If you pull back fr om the spectacle, however, the whole
drama could have been avoided. An idealized self -image
isn’t a viable solution. Only true self -acceptance is, and
when that happens, ther e is nothing for others to r eject. This doesn’t mean you will be universally loved. Someone
else might still walk away, but if that happens, you won’t
feel r ejected. It won’t r esult in an emotional wound. How do
you know if you ar e falling for a false sense of self, which is
what an idealized self -image is? Y ou will hold such attitudes
as the following:
“I’m not lik e those people. I’m better .”
“I’ve never strayed.”
“God is pr oud of me.”
“Criminals and wr ongdoers ar en’t even human.”
“Everyone sees how good I am. Even so, I need to
remind them.”
“If I don’t have bad thoughts, why do other people?”“I alr eady know who I am and what I need to do . I’m not
conﬂicted.”
“I’m a r ole model.”
“Virtue isn’t its own r ewar d. I want my good deeds to be
validated.”
Dismantling your ideal image of yourself is a challenge,
because this is a much subtler defense than simple denial. Denial is blindness; the idealized self -image is pur e
seduction. The way out is to go past all images. Ther e is no
need to defend who you r eally ar e. Your true self is
acceptable not because you ar e so good, but because you
are complete. All things human belong to you. The most important ally you have is awar eness. Judgment
is constrictive. When you label yourself or anyone else as
bad, wr ong, inferior, unworthy, and so on, you ar e looking
through a nar row lens. Expand your vision and you will be
awar e that everyone, however ﬂawed, is complete and
whole at the deepest level. The mor e awar e you ar e, the
more you will accept yourself . This isn’t an instant solution. You must spend time looking at all the feelings you’ve so
diligently denied, suppr essed, and disguised. F ortunately,
those feelings ar e temporary; you can go beyond them. There’s nothing to r eject, just a lot to work thr ough. This is
how a ﬁgur e like Jesus or Buddha could have compassion for
anyone. By seeing the wholeness behind the play of light
and dark, they found nothing to blame. The same holds true
along the spiritual path you follow . As you see yourself mor e
completely, you will have compassion for your faults, and
that will lead to complete self -acceptance. The One V ersus the Many
The solution: Sur render to being.Finally, we ar rive at the war in your soul. A t this level, the
conﬂict is very subtle, which sounds odd, because we tend
to think that the cosmic battle between God and Satan must
be titanic. In fact, it’s very delicate. As you get closer to
your true self, you begin to sense that you ar e part of
everything. Boundaries sof ten and disappear . Ther e’s a
blissful feeling of mer ging. As beautiful as this e xperience is,
one last r esistance cr ops up. The ego says, “What about
me? I don’t want to die,” lik e the W icked W itch in The
Wizard of Oz,  whose last wor ds wer e “I’m melting, I’m
melting!” The ego has been incr edibly useful. It has guided
you thr ough a world of inﬁnite diversity . Now you ar e about
to experience unity . No wonder the ego feels fatally
threatened; it sees it usefulness (and its domination) come
to an end. The ego mistak es sur render for death. T o be whole
involves sur render . You give up one way of seeing yourself,
and in its place a new way dawns. “Sur render ” isn’t a
welcome wor d to the ego, because it connotes failur e, loss
of contr ol, passivity, the end of power . When you lose an
argument, ar en’t you sur rendering to the winner? Of course. Any situation couched in ter ms of winning and losing mak es
surrender seem weak, shameful, depr essing, and unworthy . These ar e all feelings at the ego level, however . Seen
without ego, sur render becomes natural and desirable. A
mother who gives her childr en what they need isn’t losing,
even though one could say she’s sur rendering her needs in
favor of her childr en’s. That would be a false perspective. When you give of yourself out of love, you lose nothing. In
fact, loving sur render is lik e a gain. Y our sense of self
expands beyond ego -driven needs and desir es—these can
never lead to love. Surrender is not of the mind. Y ou cannot think your way
there. Instead, you must jour ney into pur e consciousness,
befor e wor ds and thoughts arise. That’s the whole purpose
of meditation, to car ry a person beyond the thinking mind,which means beyond conﬂict. It’s easy to believe these days
that everyone knows how to meditate. If you have tried to
meditate and then abandoned the practice, I’d lik e to
suggest that you r eturn. Not all meditations ar e created
alike. Perhaps you wer e taught meditation as a for m of
relaxation or str ess release or as a r oute to silence. These
are all r eal results, but they aim too far short. The most
profound eﬀect of meditation is to transfor m your
awar eness. If you ar en’t e xpanding in consciousness, the
true purpose of going inwar d has been missed. Which is not to label any kind of meditation as wr ong. But
there has to be an intimate rightness that suits you. I’ve
seen people who evolved very quickly using a simple heart
meditation, in which they sat quietly and dir ected their
attention to their hearts, and others who beneﬁted by
quietly following the in-and out-br eaths as they sat with
eyes closed. Eventually one longs to e xperience the true
self completely . This can be achieved by going into the
mantra meditation that originated in V edic India or the
Vipassana techniques of Buddhism, to mention just two
proven methods. Whatever you do, r emain awak e to your
vision of wholeness. Y ou don’t want to tur n meditation into
another kind of conditioning, wher e your mind convinces
itself that it is peaceful or has found silence when both ar e
just pleasant moods or habits. (In his typically blunt way,
Krishnamurti war ned that the worst thing a spiritual path
can do is deliver what you e xpect. Instead of r eaching the
truth, the path has simply tur ned you into a version of your
old self, but “impr oved” by feeling and looking better .) The shadow is a thing of denial, r esistance, hidden fears,
and r epressed hopes. Ther efore, if meditation is working,
these things will begin to diminish. Y ou should be
experiencing the following on your spiritual path:
Life becomes easier, losing its struggle.You feel and act mor e spontaneous. The world no longer brings negative r eﬂections. Your desir es ar e fulﬁlled mor e easily . You ﬁnd happiness in the simplicity of e xistence. Being
here is enough. You gain in self -awar eness, knowing who you r eally ar e.
You feel included in the wholeness of life. If these sound lik e ideal goals, they ar e also noble ones
and fully attainable. In fact, if months pass and you don’t
feel these things incr easing, you need to stand back and
reexamine your path. I’m not implying that your practice is
wrong or defective. Ther e are lulls and delays in personal
evolution for everyone, because some issues tak e time to
work out. Much of this working out tak es place out of sight,
in the deeper r eaches of the unconscious. Artists ar e well
awar e of this; their muse doesn’t answer on a time
schedule. On the other hand, ther e may be serious r easons
why the true self isn’t unfolding:
Excessive str ess
Emotional pr essur es
Distractions
Depr ession and anxiety
Lack of discipline or commitment
Opposing intentions—seeking mor e than one way of life
The spiritual path delivers everything; it can r esolve all
conﬂicts. But we e xpect too much of it when we ask for a
panacea. Spiritual unfoldment is delicate. It can’t be
reached when your mind is too agitated or your attention
overwhelmed by str ess and other outside pr essur es. In other
words, wholeness is a cur e-all, but not an instant cure-all.You need to pr epare the right conditions for going inwar d. To
that end, each of the obstacles I’ve listed has to be dealt
with. Str ess, depr ession, anxiety, and distractions won’t
suddenly end just because you sit down for half an hour
with your eyes shut. I hope that doesn’t sound too blunt,
because when you tak e even small steps to pr epare the
ground for meditation, it yields r esults that cannot be had
any other way . This is the r oyal r oad to consciousness, and
consciousness is whole. In Summary
I will end as I began, with a physician’s instinct for
diagnosis, tr eatment, and pr ognosis. The shadow has
outwitted and outlasted many appr oaches, yet some people
have succeeded, and not just the gr eat names lik e Jesus and
Buddha. The for ce of evolution is inﬁnitely str onger than the
obstacles that block its way . You only have to gaze ar ound
you at the natural world to see the pr oof that beauty, for m,
order, and gr owth have survived for billions of years. In
dealing with your shadow, you ar e aligning yourself with the
same inﬁnite power . After all is said and done, the
requir ements ar e not comple x:
1. Acknowledge your shadow when it brings
negativity into your life. 2. Embrace and for give your shadow . Turn an
unwanted obstacle into your ally . 3. Ask yourself what conditions ar e giving rise
to the shadow : stress, anonymity,
permission to do har m, peer pr essur e,
passivity, dehumanizing conditions, an “us
versus them” mentality .4. Share your feelings with someone you trust:
a therapist, trusted friend, good listener,
counselor, or conﬁdante. 5. Include a physical component: body work,
energy release, yogic br eathing, hands- on
healing. 6. To change the collective, change yourself—
projecting and judging “them” as evildoers
only incr eases the shadow’s power . 7. Practice meditation in or der to e xperience
pure consciousness, which is beyond the
shadow . I’ve laid out a vision of unity as the solution to the shadow . The instant that life is split into good and evil, the self
follows suit. A divided self cannot mak e itself whole. Ther e
must be another level of life that is whole alr eady. Casting
their eyes over the invisible world, the ancient sages of
India r ealized that it was indescribable. The V edic scriptur es
from thousands of years ago wer e the ﬁrst to declar e,
“Those who know it speak of it not. Those who speak of it
know it not.”
But of course people wer en’t thrilled to hear this teaching. They wanted help with their everyday pr oblems. If a vision
cannot be tur ned into practice, it’s arid and useless. The
ancient sages wer en’t trying to discourage their listeners. Quite the opposite, they wer e trying to give a r eliable map,
and wher e that map leads is to unity consciousness. My aim
in this part of the book has been to draw the same map in
vivid, moder n colors. Now it’s up to you to follow it. The
shadow isn’t a fearsome opponent, but a worthy one. Powerful as it is, the power of wholeness is inﬁnitely gr eater,
and by a miracle of cr eation it is within your grasp. OceanofPDF .comPART II
OceanofPDF .comMaking Peace with Ourselves, Others, and the
World
DEBBIE FORD
The story of the human being and the human psyche has
been e xamined, studied, and written about since the
beginning of our e xistence. Although it’s been r esear ched
and dissected by brilliant think ers, e xplor ed and e xplained
by the gr eatest intellects of all time, most of us ar e still
living in the dark, perple xed by the behavior of our friends,
our family members, our idols, and—mor e often than not—
ourselves. Disappointed by the condition of our own lives,
we for ge ahead each day hoping that our dark er impulses
and bad behaviors will miraculously disappear . Hurt time and again by the ﬂaws that we can’t seem to
shake free of, we silently pray that we will ﬁnd the courage
to give up our pr ocrastination, our overspending, our
chocolate, our r esentments, or our sharp tongues. Y et we
continue to succumb to our lower impulses, sabotage our
own desir es, and neglect our futur e. In an attempt to hide
our discontent, we put on a happy face, muster our best
“everything is ﬁne” look, and continue acting out in ways
that under mine our self -esteem and defeat our best-laid
plans. In the course of raising our childr en, chasing success, and
struggling to put enough away for vacation or r etirement,
answers to the very questions that will help us gr ow elude
us. Our deeper year ning for self -understanding gets buried
beneath the daily news, family issues, a health crisis, or a
common cold. An indignant neighbor, a disgruntled e x, or achild who has lost their way will literally suck the hours out
of our days and the money out of our bank accounts while
twisting our minds into believing that we can’t and won’t
ever have everything we want. Sometimes, we even for get
that we ever wanted anything diﬀer ent fr om what we have. The r epetitiveness of our to xic memory can lur e us into
years of accepting mor e of the same and wasting away in a
mediocr e existence that fails to meet even our own
expectations. Unfortunately, this method of survival strips us of the
ability to live the life that we wer e meant to live. The
emotional pain that surfaces as part of everyday life has us
wish away our past and become r esigned about our futur e.
