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

by Deepak Chopra

When we come face-to-face with the shadow, we soon realize that this part of ourselves is not trying to destroy us. Instead, the shadow self is trying to lead us back to wholeness.

we have buried as much of our light as we have of our darkness.

We find our hidden light shadow the same way we discover our dark one. We look around for the places where we are projecting our light onto other people.

There is no quality that we respond to in another that we lack.

Any desire of the heart exists to support you in discovering and manifesting it.

To the shadow, the light is an enemy. But to the light, the shadow is nothing. It simply does not exist.

Mere intention to do better can be overridden by the power of the shadow. The shadow can override our best intentions, and only love can override the shadow.

Real religion—whether it occurs within the context of an organized institution or a more universal spirituality—reconnects us to the truth of who we are, to the love at our core, and to the compassion that heals.

Whenever our hearts are open, the darkness is replaced by light.

the healing of the world will emerge not from our changing and correcting others, but from our willingness to change and correct ourselves.

psychic pain is the same. Sometimes we need to say, “I need to tend to this pain. Why is it here? What is this situation trying to tell me? What part of myself do I need to address?”

The wound must be looked at. And the physician, both human and divine, is not there to judge you, but to heal you.

This sense of separation leads me to believe that I am weak, when in fact, as a child of the divine, I have infinite resources of strength within.

Since all shadow manifestations are rooted in thoughts of separation, then healing the mistaken thought that we are separate from the rest of life—from our Creator, from other people, and from other created things—is the ultimate solution to the problem of the shadow.

The real you is a divine, loving, and changeless being. It can become temporarily invisible, hidden behind a shadowy veil, but it cannot be uncreated, because God created it. It is always there.

The shadow does not leave when it is attacked; it heals when it is forgiven.

It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens

our problem, if we’re honest with ourselves, is not so much that we are imprisoned by the shadow, but that we avoid the light.

We actively resist the emergence into our better self. And as long as we don’t deal with that, then the pattern of avoidance goes unquestioned and unchallenged. The only way we can escape the shadow is to outgrow it, to drop it like the set of old and outworn clothing that it is, and become the spiritual giants we are intended to be.

our shadow is a comfort zone. As long as we are being weak, we bear no responsi...

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. We

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking, so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.