If we r outinely cover
over feelings of loneliness, they may surface in the quiet of
the night as an insatiable hunger for sugar, alcohol, or
sedatives to ﬁll the emptiness we feel. If the rage we wer e
subjected to decades ago is not addr essed and r eleased, it
may seek e xpression by tur ning us in to a nagging par ent or
a bick ering spouse. Maybe our distaste for our cheating
parent causes us to k eep attracting partners who can’t be
trusted and ar e emotionally abusive. It could be that our
normal se xual curiosity was shut down at a young age,
giving rise to an insatiable fascination with illegal
pornography or danger ous se x. However, to fr ee ourselves
from the unmanageable compulsions that cause us to live a
secret life, we must ﬁnd healthy ways to e xpress our
repressed aspects so that we can be safe fr om behaviors
that can sabotage our life. Matthew was the chief of staﬀ at a pr estigious medical
university . He was admir ed by his colleagues and had a
loving wife and thr ee healthy childr en. Although to the outerworld he look ed lik e a pillar of society, he found himself
bored with his intellect and all the accolades that came with
success. One night Matthew r eturned home af ter making
rounds and started watching late-night TV . He became
fascinated by a young actr ess who was star ring in a movie
and decided to go online and check her out. One thing led to
another and, while visiting a por n site, he click ed on an ad
for a local strip club. The images he saw ﬁlled him with
excitement. His mind began to wander, and he fantasized
about stopping by the club on his ne xt day oﬀ. F eeling a bit
of excitement and fear, he rationalized his decision,
reasoning that since the club was located on the other side
of town, he could just put on a baseball cap and avoid being
recognized by anyone he knew . Soon visits to this strip club became Matthew’s r egular
patter n. He found himself gr owing overly attracted to one of
the women and eventually made a date to get together . The
stories he told his wife became mor e and mor e complicated,
with deeper and deeper layers of deception. He began
looking for medical confer ences to attend in obscur e parts
of the country, so he could enjoy a week end of de bauchery
without wor rying about being caught. As se x with his wife
became less fr equent and less e xciting, he became mor e
adventur ous and started taking bigger risks. He even got
into the habit of buying se xy lingerie and outﬁts he could
take with him on his outings to ensur e that his women could
turn him on. One week end, Matthew’s wife, Maria, took his car to dr op
their kids oﬀ at a tennis lesson, and when she opened the
trunk to tak e out their equipment, she noticed a medical
bag she had never seen befor e. After getting her kids to
their lesson, she r eturned to the parking lot and—on an
instinct—opened the bag. She was shock ed to ﬁnd sheer
lingerie, condoms, and an assortment of other se xual
parapher nalia stuﬀed in this small bag. W anting to
understand the e xtent of her husband’s inﬁdelity, she beganlooking thr ough the cr edit-car d bills, the Inter net history on
their computers, and his cell-phone bills. A fter studying his
behavior for a number of weeks, she discover ed just how big
a secr et life Matthew had been leading, which r evolved
around strip clubs, escorts, and countless one-night stands. After several weeks of silent suﬀering, Maria decided to
confr ont Matthew with all the evidence she had uncover ed. With nothing to say and his hidden behaviors now out in the
open, Matthew was faced with the task of unveiling the
unfulﬁlled ur ges that had led him to cr eate such a gap
between his public persona and his private life. As the shock
of the consequences of his secr et life came into clear view,
he was disgusted that his shadow had lur ed him into
behaviors he never dr eamed he would have been capable
of. Like most se x addicts, Matthew needed help and soon
discover ed that it wasn’t just se x he was seeking, but
attention, admiration, and e xcitement. If he had been able
to see and acknowledge these secr et desir es, he could have
sought the support he needed befor e his behavior escalated
out of contr ol. Instead, his shadow caused him to lose his
marriage and his dignity . I have hear d countless people in my seminars over the
years shar e similar stories. W ithout thinking, they became
somebody they never wanted to be. The bottom line is if we
don’t deal with our shadow aspects, our impulses and our
repressed feelings, they will deal with us. As my friend Dr . Charles Richar ds tells us in The Shadow Eﬀect  movie,
“Ignoring our r epressed shadow is lik e locking somebody in
the basement until they have to do something dramatic to
get our attention.” If we r efuse to uncover them willingly,
we put ourselves at risk of being in the line of ﬁr e of what I
call the Shadow Eﬀect. W ith no r elief in sight for these
repressed parts of ourselves, they tak e on a life of their
own. By r eleasing the guilt and shame we car ry when a part
of our life is housed in the dark, we can instead open thecellar doors and e xchange our secr et life for an authentic
life. When we deny ourselves a safe outlet to e xpress our dark
side—or r efuse to even acknowledge its e xistence—it builds
up and becomes a powerful for ce capable of destr oying our
life as well as the lives of those ar ound us. The mor e we try
to suppr ess the aspects of our personality that we deem
unacceptable, the mor e they ﬁnd mischievous ways of
expressing themselves. The Shadow Eﬀect occurs when our
own r epressed darkness mak es its pr esence known by
driving us to act out in unconscious and une xpected ways. It
occurs when something in the outer world for ces our inner
darkness out of hiding, and we suddenly come face-to -face
with the character traits, behaviors, and feelings that we’ve
kept hidden in our secr et life. The Shadow Eﬀect is not
something we plan. In fact, it’s something that most of us
have invested a lot of time and ener gy in trying to avoid. But when we understand this phenomenon, we can unravel
the mystery of our own self -sabotage. THE SHADOW EFFECT
Imagine that every quality, every emotion, every dark
thought that you try to ignor e, hide, or disown is lik e a
beach ball you ar e holding underwater . You tak e your selﬁsh
self, you tak e your angry self, your too -good self, your not-
good-enough self, your foolish self, your conceited self, all
the selves. And suddenly you’r e overwhelmed with all these
beach balls you’r e trying to manage. When you’r e young,
you have lots of ener gy, so you can manage a lot of beach
balls—you can suppr ess a lot of your unwanted qualities. But then when you’r e tired, heartbr oken, or sick; when you
no longer believe in the possibility of an e xciting futur e;when your defenses ar e down; when your attention is on
your family or some big pr omotion you’r e going to win;
when you’ve had one too many drinks—all of a sudden,
boom! Y ou or someone ar ound you does something without
thinking and one or mor e of your submer ged beach balls
pops up and hits you in the face. This is the Shadow Eﬀect. What is r oad rage? Is it anything mor e than a beach ball of
suppr essed anger for cing its way to the surface? W e see it
in the media all the time. A ﬁlmmak er making deep
Christian ﬁlms all of a sudden gets drunk and shouts anti-
Semitic comments in a drunk en rage. A radio star who
makes his living being a gr eat communicator in one second
makes a racial slur that destr oys his car eer and r eputation. An ambitious young teacher thr ows away her futur e by
having se x with a fourteen- year-old student. A movie star,
with the means to aﬀor d almost anything, gets caught
shoplif ting. All of the suppr essed impulses and hidden ur ges
we have tried to manage ar e like ticking time bombs waiting
to go oﬀ. And what we can e xpect is that the Shadow Eﬀect will
arise at the least opportune time—when we’r e on the ver ge
of ﬁnancial success or in the midst of r omancing a desirable
new partner; when we’r e days away fr om retirement or
about to close a deal that could change our life for ever. These ar e the times when we consciously or unconsciously
sabotage our own success; when one choice, made in the
haze of unconsciousness, under mines the pr ogress we’ve
work ed years to mak e. All self -sabotage is an e xternalization
of the inter nal shame hidden in the dark r ecesses of our
unconscious minds. Because we have not had the wisdom,
courage, or wher ewithal to mak e peace with what we have
suppr essed out of guilt, fear, or shame, it gets for ced out
into the open so that we can r eclaim and embrace our lost
self and r eturn to the transpar ent state of our whole self . It’s not until our self -destructive behaviors ar e no longer a
secret and we see thr ough objective eyes the damage we’r edoing to ourselves and those ar ound us that we ﬁnd the
motivation to change. It’s not until our childr en come home
from school to ﬁnd the electricity cut oﬀ that we’r e willing to
face our gambling addiction. It tak es a DUI ar rest to wak e us
up to the fact that our drinking has spiraled out of contr ol. When we’r e out to dinner with friends and the waiter
announces that our cr edit car d has been declined, we might
ﬁnally have to face the fact that our spending is out of
contr ol. When we get caught dipping into the company
expense account, we ﬁnally r ealize that we must deal with
our entitlement issues. W e can fool ourselves that we ar e
doing all right at work or on our diet—until we get our yearly
review or step on the scale. The Shadow Eﬀect arises as a
potent outer r eﬂection that our inner world is danger ously
out of balance. But as painful as these moments of truth can
be, they can serve to begin a pr ocess of involuntary
evolution. When we ar e confr onted with our shadow and it is
seen by those whose opinions matter to us, we snap out of
denial and hopefully r ecognize that we must do something
about it. If we wer e able to see ourselves accurately, it would be an
easier task. But we can’t, and because of this, it is so easy
to fall into the trance of denial, otherwise known as “ Don’t
Even Notice I Am Lying.” The lie begins with ourselves. If
we wer e intimate with our dark er impulses—if we knew that
selﬁshness, hatr ed, gr eed, and intolerance have an
important message to deliver—we would heed their
presence in our life, lik e a trusted friend knocking at the
door. But when we alienate our shadow, when out of fear we
refuse to acknowledge or r eceive the messages it is trying
