me.

Did Jesus exhibit fear?  Was it not fear which tried to save his human body, when he asked if the cup of his crucifixion could be removed from his lips?

Perhaps it was his sadness for the plight of others, which moved him to try to improve their plight.

Jesus was a great example of all that we can be.

I believe that we have come to Earth to experience duality, and in experiencing that duality, we experience all that is divine. If we think of each emotion as being on a linear scale: from fear to love, from anger to peace, from sadness to happiness, we think of one end of the scale as human and the other end as divine. In one sense, this is true, and we are all here for the dominant part of our being to evolve from one end of the scale to the other – to become more God-like. But in another sense, as Jesus demonstrated, our humanity includes all of it. All of our being is divine, including the human end of the scale.

Is it possible for us all to embrace our shadows? Would the world be a better place if we expressed all of our natural emotions? What do you think?