If we feel we have been deceived or conned or that we have
acted out of character, we become victims of the past and
hopeless about what’s to come. Cynical and sk eptical, we
fall pr ey to judgment, opting to point our ﬁnger at others
rather than look inside ourselves for the answers to our
woes. The r obotic natur e of our egocentric self rises up to
help us over come our feelings of insecurity and shame by
protesting our innocence and pr oclaiming our diﬀer ences. We think that if only we could just get that one person or
thing to change, we would feel better . We believe that if we
handle the one issue that we k eep complaining about or get
that one thing that we’ve been striving for, we will be happy . Rather than taking the time to pier ce the veil between who
we think we ar e and who we r eally want to be, we allow the
illusional life of a self that e xists in our minds to be in
contr ol. The pr oblem with this appr oach to life is that it pr events
us from discovering our true self, and it endangers the ar eas
of our lives that ar e most important to us. When we ar e
busy pr otecting ourselves fr om the demons that lurk in the
dark, we miss out on feeling joyful, fulﬁlled, and deeply
connected with those we love. Intent on hiding the dark erhalf of our human natur e, we fail to r each our full potential
and e xperience the depth and richness of our lives. We wer e bor n whole, and yet most of us ar e living as
partial human beings. W e each have the capacity to be an
important part of a grander whole. W e have the capacity to
leave this world a better place than we found it. W e are
meant to discover our authentic natur e—the state of being
in which we ar e inspir ed by ourselves, tur ned on, lit up, and
excited about who we ar e. We are meant to over come
adversity and manifest the gr eatest version of our own
individual soul, not a version of a self that is birthed out of a
fantasy . Big, blown- out fantasies about our lives stem fr om
the pain of our unr ealized potential, but true dr eams ar e a
reality we ar e willing to work for, ﬁght for, stay up late for—
this is a futur e that is within our r each. And ther e is only one
thing that can r ob us of that futur e, and that is our shadow—
our dark side, our secr ets, our r epressed feelings, and our
hidden impulses. The gr eat Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung tells us that our
shadow is the person we would rather not be. The shadow
can be seen in the person in our family whom we judge the
most, the public oﬃcial whose behavior we condemn, the
celebrity who causes us to shak e our head in disgust. If we
understand this cor rectly, we come to the startling and
sometimes sobering r ealization that our shadow is
everything that annoys, hor riﬁes, or disgusts us about other
people or about ourselves. W ith that wisdom in hand, we
begin to see that our shadow is all that we try to hide fr om
those we love and all that we don’t want other people to
ﬁnd out about us. Our shadow is made up of the thoughts, emotions, and
impulses that we ﬁnd too painful, embar rassing, or
distasteful to accept. So instead of dealing with them, we
repress them—seal them away in some part of our psyche,
so we won’t have to feel the bur den and shame they car ry
with them. P oet and author R obert Bly describes the shadowas an invisible bag that each of us car ries ar ound on our
back. As we’r e growing up, we put in the bag every aspect
of ourselves that is not acceptable to our families and
friends. Bly believes we spend the ﬁrst few decades of our
life ﬁlling up our bag, and then the r est of our life trying to
retrieve everything we’ve hidden away . Our shadow, ﬁlled with r hetoric and a hypocritical set of
rules that we can never adher e to, leads us to glorif y some
and demonize others. It began with the teacher who called
us stupid, the bully who taunted us, or the ﬁrst love who
ever abandoned us. W e have all hidden away and r epressed
pain-ﬁlled, shame-ﬁlled moments, and, over time, these
emotions har den into our shadow . These ar e the
unexpressed fears, the hor rifying shame, the gnawing guilt. These ar e all the issues of the past that we have never
faced. Our shadow might stem fr om one deﬁning moment,
and most do, or it can accumulate over years of denial. As
the shadow tak es shape, we begin to lose access to a
fundamental part of our true natur e. Our gr eatness, our
compassion, and our authenticity get buried beneath the
parts of ourselves that we’ve disconnected fr om. Then our
shadow gains the upper hand. It can trick us into believing
that we ar e too unworthy, incapable, undeserving,
unlovable, or stupid to be the superstar of our own life. It is our dark side, the r epressed and disowned aspects of
our personality, that cuts us oﬀ our true self . The fact is that
whatever we have hidden away in shame or denied out of
fear holds the k ey to unlock a self that we feel pr oud of, a
self that inspir es us, a self that is pr opelled into action by
great vision and purpose rather than one that is cr eated out
of our limitations and the unhealed wounds of our past. This
is why we must e xplor e our shadow . This is why we must
unveil and r eclaim our whole self, our true natur e. This is
why we must look within to e xamine the underpinnings of
our life. Hidden her e is the blueprint, a template, a vision of
our authentic self .My own study of the shadow began as I made the
transition fr om a clumsy pr eadolescent to a pr etty young
teen. Confused and alone, I set oﬀ on a jour ney to ﬁt in. I
work ed har d to feel good about myself, despite the fact that
I was riddled with insecurities about everything fr om being a
friend and girlfriend to being a sister and daughter . I fought
to understand why I felt so bad about who I was. The voices
in my head that seemed to overtak e me—even at the young
age of twelve—ﬁlled me with endless loops of dark thoughts
and negative feedback: “Why did you say that?” “ Don’t be
silly; he will never lik e you,” “Y ou’re an idiot,” “ Don’t stand
too tall; people will be jealous of you,” and on and on and
on. I found it odd and confusing listening to these voices
inside my head, because one minute they wer e telling me
that I was nothing but a spoiled, r otten brat and the ne xt
they wer e convincing me that I was better, pr ettier, smarter,
and mor e talented than everyone else. An inter nal war raged inside my psyche. F irst it was,
“You’re great!” and then, “Y ou’re nothing but a little liar .”
“Everyone lik es you because you ar e kind and war m,” and a
few minutes later, “Y ou ar e a cold-hearted bitch who doesn’t
deserve to have any friends.” These voices lef t me utterly
confused about who I was. The coe xistence of the positive
messages and the negative war nings cr eated so much
havoc within me that I was either crying hysterically or
going out of my way to spr ead good feelings to anyone who
was willing to r eceive my love. They called it hor mones at
the time. Er ratic behavior was e xpected of a girl my age,
but mine was a bit mor e melodramatic, which ear ned me
the title of the neighbor hood drama queen. A t last I had
ﬁnally won a pageant, e xcept this cr own came with many
negative pr ojections fr om my family and lots of laughs fr om
family friends who wer e privy to my private shame. I began
to feel mor e and mor e powerless over my inter nal
chattering, until I came to the conclusion that ther e was
deﬁnitely something wr ong with me and ther e was nothingthat I could do to ﬁx it. I tried with all my might to silence
these voices, to mak e them shut up, by trying to convince
myself that I was r eally ok ay. My moments of peace and
happiness became less and less fr equent, unless I was
fortunate enough to be caught up in listening to a gr eat
song or playing with my friends. But in the quietness of a
shower or an early mor ning rush to school, it became har der
and har der to br eak fr ee of the stranglehold of my inter nal
demons, whose voices sounded lik e a chur ch choir singing
out of tune. Instead of feeling compassionate, kind, and
gentle towar d myself, I felt hopeless, hostile, and angry . As my inter nal discomfort r ose, I began to sear ch for what
might silence my ugly little mind and mak e me feel better
about myself . My sear ch for feel-good moments began with
certain foods: Sara L ee br ownies and a liter of Cok e seemed
to do the trick. I lear ned how to silently slip into my par ents’
room during dinner, go into their wallets, and steal the
change I needed to get my daily ﬁx. It started oﬀ quite
easily, because the 7-Eleven was right acr oss the str eet
from our home on F orty-sixth A venue in Hollywood, Florida. As months went by, that ﬁx was just not enough. The
noisy, dark voices fr om inside somehow lear ned to slip
through my sugar -induced feel-good moments. I had to ﬁnd
something else to manage these unwanted br eak-ins and
put a smile back on my face—even if those smiles wer e met
with the occasional inter nal voice thr eatening to “ wipe that
smile oﬀ your face.”
My inner hunger to feel good soon became gr eater than
my need to be lik ed or to be per ceived as a good or “decent
young lady .” I was over come with the impulse to change the
way I felt. My sugar addiction quickly tur ned into something
greater, as I pick ed up my ﬁrst cigar ette and a sampling of
drugs. P ot, which was never my thing, tur ned into pills,
placidillies, or downers, as they wer e called in those days. These escalated into psychedelics that led me to a plethora
of other substances. As I succeeded in using drugs to cr eatemoments of complete peace—the mantra of almost every
popular song back then—I ingrained into my young psyche a
way of thinking and behaving that said to feel good I
needed to look outside myself for something to mak e me
feel better . Over time I lear ned that the scary impulses that of ten
came out in my behavior wer e not meant to be e xamined or
expressed, but rather should be hidden and r epressed, no
matter what the cost. Slowly I slipped away fr om any
semblance of the innocent child I once was and cr eated an
outer persona that e xuded conﬁdence and success. The
more I played in the darkness of my own human demons,
the str onger the impulse to hide my feelings of shame and
unworthiness. I began to over compensate for my
weaknesses by becoming char ming, friendly, str eet-smart,
and savvy in the outer world. Although I struggled
desperately in school, because I was too busy listening to
the craziness in my mind rather than the teacher in the
room, I wrapped myself up in a pack age that look ed
somewhat smart and pr etended to be an opinionated know-
it-all, hoping that I could fool everyone, including myself,
into believing that I wasn’t the dumb little sister of Linda
and Michael F ord. I watched what the rich girls wer e wearing, and either I
begged my par ents to buy me the knock- oﬀs or I met with a
group of kids at the mall on Satur day mor nings to steal what
I didn’t have, so no one would ﬁnd out that I was fr om a
middle-class Jewish family . I didn’t think being a Jewish girl
was cool and had hear d mor e than my shar e of nasty
Jewish-girl jok es, so I studied how the town shiksas (the
pretty non- Jewish girls—usually blonde) wer e behaving and
took on some of their characteristics and behaviors as part
of my car efully designed mask to hide my inner ﬂaws and
imperfections. It was a game I didn’t even know I was playing at the
time. If I discover ed something about myself that was notacceptable to my ego ideal, I would sear ch the outer world
to see who was acceptable, and with the sensibilities of a
true artist I sculpted the new me, giving the illusion that I
was the person I wanted to be rather than the person I
feared I was. The pr oblem was that no matter how much I
over-compensated for the parts of myself that I fear ed or
was ashamed of, in the silence of my own mind I knew the
truth about who I was under neath my public mask. Although
some could see thr ough the glorious act that I had cr eated,
for the most part I had become a successful human being
because I could fool those ar ound me. I trick ed people into believing my smok e-and-mir rors act. I
was able to enr oll people in my happy life by smiling and
spouting my many accomplishments of the day . Or I could
invite them into one of my other favorite nar ratives—“W oe
is me”—wher e I played the part of the damsel in distr ess. Either way, I became a master at hiding not just fr om
others, but also, and most of all, fr om myself . I didn’t know
who I was or what I r eally wanted. I didn’t know what truly
made me happy or what lef t me feeling empty and devoid
of emotions. My shadow was in contr ol, even though, in all
my ar rogance, I believed I was the one in char ge. Truly the
dark side had won, until my persona came crumbling down. Just lik e Humpty Dumpty, who fell to the gr ound, by the
time I was twenty -seven I was stripped of my “I have it all
together,” know-it-all persona and lef t wailing on the ﬂoor of
a drug tr eatment center . It was ther e that I came face-to -
face with the r eal Debbie F ord—with all of her ﬂaws,
weakness, and disowned qualities as well as her gif ts,
strengths, and deeply hidden inner needs. It was ther e that I
knew I was mor e than I could ever even imagine and that I
was nothing but one of six billion human beings struggling
to mak e peace with their dark side and their human
vulnerabilities. It was during this very humbling meeting with myself that
I committed to lear ning about who and what I was and why Ifelt compelled to do the things I did. It was at this pivotal
time in my life that I began to understand the human
shadow and the eﬀect it had on my life and the lives of
those ar ound me—not as a theory in a te xtbook, but as a
woman struggling to deal with her own unwanted feelings
and deep insecurities. Driven by deep feelings of loneliness that came fr om not
understanding who I was or why I was her e, I began my
journey of becoming intimate with my dark side, my shadow
self. This moment of r eckoning became a catalyst for living a
life beyond my wildest dr eams. It has led me to study,
grapple with, and dwell in not only my own human behavior,
but the behavior of hundr eds of thousands of people whom I
have been privileged to guide into the ter ritory of their
unclaimed self and the glorious discovery of a life yet to be
lived. It is not my light that has led me to the wisdom I have
shared in my last seven books, but my battle with my dark
side (and the ultimate sur render in the war within) that has
been my guide and continued inspiration. It is the very
darkness that I spent the ﬁrst part of my life running away
from that is now my passion and my fuel to help lead others
in this magical jour ney thr ough the human psyche into living
in the light of their gr eatest e xpression. It is a spiritual call,
a higher voice that asks me to ask you: Ar e you r eady to
embark on this jour ney of r eclaiming all of yourself, the light
and the dark, your good self and your evil twin? Ar e you
ready to r eturn to the love of your true, total, authentic self
rather than stay trapped in the judgmental angst of a