to send, we can be certain that we will do something or
become involved in something that brings our hidden
darkness to the surface. A t these times, the pr overbial
knock on the door feels mor e like a knock in the head; yet
the moments we meet our own disowned darkness ar e notonly some of the most painful, but also the most fertile
times of our life. If we wish to avoid the wrath of the Shadow Eﬀect, we
must do a r eality check with ourselves every day to see if
we ar e acting in ways that could shame, embar rass, or
destr oy our family, car eer, health, or self -esteem. W e must
wake up and consider whether we ar e hiding and denying a
secret life; we must become awar e of habits, behaviors, or
ways of being we ar e keeping fr om others. If we fear what
would happen if our families, cowork ers, or friends look ed
through our e-mails, check ed the history of our most
recently viewed sites on our computers, or r ead the
judgmental, mean thoughts in our minds, we must
recognize these as signs—as ﬂashing r ed lights. Denial is
the culprit that k eeps our secr et life intact and out of sight—
and k eeps us focused on anything but our own indiscr etions. To embrace our shadow and derail the possibility of the
Shadow Eﬀect taking us down, we must open up to a
greater truth about our humanness and what lurks beneath
the surface of the person we believe ourselves to be. When
we engage our minds in investigating the hypocrisy of our
human behavior, we open up to a deeper, mor e meaningful
truth—that all parts of ourselves deserve to be seen, hear d,
and embraced, that every aspect holds a gr eater gif t than
we can see and every feeling deserves healthy e xpression. When they ar e tak en out of the darkness and e xposed to the
light, they will support us in cr eating healthy r elationships,
regaining good mental health, and achieving our potential. The Shadow Eﬀect shatters our perfectly constructed
persona so that we can r einvent ourselves as somebody
other than who we’ve been. Self -sabotage is nothing mor e
than an unwillingness on the part of our higher self to
continue playing the r ole we have assigned to ourselves. Ideally, we embrace our disowned aspects willingly; when
we insist on clinging to our personas, the fallout can be
painful and messy . Ther e are examples of this everywher e.Britney Spears, the all- American Mousek eteer who wor e the
good-girl mask, spirals into self -destruction and becomes a
notorious bad girl. T iger W oods, the all-star golfer with the
nice-guy overachiever mask, acts out and in one day goes
from a super hero to a self -sabotaging cheater . When the
mask of our human persona gets too tight, when ther e is no
more room to gr ow or br eathe, it blows itself up, so that it
can r e-create itself anew . Ther e are literally millions of
examples thr oughout time that clearly demonstrate the
phenomenon of the Shadow Eﬀect. Y et when these little or
massive indiscr etions of others ar e brought to light, we ar e
left shaking our heads, perple xed at their behavior . We call
it a fall fr om grace, but is it r eally a fall fr om grace? Is grace
no mor e than a well-constructed act we show the world,
while our secr et life is hidden fr om those we love? UNCO VERING OUR SHADOW
When we ﬁnd ourselves obsessed with aspects of other
people’s shadows, it is only because they have touched one
of our own. W e are used to thinking that we cannot see
ourselves unless we ar e looking in a mir ror—but this is true
only on one level. The fact is we can see ourselves in living
color by taking note of what we observe in other people. W e
are designed to pr oject onto others the qualities we can’t
see in ourselves. It’s not a bad thing. W e all do it all the
time. P rojection is an involuntary defense mechanism of the
ego; instead of acknowledging the qualities in us that we
dislik e, we pr oject them onto someone else. W e project
them onto our mothers, our kids, our friends, or, even
better, some famous public ﬁgur e we have never even met. Whatever we judge or condemn in another is ultimately a
disowned or r ejected part of ourselves. When we ar e in the
midst of pr ojection, it appears as though we ar e seeing the
other person, but in r eality we ar e seeing a hidden aspect ofourselves. Those we pr oject on hold pieces of our unclaimed
darkness as well as pieces of our unclaimed light. Simultaneously afraid of our own unworthiness as well as
our own gr eatness, we unconsciously transfer these
qualities onto another rather than own them ourselves. You have alr eady e xperienced the power of pr ojection
thousands of times in your life. Y ou walk into a r oom and
feel suddenly enamor ed with someone. Y ou begin a
conversation, and then she starts telling you about her lik es
or dislik es that don’t mesh with your own. Suddenly that
person looks diﬀer ent to you—the trance of pr ojection has
been br oken and you see her in a completely diﬀer ent light. If a moment later she happens to mention that she can get
you courtside tick ets to a game you’ve been dying to see or
that she knows someone who can help you get your latest
project oﬀ the gr ound, you may again see her in a favorable
light and she may seem mor e inter esting. F inally, the
conversation is back on track, but in the very ne xt breath
she starts dr opping names, and when she suddenly r eminds
you of your bragging father -in-law, you feel r epulsed. In
reality, nothing about this person has changed e xcept your
perception of her . This is the power of pr ojection. If you
understand this phenomenon, you will understand why you
can love someone one minute and in the very ne xt moment
ﬁnd that person unbearably annoying. Our unclaimed darkness continually shows itself on the
screen of those ar ound us. W e might see our
submissiveness in our mother, our gr eed in our father, our
laziness in our husband, or our righteous ness in politicians. Projection sounds lik e this: “She’s so self -center ed.” “ He is
so full of himself .” “What an idiot. He is such a loser .”
Projection e xplains why ﬁve siblings can gr ow up in the
same home, and each of them will r ecount a diﬀer ent story
about their par ents, assign them a diﬀer ent set of str engths
and weaknesses, and r emember them as possessing
diﬀer ent characteristics.It’s of ten har d to r ecognize our own bad behavior,
because we ar e continually pr ojecting it on others. The mor e
convinced we ar e of other people’s wr ongdoings, the mor e
likely it is that we ourselves ar e guilty of the same
indiscr etions. A .J., who tends bar at a popular r estaurant,
was headed home af ter a long day’s work and looking
forwar d to spending a quiet evening with his wife and family . A few short minutes into his drive, he suddenly hear d the
noise behind him that we all dr ead—the squeal of a sir en. As
he pulled over, he sear ched his memory to see what he
could have done, but nothing came to mind. He r olled down
his window, and the oﬃcer ask ed to see his license. After he handed over his ID, the oﬃcer leaned in and
asked him, “Y oung man, have you been drinking?”
A.J. replied, “No, sir, I was at work.”
“Young man, I believe you have been drinking, and it
would serve your best inter est to tell the truth. Maybe
you’ve been somewher e besides work?” the oﬃcer ask ed
sarcastically . A.J., feeling agitated and slightly defensive, said, “No, sir, I
haven’t been drinking. A ctually, I was at the sports bar
serving you drinks all af ternoon.”
The oﬃcer, obviously stunned, handed A .J. his license
back, got into his patr ol car, and dr ove away . This is a
perfect e xample of pr ojection. When the oﬃcer, a little
buzzed and maybe feeling a bit guilty about having a few
drinks while on duty, went back to work af ter his “br eak,” he
unconsciously began looking for himself . The parts of ourselves we try to avoid may be hidden fr om
our view, but they e xist as part of our ener gy ﬁeld
regardless. The behaviors and feelings we ar e not at peace
with will always ﬁnd a scr een to pr oject themselves on, and
we can be sur e this is happening when we feel an emotional
charge in the pr esence of someone else. Imagine having a
hundr ed diﬀer ent electrical outlets on your chest. Each
outlet r epresents a diﬀer ent quality . The qualities youacknowledge and embrace have cover plates over them. They ar e safe—no electricity runs thr ough them. But the
qualities you’r e not ok ay with, the ones you have not yet
owned, do have a char ge. So when others come along and
reﬂect back to you an image of a self you don’t want to be,
you become r eactive. Here’s an e xample. I once dated a man I consider ed to be
a bit chubby and out of shape. A fter a few months of dating,
I noticed that, no matter wher e we went, he would point out
the guy who was overweight, who had a pot belly, or whose
pants hung too low . One day, as we wer e walking thr ough
the airport on our way out of town for a r omantic getaway,
he pointed his ﬁnger at another man he didn’t even know
and would never see again and said, “What a slob. Why do
you think that guy doesn’t tak e car e of himself?”
I ﬁnally couldn’t k eep my mouth shut any longer, and I
muster ed up the courage to tell him that he was just
projecting his own weight concer ns on various poor
overweight men he didn’t even know . I suggested that
instead of pointing his ﬁnger at them, he should just look
down. I thought he was going to trip getting oﬀ the
escalator as he spotted, as if for the ﬁrst time, his own
bulging belly . His face dr opped as he r ealized that he too
was car rying an e xtra twenty -ﬁve pounds of unwanted
weight. Embar rassed, he sheepishly ask ed me if he r eally
looked lik e the other men. Scar ed that I would ruin my fun
week end away, I lied and told him that maybe he wasn’t as
bad as the others, but that ther e wer e many other places
his eye could be going when we wer e out in public, so it
must mean that, at some level, he really wanted to tak e on
his own body and alter the way he appear ed in the world or
he wouldn’t be so plugged in. There wer e literally hundr eds of other traits he could have
focused on—somebody’s hair, smile, beautiful eyes, or big
nose. But he didn’t. He only focused on other men’s bellies. Our pr ojections always shock us. When we ar e judginganother, we never r eally think we ar e talking about
ourselves. But once we understand our ﬁnger -pointing, we
can start to untangle ourselves fr om our per ceptions and
ﬁerce judgments of others. W e must r emember the old
saying, “Y ou spot it, you got it.”
