7 Choices That Increase The Power Of Our Shadow [Excerpt]

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Excerpt: We all have a shadow inside. And if we’re not careful, our choices can fuel its power. Here are seven choices to avoid making if you want to minimize your shadow’s power over you.

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The following is an excerpt from Deepak Chopra that’s found on page 35 of The Shadow Effect. In it, Deepak explains how a series of simple choices can cause a negative downward spiral of pain that may leave a person more and more in the grips of their shadow.

Being that the shadow is one of the most crucial obstacles to happiness that we face, understanding these choices and what we need to do to counteract them—is also crucial. I’ll turn it over to Deepak to explain. I hope it helps.

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7 Choices That Increase The Power Of Our Shadow [Excerpt]

Like everything in life, creating the shadow is a process. No one sets out to increase the power of the shadow, yet we all do. The shadow increases whenever you resort to the following:

• Keeping secrets from yourself and others. A secretive life gives the shadow material to build upon. Forms of secrecy are denial, deliberate deception, fear of exposing who you are, and conditioning by a dysfunctional family.

• Harboring guilt and shame. Everyone is fallible; no one is perfect. But if you feel ashamed of your mistakes and guilty about your imperfections, the shadow gains power.

• Making yourself and others wrong. If you can’t find a way to release your guilt and shame, it’s all too easy to decide that you—or others—deserve them. Judgment is guilt wearing a moral mask to disguise its pain.

• Needing someone to blame. Once you decide that your inner pain is a moral issue, you will have no trouble blaming someone else you feel is inferior to you in some way.

• Ignoring your own weaknesses while criticizing those around you. This is the process of projection, which many don’t see or understand very well. But whenever you try to explain a situation as the act of God or the Devil, you are projecting. The same goes for identifying “them,” the bad people who cause all the problems. If you believe the problem is with “them,” you have projected your own fear instead of taking responsibility for it.

• Separating yourself from others. If you reach the point where you feel that the world is divided into “them” and “us,” you will naturally identify your side as the good one and choose it. This isolation increases a sense of fear and suspicion, which the shadow thrives on.

• Struggling to keep evil at bay. At the bottom of the cycle, people are convinced that evil lurks everywhere. What has really happened is that the creators of illusion are being fooled by their own creation. Everything has come together to give the shadow enormous power.

We’ve taken the first steps in removing the shadow’s power by exposing the process that fuels it. There’s a downward spiral. It begins by thinking you have to keep secrets, and then those secrets, instead of remaining quietly hidden, become the source of shame and guilt. Self-judgment enters. This is too painful to live with, so you search for someone outside yourself to blame. The spiral leads eventually to isolation and denial. By the time you find yourself struggling with sin and evil, you have long ago lost sight of the basic fact that would save you, which isn’t redemption from the Devil. The basic fact is that you entered this whole process willingly by making simple choices. Therefore to escape you only need to make the opposite choices.

I’ve divided those choices into four categories with steps to take toward making them:

1. Stop projecting.
2. Detach and let go.
3. Give up self-judgement.
4. Rebuild your emotional body.

The basic life choices are available to anyone. We make the opposite choices all the time. The shadow has persuaded us to blame others rather than take responsibility. It tells us that we are unworthy of love and respect. It promotes anger and fear as natural reactions to life. All of us are entangled in these disastrous choices. They stifle our lives and remove all joy. So nothing is more urgent than to turn the process around, and the sooner the better.

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If you enjoyed this excerpt from The Shadow Effect, you should consider reading it in full. It comes highly recommended:

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