disjointed human ego? Becoming intimate with your shadow is one of the most
fascinating and fruitful inquiries you can ever embark upon. It is a mysterious jour ney that will lead you to ﬁnd your most
authentic self—a place wher e you feel at home with who
you ar e, wher e you r ecognize your weaknesses and your
strengths, wher e you can bask in your gif ts, admit to yourimperfections, and admir e your gr eatness. This self that is
hidden beneath the mask of your human persona is the self
that you ar e thrilled to be, a self that knows who it is and
who honors the human jour ney. This self that you will
discover as you embrace mor e and mor e of your hidden and
disowned aspects is a self that oﬀers you the conﬁdence to
speak your truth and pursue what’s truly important to you. It’s ir onic that to ﬁnd the courage to lead an authentic life,
you will have to go into the dark r ooms of your most
inauthentic self . You have to confr ont the very parts of
yourself that you fear most to ﬁnd what you have been
looking for, because the mechanism that drives you to
conceal your darkness is the same mechanism that has you
hide your light. What you’ve been hiding fr om can actually
give you what you’ve been trying har d to achieve. THE INFL UENCE OF THE SHADOW
From its invisible home deep within our psyche, the shadow
wields enor mous power over our life. It deter mines what we
can and cannot do, what we will be ir resistibly drawn
towar d, and what we will do almost anything to avoid. It
explains the mystery of our attractions and our r epulsions
and deter mines what we will love and what we will judge
and criticize. Our shadow inﬂuences what race or class of
people we will appr ove of or r elate to, whether we will be
religious or an atheist, what party we will vote with, and
which causes we will support and which we will ignor e. It
tells us how much money we ar e entitled to ear n and
deter mines whether we spend it wisely or piss it away . It is
our shadow, our hidden self, that dictates how much
success we’r e entitled to cr eate or how much failur e we’r e
doomed to e xperience. The shadow deter mines the degr ee
of car e or neglect we give our body, the amount of e xtra
weight we car ry around our belly, and the level of pleasur ewe allow ourselves to feel, give, and r eceive. The shadow
casts us into pr eassigned r oles that we blindly follow in
everything fr om work to love. Unbeknownst to us, the
shadow is the author of a pr ewritten script that springs into
action in times of fear, pain, or conﬂict or when we ar e just
going about our business on autopilot. If lef t une xamined,
our shadow will emer ge from the darkness to sabotage our
life when we least e xpect and want it. Our shadow deter mines whether we will r espect our
childr en and trust that they will gr ow up to be independent,
capable adults or whether we will try to mold them into
everything that we ar e not. When back ed into a cor ner, will
we lash out in rage or will we withdraw into venomous
silence? The shadow is an oracle that can pr edict all of our
behaviors and r eveal what mak es us the people we ar e
today . It decides whether we will be pr oductive, inspiring
members of society or invisible lost souls. When we e xpose
our dark side, we understand how our personal history
dictates the way we tr eat those ar ound us—and how we
treat ourselves. This is why it’s imperative that we unmask
it and understand it. T o do this, we must uncover what
we’ve hidden and befriend the very impulses and
characteristics that we abhor . Our shadow deter mines whether we will live a happy,
successful, and str ess-fr ee existence or whether we will
struggle with our ﬁnances, our r elationships, our car eer, our
temper, our integrity, our self -image, or an addiction. The I
Ching  tells us, “It is only when we have the courage to face
things e xactly as they ar e, without any self -deception or
illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the
path to success may be r ecognized.” Only in the pr esence of
an unwavering commitment to facing our demons does the
doorway to self -discovery open. We cannot jour ney into the dark side for a quick dip or an
afternoon liaison. T o understand our shadow completely
takes a willingness to let go of what we think we know . Ittakes the for ce of a caged lion to br eak open the cellar
doors that we ourselves chained closed many moons ago . The gr eat news is that we wer e bor n with a bur ning desir e to
evolve and gr ow, to open up, to e xpand and be whole. And I
am going to assert that we all have at least one place wher e
we secr etly desir e to be mor e, to have mor e, to e xperience
more. It is her e that our shadow is waiting patiently for us to
come r etrieve our power fr om the dark r ecesses of our
unconscious mind. When we ﬁrst come in contact with our dark side, our
initial instinct is to tur n away and our second is to bar gain
with it to leave us alone. Many of us have spent vast
amounts of time and money in an eﬀort to do just that. Ironically, it’s these hidden aspects and r ejected feelings
that need the most attention. When we lock ed away those
parts of ourselves we didn’t lik e, we unknowingly sealed
away our most valuable gif ts. The r eason for doing shadow
work is to become whole, to end our suﬀering, to stop hiding
from ourselves. Once we do this, we can stop hiding fr om
the rest of the world. We must embrace our shadow in or der to know the
freedom of living a transpar ent life, so that we feel fr ee
enough to invite others into our life—to let others know the
truth about our ﬁnances, our pastimes, and our r elationships
—without being gripped by the fear that our public persona
will come unraveled, e xposing the person we’ve been trying
hard not to be. When our pr ecious ener gy isn’t tied up in
hiding fr om or over compensating for our self -destructive
impulses, we ar e gifted with the clarity and the motivation
we need to build an unshak able foundation for an inspiring
futur e.
OUR DU ALISTIC SELFThe shadow lurks, deceives, hides, and cons us into
believing what we can and cannot do . It drives us to smok e,
gamble, drink, and eat that which mak es us feel bad the
next day . Our shadow gives rise to the hypocritical
behaviors that cause us to violate our personal boundaries
and our own integrity . It is a for ce that can only be r eckoned
with by bringing it into the light of our awar eness and
examining what we ar e made of . We possess every human
characteristic and emotion, whether active or dor mant,
whether conscious or unconscious. Ther e is nothing we can
conceive of that we ar e not. W e are everything—that which
we consider good and that which we consider bad. How
could we know courage if we have never known fear? How
could we know happiness if we never e xperienced sadness? How could we know light if we never knew dark? All these pairs of opposites e xist within us because we ar e
dualistic beings made up of opposing for ces. This means
that every quality we can see in another e xists within
ourselves. W e are the micr ocosm of the macr ocosm,
meaning within our DNA structur e we have the imprint of
every characteristic. W e are capable of both the gr eatest
acts of selﬂessness and the most destructive, self -punishing
crimes. When viewed in the full light of our awar eness, our
shadow e xposes the duality and the truth of both our human
self and our divine self, as they both pr ove to be essential
ingredients of a whole authentic human being. We have to uncover, own, and embrace all of who we ar e
—the good and bad, the light and the dark, the selﬂess and
the selﬁsh, and the honest and dishonest parts of our
personality . It is our birthright to be whole, to have it all. But
to do this, we must be willing to tak e an honest look at
ourselves and step out beyond our judgmental mind. It is
here that we will have a life-altering shif t in per ception, an
opening of our heart. The good news is that every aspect of ourselves comes
bearing gif ts. Every emotion and every trait we possesshelps show us the way back to oneness. Our dark side e xists
to point out wher e we ar e still incomplete, to teach us love,
compassion, and for giveness—not just for others, but also
for ourselves. And when the shadow is embraced, it will heal
our heart and open us up to new opportunities, new
behaviors, and a new futur e. When we bring our shadow,
our hidden emotions and our life-draining beliefs, into the
light of our conscious awar eness, it will transfor m the way
we see ourselves, others, and the world. Then we ar e free. Dealing with our shadow is a comple x but guaranteed
journey back to love. Not just love of another, but love for
each and every characteristic that lives within you and
within me—a love that allows us to embrace the richness of
our humanity and the holiness of our divinity . Having faced
our own inter nal demons, we ar e ﬁlled with peace and
compassion in the pr esence of other people’s dark side. W e
can for give and let go of our demeaning judgments and our
resentful heart. W e can tap into the humility of Gandhi and
the tolerance of Martin L uther King, Jr ., and draw forth the
strength and the courage to deal with the issues that haunt
us. “Ther e but for the grace of God go I” tak es on a whole
new meaning when we can view evil thr ough the universal
lens of our humanity . Exploring our dark side is the gateway
to understanding why we do what we do, why we
sometimes act in ways that ar e contrary to the desir es of
our conscious mind, and why we spend countless hours,
days, months, or years judging others and holding on to
grudges that only bring us headache, heartache, and dis-
ease. All of us have moments fr om the past when our emotional
pain was too much for us to bear, so we r epressed it within
the darkness of our shadow . This is an unavoidable part of
life. W e can run, but we can’t hide. Our shadow is always
linked back to one traumatic event or a combination of
painful moments. When we truly understand our shadow
and its gif ts, ther e are no ﬁngers to point or blame to caston our par ents, our teachers, or our past, because our
shadow is a delivery system for an e xtraor dinary futur e.
Understanding how our shadow was for med unlocks the
door to enor mous personal power and pr ofound wisdom. THE BIR TH OF THE SHADOW
The birth of our shadow occur red when we wer e young,
befor e our logical thinking mind was developed enough to
ﬁlter the messages we r eceived fr om par ents, car egivers,
and the world at lar ge. Even with the best of car egivers, we
inevitably wer e shamed for displaying certain qualities. W e
received the message that something about us was wr ong
or that in some way we wer e bad. As childr en, we might
have been told that we wer e too loud. Instead of sof tening
our voice, knowing ther e would again come a time to be
loud, our fragile, unfor med ego may have tak en this
comment to mean that our unabashed self -expression was
wrong and should be hidden fr om others. Or maybe we wer e
called selﬁsh, because we took mor e than our fair shar e of
cookies fr om the plate. Instead of understanding the cookies
were to be shar ed, we made it mean that our selﬁshness
was bad and should be destr oyed. Or we got e xcited and
yelled out an answer in elementary school, and suddenly all
the kids wer e staring at us, laughing. Instead of laughing
with them, we made it mean that we wer e stupid and we
should never tak e a risk again. These negative messages
got ingrained into our subconscious lik e a computer virus,
altering our per ception of ourselves and causing us to shut
down those aspects of our personality that we or others
deemed unacceptable. Each time a behavior of ours was met with harsh criticism
or senseless punishment, we unconsciously separated fr om
our authentic self, our true self . And once these negative
ﬁlters wer e ﬁrmly in place, we wer e separated fr om our joy,our passion, and our ever -loving heart. T o ensur e our
emotional survival, we began the pr ocess of trying to cover
up our true self in or der to become who we believed would
be an acceptable version of a self that would belong. W ith
each r ejection, we cr eated mor e and mor e inter nal
separation, building thick er and thick er invisible walls to
protect our tender and sensitive heart. Day by day,
experience af ter experience, we unknowingly constructed
an invisible fortr ess that became our false self . This fortr ess
of limited e xpression obscur ed our essence, hiding our
vulnerabilities, our sensitivities, and of ten our ability to
know and see the truth of who we ar e.
Befor e our malleable self har dened into a mor e rigid ego
ideal, we had the fr eedom to e xpress every aspect of our
humanity . We had multiple emotional r esponses to any
event in our life. Unbur dened by shame or judgment, we
had access to all parts of ourselves. This fr eedom meant
that we could be anything we wanted to be at any given
moment. Ther e wer e no inter nal restraints to pr event us
from stepping into the r ole of the sought-af ter object of
attention or the jealous, wick ed stepsister . Befor e we
learned to judge one quality as better than another, we had
unrestricted access to the full range of e xpression that
resides within us. W e could tap into elegance, grace,
courage, cr eativity, honesty, integrity, assertiveness,
sexiness, power, brilliance, gr eed, frugalness, laziness,
arrogance, and incompetence as easily as we could change
our clothes. Life was a play when we granted all parts of ourselves the
permission to e xist. Each day was an opportunity for
complete self -expression. And best of all, if we didn’t lik e the
way our story was tur ning out, all we had to do is go into our
room, wrap a cape ar ound our shoulders, bring forth a
diﬀer ent character, and—voilà—we could r ewrite the script
and cr eate a gr eat new ending or even an entir ely diﬀer ent
story . We could tur n a drama into a comedy or a boring epicinto a fabulous adventur e. Ther e wer e countless
possibilities, and we wer e curious to e xplor e them all. Once the shadow was bor n, however, our self -expression
became stiﬂed and mor e serious. W e lear ned fr om our
parents, teachers, friends, and society that to win love and
acceptance we had to adher e to certain pr ewritten scripts. As we went to school, wer e exposed to media, and
interacted with a wider cir cle of people, we observed that
certain behavioral traits wer e demonized, criticized, or
denied love and acceptance while others wer e idolized and
shower ed with attention. F rom this time on, we distanced
ourselves fr om any part of ourselves that did not ﬁt into
society’s standar ds or our own ego ideals. W e rejected mor e
and mor e aspects of ourselves for all kinds of r easons—
some because they seemed too bold, others because they
were too silly or foolish. We tried to ﬁgur e out ways to get rid of these unwanted
aspects of our persona until one day we got so distracted
that we for got they e xisted at all. W ith everyone giving us
diﬀer ent messages about which of our many faces we
should show the world, it became safer to listen to the
voices of authority rather than trust in our authentic natur e.