If we deny or ar e uncomfortable with our anger, our eye
will automatically sear ch and ﬁnd all the angry people. If we
are secr etly lying or judging ourselves for lying in the past,
we will be righteously upset about the dishonesty of others. In my years of leading workshops, I’ve had some incr edibly
funny moments when people got mad at me for suggesting
this very concept of pr ojection and telling them that they
too possessed the qualities they dislik e in others. One of my
favorites was when a beautiful Hispanic woman in her late
twenties came up to me on one of the br eaks insisting that
she wasn’t anything lik e her father, who didn’t appr ove of
the men she went out with. When I ask ed her if she knew
why, she said it was because he is a racist. She said she
only went out with Asian men, and he didn’t appr ove of
them. When I jokingly ask ed her what kind of Hispanic
woman only goes out with Asian men, the anger drained out
of her face, and she meekly suggested, “Someone who’s a
racist?” She r ealized in that moment that she was a bit of a
racist, just lik e her father, because she would never go out
with men of her own backgr ound. Another woman pr otested that she wasn’t anything lik e
her judgmental father, who always pointed out what was
wrong with her . She told me he was angry, hypocritical,
nasty, critical, and so on. When I ask ed her what she just did
to her father in the course of this conversation, she r ealized
she was demonstrating the same judgmental behavior that
she saw in him. Another time, a man stood up to tell me
how much he hated closed-minded people and how he
seemed to be sur rounded by them at work and in his own
neighbor hood. Then one day, his beloved son came home
from college and announced that he was gay . This man wasﬁlled with disgust. When his wife tried to settle him down,
he realized that he was the closed-minded person he always
despised, which led him to “The Shadow P rocess” workshop. Owning our pr ojections is a courageous and yet humbling
experience we all must go thr ough to ﬁnd peace. It for ces us
to acknowledge that we ar e capable of and of ten do the
very things we dislik e in others. There are many famous e xamples of pr ojection. The
former gover nor of New Y ork Eliot Spitzer spent his car eer
trying to clean up pr ostitution, because he deemed it so
unacceptable, and then got caught in a call-girl scandal. Former Speak er of the House Newt Gingrich, who
continually pointed his ﬁnger in outrage and led the char ge
to impeach P resident Bill Clinton for se xual indiscr etions,
was later found having an aﬀair outside his mar riage. The
famous pr eacher R everend T ed Haggar d, who railed about
the immorality of homose xuality, was later caught having a
drug-fueled homose xual r elationship. And the radio
phenomenon R ush Limbaugh, who on his radio show openly
shamed and derided drug addicts, later admitted his own
addiction to pr escription medicine. I could literally give
thousands of e xamples of people publicly demonizing and
putting down behavior they ar e cur rently displaying. Do you
think these people r eally set out to destr oy their lives and
careers, to publicly humiliate themselves and shame their
families? W as this r eally their intention? Or wer e they in fact
caught by surprise and deeply disappointed in their own
behavior? Is “The Devil made me do it” r eally the shadow in
disguise? As Shak espear e so brilliantly said, “The lady doth pr otest
too much.” Whatever quality, behavior, or feeling we ﬁnd
ourselves righ teously denying, we can be certain that is the
one we ar e harboring deep within our own psyche. W e don’t
have to look far to discover that we ar e usually doing the
exact thing we ar e judging others for . It may show up in a
completely diﬀer ent way, yet the driving for ce behind ourbehavior is, in fact, the same. It can sometimes be
challenging to identif y the driving for ce in ourselves,
because we may not be displaying the e xact behavior as the
person we ar e projecting onto, but it is ther e within us. When we have a trait that doesn’t have a cover plate over it
(to use the earlier image of multiple electrical outlets), we
draw people and incidents into our life to help us
acknowledge, heal, and embrace that denied aspect. If we embrace the qualities that disturb us in others, we
will no longer be upset by them. W e might notice them, but
they won’t aﬀect us. Those outlets will have cover plates
over them, so they will no longer car ry a char ge. It is only
when we ar e lying to ourselves or hating some aspect of
ourselves that we become emotionally char ged fr om
someone else’s behavior . Revered philosopher and
psychologist K en W ilber mak es a gr eat distinction. He says if
a person or thing in the envir onment informs us, if we
receive what is happening as infor mation or a point of
interest, we pr obably ar en’t pr ojecting. If it aﬀects  us, if
we’re pointing our ﬁnger in judgment, if we’r e plugged in,
chances ar e we ar e a victim of our own pr ojections. Until we tak e back all the parts of ourselves we have
projected away, whatever we r efuse to accept will k eep
showing up in our life, either in our own behavior or in the
behavior of someone close to us. When we don’t deal with
our shadow, it will negatively aﬀect our r elationships. It will
rob us of being pr esent to the gif ts of those ar ound us,
because we will have put up a defensive wall of judgment
that blinds us fr om truly seeing who others ar e. It will
distract us fr om the r elationship as a whole and, instead,
force our eye and our attention to what we believe is wr ong
about others. Pilar’s behavior is a perfect e xample of the phenomenon
of projection. A woman in her early forties who prides
herself on being a good daughter, P ilar is constantly upset
at her father for being a hoar der. As she drives over to hishouse each Sunday to visit him, she begins to feel anxious
and annoyed. By the time she walks into his living r oom to
settle in for their af ternoon father -daughter time, instead of
asking him how he is doing or updating him on her own life,
she starts barking at him about all the piles of newspapers
on the ﬂoor and the hundr eds of little items of memorabilia
scatter ed ar ound his small living space. F rustrated by her
father’s inability to thr ow things out and listen to her
direction to dump everything into the trash, P ilar engages in
a belittling conversation in which she points out his inability
to let go of useless items. Sitting in such an atmospher e of
judgment, they both feel sad, and their visits end up being
monotonous and life-draining for both of them. P ilar always
drives away feeling bad about herself, and her father
secretly wishes she would just stop coming, although he’s
too kind and lonely to say so . One day while working in the home oﬃce she shar es with
her husband, Emilio, P ilar realized something about herself . Emilio ask ed her if she could empty one of the drawers she
was using, so he could have mor e room for his papers. Annoyed, she quickly r esponded that she needed six of the
eight drawers for all of her important papers and that he
could r ent a storage unit if he needed mor e room. Agitated
at his wife’s inability to shar e, Emilio began to yank open
one af ter another of her cabinet drawers, r evealing
hundr eds of ﬁles stuﬀed with newspaper and magazine
clippings. She hear d Emilio ranting, even though she was no
longer listening to the content of what he was saying. She
was stunned. Her e it was right in fr ont of her—her father’s
bad habit. She could see that to Emilio all these clippings
were useless junk. She had saved some of these clippings
for a long time, even coupons fr om when she was in college
over twenty years earlier! Suddenly, when she br ought her mind back into the r oom
wher e her husband was still ar guing that she didn’t need
half of what was in the drawers, she began laughing outloud. In just a few moments, she went fr om feeling
nauseous when her own shadow was e xposed to being set
free when she br oke the trance of her pr ojection. She saw
how she displayed the same quality as her father, even if
hers was hidden in closed cabinet drawers. She embraced
the fact that she was a hoar der and ask ed her husband to
please help her clean out and thr ow away some of her
clippings, because she knew it would be diﬃcult to do on
her own. She loved all her pieces of paper just as her father
loved his. Days later when Emilio got not only one drawer but thr ee,
Pilar decided to shar e her story with her father and ask that
he for give her for being so judgmental. Both father and
daughter had a good laugh together and hugged, which is
something they did as a r outine gr eeting, but never as an
authentic e xpression of love and r espect. Her own
admission of guilt opened up a new loving and r espectful
relationship between P ilar and her father that allowed him
little by little to let go of his past. He even allowed her to
help him ﬁll a few garbage bags each Sunday . Here’s what’s so e xciting. When you understand
projection, you will never see the world the same way again. In this holographic world, everyone and everything is a
mirror, and you ar e always seeing yourself and talking to
yourself . If you choose, you can now look at what
emotionally aﬀects you as an alar m, a clue to uncover your
shadow, a catalyst for gr owth that gives you an opportunity
to reclaim a hidden aspect of yourself . Every shadow aspect
you embrace will allow you to e xperience mor e love, mor e
compassion, mor e peace, and a gr eater sense of fr eedom. And ther e is even mor e great news about owning our
projections. When we do, the people in our life e xperience
increased fr eedom and have an opportunity to shif t their
behavior . When we disown qualities, behaviors, and feelings
and attribute them to other people, those traits appear to
actually e xist in other people and not ourselves. But timeand time again I’ve seen that when people wak e up fr om
the trance of pr ojection, the people they have been
projecting onto change—they become fr ee to show up
diﬀer ently. When we can see them as they ar e, release them
from our own judgments and clouded per ceptions, a new
reality will emer ge. Ultimately, we must come to a place
wher e we can uncover, own, and embrace every quality that
exists, so that we no longer have to pr oject our disowned
aspects on others, so we can be fr ee to see people thr ough
the wide lens of compassion rather than the illusional lens of
projection. It is then that we will be fr ee to love not only
ourselves, but all those we see in the world. It is then that
we will e xperience true fr eedom. UNMASKING OUR SHADOW
Another eﬀective way of ﬁnding unclaimed parts of
ourselves is to e xplor e the r epetitive behavior patter ns we
have struggled with for years. These patter ns of behavior,
which stem fr om unclaimed and r ejected parts of ourselves,
become our nemesis. Of ten we trick ourselves into believing
that our less than acceptable behavior is the pr oblem rather
than sear ching for the r oot cause of the behavior . We may
spend years ﬁghting with the same ten pounds, or
cigar ettes, womanizing, or overspending, only to ﬁnd
ourselves right back wher e we started or in an even worse
position. But if we understand that our patter ns of behavior
were formed fr om repressed feelings or a disowned or
shamed aspect of our shadow, we can go to the sour ce of
our behavior and dismantle the patter n.
