On Shadows

An insight into L'homme sans ombre or The Man Without a Shadow by George Schwizgebel via an excerpt from Deepak Chopra's book The Path to Love, Spiritual Strategies for Healing:

...Aspiring to these images is aspiring to be something that you are not.

The farther you are from the desired image, the harder you must try to suppress who you really are. The tendency is to make yourself more and more inauthentic, until, if you "succeed" in becoming as desirable as your image, you will have thrown away what is most desirable in yourself--your multifaceted being. This being doesn't live up to any single image, ugly or beautiful, desirable or undesirable, because it expresses the shifting, changing light of life. This light is nothing if not ambiguous. Your being contains shadows and hints of meaning; it is mysterious to the core.

To be authentic, you have to be everything that you are, omitting nothing. Within everyone there is light and shadow, good and evil, love and hate. The play of these opposites is what constantly moves life forward; the river of life expresses itself in all its changes from one opposite to another. If you can truly embrace these opposites within yourself, you will be authentic, and as your self-acceptance expands until there is nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide, your life will take on the generosity and warmth that marks every great lover.