Purpose of Touching the Shadow

While classical science is based on knowing the object based on consciousness. 

Touching the shadow is based on self-awareness which is technically therapy. 

I basically observe how I am observing the object or other. The result of self-observation, if you wish, is not to know external objects, but eventually know and know via Self. This Self-archetype is according to Jung not anymore a psychological archetype, but what he calls Psychoid, which has been referred to in Jungian circles as a transcendental subject (E.F. Edinger). 

Put differently, one awakens to a deeper expanded experience of self. 

The result here is to get to know and experience deeper levels of self and via this a sense of reality, where self and other are not experienced as separate vis-a-vis the classical scientific approach, where a sense of separateness ensues to the world or object due to getting to know the object.

Choice and Thinking

We find ourselves constantly doing what we don’t want to do. 

I say something which I regret later. We are driven and controlled by external and alien forces. 

But we have a choice. For instance to not let one silly traffic incident spoil the rest of our day. 

We even have a choice as to what we think. 

We can change what we think. 

We can become aware that what we are thinking about someone (which is classically a projection) is not true. And hence we can choose to think something else. 

We can choose to not think. 

(Free) Choice and will predate and fore-go thinking. 

They operate thinking and thus feeling. The work of touching the shadow and re-taking projections is actually not thinking anymore. 

It is consciousness.