All of our habitual behavior stems fr om an e xperience or
experiences in the past that led us to cr eate particular
interpr etations about ourselves. F rom those interpr etations
certain thoughts wer e bor n, and these thoughts made us
feel a particular way about ourselves, of ten a negative one.Our desir e to distance ourselves fr om these unwanted
feelings drives us to ﬁnd ways to mak e ourselves feel
better; thus the birth of our self -sabotaging behaviors. Annette was six or seven the ﬁrst time her mom told her
she was going out and leaving her alone for the evening. As
the sk y dark ened, she wander ed ar ound the empty
apartment and decided that her mom didn’t love her . She
was plagued by the thought that something bad would
happen to her mom and she would be lef t alone for ever. This caused her to feel alone, afraid, panick y, and, above all,
diﬀer ent fr om the other kids whose moms stayed home and
cooked dinner . To douse these feelings, Annette found
herself taking multiple trips to the kitchen, wher e her mom
had lef t a big pink bo x of donuts. She lear ned that, at least
for a short time, the tr eats made her painful feelings not so
bad. If we e xplor e our behavior patter ns—especially those we
don’t wish to r epeat—we always uncover a shadow aspect
of ourselves that we ar e trying to hide or cover up. The
repetitive patter ns we ﬁnd ourselves trapped in always echo
back to us feelings that accompanied the original wound. Then, in a gr eat cover -up, we cr eate patter ns of behavior
that ultimately r einfor ce the wound rather than giving us
the relief that we seek. Helena was constantly overwhelmed and anxious,
because she found herself pr ocrastinating on work pr ojects,
tasks at home, and things lik e getting the oil changed in her
car or making an appointment to go to the dentist. Every
time she came face-to -face with the consequences of her
procrastination, she made a str ong pr omise to herself that
she would change. Helena was clear that this patter n of
behavior was emotionally depleting and debilitating. F illed
with r egret, Helena called me pr oclaiming that she just
couldn’t tak e it one mor e day . After listening to her rant, I
asked her if she was r eady to ﬁnd the r oot cause of this
patter n, the portion of the shadow that was r obbing her of apeaceful and joyous life. W ith tr epidation and a bit of
resignation, she agr eed. So I ask ed my ﬁrst question: What kind of person would
procrastinate? Suddenly she saw an image of her stepfather
lying on the couch with the television blasting; he was not
getting his work done ar ound the house, and her mother
was enraged. As she located the r oot of the wound, she felt
the embar rassment and shame of r ealizing that she car ried
that same undesirable quality her stepfather had. When I
asked her what interpr etation she made about her
stepfather, she told me that she deemed him a lazy bum,
even though he was very successful in his car eer. Helena,
who was at that time just shy of her thirteenth birthday,
decided that fr om that day forwar d she would never be lazy
like her stepdad. In fact, those ar ound her would say that
just the opposite was true—that she was a doer, highly
eﬀective, pr oductive, driven, and ener getic. But Helena
always knew what was lef t undone, waiting for her to deal
with in her own life. She r ecalled the names she hear d being
shouted at her stepdad—“Y ou’re a good-for -nothing lazy
bum!”—and easily identiﬁed the inter nal dialogue that
plagued her on an ongoing basis; the demoralizing truth
was that she was r epeating these same wor ds to herself
more and mor e each year . But now as an adult, she saw that even though she was
extremely busy doing tons of things each day, she wasn’t
able to do what was truly important to the success of her
own life. Even though she sat appalled for a few minutes at
the thought that she might be lazy just lik e her stepdad, she
could see that this shadow quality, which she had so
masterfully hidden, had tak en root in her own life and now
had to be weeded out if she was to be fr ee from this self -
defeating patter n. It didn’t tak e her long to accept the fact
that, indeed, she was lazy when it came to herself . With the
real sour ce of her behavior now in fr ont of her, she could
begin the pr ocess of making peace with the lazy part ofherself, so that it would not have to under mine her choices
each day and r ob her of her self -esteem and her dr eams. Every time we ﬁnd a behavior that thr eatens our peace of
mind, our happiness, or our safety, we ar e implor ed to heed
the call of our inter nal world and e xplor e the r oot cause of
our behavior . When we do, we will unveil an aspect of our
shadow . It doesn’t have to tak e a year or a lifetime. It can
take ﬁve minutes of radical honesty to unravel a patter n
from our past. If we ﬁnd an impulse in ourselves that we
unknowingly hid, we have the right and the ability to bring it
into the light of our awar eness, for give ourselves and others
for the pain we e xperienced, and br eak fr ee from the self -
defeating behavior . Maybe self -neglect is a patter n of behavior that you must
confr ont. Y ou show up for others, but have no idea how to
be ther e for yourself . Your dr eams have been put on hold as
you support your husband, childr en, siblings, and friends in
getting their needs met. F inally, you can’t stand one mor e
day of neglecting yourself and your own desir es. You trace
this patter n of behavior back by asking, “What kind of
person would go af ter her dr eams and not be ther e for other
people?” The answer you hear is “ A selﬁsh person.” F or a
moment you feel happy that you’r e not that selﬁsh person,
because you hate selﬁsh people. L ooking back, you
remember being told over and over again in r eligious school
how bad it is to be selﬁsh, so you made what you believed
to be the right decision—that you would never be that. Instead, you became the opposite—a selﬂess, big-hearted,
loving, and kind person who would do anything for the world
—and with that inter nal commitment, people pleasing
became your patter n.
To mak e peace and br eak this cycle, you must now
confr ont the distaste you feel for the notion of being selﬁsh
and e xpose the judgments you have held towar d all those
who you have deemed selﬁsh in the past. Y ou must admit to
the negative connotations you attach to the wor d “selﬁsh”and be willing to see that the way you ar e interpr eting that
word is limiting, disempowering, and rigid. Y ou must look to
see when you decided or wer e told that selﬁsh people wer e
bad and wr ong. Y ou must become willing to open your heart
to the selﬁsh part of you and for give all those who have
reﬂected back to you that being selﬁsh is bad. Y ou must
accept the dualistic view that being human comes with both
a healthy dose of selﬁshness and an equal dose of
selﬂessness. If you ar e unwilling or unable to ﬁnd a positive
view of being selﬁsh and insist on k eeping it in the shadow,
you will continue to be held, clinched in the patter n of
behavior that has you continue to neglect what is important
for your individual gr owth and the fulﬁllment of your soul’s
desir es. To embrace what has k ept us trapped, we must muster up
the courage to ﬁnd the gif t of our selﬁsh self . If self -neglect
is a patter n, being selﬁsh is a vital quality to embrace in
order to ﬁnd our true self . It’s gr eat to support others in
living their dr eams—I happen to do it for a living. But if I
could never choose selﬁsh behavior, I would never be able
to ﬁnish writing a book, because I would always be swayed
to answer the phone or support one of the many people who
want my help or attention each day . If we can’t choose
between selﬁsh and selﬂess, we will be driven to bypass
what may truly matter to us at the end of our life. F reedom
is being able to choose whoever and whatever we want to
be at any moment in our life. If we have to act in a
particular way to avoid being something we don’t lik e, we’r e
trapped. W e’ve limited our fr eedom and r obbed ourselves of
wholeness. If we can’t be lazy or angry, we can’t be fr ee. When we ar e reclaiming these parts of ourselves, it’s vitally
important to r emember that we ar e doing this to own our
true magniﬁcence. It’s best said by C. G. Jung: “I’d rather be
whole than good.”