Soon we found ourselves with only a limited range of
emotions. Our self -expression was stiﬂed; the endless
possibilities that wer e once in fr ont of us nar rowed to just
the few . We lear ned how to shut oﬀ life and actually became
comfortable doing it. Eventually we identiﬁed with the
internal character we believed to be most acceptable to
those ar ound us—and chances ar e we ar e still playing some
version of that r ole to this day . We may mak e little changes
here and ther e, but when we tak e an honest look, we may
see that we’ve never r eally r einvented ourselves completely . Chances ar e we’r e like most people—we ﬁx ourselves up a
bit, put a patch over the parts of our lives that ar en’t
working, and cr eate a slightly new version of who we’ve
been. By the time we move thr ough our thirties, most of ourchoices ar e already pr edeter mined in one or mor e areas of
our life. Even the clothes we wear, the foods we eat, the
types of entertainment we seek. The things we fantasize
about ar e even r epetitive and monotonous. As we become mor e present and awar e, we begin to see
how r obotic and trapped we r eally ar e inside the personas
we’ve cr eated. And we can choose to tak e proactive
measur es to deal with the shadows that ar e keeping us
bound and try to br eak fr ee. If we don’t deal with these
shadows, mak e no mistak e—they will deal with us. They will
show up in our r elationships and separate us fr om those we
love, k eep us tied to a job or lifestyle that we outgr ew years
ago, or lead us to an addiction or habits that under mine our
success and happiness. They will blind us fr om seeing the
warning signs of an abusive r elationship or a bad business
deal. They will k eep us in a state of perpetual denial, and in
that state we fail to help those we love when they most
need us, when they ar e faced with their own demons. Every one of us has constructed an ego -based identity in
which we have assigned ourselves an acceptable r ole that
eventually smothers our full self -expression. R ather than
being who we r eally ar e, we become a characterization of
the person we think we “should” be. Over time, our stiﬂed
self-perception becomes the perfect br eeding gr ound for our
shadows to tak e root. Whether this r ole was cr eated to
compensate for some inadequacy that we believed e xisted
within ourselves or as a strategy to meet the e xpectations
of our par ents, car egivers, or friends—if we strive to fulﬁll
our ego’s r ole to the e xclusion of all other r oles that we
could potentially enjoy, we end up cr eating a life devoid of
depth, adventur e, meaning, and ﬂavor . As we begin taking
our assigned r oles too seriously, they get sealed into our
ego structur e. Rarely do we deviate fr om the identity we’ve
created, because we fall into the illusional state of denial
and start to believe we are that identity . Looking ar ound ourown lives, most of us can r ecognize the limitations and
repetitiveness of the r oles we play . Of course, it’s much easier to spot the r oles that our
friends and family members ar e playing than it is to spot our
own. W e can identif y the martyr who will volunteer at the
PTA and tak e on mor e than her fair shar e of the workload
(and then complain about it later), or the neighbor hood
charmer who is pr etending to be super -dad while secr etly
cheating on his wife. W e know who lik es to play the part of
the gossip whor e, who knows the dirt about everyone and
everything (and looks for every opportunity to shar e it). W e
are familiar with the local drama queen, who is always being
victimized in one way or another (whether it’s by getting in
a fender bender or because her husband didn’t bring home
enough money last month). It’s easy to spot the eter nal
optimist who is always the life of the party or the wallﬂower
who always sits passively on the sidelines. What’s incr edible
is that even if the r ole we’ve assigned ourselves is boring,
miserable, r epetitive, or joyless, we cling to it for dear life,
all the while rationalizing why we can’t be mor e than we
already ar e or have mor e than we cur rently do . Unknowingly
we ar e the ones who have typecast ourselves to play some
version of the same character year af ter year and rar ely—if
ever—do we allow ourselves to ventur e into a r ole that we
aren’t familiar with or a level of self -expression we don’t yet
know . If we operate inside the myth that we must squelch, kill
oﬀ, lock up, and hide all of the qualities that mak e us
interesting and unique, we forsak e our right to e xperience
passion and peace. The quest for the perfect life, the perfect
role, and the perfect persona will always leave us unfulﬁlled
—even if we attain it—for the simple r eason that we ar e
much mor e than the small handful of qualities that ﬁt neatly
into our ego ideal. In the pr ocess of trying to e xpress only
those aspects of ourselves that we believe will guarantee us
the acceptance of others, we suppr ess some of our mostvaluable and inter esting featur es and sentence ourselves to
a life of r eenacting the same drama with the same outwor n
script. In this quest for safety and pr edictability, our range of
self-expression shrinks and, with it, our choices. Who and
what we will be tomor row is usually some for m of who we
were yester day, because we can only access the r esour ces
and behaviors of the self that has consented to be seen. In
shutting out the darkness we fear lurks within us because
we fear the destruction it might cause, we also shut oﬀ the
competent, powerful, successful, se xy, funny, and brilliant
parts of ourselves that ar e year ning for e xpression. This is
the root cause of the bor edom we of ten feel in some or
many ar eas of our life. As we sever our r elationship with certain aspects of our
personality, we deny ourselves access to stimulation,
excitement, passion, and cr eativity . One of the most e xciting
aspects of being human is that ther e are literally hundr eds
of inspiring, useful, and powerful parts of ourselves lying
dormant, aching to come out of the shadow and be
integrated into the whole of the self . Ther e is a whole ar ray
of wonderful feelings waiting for an opportunity to move
through our body, bringing us new sensations and new
levels of happiness, joy, and pleasur e. We can’t r eally enjoy
the enor mity of who we ar e, because we have for gotten who
we ar e beyond the bor ders of our own r estricted inter nal
barriers and the constraints we have imposed on our
emotional world. To be r einspir ed in any ar ea of our life, we just have to
look to see which of our shadow aspects or characters have
been driven out of sight, ﬁnd safe and appr opriate ways for
them to e xpress themselves, and invite them once again
onto the stage. W e must challenge ourselves to accept all
the faces of our humanity; otherwise the characters that got
booted oﬀ stage and ar e now r epressed will become the
silent or chestrators of our secr et life. Only in the pr esence ofour entir e, uncensor ed self can we fully understand and
appreciate our totality and our uniqueness. W e must ﬁnd a
good use for every character, or we will r emain at war
within ourselves. BEFRIENDING OUR SHADOW
To begin to grasp how essential the shadow is, try to
imagine a story without any conﬂict or a her o whose virtue
is never put to the test by a worthy adversary . The her o of
any story could not e xist if it wer e not for the villains that
challenge the her o along the way . If what the Easter n
wisdom traditions say is indeed true, that “the sinner and
the saint ar e mer ely e xchanging notes,” then the conﬂict
between our higher and lower natur es cr eates the tension
necessary to pr opel our evolution as human beings. The
same concept that guides good literatur e applies equally in
real life: heroes ar e only as str ong as their villains . In the drama of our evolution, the shadow is the character
of greatest inter est. The shadow is only danger ous when we
keep it lock ed away in the dark cellar of r epression. That’s
when we run the risk that it will blow up in our face,
derailing our diets, sabotaging our r elationships, and killing
our dr eams. But if we allow our shadow characters to serve
as integrated parts of our whole self—as colorful, powerful
forces for the good—they will lead us to richer e xperiences,
more genuine connections, mor e laughter, mor e
authenticity, and honest self -expression. The battle with our
dark side will never be won thr ough hatr ed and r epression;
we can’t ﬁght darkness with darkness. W e have to ﬁnd
compassion and embrace the darkness inside us in or der to
understand it and, ultimately, to transcend it. In his inﬂuential book The Art of W ar, Sun Tzu suggests
that “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy .”
In this case, the enemy is usually an impulse insideourselves that we don’t understand or don’t know how to
deal with. As long as we’r e denying, r epressing, or
minimizing the importance of this and other hidden ur ges,
as long as we believe that our own dark impulses will never
catch up with us or be e xposed, their wisdom will continue
to elude us. By actively ﬁnding the gif ts and r eceiving the
contribution our shadow is trying to mak e, we r edirect its
once destructive power into a for ce that can beneﬁt our life. More than that, we become a r ole model for others to ﬁnd
healthy outlets for the parts of themselves that don’t
confor m to society’s script or to their ego ideal. We can be saints by pr oviding the sinners that r eside
within us the fr eedom of self -expression—not by indulging
bad behavior, but by seeing how this impulse or quality
could serve us or society as a whole. The mor e acceptance
and safe e xpression we ﬁnd for our dark er impulses, the less
we will have to wor ry about being blindsided by them. I
know you might be wondering how a part of you that you
fear and loathe could actually serve you, but I pr omise you
as you go thr ough the pr ocess, you will see that ther e are
gifts to be mined in every quality, feeling, and e xperience. Reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we have r elegated
to the shadow is the most r eliable path to actualizing all of
our human potential. Once befriended, our shadow becomes
a divine map that—when pr operly r ead and followed—
reconnects us to the life we wer e meant to live, the people
we wer e meant to be, and the contributions we wer e meant
to give. Embracing our inner beast is the tick et to fr eedom. It is the conduit for tapping into all our gr eatness. It mak es
our inner life rich and meaningful and our outer life mor e
enjoyable. It allows us to bask in wholeness rather than be
constrained by the limitations of a self that was cr eated by
smok e and mir rors. Why smok e and mir rors? Because if we
have cr eated our public image or persona out of only those
qualities we have deemed acceptable, we will have lef t outsome of the most important, potent, and ﬂavorful parts of
ourselves. OUR SHADOW MASK
Uncovering the parts of ourselves that we lear ned to r epress
is the k ey to understanding why we enjoy fr eedom in some
areas of our life and behave lik e a robot in others. It is fear
that convinces us to wear one of an inﬁnite number of
masks to hide behind and to construct a persona—a
costume, so to speak—to conceal all of who we r eally ar e.
