Again, Rohr borrows from Carl Jung’s concepts of the two halves of life. Rohr describes people in the second half of life as more wise and accepting of paradoxes. Rather than feeling defensive of their identities and rigid beliefs, people who have progressed to this phase are more open, accepting, and forgiving. Crucially, they have experienced humbling losses which have brought them closer to God and resulted in their lives being more compassionate and service-oriented.

Rohr’s concept of the “shadow self” is the part of people that they are ashamed of and deny. While it is not necessarily sinful in and of itself, it can lead to sin if it is neglected and unexamined. Rohr presents “shadow work” as the process of examining and confronting one’s shadow self. For instance, he recommends observing one’s thoughts and actions in reaction to humiliation or offense to uncover the shadow self and neuter its negative impulses.

The author credits Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno with this concept, which appears in Unamuno’s book of the same name, The Tragic Sense of Life (1913). Unamuno teaches that life is full of inherent tragedy, suffering, and disorder. Rohr praises Unamuno’s rejection of the simplistic and romanticized notion of life as a linear story of progress and his ability to embrace the paradoxes of reality. Rohr writes of Unamuno’s idea, “According to him, life is characterized much more by exception and disorder than by total or perfect order. Life, as the biblical tradition makes clear, is both loss and renewal, death and resurrection, chaos and healing at the same time. Life seems to be a collision of opposites” (33).