Taking this jour ney into the past may feel slightly daunting
at ﬁrst. But the fact is this jour ney is one of the mostrewar ding trips we can tak e. It’s intriguing to uncover our
shadow, to see how it has tak en root, and to catch ourselves
befor e we say something we don’t r eally mean or do
something that we will r egret. Our shadows ar e there for us,
waiting to oﬀer invaluable insights about ourselves. W e can
never manage or defeat our self -sabotaging behaviors
without embracing the shadows that ar e driving them. There is no patter n of behavior that can’t be br oken or
changed if we ar e willing to e xpose its r oots and the
emotional upset that caused us to r eject the shadow aspect
in the ﬁrst place. When we can compassionately embrace
the part of us that has set this behavior in place, we will
take back the power over our own actions and br eak the
automatic r esponses of our unwanted patter ns. This pr ocess
often cr eates a conundrum because, as human beings, we
are designed to want to feel safe, and mor e often than not,
repeating the same old behaviors is what gives us a false
sense of safety . It somehow feels easier to r epeat the past
than e xplor e a diﬀer ent outcome. But to br eak open a
repetitive self -sabotaging behavior, we will have to give up
this illusion of a safety net for a moment and be willing to
feel what’s under neath. And when we ﬁnd ourselves in the
presence of one of our shadow aspects, we will be able to
unravel the mystery of our undesirable behavior and cause
change to begin. As we become mor e and mor e awar e of the fruitlessness
of succumbing to the same tir ed old patter ns, we can tur n to
our courageous self, ask for support, come face-to -face with
the shadow part of ourselves that is hidden, and have a
heart-to -heart. By becoming intimate with the cast of
characters that mak e up our own inter nal drama, we can
learn to mak e peace and give support to the life that we
want to achieve. On the other hand, if we fail to
acknowledge the opposing for ces that give rise to these
characters, we can easily get caught in the trap of believing
a story about ourselves that is only partially true, and wecan lose sight of the amazing opportunity to be a fully
expressed human being. If we r efuse to acknowledge the
duality within, we will be trapped, identif ying with the
character whose voice is the loudest within us, no matter
what that character’s agenda or mission might be. THE GIFTS OF OUR SHADOW
The shadow contains essential characters in the script of
your life. Y our job is to lear n from the shadow, to integrate
it, and allow it to evolve your thinking and e xpand the
boundaries of your self -created persona. Y our challenge is to
ﬁnd its value and to bring the light of for giveness and
compassion so that you can defuse its ability to dismantle
your life. Y our job is to bring its comple x characters out fr om
the shadow, and to use their power and potency as sacr ed
fuel to become who you wer e meant to be in this lifetime. If the villain inside you is angry, you must for give this part
of yourself and consider the possibility that anger is e xactly
what you need to ﬁght against some injustice or oppr ession
or to get you out of an abusive situation and back on track
to creating an amazing life. If your shadow is ﬁlled with fear
about who you ar e and what you think and masks the r eal
you by cr eating a phony and inauthentic self, you must
forgive yourself and look to see how and wher e these
qualities can be put to use. Maybe these parts of you will
help you deal with a contr olling partner or a bullying e x-
spouse who thr eatens to destr oy your r elationship with your
childr en. If the villain in your life story is insatiable and
always sear ching for something to ﬁll its emptiness, you
don’t need to r epress its ur ge thr ough feeding an addiction
and continually beating yourself up. Instead, you can
harness the ener gy of this aspect of yourself and use it to
make positive change in your life or the life of someone you
care about.The point is you must for give yourself for possessing all
these human qualities and ﬁnd a healthy r espect and a
healthy outlet for each and every aspect of yourself . You
never know when you will need a part of you that you have
locked away . You never know when a part of yourself that
you deemed to be worthless will deliver the e xact skill you
need to mak e a diﬀer ence for yourself or another . I’m reminded of Jason, a thirty -year-old with rugged good
looks and an addiction to all things danger ous. As a young
boy, af ter being labeled by his friends and family members
a “scar edy cat,” Jason decided that fearful was the last thing
he wanted to be. He started playing hock ey when he was
eleven and soon developed a taste for e xtreme sports. His
love of danger was the perfect cover -up; no one who scales
mountains or jumps out of airplanes could ever be accused
of being a cowar d.
After coming home fr om one of his infamous trips abr oad,
Jason decided to visit his divor ced mother to meet her new
ﬁancé. He was shock ed to ﬁnd out that Jack, the man of his
mother’s futur e, was close to twenty years her junior . After
Jason had spent an evening listening to Jack dodge
questions about his job history and his businesses, Jason’s
fear overwhelmed his usual r espect for his mother’s
boundaries, and he set out to ﬁnd out everything about his
mother’s new boyfriend. An Inter net sear ch revealed
nothing, so he ask ed a few acquaintances who wer e closer
to his own age to check into the million-dollar business that
Jack had been alluding to all evening. In a matter of days, Jason’s suspicions wer e validated as
he uncover ed a r ecent bankruptcy, a hor rible cr edit history,
lawsuits, and a long list of debts. Jack’s multimillion-dollar
business had a nice oﬃce space, but failed to have any
business to speak of . Although Jason’s suspicions wer e
conﬁr med, days later he still couldn’t muster up the courage
to say anything. Then, when his mother announced that Jack
would soon be moving in with her to combine householdexpenses, Jason look ed inside to ﬁnd the str ength to voice
his concer ns, but instead he found only the scar ed little boy
who didn’t want to lose his mother’s love. His shadow was
now dictating what he could and could not say . Jason knew
he had to speak up, but felt paralyzed in the pr esence of his
fearful self, which had been banished for all these years. Only by acknowledging and opening his heart to his fearful
self—r elegated to the shadow—did Jason ﬁnd the cour age to
ﬁnally tell his mother what he knew . He was able to ask his
mother to r econsider having Jack move in until she had
found out the truth of who he was. Unattached to the choice
she would ultimately mak e, Jason felt pr oud that he had the
courage to r eveal what he knew to his mother and now had
a healthy dose of compassion and r espect for his fearful self . After all, it was his fearful self, not his courageous self, that
had pr ompted him to unmask the man who was lik ely
preying upon his mother . Looking further, Jason was able to identif y many times
that his fearful, suspicious self helped him stay out of
trouble. Having found the gif ts of his fear, Jason no longer
had to play the r ole of the fearless risk tak er all the time. Now he had nothing lef t to pr ove. He r eclaimed a deep
strength he never knew e xisted when this shadow aspect
had r emained hidden in the dark. To be a whole human being, we have to acknowledge the
existence of all our feelings, human qualities, and
experiences and value not just the parts of ourselves that
our ego has deemed acceptable, but everything that we
have deemed wr ong or bad. If we ar e willing to allow our
dark side to be a part of the whole of who we ar e, we will
ﬁnd it comes equipped with all the power, skill, intelligence,
and for ce needed to do gr eat things in the world. The jour ney to e xtract the gold in the dark, to ﬁnd the
gifts of our shadow demands that we bring radical honesty
to the places wher e we’ve been in denial; for giveness and
compassion to the parts of ourselves that we’ve beenashamed of; love and acceptance to the diﬃcult
experiences fr om our past; and courage to the ar eas of our
life wher e we’ve been afraid to admit our vulnerabilities. It’s
not a pr ocess of smoothing over, covering up, or pr etending
that the things we do to sabotage our success ar e not that
big a deal. In fact, only by admitting the cost of some of our
behaviors will we unlock the ener gy to def y the gravitational
pull of our past and step into the inﬁnite possibilities of our
true self . When we come face-to -face with the shadow, we soon
realize that this part of ourselves is not trying to destr oy us. Instead, the shadow self is trying to lead us back to
wholeness. I’m r eminded of the scene in Batman: The Dark
Knight  in which the Jok er is holding a knife to Batman’s
throat. Batman dar es the Jok er, “Go ahead and kill me.” The
Joker, with a perple xed, twisted look on his face, r eplies, “I
don’t want to kill you. Y ou complete me.” What he is saying
is that without his her oic counterpart, he would be nothing
at all. If we ar e savvy enough to enr oll our inner villains—our
pessimist, our ar rogant self, our dictator, our victim—in the
script of our highest self and r ecognize that they ar e not
enemies, but rather hurt and lost parts of ourselves that ar e
in deep need of love and acceptance, we can live in
accor dance with our soul’s highest mission and ﬁnd peace in
this world. EMBRACING OUR LIGHT SHADOW
Our shadow isn’t just our dark qualities or things society
considers bad. Our shadow also includes all the positive
qualities we’ve hidden away . These positive qualities ar e
often referred to as our “light shadow .” It’s not just our
darkness we’ve buried. It’s our positive traits—our powerful,
loving, and delicious aspects—as well. The fantastic and
interesting news her e is that we have buried as much of ourlight as we have of our darkness. W e may have buried our
genius, competence, humor, success, or courage. Maybe
we’ve hidden our self -conﬁdence, charisma, or power . Maybe our full self -expression, uniqueness, or joyful self was
buried af ter we hear d, “Don’t be too big for your britches,”
“Don’t brag or people won’t lik e you,” or “It’s lonely at the
top.”