We work tir elessly to cr eate an outer façade, so that no one
will ﬁnd out about our dark thoughts, desir es, impulses, and
history . It is the shadow of our past that dr ove us to cr eate
the face—the mask—that we show the world. W ill we be a
people pleaser, or will we seek r elief from the world by
being isolated, distant, and alone? W ill we work tir elessly to
be per ceived as an overachiever, or will we be content to lie
in front of the TV or spend hours sear ching Inter net gossip
sites? Our persona was not cr eated by accident; it was
created in or der to camouﬂage the parts of ourselves we
deemed the most undesirable and to over compensate for
what we believe to be our deepest ﬂaws. This false self is char ged with one mission only : to hide all
of the unwanted and unacceptable parts of ourselves. If we
were wounded fr om having been raised by emotionally
unpredictable par ents, we may work very har d to portray an
image that we ar e calm and in contr ol. If we had a lear ning
disability gr owing up, we might cr eate a war m, overly loving
personality, so others won’t notice what we per ceive to be
our handicap. If we ar e ashamed of the fact that we wer e
raised by a welfar e mom, we might become a highly
motivated work er who is always impeccably dr essed and
well-spok en. The public image we cr eate is contrived by the
parts of us that wer e hurt, confused, or full of pain. Althoughit may fool others and even us for a while, eventually we will
be faced with the wounds that this mask was constructed to
hide. As a way to ensur e that our ﬂawed and imperfect self
would not be discover ed or e xposed, we cleverly began to
develop qualities opposite fr om those we wer e trying to
hide. W e work ed har d to over compensate for the parts of
ourselves we believed wer e unacceptable, hoping to thr ow
others oﬀ the scent or to rid ourselves of the bad feelings
that wer e associated with them. If we wer e riddled with
insecurities, we may have developed an ar rogant, know-it-
all persona to convince others that we have enor mous
conﬁdence. If we felt lik e a failur e, we may have sur rounded
ourselves with people who have achieved gr eat things or
exaggerated the scope of our own endeavors to appear
more successful than we actually ar e. If we felt powerless
over our life, we might have chosen a car eer or partner that
would have allowed us to appear mor e powerful. Our personas convince us that ther e is nothing that we
don’t know about ourselves—that we ar e in fact the person
we see in the mir ror and believe ourselves to be. But the
issue with this is that once we have bought into the story of
“this is who I am,” we shut the door on any other possibility
and deny ourselves access to all of who we can be. W e lose
our ability to choose, because we can’t do anything outside
the conﬁnes of the character we’r e playing. The pr edictable
persona we’ve constructed is now in contr ol. W e become
blind to the immense possibilities for our life. Only when we
stop pr etending to be something we ar e not—when we no
longer feel the need to hide or over compensate for either
our weaknesses or our gif ts—will we know the fr eedom of
expressing our authentic self and have the ability to mak e
choices that ar e based on the life we truly desir e to live. When we br eak out of this trance and ar e no longer
preoccupied with ﬁtting in, with what other people think of
us or what we think about ourselves, we can open up andtake advantage of opportunities that might just pass us by
when we ar e trapped inside our story line or behind the
mask we wear . We are driven to the point of e xhaustion by our ego ideal
to be diﬀer ent than we ar e. We ﬁght to be bigger, str onger,
tougher, and mor e secur e. Without r ealizing it, we position
ourselves to pr ove that we ar e mor e, better, or diﬀer ent
than the r est of the cr owd or try to stay invisible by ﬁtting in
and not being seen. W e scramble to cr eate the e xact
persona we believe will bring us the appr oval and
recognition we desperately need or, alter natively, give us an
excuse for not playing full out and having a life we love. And
then we begin to act and behave in ways, consciously or
unconsciously, that will leave others with the thoughts,
feelings, and impr essions we believe will bring us their love,
respect, or pity—until that one day when the walls come
crumbling down. Amanda was deeply ashamed of the fact that she never
graduated fr om college and mortiﬁed that most of the
relatives on her mother’s side of the family wer e from the
wrong side of the tracks and uneducated. She work ed har d
to create a persona to hide her embar rassment and mak e
her look good to those she wanted to impr ess. She found a
niche for herself in a specialized ﬁeld wher e she was
regarded as smart, helpful, and indispensable, but no
matter how much she r ead or how much she contributed at
work, Amanda ended most days feeling “less than.” In an
attempt to r esolve her pain, she decided to go back to
school, hoping that ear ning a degr ee would transfor m her
from an uneducated girl fr om a trailer park into a
sophisticated, worldly woman. One evening she walk ed into her psychology class suited
up inside her pr ofessional persona. She felt pr oud, because
she had alr eady cr eated a r eputation for being the smart girl
in the class. As the pr ofessor detailed their assignment for
the week, Amanda began to cringe as her shame-ﬁlledshadow took over . She could feel her whole body tightening
up as she lear ned that the pr oject was to cr eate a very
detailed family tr ee showing the educational backgr ounds
and car eers of all her family members. As she began
working on the assignment, noting all the members of her
family who wer e drug-addicted, ﬁnancially unstable, and
uneducated, she was confr onted with the pain and
embar rassment of her family history . Her overwhelming
sense of not being good enough suddenly felt too big to be
hidden by any persona. Later in the week, as she r ead her
report and look ed over her compr ehensive family tr ee,
instead of feeling pr oud of the work she had done, she was
riddled with shame. A fter years of trying to outrun her
shadow and cover it up, it took only one assignment for
Amanda’s persona to crack open. Like Amanda, some of us wer e awar e, even at a young
age, that we wer e trying to be someone we wer e not. Instead of ourselves, we wanted to be lik e someone we
looked up to, so we unconsciously took on another person’s
façade, not even r ealizing that it was not an authentic self
we wer e seeing. But either way, in our sear ch for fr eedom,
safety, and authenticity, it is imperative to r ecognize that
we ar e wearing some version of a mask that we put on
twenty, thirty, or even forty years ago . And now our
authentic self, which is scr eaming to get our attention, is
deeply hidden behind a mask, and our false self is
masquerading as our true natur e.
Imagine this. When you wer e a small child, you r eceived a
little gif t—a magic penny, per haps—fr om your grandmother . Wanting to k eep it safe, you hid it somewher e so no one
would ﬁnd it. W ould you be able to r emember all these
decades later wher e you had hidden it? W ould you
remember that you had hidden it at all? The same is true for
your unscathed authentic self . You’ve k ept it hidden for such
a long time, you have for gotten that this part of you ever
existed in the ﬁrst place.The natur e of the façade we chose varies based on our
backgr ound, our par ents, our sur roundings, and what was
consider ed good and bad behavior, yet the masks that ar e
commonly seen in our society today ar e no diﬀer ent fr om
those of a hundr ed years ago . Today we see updated
versions of the seductr ess, the char mer, the people pleaser,
the eter nal optimist, the “cool” one, the martyr, the good
girl, the nice guy, the tough guy, the abuser, the bully, the
quiet snak e, the intellect, the savior, the depr essive, the
jokester, the loner, the victim, and the overachiever . They
are repetitive, ar chetypal e xpressions appearing in the
moder n age. The pr oblem with living inside these masks,
these personas, is that eventually we lose sight of who we
really ar e and what is possible for our life. In canceling out
our darkness, we unconsciously e xtinguish our authentic
power, cr eativity, and dr eams. EXPOSING OUR SECRET LIFE
Our shadow thrives when we have secr ets. The moment we
close the door on one or mor e aspects of ourselves, we set
into motion a secr et life. Ther e’s an adage in twelve-step
programs: “Y our secr ets k eep you sick.” And in my years of
working with people, I can conﬁr m that this is, in fact, true. It is nothing to be ashamed of, because most of us have a
public life and a secr et life. W e have a public persona we
show the world and a secr et life we k eep hidden. W e
construct a secr et life in or der to hide the parts of ourselves
that we’r e most ashamed to face. It could be an ar ea of our
life that holds some shame or wher e we ar e behaving in a
way we fear will be unacceptable to those we love. Maybe
it’s an ar ea of our life that’s out of contr ol, a habit or
addiction we ar e struggling with, or a fantasy that we’r e
afraid to speak out loud. When our behaviors ar e
incongruent with the masks we wear, we will work har d tohide them. W e might be r eally sweet and caring to everyone
we come in contact with during the day and then go home
at night and yell at our kids. Maybe we position ourselves as
a brilliant intellectual while we’r e with our colleagues, only
to go home and spend hours watching mindless TV and
playing video games. P erhaps we’r e in a committed
relationship but ar e secr etly cheating, or we act lik e a self -
made success when the fact is we ar e secr etly living oﬀ our
parents. Our unr esolved shame causes us to act out; it eventually
gets e xpressed as an outer behavior that blows the cover oﬀ
the parts of our life we’ve been trying to conceal. W e can
work day and night trying to contr ol our hidden impulses
from ever coming to the surface, but we ar e only a moment
away fr om acting in ways that under mine our self -respect. If
we’ve been hiding a part of our life in which we act without
integrity, it will eventually be e xposed as we write bad
checks or cheat on our tax r eturns.
_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 you pull back fr om the spectacle, however, the whole
drama could have been avoided. An idealized self -image
isn’t a viable solution. Only true self -acceptance is, and
when that happens, ther e is nothing for others to r eject. This doesn’t mean you will be universally loved. Someone
else might still walk away, but if that happens, you won’t
feel r ejected. It won’t r esult in an emotional wound. How do
you know if you ar e falling for a false sense of self, which is
what an idealized self -image is. Y ou will hold such attitudes
as the following:
“I’m not lik e those people. I’m better. ”
“I’ve never strayed. ”
“God is pr oud of me. ”
“Criminals and wr ongdoers ar en’t even human. ”
“Everyone sees how good I am. Even so, I need to
remind them. ”
“If I don’t have bad thoughts, why do other people. ”“I alr eady know who I am and what I need to do. I’m not
conﬂicted. ”
“I’m a r ole model. ”
“Virtue isn’t its own r ewar d. I want my good deeds to be
validated. ”
Dismantling your ideal image of yourself is a challenge,
because this is a much subtler defense than simple denial. Denial is blindness; the idealized self -image is pur e
seduction. The way out is to go past all images. Ther e is no
need to defend who you r eally ar e. Your true self is
acceptable not because you ar e so good, but because you
are complete. All things human belong to you. The most important ally you have is awar eness. Judgment
is constrictive. When you label yourself or anyone else as
bad, wr ong, inferior, unworthy, and so on, you ar e looking
through a nar row lens. Expand your vision and you will be
awar e that everyone, however ﬂawed, is complete and
whole at the deepest level. The mor e awar e you ar e, the
more you will accept yourself. This isn’t an instant solution. You must spend time looking at all the feelings you’ve so
diligently denied, suppr essed, and disguised. F ortunately,
those feelings ar e temporary; you can go beyond them. There’s nothing to r eject, just a lot to work thr ough. This is
how a ﬁgur e like Jesus or Buddha could have compassion for
anyone. By seeing the wholeness behind the play of light
and dark, they found nothing to blame. The same holds true
along the spiritual path you follow. As you see yourself mor e
completely, you will have compassion for your faults, and
that will lead to complete self -acceptance. The One V ersus the Many
The solution: Sur render to being. Finally, we ar rive at the war in your soul. A t this level, the
conﬂict is very subtle, which sounds odd, because we tend
to think that the cosmic battle between God and Satan must
be titanic. In fact, it’s very delicate. As you get closer to
your true self, you begin to sense that you ar e part of
everything. Boundaries sof ten and disappear. Ther e’s a
blissful feeling of mer ging. As beautiful as this e xperience is,
one last r esistance cr ops up. The ego says, “What about
me. I don’t want to die,” lik e the W icked W itch in The
Wizard of Oz,  whose last wor ds wer e “I’m melting, I’m
melting. ” The ego has been incr edibly useful. It has guided
you thr ough a world of inﬁnite diversity. Now you ar e about
to experience unity. No wonder the ego feels fatally
threatened; it sees it usefulness (and its domination) come
to an end. The ego mistak es sur render for death. T o be whole
involves sur render. You give up one way of seeing yourself,
and in its place a new way dawns. “Sur render ” isn’t a
welcome wor d to the ego, because it connotes failur e, loss
of contr ol, passivity, the end of power. When you lose an
argument, ar en’t you sur rendering to the winner. Of course. Any situation couched in ter ms of winning and losing mak es
surrender seem weak, shameful, depr essing, and unworthy. These ar e all feelings at the ego level, however. Seen
without ego, sur render becomes natural and desirable. A
mother who gives her childr en what they need isn’t losing,
even though one could say she’s sur rendering her needs in
favor of her childr en’s. That would be a false perspective. When you give of yourself out of love, you lose nothing. In
fact, loving sur render is lik e a gain. Y our sense of self
expands beyond ego -driven needs and desir es—these can
never lead to love. Surrender is not of the mind. Y ou cannot think your way
there. Instead, you must jour ney into pur e consciousness,
befor e wor ds and thoughts arise. That’s the whole purpose
