The Shadow Effect: Illuminating the Hidden Power of Your True Self Through Comprehensive and Practical Shadow Work

by Deepak Chopra

It is only by embracing our duality that we free ourselves of the behaviors that can potentially bring us down. If we don’t acknowledge all of who we are, we are guaranteed to be blindsided by the shadow effect.

embracing the shadow allows us to be whole, to be real, to take back our power, to unleash our passion, and to realize our dreams.

Whenever any aspect of the self has been split off, labeled as bad, illicit, shameful, guilty, or wrong, the shadow gains power.

The more you repress your dark side, the easier it is to construct a persona that shines with goodness and light.

You have only one self. It is the real you. It is beyond good and evil.

When you are no longer split, there’s nothing to see but one self in all directions.

We enter the world not as passive receivers of sense data, but as eager creators.

At any moment when you feel that your world is falling apart, what is really falling apart is the self and its confidence that it understands reality. After any major trauma to body or mind, it takes time for the fragile ego-personality to recover. (We are very lucky that an old adage is true: “Souls don’t break; they bounce.”)

It took the discovery of so-called messenger molecules to show that the brain translates every emotion into a chemical equivalent. As messenger molecules stream through the blood, circulating to hundreds of billions of cells, unhappiness or happiness gets transmitted to the heart, liver, intestines, and kidneys.

Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler, whose new book, Connected,

Childhood experiences cause unending later reminders that “this is good, this is bad; this is divine, this is diabolical.”

If children were taught to become aware of their shadow, sharing even dark feelings, forgiving themselves for not being “good” all the time, learning how to release shadow impulses through healthy outlets, then there would be much less damage to society and the ecosystem.

all experience in life, which is the manifestation of the soul, is the result of contrast.

The cortex allows us to reason; it gave rise to love and compassion.

The question “Who am I” never has a fixed answer. The self is fluid and constantly changing, meaning your own self and the self you share with everyone else.

The truly mysterious self enters when we ask if the power of self-creation can be used for something new: unity in place of division.

The visible universe gave us the scenic backdrop for our evolution; the invisible domain gave us the soul. The two go hand in hand. In fact, they are one.

Any change you make at the level of the soul also creates a change in the outer world, which is the mirror of the soul.

Anything that keeps you unconscious is the result of the shadow, because the shadow is the hiding place of pain and stress.

Stop projecting. Detach and let go. Give up self-judgment. Rebuild your emotional body.

Superiority disguises the feeling that you are a failure or that others would reject you if they knew who you really are.

Injustice disguises the feeling of sinfulness or the sense that you are always to blame.

Arrogance disguises bottled-up anger, and beneath that lie...

Defensiveness disguises the feeling that you are unworthy and weak. Unless you defend yourself from others, yo...

Blame disguises the feeling that you are at fault and should be ...

Idealizing others disguises the feeling that you are a weak, helpless child who needs pro...

Prejudice disguises the feeling that you are inferior and des...

Jealousy disguises your own impulse to stray or a sense of...

Paranoia disguises deep-seated, overwhe...

Until you make peace with negative feelings, they will persist. The way to deal with negativity is to acknowledge it.

Most stories are rooted in childhood, because childhood is the learning ground for guilt, shame, resentment, inferiority, and all of the most primal negativity we carry around with us.

Having heard the story, be accepting. Tell yourself that you had a valid reason for holding on to negativity.

you did nothing wrong. Your old feelings stuck around to protect you from having the same wound repeated. Make peace with this now, and you ...

detach yourself from the negativity. There’s a balancing act here, because you want to take responsibility (“This is mine”) without going overboard and identifying with your negativity (“This is me”).

Detachment doesn’t show indifference. It shows that you really don’t want negativity to stick to you.

If you can look at yourself and say, “It’s all right. I understand,” you are doing two things at once. You are taking the judgment out of your emotions, and you are giving yourself permission to be who you are.

Sympathy is an emotion we tend to direct outward. We forget to grant it to ourselves.

The most important single thing in rebuilding your emotional body is becoming more whole.

Everything you can possibly think of is encompassed by the ecosystem. It is the web of relationships in which we all exist. If you understand the web of relationships as an invisible place where everything comes together, you begin to see wholeness where divisions once existed.

If you acknowledge and embrace your shadow, it is actually nurturing, because the whole of life is nurturing—that is, life exists to sustain itself.

You can exchange judgment for the real experience of compassion, love, and forgiveness. That is the healing that comes with being whole.

What does the body do to restore wholeness? It seeks balance. Every cell communicates with every other. No part is more important than the whole. Rest and activity are harmonized. In the midst of constant activity, there is a stable foundation (known as homeostasis). Every cell adapts to change in the environment. Stress is countered and brought under control (disease and discomfort are basically the result of stress).

We don’t have to demonize the shadow; it’s the source of almost every challenge worth facing.

See your source as a point while your whole world is an expanding circle. The more you see, understand, and experience, the bigger the circle gets. Yet it is always expanding from the source. What this means is that the source is never far away. It’s a constant.

The reason that your source seems far away is that you have identified with all the separate things in your world, neglecting the creative origin that makes everything possible.

your potential for change isn’t far away, either. Potential is the same as unseen possibilities.

Without expansion you are forced to have narrow vision.

The only ones who conquer the shadow don’t fight it; they transcend it. When you transcend, you go beyond. In everyday life we transcend all the time.

the level of the problem is never the level of the solution.

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Safe Versus Unsafe The solution: Be established in your true self.