We ﬁnd our hidden light shadow the same way we
discover our dark one. W e look ar ound for the places wher e
we ar e projecting our light onto other people. If we see
someone we want to emulate, it’s because we ar e seeing
qualities that e xist within us. If we ar e enthralled by
someone else, it is because the aspect we love in that
person e xists inside us. Ther e is no quality that we r espond
to in another that we lack. It might be hidden behind some
bad behavior or an old, outdated shadow belief that says we
are the e xact opposite of what we ar e seeing in the other
person. But I pr omise you that if you ar e attracted to a
quality in someone else, no matter how gr eat, it also e xists
inside you. More than twenty years ago, as I continued making
progress in my r ecovery fr om drug addiction, my life in
South Florida, wher e I owned a r etail boutique, seemed
empty and insigniﬁcant. I k ept feeling the impulse to do
something deeper and mor e meaningful, so I decided to go
back to school and study psychology, thinking that I would
become a therapist. I had moved to San F rancisco and was
immersed in consciousness studies and enamor ed with
shadow work. One night my sister called to tell me that
Marianne W illiamson was speaking at the P alace of F ine
Arts. She got me a tick et to the sold- out event, and as I sat
in the audience I was stunned. I watched as Marianne boldly
called people to a higher vision for themselves and the
world. I hear d her unabashedly implor e us to step out of the
smallness of our own ego -center ed lives and into the
grandness of serving as part of a divine mission. Although Iwas listening intently to the wor ds she spok e, I was mor e
overcome by her pr esence. I lef t ther e completely in love
with Marianne W illiamson. I returned to my apartment, intent to discover the parts of
myself that I so clearly saw in her . I loved that she had the
courage to speak the truth, even if it meant shocking people
in order to wak e them up. Also I admir ed the way she was
able to clearly articulate a diﬃcult message, speaking with
such eloquence that her wor ds penetrated into people’s
minds and hearts. I was enamor ed with the depth of
concer n she seemed to feel for humanity and the sense that
she was dedicated to something lar ger than just her
individual life. I also envied her beauty, her sense of style,
and her willingness to look lik e a hot, se xy woman and not
one of the many ster eotypical frumpy spiritual teachers. She
took the stage looking gor geous and sophisticated, yet her
holiness came thr ough loud and clear . As a dedicated student of pr ojection, I look ed beyond her
behaviors and tried to discover the underlying
characteristics that gave rise to those behaviors. I ask ed
myself, “What kind of person is able to just be herself on
stage?” Clearly, an authentic person. “What kind of person
would car e so deeply for the r est of the world?” A selﬂess
person. “What is the quality that allows Marianne to speak
up, to tell the truth even when it’s shocking or scary?” I
heard very clearly—a bold person. I look ed at my list of qualities, which r ead, “bold,
authentic, and selﬂess.” None of them wer e characteristics I
owned or acknowledged within myself . Those who know me
now may ﬁnd this har d to believe, but back then I was not
somebody who told it lik e it is. A fraid of losing the appr oval
of those I loved, I skirted ar ound issues and lack ed the self -
conﬁdence to even stand in fr ont of a r oom without shaking. I was mor e concer ned with looking good than I was with
saying something that would change people’s lives. I was
more concer ned with saying it nicely than with beingstraight or authentic. Y et I knew that if I saw these str engths
in Marianne, the potential for them must e xist also within
me. I began practicing being mor e authentic with people and
challenged myself to speak up even when I wanted to be
silent. T o develop the visionary part of myself, I started my
day with a prayer for the world and followed with a daily
prayer for myself . To be mor e selﬂess, I focused on what I
could give rather than what I could get. Marianne’s
magniﬁcence r eﬂected back to me my own hidden potential. By seeing her light, I literally glimpsed who I could be in the
world if I had the courage and the tenacity to acknowledge
that the str engths I attributed to her wer e also my own. This
is not to say that they don’t e xist in her as well; clearly they
do. Boldness, authenticity, and selﬂessness ar e universal
qualities; each one of us has the right to e xpress them in
our own unique way . Befor e I br oke the trance of my light pr ojection on
Marianne, I wanted my ﬁrst book to be as beautiful and
poetic as her gr ound-br eaking book A Return to L ove. But as
I surrender ed to the unique unfolding of these qualities
within me, I r ealized that I was being guided along a
diﬀer ent path. My mission was to be the Champion of the
Darkness rather than the F irst Lady of the Light. This was
the divine plan for my life, and I never would have glimpsed
it if I hadn’t embraced all of my pr ojections. Taking back our light fr om those we’ve pr ojected it onto
opens the door to an unimaginable futur e. I never dr eamed
that I would one day write a book with Marianne W illiamson,
that we would become friends, or that we would support
one another in the fulﬁllment of a collective mission. This is
what’s possible when we tak e responsibility for the light we
see and admir e in others. Instead of staying in the trance,
we own up to the part of us that is aching to come forth and
do the work to own it within ourselves.Whatever inspir es you is an aspect of yourself . Any desir e
of the heart e xists to support you in discovering and
manifesting it. If you have an aspiration to be something, it
is because you have the potential to manifest the quality
you ar e seeing and the behavior that this quality will bring
forth. It will not necessarily be in the e xact way that others
are expressing the quality, but in your own way . In my workshops, I always pick a diﬀer ent celebrity and
ask people in the audience to shar e with me what they love
most about the person. R ecently I chose Bono, and of
course I hear d at least twenty diﬀer ent qualities that people
love about him. One person loved his talent; another raved
about his cr eativity; another, his charisma. Some wer e
enamor ed with his vision, while others wer e inspir ed by his
leadership, his selﬂessness, or his gener osity. They each
shouted out the quality they attributed to him as though
everybody couldn’t help but see it and would naturally
agree. But this is rar ely the case, because each person saw
him thr ough the lens of their disowned self that wanted to
come out and be embraced. Everyone had diﬀer ent
perceptions, because everyone had pr ojected a diﬀer ent
piece of their light onto the scr een of the man named Bono . In this e xample, Bono is serving as a gr eat mir ror for all
those who follow him to ﬁnd the hidden aspects of
themselves. He gives people the opportunity to tak e back
their own light and ﬁnd e xpression for the qualities they see
in him. All celebrities have the power and r esponsibility to
not actually claim people’s pr ojections. In fact when they do,
they of ten get trapped in their own illusional self, which
promises to mak e their own shadow act out. Instead, their
job is to r eﬂect the pr ojections back to all those who ar e
transfer ring their light to them. Remember, our shadow is of ten so well hidden fr om us
that it’s nearly impossible to ﬁnd. If it wer en’t for the
phenomenon of pr ojection, it might stay hidden fr om us for
a lifetime. Some of us buried our shadow traits when wewere three or four years old. When we pr oject onto other
people, we have an opportunity to ﬁnally ﬁnd these buried
and hidden tr easur es. INTEGRA TING THE SHADOW
By now, you might be able to acknowledge that the shadow
—with all its pain, trauma, and strife—is an indestructible
part of who we all ar e. No matter how har d we try, we will
never succeed in getting rid of it or squelching its pr esence. We do, however, get to decide if we will allow it to destr oy
our life and r ob us of e xperiencing our gr eatness, or if we
will milk it for all its wisdom and use it to pr opel us into the
most e xtraor dinary version of ourselves. W e have all tasted
the sweetness of love, the sour disappointment of loss, the
bitter ness that r emains af ter a heartbr eak. Every one of
these e xperiences is part of our divine, unique r ecipe. W e
wouldn’t be who we ar e without them. Most of us suﬀer
from the painful and unwanted parts of our r ecipe, but ther e
are some e xtraor dinary people who choose to use their pain
to heal their heartache and contribute to the world rather
than get suﬀocated by the shadow aspects of their past. John W alsh, the host of America’s Most W anted,  did just
that. The death of a child is one of the toughest ingr edients
any one of us could imagine having to survive, yet many will
have this e xperience as part of their r ecipe. A fter his six-
year-old son A dam was mur dered, John became an advocate
for victims’ rights and tur ned his anger into action by
establishing a television pr ogram and advocating for
legislation that has led to the pr osecution of tens of
thousands of criminals. He could have just as easily chosen
to swallow his grief or stay a victim himself to this most
horriﬁc e xperience, but instead he chose to use his anger,
pain, and heartache to cr eate the television show America’s
Most W anted,  which is r esponsible for capturing over athousand fugitives and bringing home mor e than ﬁf ty
missing childr en. Out of the heartbr eak of his personal
trauma, he was able to save others fr om e xperiencing the
same pain and has emer ged as a man who is awed and
respected. After her only sister died of br east cancer at the age of
thirty -six, Nancy Goodman Brink er—a br east-cancer survivor
herself—founded the Susan G. K omen Br east Cancer
Foundation, a nonpr oﬁt that has raised over $1 billion for
resear ch, education, and health services. By embracing the
events of her life and making a commitment to not be a
victim, she has done e xtraor dinary things to raise
awar eness, to help others seek early detection of this
potentially life-thr eatening disease, and to advance the
search for a cur e.
Can you imagine what our world would look lik e if Thomas
Edison had not embraced all of himself and his e xperiences? At a very young age, he had all the evidence in the world to
believe that he was a loser, a failur e, and an idiot. He tried
thousands of diﬀer ent theories for discovering electricity,
each of which appear ed lik ely to succeed—and failed each
and every time. But instead of giving up, he look ed beyond
his failur es, lear ned fr om them, and k ept going. He held on
to and believed in the possibility of his genius, his vision,
even befor e it had been pr oven. If he had done what most of
us do, if he had labeled himself a loser and stayed trapped
within the conﬁnes of his limitations, r efusing to for give
himself for his failur es, we would all still be in the dark—
literally . Because Edison was able to integrate and lear n
from his failur es, he found the motivation to continue to
pursue success and tur n on the lights for all of us. Edith Eva Eger ar rived at Auschwitz on May 22, 1944. After being separated fr om her father and witnessing her
mother being tak en away to the gas chamber, Edie lived
each day in the most hor riﬁc of cir cumstances, watching
other inmates electr ocute themselves on the barbed-wir efence sur rounding the concentration camp and not knowing
when she took a shower whether water would come out or
gas. Edie survived the worst cir cumstances that any of us
could imagine, yet if you met her today, you would see a
beautifully integrated human being who allowed herself to
thrive in spite of—and in some ways because of—her painful
past. She did this by e xercising the choices that wer e still
available to her even under these bleak and inhumane
conditions. When she was ask ed to dance for Dr . Mengele,
the ar chitect of cruelty who was r esponsible for the tortur e
and mur der of millions of Jews, she closed her eyes and
chose to imagine that the music was T chaik ovsky and she
was dancing in Budapest to Romeo and Juliet. When the
German soldiers took her blood twice a week, telling her
that it would help them win the war, she chose to tell
herself, “I am a paciﬁst. I am a ballerina. My blood will never
help them win the war .” She chose to view the guar ds who
held her captive as mor e imprisoned than she was. She
soothed the pain of her mother’s death by r epeating to
herself over and over, “The spirit never dies.” She clung to
the part of herself that she still had the power to contr ol and
refused to allow anything that happened e xternally to
murder her spirit. “If I survive today,” Edie told herself,
“then tomor row I’ll be fr ee.”