of meditation, to car ry a person beyond the thinking mind,which means beyond conﬂict. It’s easy to believe these days
that everyone knows how to meditate. If you have tried to
meditate and then abandoned the practice, I’d lik e to
suggest that you r eturn. Not all meditations ar e created
alike. Perhaps you wer e taught meditation as a for m of
relaxation or str ess release or as a r oute to silence. These
are all r eal results, but they aim too far short. The most
profound eﬀect of meditation is to transfor m your
awar eness. If you ar en’t e xpanding in consciousness, the
true purpose of going inwar d has been missed. Which is not to label any kind of meditation as wr ong. But
there has to be an intimate rightness that suits you. I’ve
seen people who evolved very quickly using a simple heart
meditation, in which they sat quietly and dir ected their
attention to their hearts, and others who beneﬁted by
quietly following the in-and out-br eaths as they sat with
eyes closed. Eventually one longs to e xperience the true
self completely. This can be achieved by going into the
mantra meditation that originated in V edic India or the
Vipassana techniques of Buddhism, to mention just two
proven methods. Whatever you do, r emain awak e to your
vision of wholeness. Y ou don’t want to tur n meditation into
another kind of conditioning, wher e your mind convinces
itself that it is peaceful or has found silence when both ar e
just pleasant moods or habits. (In his typically blunt way,
Krishnamurti war ned that the worst thing a spiritual path
can do is deliver what you e xpect. Instead of r eaching the
truth, the path has simply tur ned you into a version of your
old self, but “impr oved” by feeling and looking better. ) The shadow is a thing of denial, r esistance, hidden fears,
and r epressed hopes. Ther efore, if meditation is working,
these things will begin to diminish. Y ou should be
experiencing the following on your spiritual path:
Life becomes easier, losing its struggle. You feel and act mor e spontaneous. The world no longer brings negative r eﬂections. Your desir es ar e fulﬁlled mor e easily. You ﬁnd happiness in the simplicity of e xistence. Being
here is enough. You gain in self -awar eness, knowing who you r eally ar e. You feel included in the wholeness of life. If these sound lik e ideal goals, they ar e also noble ones
and fully attainable. In fact, if months pass and you don’t
feel these things incr easing, you need to stand back and
reexamine your path. I’m not implying that your practice is
wrong or defective. Ther e are lulls and delays in personal
evolution for everyone, because some issues tak e time to
work out. Much of this working out tak es place out of sight,
in the deeper r eaches of the unconscious. Artists ar e well
awar e of this; their muse doesn’t answer on a time
schedule. On the other hand, ther e may be serious r easons
why the true self isn’t unfolding:
Excessive str ess
Emotional pr essur es
Distractions
Depr ession and anxiety
Lack of discipline or commitment
Opposing intentions—seeking mor e than one way of life
The spiritual path delivers everything; it can r esolve all
conﬂicts. But we e xpect too much of it when we ask for a
panacea. Spiritual unfoldment is delicate. It can’t be
reached when your mind is too agitated or your attention
overwhelmed by str ess and other outside pr essur es. In other
words, wholeness is a cur e-all, but not an instant cure-all. You need to pr epare the right conditions for going inwar d. To
that end, each of the obstacles I’ve listed has to be dealt
with. Str ess, depr ession, anxiety, and distractions won’t
suddenly end just because you sit down for half an hour
with your eyes shut. I hope that doesn’t sound too blunt,
because when you tak e even small steps to pr epare the
ground for meditation, it yields r esults that cannot be had
any other way. This is the r oyal r oad to consciousness, and
consciousness is whole. In Summary
I will end as I began, with a physician’s instinct for
diagnosis, tr eatment, and pr ognosis. The shadow has
outwitted and outlasted many appr oaches, yet some people
have succeeded, and not just the gr eat names lik e Jesus and
Buddha. The for ce of evolution is inﬁnitely str onger than the
obstacles that block its way. You only have to gaze ar ound
you at the natural world to see the pr oof that beauty, for m,
order, and gr owth have survived for billions of years. In
dealing with your shadow, you ar e aligning yourself with the
same inﬁnite power. After all is said and done, the
requir ements ar e not comple x:
1. Acknowledge your shadow when it brings
negativity into your life. 2. Embrace and for give your shadow. Turn an
unwanted obstacle into your ally. 3. Ask yourself what conditions ar e giving rise
to the shadow : stress, anonymity,
permission to do har m, peer pr essur e,
passivity, dehumanizing conditions, an “us
versus them” mentality. 4. Share your feelings with someone you trust:
a therapist, trusted friend, good listener,
counselor, or conﬁdante. 5. Include a physical component: body work,
energy release, yogic br eathing, hands- on
healing. 6. To change the collective, change yourself—
projecting and judging “them” as evildoers
only incr eases the shadow’s power. 7. Practice meditation in or der to e xperience
pure consciousness, which is beyond the
shadow. I’ve laid out a vision of unity as the solution to the shadow. The instant that life is split into good and evil, the self
follows suit. A divided self cannot mak e itself whole. Ther e
must be another level of life that is whole alr eady. Casting
their eyes over the invisible world, the ancient sages of
India r ealized that it was indescribable. The V edic scriptur es
from thousands of years ago wer e the ﬁrst to declar e,
“Those who know it speak of it not. Those who speak of it
know it not. ”
But of course people wer en’t thrilled to hear this teaching. They wanted help with their everyday pr oblems. If a vision
cannot be tur ned into practice, it’s arid and useless. The
ancient sages wer en’t trying to discourage their listeners. Quite the opposite, they wer e trying to give a r eliable map,
and wher e that map leads is to unity consciousness. My aim
in this part of the book has been to draw the same map in
vivid, moder n colors. Now it’s up to you to follow it. The
shadow isn’t a fearsome opponent, but a worthy one. Powerful as it is, the power of wholeness is inﬁnitely gr eater,
and by a miracle of cr eation it is within your grasp. OceanofPDF. comPART II
OceanofPDF. comMaking Peace with Ourselves, Others, and the
World
DEBBIE FORD
The story of the human being and the human psyche has
been e xamined, studied, and written about since the
beginning of our e xistence. Although it’s been r esear ched
and dissected by brilliant think ers, e xplor ed and e xplained
by the gr eatest intellects of all time, most of us ar e still
living in the dark, perple xed by the behavior of our friends,
our family members, our idols, and—mor e often than not—
ourselves. Disappointed by the condition of our own lives,
we for ge ahead each day hoping that our dark er impulses
and bad behaviors will miraculously disappear. Hurt time and again by the ﬂaws that we can’t seem to
shake free of, we silently pray that we will ﬁnd the courage
to give up our pr ocrastination, our overspending, our
chocolate, our r esentments, or our sharp tongues. Y et we
continue to succumb to our lower impulses, sabotage our
own desir es, and neglect our futur e. In an attempt to hide
our discontent, we put on a happy face, muster our best
“everything is ﬁne” look, and continue acting out in ways
that under mine our self -esteem and defeat our best-laid
plans. In the course of raising our childr en, chasing success, and
struggling to put enough away for vacation or r etirement,
answers to the very questions that will help us gr ow elude
us. Our deeper year ning for self -understanding gets buried
beneath the daily news, family issues, a health crisis, or a
common cold. An indignant neighbor, a disgruntled e x, or achild who has lost their way will literally suck the hours out
of our days and the money out of our bank accounts while
twisting our minds into believing that we can’t and won’t
ever have everything we want. Sometimes, we even for get
that we ever wanted anything diﬀer ent fr om what we have. The r epetitiveness of our to xic memory can lur e us into
years of accepting mor e of the same and wasting away in a
mediocr e existence that fails to meet even our own
expectations. Unfortunately, this method of survival strips us of the
ability to live the life that we wer e meant to live. The
emotional pain that surfaces as part of everyday life has us
wish away our past and become r esigned about our futur e. If we feel we have been deceived or conned or that we have
acted out of character, we become victims of the past and
hopeless about what’s to come. Cynical and sk eptical, we
fall pr ey to judgment, opting to point our ﬁnger at others
rather than look inside ourselves for the answers to our
woes. The r obotic natur e of our egocentric self rises up to
help us over come our feelings of insecurity and shame by
protesting our innocence and pr oclaiming our diﬀer ences. We think that if only we could just get that one person or
thing to change, we would feel better. We believe that if we
handle the one issue that we k eep complaining about or get
that one thing that we’ve been striving for, we will be happy. Rather than taking the time to pier ce the veil between who
we think we ar e and who we r eally want to be, we allow the
illusional life of a self that e xists in our minds to be in
contr ol. The pr oblem with this appr oach to life is that it pr events
us from discovering our true self, and it endangers the ar eas
of our lives that ar e most important to us. When we ar e
busy pr otecting ourselves fr om the demons that lurk in the
dark, we miss out on feeling joyful, fulﬁlled, and deeply
connected with those we love. Intent on hiding the dark erhalf of our human natur e, we fail to r each our full potential
and e xperience the depth and richness of our lives. We wer e bor n whole, and yet most of us ar e living as
partial human beings. W e each have the capacity to be an
important part of a grander whole. W e have the capacity to
leave this world a better place than we found it. W e are
meant to discover our authentic natur e—the state of being
in which we ar e inspir ed by ourselves, tur ned on, lit up, and
excited about who we ar e. We are meant to over come
adversity and manifest the gr eatest version of our own
individual soul, not a version of a self that is birthed out of a
fantasy. Big, blown- out fantasies about our lives stem fr om
the pain of our unr ealized potential, but true dr eams ar e a
reality we ar e willing to work for, ﬁght for, stay up late for—
this is a futur e that is within our r each. And ther e is only one
thing that can r ob us of that futur e, and that is our shadow—
our dark side, our secr ets, our r epressed feelings, and our
hidden impulses. The gr eat Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung tells us that our
shadow is the person we would rather not be. The shadow
can be seen in the person in our family whom we judge the
most, the public oﬃcial whose behavior we condemn, the
celebrity who causes us to shak e our head in disgust. If we
understand this cor rectly, we come to the startling and
sometimes sobering r ealization that our shadow is
everything that annoys, hor riﬁes, or disgusts us about other
people or about ourselves. W ith that wisdom in hand, we
begin to see that our shadow is all that we try to hide fr om
those we love and all that we don’t want other people to
ﬁnd out about us. Our shadow is made up of the thoughts, emotions, and
impulses that we ﬁnd too painful, embar rassing, or
distasteful to accept. So instead of dealing with them, we
repress them—seal them away in some part of our psyche,
so we won’t have to feel the bur den and shame they car ry
with them. P oet and author R obert Bly describes the shadowas an invisible bag that each of us car ries ar ound on our
back. As we’r e growing up, we put in the bag every aspect
of ourselves that is not acceptable to our families and
friends. Bly believes we spend the ﬁrst few decades of our
life ﬁlling up our bag, and then the r est of our life trying to
retrieve everything we’ve hidden away. Our shadow, ﬁlled with r hetoric and a hypocritical set of
rules that we can never adher e to, leads us to glorif y some
and demonize others. It began with the teacher who called
us stupid, the bully who taunted us, or the ﬁrst love who
ever abandoned us. W e have all hidden away and r epressed
pain-ﬁlled, shame-ﬁlled moments, and, over time, these
emotions har den into our shadow. These ar e the
unexpressed fears, the hor rifying shame, the gnawing guilt. These ar e all the issues of the past that we have never
faced. Our shadow might stem fr om one deﬁning moment,
and most do, or it can accumulate over years of denial. As
the shadow tak es shape, we begin to lose access to a
fundamental part of our true natur e. Our gr eatness, our
compassion, and our authenticity get buried beneath the
parts of ourselves that we’ve disconnected fr om. Then our
shadow gains the upper hand. It can trick us into believing
that we ar e too unworthy, incapable, undeserving,
unlovable, or stupid to be the superstar of our own life. It is our dark side, the r epressed and disowned aspects of
our personality, that cuts us oﬀ our true self. The fact is that
whatever we have hidden away in shame or denied out of
fear holds the k ey to unlock a self that we feel pr oud of, a
self that inspir es us, a self that is pr opelled into action by
great vision and purpose rather than one that is cr eated out
of our limitations and the unhealed wounds of our past. This
is why we must e xplor e our shadow. This is why we must
unveil and r eclaim our whole self, our true natur e. This is
why we must look within to e xamine the underpinnings of
our life. Hidden her e is the blueprint, a template, a vision of
our authentic self. My own study of the shadow began as I made the
transition fr om a clumsy pr eadolescent to a pr etty young
teen. Confused and alone, I set oﬀ on a jour ney to ﬁt in. I
work ed har d to feel good about myself, despite the fact that
I was riddled with insecurities about everything fr om being a
friend and girlfriend to being a sister and daughter. I fought
to understand why I felt so bad about who I was. The voices
in my head that seemed to overtak e me—even at the young
age of twelve—ﬁlled me with endless loops of dark thoughts
and negative feedback: “Why did you say that. ” “ Don’t be
silly; he will never lik e you,” “Y ou’re an idiot,” “ Don’t stand
too tall; people will be jealous of you,” and on and on and
on. I found it odd and confusing listening to these voices
inside my head, because one minute they wer e telling me
that I was nothing but a spoiled, r otten brat and the ne xt
they wer e convincing me that I was better, pr ettier, smarter,
and mor e talented than everyone else. An inter nal war raged inside my psyche. F irst it was,
“You’re great. ” and then, “Y ou’re nothing but a little liar. ”
“Everyone lik es you because you ar e kind and war m,” and a
few minutes later, “Y ou ar e a cold-hearted bitch who doesn’t
deserve to have any friends. ” These voices lef t me utterly
confused about who I was. The coe xistence of the positive
messages and the negative war nings cr eated so much
havoc within me that I was either crying hysterically or
going out of my way to spr ead good feelings to anyone who
was willing to r eceive my love. They called it hor mones at
the time. Er ratic behavior was e xpected of a girl my age,
but mine was a bit mor e melodramatic, which ear ned me
the title of the neighbor hood drama queen. A t last I had
ﬁnally won a pageant, e xcept this cr own came with many
negative pr ojections fr om my family and lots of laughs fr om
family friends who wer e privy to my private shame. I began
to feel mor e and mor e powerless over my inter nal
chattering, until I came to the conclusion that ther e was
deﬁnitely something wr ong with me and ther e was nothingthat I could do to ﬁx it. I tried with all my might to silence
these voices, to mak e them shut up, by trying to convince
myself that I was r eally ok ay. My moments of peace and
happiness became less and less fr equent, unless I was
fortunate enough to be caught up in listening to a gr eat
song or playing with my friends. But in the quietness of a
shower or an early mor ning rush to school, it became har der
and har der to br eak fr ee of the stranglehold of my inter nal
demons, whose voices sounded lik e a chur ch choir singing
out of tune. Instead of feeling compassionate, kind, and
gentle towar d myself, I felt hopeless, hostile, and angry. As my inter nal discomfort r ose, I began to sear ch for what
might silence my ugly little mind and mak e me feel better
about myself. My sear ch for feel-good moments began with
certain foods: Sara L ee br ownies and a liter of Cok e seemed
to do the trick. I lear ned how to silently slip into my par ents’
room during dinner, go into their wallets, and steal the
change I needed to get my daily ﬁx. It started oﬀ quite
easily, because the 7-Eleven was right acr oss the str eet
from our home on F orty-sixth A venue in Hollywood, Florida. As months went by, that ﬁx was just not enough. The
noisy, dark voices fr om inside somehow lear ned to slip
through my sugar -induced feel-good moments. I had to ﬁnd
something else to manage these unwanted br eak-ins and
put a smile back on my face—even if those smiles wer e met
with the occasional inter nal voice thr eatening to “ wipe that
smile oﬀ your face. ”
My inner hunger to feel good soon became gr eater than
my need to be lik ed or to be per ceived as a good or “decent
young lady. ” I was over come with the impulse to change the
way I felt. My sugar addiction quickly tur ned into something
greater, as I pick ed up my ﬁrst cigar ette and a sampling of
drugs. P ot, which was never my thing, tur ned into pills,
placidillies, or downers, as they wer e called in those days. These escalated into psychedelics that led me to a plethora
of other substances. As I succeeded in using drugs to cr eatemoments of complete peace—the mantra of almost every
popular song back then—I ingrained into my young psyche a
way of thinking and behaving that said to feel good I
needed to look outside myself for something to mak e me
feel better. Over time I lear ned that the scary impulses that of ten
came out in my behavior wer e not meant to be e xamined or
expressed, but rather should be hidden and r epressed, no
matter what the cost. Slowly I slipped away fr om any
semblance of the innocent child I once was and cr eated an
outer persona that e xuded conﬁdence and success. The
more I played in the darkness of my own human demons,
the str onger the impulse to hide my feelings of shame and
unworthiness. I began to over compensate for my
weaknesses by becoming char ming, friendly, str eet-smart,
and savvy in the outer world. Although I struggled
desperately in school, because I was too busy listening to
the craziness in my mind rather than the teacher in the
room, I wrapped myself up in a pack age that look ed
somewhat smart and pr etended to be an opinionated know-
it-all, hoping that I could fool everyone, including myself,
into believing that I wasn’t the dumb little sister of Linda
and Michael F ord. I watched what the rich girls wer e wearing, and either I
begged my par ents to buy me the knock- oﬀs or I met with a
group of kids at the mall on Satur day mor nings to steal what
I didn’t have, so no one would ﬁnd out that I was fr om a
middle-class Jewish family. I didn’t think being a Jewish girl
was cool and had hear d mor e than my shar e of nasty
Jewish-girl jok es, so I studied how the town shiksas (the
pretty non- Jewish girls—usually blonde) wer e behaving and
took on some of their characteristics and behaviors as part
of my car efully designed mask to hide my inner ﬂaws and
imperfections. It was a game I didn’t even know I was playing at the
time. If I discover ed something about myself that was notacceptable to my ego ideal, I would sear ch the outer world
to see who was acceptable, and with the sensibilities of a
true artist I sculpted the new me, giving the illusion that I
was the person I wanted to be rather than the person I
feared I was. The pr oblem was that no matter how much I
over-compensated for the parts of myself that I fear ed or
was ashamed of, in the silence of my own mind I knew the
truth about who I was under neath my public mask. Although
some could see thr ough the glorious act that I had cr eated,
for the most part I had become a successful human being
because I could fool those ar ound me. I trick ed people into believing my smok e-and-mir rors act. I
was able to enr oll people in my happy life by smiling and
spouting my many accomplishments of the day. Or I could
invite them into one of my other favorite nar ratives—“W oe
is me”—wher e I played the part of the damsel in distr ess. Either way, I became a master at hiding not just fr om
others, but also, and most of all, fr om myself. I didn’t know
who I was or what I r eally wanted. I didn’t know what truly
made me happy or what lef t me feeling empty and devoid
of emotions. My shadow was in contr ol, even though, in all
my ar rogance, I believed I was the one in char ge. Truly the
dark side had won, until my persona came crumbling down. Just lik e Humpty Dumpty, who fell to the gr ound, by the
time I was twenty -seven I was stripped of my “I have it all
together,” know-it-all persona and lef t wailing on the ﬂoor of
a drug tr eatment center. It was ther e that I came face-to -
face with the r eal Debbie F ord—with all of her ﬂaws,
weakness, and disowned qualities as well as her gif ts,
strengths, and deeply hidden inner needs. It was ther e that I
knew I was mor e than I could ever even imagine and that I
was nothing but one of six billion human beings struggling
to mak e peace with their dark side and their human
vulnerabilities. It was during this very humbling meeting with myself that
I committed to lear ning about who and what I was and why Ifelt compelled to do the things I did. It was at this pivotal
time in my life that I began to understand the human
shadow and the eﬀect it had on my life and the lives of
those ar ound me—not as a theory in a te xtbook, but as a
woman struggling to deal with her own unwanted feelings
and deep insecurities. Driven by deep feelings of loneliness that came fr om not
understanding who I was or why I was her e, I began my
journey of becoming intimate with my dark side, my shadow
self. This moment of r eckoning became a catalyst for living a
life beyond my wildest dr eams. It has led me to study,
grapple with, and dwell in not only my own human behavior,
but the behavior of hundr eds of thousands of people whom I
have been privileged to guide into the ter ritory of their
unclaimed self and the glorious discovery of a life yet to be
lived. It is not my light that has led me to the wisdom I have
shared in my last seven books, but my battle with my dark
side (and the ultimate sur render in the war within) that has
been my guide and continued inspiration. It is the very
darkness that I spent the ﬁrst part of my life running away
from that is now my passion and my fuel to help lead others
in this magical jour ney thr ough the human psyche into living
in the light of their gr eatest e xpression. It is a spiritual call,
a higher voice that asks me to ask you: Ar e you r eady to
embark on this jour ney of r eclaiming all of yourself, the light
and the dark, your good self and your evil twin. Ar e you
ready to r eturn to the love of your true, total, authentic self
rather than stay trapped in the judgmental angst of a
disjointed human ego. Becoming intimate with your shadow is one of the most
fascinating and fruitful inquiries you can ever embark upon. It is a mysterious jour ney that will lead you to ﬁnd your most
authentic self—a place wher e you feel at home with who
you ar e, wher e you r ecognize your weaknesses and your
strengths, wher e you can bask in your gif ts, admit to yourimperfections, and admir e your gr eatness. This self that is
hidden beneath the mask of your human persona is the self
that you ar e thrilled to be, a self that knows who it is and
who honors the human jour ney. This self that you will
discover as you embrace mor e and mor e of your hidden and
disowned aspects is a self that oﬀers you the conﬁdence to
speak your truth and pursue what’s truly important to you. It’s ir onic that to ﬁnd the courage to lead an authentic life,
you will have to go into the dark r ooms of your most
inauthentic self. You have to confr ont the very parts of
yourself that you fear most to ﬁnd what you have been
looking for, because the mechanism that drives you to
conceal your darkness is the same mechanism that has you
hide your light. What you’ve been hiding fr om can actually
give you what you’ve been trying har d to achieve. THE INFL UENCE OF THE SHADOW
From its invisible home deep within our psyche, the shadow
wields enor mous power over our life. It deter mines what we
can and cannot do, what we will be ir resistibly drawn
towar d, and what we will do almost anything to avoid. It
explains the mystery of our attractions and our r epulsions
and deter mines what we will love and what we will judge
and criticize. Our shadow inﬂuences what race or class of
people we will appr ove of or r elate to, whether we will be
religious or an atheist, what party we will vote with, and
which causes we will support and which we will ignor e. It
tells us how much money we ar e entitled to ear n and
deter mines whether we spend it wisely or piss it away. It is
our shadow, our hidden self, that dictates how much
success we’r e entitled to cr eate or how much failur e we’r e
doomed to e xperience. The shadow deter mines the degr ee
of car e or neglect we give our body, the amount of e xtra
weight we car ry around our belly, and the level of pleasur ewe allow ourselves to feel, give, and r eceive. The shadow
casts us into pr eassigned r oles that we blindly follow in
everything fr om work to love. Unbeknownst to us, the
shadow is the author of a pr ewritten script that springs into
action in times of fear, pain, or conﬂict or when we ar e just
going about our business on autopilot. If lef t une xamined,
our shadow will emer ge from the darkness to sabotage our
life when we least e xpect and want it. Our shadow deter mines whether we will r espect our
childr en and trust that they will gr ow up to be independent,
capable adults or whether we will try to mold them into
everything that we ar e not. When back ed into a cor ner, will
we lash out in rage or will we withdraw into venomous
silence. The shadow is an oracle that can pr edict all of our
behaviors and r eveal what mak es us the people we ar e
today. It decides whether we will be pr oductive, inspiring
members of society or invisible lost souls. When we e xpose
our dark side, we understand how our personal history
dictates the way we tr eat those ar ound us—and how we
treat ourselves. This is why it’s imperative that we unmask
it and understand it. T o do this, we must uncover what
we’ve hidden and befriend the very impulses and
characteristics that we abhor. Our shadow deter mines whether we will live a happy,
successful, and str ess-fr ee existence or whether we will
struggle with our ﬁnances, our r elationships, our car eer, our
temper, our integrity, our self -image, or an addiction. The I
Ching  tells us, “It is only when we have the courage to face
things e xactly as they ar e, without any self -deception or
illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the
path to success may be r ecognized. ” Only in the pr esence of
an unwavering commitment to facing our demons does the
doorway to self -discovery open. We cannot jour ney into the dark side for a quick dip or an
afternoon liaison. T o understand our shadow completely
takes a willingness to let go of what we think we know. Ittakes the for ce of a caged lion to br eak open the cellar
doors that we ourselves chained closed many moons ago. The gr eat news is that we wer e bor n with a bur ning desir e to
evolve and gr ow, to open up, to e xpand and be whole. And I
am going to assert that we all have at least one place wher e
we secr etly desir e to be mor e, to have mor e, to e xperience
more. It is her e that our shadow is waiting patiently for us to
come r etrieve our power fr om the dark r ecesses of our
unconscious mind. When we ﬁrst come in contact with our dark side, our
initial instinct is to tur n away and our second is to bar gain
with it to leave us alone. Many of us have spent vast
amounts of time and money in an eﬀort to do just that. Ironically, it’s these hidden aspects and r ejected feelings
that need the most attention. When we lock ed away those
parts of ourselves we didn’t lik e, we unknowingly sealed
away our most valuable gif ts. The r eason for doing shadow
work is to become whole, to end our suﬀering, to stop hiding
from ourselves. Once we do this, we can stop hiding fr om
the rest of the world. We must embrace our shadow in or der to know the
freedom of living a transpar ent life, so that we feel fr ee
enough to invite others into our life—to let others know the
truth about our ﬁnances, our pastimes, and our r elationships