Edie, now a gif ted and compassionate clinical psychologist
and the matriar ch of a wonderful family, is clear that by
integrating the darkness that was thrust upon her, she
exacted the sweetest type of r evenge against Hitler . When
she was being ﬁlmed for The Shadow Eﬀect  movie, I ask ed
her if she held any anger towar d Hitler . She innocently
looked me straight in the eye and said, “I wouldn’t hold on
to any anger towar d Hitler . If I did, he would win the war,
because I would still be car rying him ar ound with me
wher ever I went.” Edie is a champion of fr eedom, the car rierof a light that is so gr eat and inspiring that we would all be
served if we walk ed in her footsteps. It’s so easy to get trapped in our hurt and pain and allow
our shadow and our history to dictate our futur e and
under mine our well-being. When we hold on to our
resentments towar d ourselves or anyone else, we bind
ourselves to the very thing that has caused us pain by a
cord stronger than steel.
_OceanofPDF.com_The_Shadow_Effect_-_Deepak_Chopra.txt
Summarize the following text section accurately and concisely. Maintain specific details and numerical information, and use anti-repetition mechanisms:

        If we r outinely cover
over feelings of loneliness, they may surface in the quiet of
the night as an insatiable hunger for sugar, alcohol, or
sedatives to ﬁll the emptiness we feel. If the rage we wer e
subjected to decades ago is not addr essed and r eleased, it
may seek e xpression by tur ning us in to a nagging par ent or
a bick ering spouse. Maybe our distaste for our cheating
parent causes us to k eep attracting partners who can’t be
trusted and ar e emotionally abusive. It could be that our
normal se xual curiosity was shut down at a young age,
giving rise to an insatiable fascination with illegal
pornography or danger ous se x. However, to fr ee ourselves
from the unmanageable compulsions that cause us to live a
secret life, we must ﬁnd healthy ways to e xpress our
repressed aspects so that we can be safe fr om behaviors
that can sabotage our life. Matthew was the chief of staﬀ at a pr estigious medical
university. He was admir ed by his colleagues and had a
loving wife and thr ee healthy childr en. Although to the outerworld he look ed lik e a pillar of society, he found himself
bored with his intellect and all the accolades that came with
success. One night Matthew r eturned home af ter making
rounds and started watching late-night TV. He became
fascinated by a young actr ess who was star ring in a movie
and decided to go online and check her out. One thing led to
another and, while visiting a por n site, he click ed on an ad
for a local strip club. The images he saw ﬁlled him with
excitement. His mind began to wander, and he fantasized
about stopping by the club on his ne xt day oﬀ. F eeling a bit
of excitement and fear, he rationalized his decision,
reasoning that since the club was located on the other side
of town, he could just put on a baseball cap and avoid being
recognized by anyone he knew. Soon visits to this strip club became Matthew’s r egular
patter n. He found himself gr owing overly attracted to one of
the women and eventually made a date to get together. The
stories he told his wife became mor e and mor e complicated,
with deeper and deeper layers of deception. He began
looking for medical confer ences to attend in obscur e parts
of the country, so he could enjoy a week end of de bauchery
without wor rying about being caught. As se x with his wife
became less fr equent and less e xciting, he became mor e
adventur ous and started taking bigger risks. He even got
into the habit of buying se xy lingerie and outﬁts he could
take with him on his outings to ensur e that his women could
turn him on. One week end, Matthew’s wife, Maria, took his car to dr op
their kids oﬀ at a tennis lesson, and when she opened the
trunk to tak e out their equipment, she noticed a medical
bag she had never seen befor e. After getting her kids to
their lesson, she r eturned to the parking lot and—on an
instinct—opened the bag. She was shock ed to ﬁnd sheer
lingerie, condoms, and an assortment of other se xual
parapher nalia stuﬀed in this small bag. W anting to
understand the e xtent of her husband’s inﬁdelity, she beganlooking thr ough the cr edit-car d bills, the Inter net history on
their computers, and his cell-phone bills. A fter studying his
behavior for a number of weeks, she discover ed just how big
a secr et life Matthew had been leading, which r evolved
around strip clubs, escorts, and countless one-night stands. After several weeks of silent suﬀering, Maria decided to
confr ont Matthew with all the evidence she had uncover ed. With nothing to say and his hidden behaviors now out in the
open, Matthew was faced with the task of unveiling the
unfulﬁlled ur ges that had led him to cr eate such a gap
between his public persona and his private life. As the shock
of the consequences of his secr et life came into clear view,
he was disgusted that his shadow had lur ed him into
behaviors he never dr eamed he would have been capable
of. Like most se x addicts, Matthew needed help and soon
discover ed that it wasn’t just se x he was seeking, but
attention, admiration, and e xcitement. If he had been able
to see and acknowledge these secr et desir es, he could have
sought the support he needed befor e his behavior escalated
out of contr ol. Instead, his shadow caused him to lose his
marriage and his dignity. I have hear d countless people in my seminars over the
years shar e similar stories. W ithout thinking, they became
somebody they never wanted to be. The bottom line is if we
don’t deal with our shadow aspects, our impulses and our
repressed feelings, they will deal with us. As my friend Dr. Charles Richar ds tells us in The Shadow Eﬀect  movie,
“Ignoring our r epressed shadow is lik e locking somebody in
the basement until they have to do something dramatic to
get our attention. ” If we r efuse to uncover them willingly,
we put ourselves at risk of being in the line of ﬁr e of what I
call the Shadow Eﬀect. W ith no r elief in sight for these
repressed parts of ourselves, they tak e on a life of their
own. By r eleasing the guilt and shame we car ry when a part
of our life is housed in the dark, we can instead open thecellar doors and e xchange our secr et life for an authentic
life. When we deny ourselves a safe outlet to e xpress our dark
side—or r efuse to even acknowledge its e xistence—it builds
up and becomes a powerful for ce capable of destr oying our
life as well as the lives of those ar ound us. The mor e we try
to suppr ess the aspects of our personality that we deem
unacceptable, the mor e they ﬁnd mischievous ways of
expressing themselves. The Shadow Eﬀect occurs when our
own r epressed darkness mak es its pr esence known by
driving us to act out in unconscious and une xpected ways. It
occurs when something in the outer world for ces our inner
darkness out of hiding, and we suddenly come face-to -face
with the character traits, behaviors, and feelings that we’ve
kept hidden in our secr et life. The Shadow Eﬀect is not
something we plan. In fact, it’s something that most of us
have invested a lot of time and ener gy in trying to avoid. But when we understand this phenomenon, we can unravel
the mystery of our own self -sabotage. THE SHADOW EFFECT
Imagine that every quality, every emotion, every dark
thought that you try to ignor e, hide, or disown is lik e a
beach ball you ar e holding underwater. You tak e your selﬁsh
self, you tak e your angry self, your too -good self, your not-
good-enough self, your foolish self, your conceited self, all
the selves. And suddenly you’r e overwhelmed with all these
beach balls you’r e trying to manage. When you’r e young,
you have lots of ener gy, so you can manage a lot of beach
balls—you can suppr ess a lot of your unwanted qualities. But then when you’r e tired, heartbr oken, or sick; when you
no longer believe in the possibility of an e xciting futur e;when your defenses ar e down; when your attention is on
your family or some big pr omotion you’r e going to win;
when you’ve had one too many drinks—all of a sudden,
boom. Y ou or someone ar ound you does something without
thinking and one or mor e of your submer ged beach balls
pops up and hits you in the face. This is the Shadow Eﬀect. What is r oad rage. Is it anything mor e than a beach ball of
suppr essed anger for cing its way to the surface. W e see it
in the media all the time. A ﬁlmmak er making deep
Christian ﬁlms all of a sudden gets drunk and shouts anti-
Semitic comments in a drunk en rage. A radio star who
makes his living being a gr eat communicator in one second
makes a racial slur that destr oys his car eer and r eputation. An ambitious young teacher thr ows away her futur e by
having se x with a fourteen- year-old student. A movie star,
with the means to aﬀor d almost anything, gets caught
shoplif ting. All of the suppr essed impulses and hidden ur ges
we have tried to manage ar e like ticking time bombs waiting
to go oﬀ. And what we can e xpect is that the Shadow Eﬀect will
arise at the least opportune time—when we’r e on the ver ge
of ﬁnancial success or in the midst of r omancing a desirable
new partner; when we’r e days away fr om retirement or
about to close a deal that could change our life for ever. These ar e the times when we consciously or unconsciously
sabotage our own success; when one choice, made in the
haze of unconsciousness, under mines the pr ogress we’ve
work ed years to mak e. All self -sabotage is an e xternalization
of the inter nal shame hidden in the dark r ecesses of our
unconscious minds. Because we have not had the wisdom,
courage, or wher ewithal to mak e peace with what we have
suppr essed out of guilt, fear, or shame, it gets for ced out
into the open so that we can r eclaim and embrace our lost
self and r eturn to the transpar ent state of our whole self. It’s not until our self -destructive behaviors ar e no longer a
secret and we see thr ough objective eyes the damage we’r edoing to ourselves and those ar ound us that we ﬁnd the
motivation to change. It’s not until our childr en come home
from school to ﬁnd the electricity cut oﬀ that we’r e willing to
face our gambling addiction. It tak es a DUI ar rest to wak e us
up to the fact that our drinking has spiraled out of contr ol. When we’r e out to dinner with friends and the waiter
announces that our cr edit car d has been declined, we might
ﬁnally have to face the fact that our spending is out of
contr ol. When we get caught dipping into the company
expense account, we ﬁnally r ealize that we must deal with
our entitlement issues. W e can fool ourselves that we ar e
doing all right at work or on our diet—until we get our yearly
review or step on the scale. The Shadow Eﬀect arises as a
potent outer r eﬂection that our inner world is danger ously
out of balance. But as painful as these moments of truth can
be, they can serve to begin a pr ocess of involuntary
evolution. When we ar e confr onted with our shadow and it is
seen by those whose opinions matter to us, we snap out of
denial and hopefully r ecognize that we must do something
about it. If we wer e able to see ourselves accurately, it would be an
easier task. But we can’t, and because of this, it is so easy
to fall into the trance of denial, otherwise known as “ Don’t
Even Notice I Am Lying. ” The lie begins with ourselves. If
we wer e intimate with our dark er impulses—if we knew that
selﬁshness, hatr ed, gr eed, and intolerance have an
important message to deliver—we would heed their
presence in our life, lik e a trusted friend knocking at the
door. But when we alienate our shadow, when out of fear we
refuse to acknowledge or r eceive the messages it is trying
to send, we can be certain that we will do something or
become involved in something that brings our hidden
darkness to the surface. A t these times, the pr overbial
knock on the door feels mor e like a knock in the head; yet
the moments we meet our own disowned darkness ar e notonly some of the most painful, but also the most fertile
times of our life. If we wish to avoid the wrath of the Shadow Eﬀect, we
must do a r eality check with ourselves every day to see if
we ar e acting in ways that could shame, embar rass, or
destr oy our family, car eer, health, or self -esteem. W e must
wake up and consider whether we ar e hiding and denying a
secret life; we must become awar e of habits, behaviors, or
ways of being we ar e keeping fr om others. If we fear what
would happen if our families, cowork ers, or friends look ed
through our e-mails, check ed the history of our most
recently viewed sites on our computers, or r ead the
judgmental, mean thoughts in our minds, we must
recognize these as signs—as ﬂashing r ed lights. Denial is
the culprit that k eeps our secr et life intact and out of sight—
and k eeps us focused on anything but our own indiscr etions. To embrace our shadow and derail the possibility of the
Shadow Eﬀect taking us down, we must open up to a
greater truth about our humanness and what lurks beneath
the surface of the person we believe ourselves to be. When
we engage our minds in investigating the hypocrisy of our
human behavior, we open up to a deeper, mor e meaningful
truth—that all parts of ourselves deserve to be seen, hear d,
and embraced, that every aspect holds a gr eater gif t than
we can see and every feeling deserves healthy e xpression. When they ar e tak en out of the darkness and e xposed to the
light, they will support us in cr eating healthy r elationships,
regaining good mental health, and achieving our potential. The Shadow Eﬀect shatters our perfectly constructed
persona so that we can r einvent ourselves as somebody
other than who we’ve been. Self -sabotage is nothing mor e
than an unwillingness on the part of our higher self to
continue playing the r ole we have assigned to ourselves. Ideally, we embrace our disowned aspects willingly; when
we insist on clinging to our personas, the fallout can be
painful and messy. Ther e are examples of this everywher e. Britney Spears, the all- American Mousek eteer who wor e the
good-girl mask, spirals into self -destruction and becomes a
notorious bad girl. T iger W oods, the all-star golfer with the
nice-guy overachiever mask, acts out and in one day goes
from a super hero to a self -sabotaging cheater. When the
mask of our human persona gets too tight, when ther e is no
more room to gr ow or br eathe, it blows itself up, so that it
can r e-create itself anew. Ther e are literally millions of
examples thr oughout time that clearly demonstrate the
phenomenon of the Shadow Eﬀect. Y et when these little or
massive indiscr etions of others ar e brought to light, we ar e
left shaking our heads, perple xed at their behavior. We call
it a fall fr om grace, but is it r eally a fall fr om grace. Is grace
no mor e than a well-constructed act we show the world,
while our secr et life is hidden fr om those we love. UNCO VERING OUR SHADOW
When we ﬁnd ourselves obsessed with aspects of other
people’s shadows, it is only because they have touched one
of our own. W e are used to thinking that we cannot see
ourselves unless we ar e looking in a mir ror—but this is true
only on one level. The fact is we can see ourselves in living
color by taking note of what we observe in other people. W e
are designed to pr oject onto others the qualities we can’t
see in ourselves. It’s not a bad thing. W e all do it all the
time. P rojection is an involuntary defense mechanism of the
ego; instead of acknowledging the qualities in us that we
dislik e, we pr oject them onto someone else. W e project
them onto our mothers, our kids, our friends, or, even
better, some famous public ﬁgur e we have never even met. Whatever we judge or condemn in another is ultimately a
disowned or r ejected part of ourselves. When we ar e in the
midst of pr ojection, it appears as though we ar e seeing the
other person, but in r eality we ar e seeing a hidden aspect ofourselves. Those we pr oject on hold pieces of our unclaimed
darkness as well as pieces of our unclaimed light. Simultaneously afraid of our own unworthiness as well as
our own gr eatness, we unconsciously transfer these
qualities onto another rather than own them ourselves. You have alr eady e xperienced the power of pr ojection
thousands of times in your life. Y ou walk into a r oom and
feel suddenly enamor ed with someone. Y ou begin a
conversation, and then she starts telling you about her lik es
or dislik es that don’t mesh with your own. Suddenly that
person looks diﬀer ent to you—the trance of pr ojection has
been br oken and you see her in a completely diﬀer ent light. If a moment later she happens to mention that she can get
you courtside tick ets to a game you’ve been dying to see or
that she knows someone who can help you get your latest
project oﬀ the gr ound, you may again see her in a favorable
light and she may seem mor e inter esting. F inally, the
conversation is back on track, but in the very ne xt breath
she starts dr opping names, and when she suddenly r eminds
you of your bragging father -in-law, you feel r epulsed. In
reality, nothing about this person has changed e xcept your
perception of her. This is the power of pr ojection. If you
understand this phenomenon, you will understand why you
can love someone one minute and in the very ne xt moment
ﬁnd that person unbearably annoying. Our unclaimed darkness continually shows itself on the
screen of those ar ound us. W e might see our
submissiveness in our mother, our gr eed in our father, our
laziness in our husband, or our righteous ness in politicians. Projection sounds lik e this: “She’s so self -center ed. ” “ He is
so full of himself. ” “What an idiot. He is such a loser. ”
Projection e xplains why ﬁve siblings can gr ow up in the
same home, and each of them will r ecount a diﬀer ent story
about their par ents, assign them a diﬀer ent set of str engths
and weaknesses, and r emember them as possessing
diﬀer ent characteristics. It’s of ten har d to r ecognize our own bad behavior,
because we ar e continually pr ojecting it on others. The mor e
convinced we ar e of other people’s wr ongdoings, the mor e
likely it is that we ourselves ar e guilty of the same
indiscr etions. A. J. , who tends bar at a popular r estaurant,
was headed home af ter a long day’s work and looking
forwar d to spending a quiet evening with his wife and family. A few short minutes into his drive, he suddenly hear d the
noise behind him that we all dr ead—the squeal of a sir en. As
he pulled over, he sear ched his memory to see what he
could have done, but nothing came to mind. He r olled down
his window, and the oﬃcer ask ed to see his license. After he handed over his ID, the oﬃcer leaned in and
asked him, “Y oung man, have you been drinking. ”
A.
We will not be able to see the truth about ourselves, and our unacknowledged aspects will seek expression in unhealthy ways, potentially leading to self-sabotage and harm to ourselves and those around us.
What is the consequence of ignoring our repressed feelings and impulses?
The author emphasizes that it is crucial to acknowledge and accept our repressed qualities and feelings to avoid the Shadow Effect and break free from self-sabotaging behaviors.
What is the author's message about the importance of acknowledging and accepting our shadow aspects?
The story of A.J., who was initially judgmental and critical of others, but eventually realized he was exhibiting the same behavior and had to confront his own shadow.
What is an example of the Shadow Effect?
By acknowledging and accepting our repressed qualities and feelings, we can break free from self-sabotaging behaviors and take control of our lives.
How can we avoid the Shadow Effect?
The author recommends radical honesty, forgiveness, and compassion to overcome the Shadow Effect, and to integrate our repressed aspects to become a whole and authentic person.
What is the author's suggestion for overcoming the Shadow Effect?