—without being gripped by the fear that our public persona
will come unraveled, e xposing the person we’ve been trying
hard not to be. When our pr ecious ener gy isn’t tied up in
hiding fr om or over compensating for our self -destructive
impulses, we ar e gifted with the clarity and the motivation
we need to build an unshak able foundation for an inspiring
futur e. OUR DU ALISTIC SELFThe shadow lurks, deceives, hides, and cons us into
believing what we can and cannot do. It drives us to smok e,
gamble, drink, and eat that which mak es us feel bad the
next day. Our shadow gives rise to the hypocritical
behaviors that cause us to violate our personal boundaries
and our own integrity. It is a for ce that can only be r eckoned
with by bringing it into the light of our awar eness and
examining what we ar e made of. We possess every human
characteristic and emotion, whether active or dor mant,
whether conscious or unconscious. Ther e is nothing we can
conceive of that we ar e not. W e are everything—that which
we consider good and that which we consider bad. How
could we know courage if we have never known fear. How
could we know happiness if we never e xperienced sadness. How could we know light if we never knew dark. All these pairs of opposites e xist within us because we ar e
dualistic beings made up of opposing for ces. This means
that every quality we can see in another e xists within
ourselves. W e are the micr ocosm of the macr ocosm,
meaning within our DNA structur e we have the imprint of
every characteristic. W e are capable of both the gr eatest
acts of selﬂessness and the most destructive, self -punishing
crimes. When viewed in the full light of our awar eness, our
shadow e xposes the duality and the truth of both our human
self and our divine self, as they both pr ove to be essential
ingredients of a whole authentic human being. We have to uncover, own, and embrace all of who we ar e
—the good and bad, the light and the dark, the selﬂess and
the selﬁsh, and the honest and dishonest parts of our
personality. It is our birthright to be whole, to have it all. But
to do this, we must be willing to tak e an honest look at
ourselves and step out beyond our judgmental mind. It is
here that we will have a life-altering shif t in per ception, an
opening of our heart. The good news is that every aspect of ourselves comes
bearing gif ts. Every emotion and every trait we possesshelps show us the way back to oneness. Our dark side e xists
to point out wher e we ar e still incomplete, to teach us love,
compassion, and for giveness—not just for others, but also
for ourselves. And when the shadow is embraced, it will heal
our heart and open us up to new opportunities, new
behaviors, and a new futur e. When we bring our shadow,
our hidden emotions and our life-draining beliefs, into the
light of our conscious awar eness, it will transfor m the way
we see ourselves, others, and the world. Then we ar e free. Dealing with our shadow is a comple x but guaranteed
journey back to love. Not just love of another, but love for
each and every characteristic that lives within you and
within me—a love that allows us to embrace the richness of
our humanity and the holiness of our divinity. Having faced
our own inter nal demons, we ar e ﬁlled with peace and
compassion in the pr esence of other people’s dark side. W e
can for give and let go of our demeaning judgments and our
resentful heart. W e can tap into the humility of Gandhi and
the tolerance of Martin L uther King, Jr. , and draw forth the
strength and the courage to deal with the issues that haunt
us. “Ther e but for the grace of God go I” tak es on a whole
new meaning when we can view evil thr ough the universal
lens of our humanity. Exploring our dark side is the gateway
to understanding why we do what we do, why we
sometimes act in ways that ar e contrary to the desir es of
our conscious mind, and why we spend countless hours,
days, months, or years judging others and holding on to
grudges that only bring us headache, heartache, and dis-
ease. All of us have moments fr om the past when our emotional
pain was too much for us to bear, so we r epressed it within
the darkness of our shadow. This is an unavoidable part of
life. W e can run, but we can’t hide. Our shadow is always
linked back to one traumatic event or a combination of
painful moments. When we truly understand our shadow
and its gif ts, ther e are no ﬁngers to point or blame to caston our par ents, our teachers, or our past, because our
shadow is a delivery system for an e xtraor dinary futur e. Understanding how our shadow was for med unlocks the
door to enor mous personal power and pr ofound wisdom. THE BIR TH OF THE SHADOW
The birth of our shadow occur red when we wer e young,
befor e our logical thinking mind was developed enough to
ﬁlter the messages we r eceived fr om par ents, car egivers,
and the world at lar ge. Even with the best of car egivers, we
inevitably wer e shamed for displaying certain qualities. W e
received the message that something about us was wr ong
or that in some way we wer e bad. As childr en, we might
have been told that we wer e too loud. Instead of sof tening
our voice, knowing ther e would again come a time to be
loud, our fragile, unfor med ego may have tak en this
comment to mean that our unabashed self -expression was
wrong and should be hidden fr om others. Or maybe we wer e
called selﬁsh, because we took mor e than our fair shar e of
cookies fr om the plate. Instead of understanding the cookies
were to be shar ed, we made it mean that our selﬁshness
was bad and should be destr oyed. Or we got e xcited and
yelled out an answer in elementary school, and suddenly all
the kids wer e staring at us, laughing. Instead of laughing
with them, we made it mean that we wer e stupid and we
should never tak e a risk again. These negative messages
got ingrained into our subconscious lik e a computer virus,
altering our per ception of ourselves and causing us to shut
down those aspects of our personality that we or others
deemed unacceptable. Each time a behavior of ours was met with harsh criticism
or senseless punishment, we unconsciously separated fr om
our authentic self, our true self. And once these negative
ﬁlters wer e ﬁrmly in place, we wer e separated fr om our joy,our passion, and our ever -loving heart. T o ensur e our
emotional survival, we began the pr ocess of trying to cover
up our true self in or der to become who we believed would
be an acceptable version of a self that would belong. W ith
each r ejection, we cr eated mor e and mor e inter nal
separation, building thick er and thick er invisible walls to
protect our tender and sensitive heart. Day by day,
experience af ter experience, we unknowingly constructed
an invisible fortr ess that became our false self. This fortr ess
of limited e xpression obscur ed our essence, hiding our
vulnerabilities, our sensitivities, and of ten our ability to
know and see the truth of who we ar e. Befor e our malleable self har dened into a mor e rigid ego
ideal, we had the fr eedom to e xpress every aspect of our
humanity. We had multiple emotional r esponses to any
event in our life. Unbur dened by shame or judgment, we
had access to all parts of ourselves. This fr eedom meant
that we could be anything we wanted to be at any given
moment. Ther e wer e no inter nal restraints to pr event us
from stepping into the r ole of the sought-af ter object of
attention or the jealous, wick ed stepsister. Befor e we
learned to judge one quality as better than another, we had
unrestricted access to the full range of e xpression that
resides within us. W e could tap into elegance, grace,
courage, cr eativity, honesty, integrity, assertiveness,
sexiness, power, brilliance, gr eed, frugalness, laziness,
arrogance, and incompetence as easily as we could change
our clothes. Life was a play when we granted all parts of ourselves the
permission to e xist. Each day was an opportunity for
complete self -expression. And best of all, if we didn’t lik e the
way our story was tur ning out, all we had to do is go into our
room, wrap a cape ar ound our shoulders, bring forth a
diﬀer ent character, and—voilà—we could r ewrite the script
and cr eate a gr eat new ending or even an entir ely diﬀer ent
story. We could tur n a drama into a comedy or a boring epicinto a fabulous adventur e. Ther e wer e countless
possibilities, and we wer e curious to e xplor e them all. Once the shadow was bor n, however, our self -expression
became stiﬂed and mor e serious. W e lear ned fr om our
parents, teachers, friends, and society that to win love and
acceptance we had to adher e to certain pr ewritten scripts. As we went to school, wer e exposed to media, and
interacted with a wider cir cle of people, we observed that
certain behavioral traits wer e demonized, criticized, or
denied love and acceptance while others wer e idolized and
shower ed with attention. F rom this time on, we distanced
ourselves fr om any part of ourselves that did not ﬁt into
society’s standar ds or our own ego ideals. W e rejected mor e
and mor e aspects of ourselves for all kinds of r easons—
some because they seemed too bold, others because they
were too silly or foolish. We tried to ﬁgur e out ways to get rid of these unwanted
aspects of our persona until one day we got so distracted
that we for got they e xisted at all. W ith everyone giving us
diﬀer ent messages about which of our many faces we
should show the world, it became safer to listen to the
voices of authority rather than trust in our authentic natur e. Soon we found ourselves with only a limited range of
emotions. Our self -expression was stiﬂed; the endless
possibilities that wer e once in fr ont of us nar rowed to just
the few. We lear ned how to shut oﬀ life and actually became
comfortable doing it. Eventually we identiﬁed with the
internal character we believed to be most acceptable to
those ar ound us—and chances ar e we ar e still playing some
version of that r ole to this day. We may mak e little changes
here and ther e, but when we tak e an honest look, we may
see that we’ve never r eally r einvented ourselves completely. Chances ar e we’r e like most people—we ﬁx ourselves up a
bit, put a patch over the parts of our lives that ar en’t
working, and cr eate a slightly new version of who we’ve
been. By the time we move thr ough our thirties, most of ourchoices ar e already pr edeter mined in one or mor e areas of
our life. Even the clothes we wear, the foods we eat, the
types of entertainment we seek. The things we fantasize
about ar e even r epetitive and monotonous. As we become mor e present and awar e, we begin to see
how r obotic and trapped we r eally ar e inside the personas
we’ve cr eated. And we can choose to tak e proactive
measur es to deal with the shadows that ar e keeping us
bound and try to br eak fr ee. If we don’t deal with these
shadows, mak e no mistak e—they will deal with us. They will
show up in our r elationships and separate us fr om those we
love, k eep us tied to a job or lifestyle that we outgr ew years
ago, or lead us to an addiction or habits that under mine our
success and happiness. They will blind us fr om seeing the
warning signs of an abusive r elationship or a bad business
deal. They will k eep us in a state of perpetual denial, and in
that state we fail to help those we love when they most
need us, when they ar e faced with their own demons. Every one of us has constructed an ego -based identity in
which we have assigned ourselves an acceptable r ole that
eventually smothers our full self -expression. R ather than
being who we r eally ar e, we become a characterization of
the person we think we “should” be. Over time, our stiﬂed
self-perception becomes the perfect br eeding gr ound for our
shadows to tak e root. Whether this r ole was cr eated to
compensate for some inadequacy that we believed e xisted
within ourselves or as a strategy to meet the e xpectations
of our par ents, car egivers, or friends—if we strive to fulﬁll
our ego’s r ole to the e xclusion of all other r oles that we
could potentially enjoy, we end up cr eating a life devoid of
depth, adventur e, meaning, and ﬂavor. As we begin taking
our assigned r oles too seriously, they get sealed into our
ego structur e. Rarely do we deviate fr om the identity we’ve
created, because we fall into the illusional state of denial
and start to believe we are that identity. Looking ar ound ourown lives, most of us can r ecognize the limitations and
repetitiveness of the r oles we play. Of course, it’s much easier to spot the r oles that our
friends and family members ar e playing than it is to spot our
own. W e can identif y the martyr who will volunteer at the
PTA and tak e on mor e than her fair shar e of the workload
(and then complain about it later), or the neighbor hood
charmer who is pr etending to be super -dad while secr etly
cheating on his wife. W e know who lik es to play the part of
the gossip whor e, who knows the dirt about everyone and
everything (and looks for every opportunity to shar e it). W e
are familiar with the local drama queen, who is always being
victimized in one way or another (whether it’s by getting in
a fender bender or because her husband didn’t bring home
enough money last month). It’s easy to spot the eter nal
optimist who is always the life of the party or the wallﬂower
who always sits passively on the sidelines. What’s incr edible
is that even if the r ole we’ve assigned ourselves is boring,
miserable, r epetitive, or joyless, we cling to it for dear life,
all the while rationalizing why we can’t be mor e than we
already ar e or have mor e than we cur rently do. Unknowingly
we ar e the ones who have typecast ourselves to play some
version of the same character year af ter year and rar ely—if
ever—do we allow ourselves to ventur e into a r ole that we
aren’t familiar with or a level of self -expression we don’t yet
know. If we operate inside the myth that we must squelch, kill
oﬀ, lock up, and hide all of the qualities that mak e us
interesting and unique, we forsak e our right to e xperience
passion and peace. The quest for the perfect life, the perfect
role, and the perfect persona will always leave us unfulﬁlled
—even if we attain it—for the simple r eason that we ar e
much mor e than the small handful of qualities that ﬁt neatly
into our ego ideal. In the pr ocess of trying to e xpress only
those aspects of ourselves that we believe will guarantee us
the acceptance of others, we suppr ess some of our mostvaluable and inter esting featur es and sentence ourselves to
a life of r eenacting the same drama with the same outwor n
script. In this quest for safety and pr edictability, our range of
self-expression shrinks and, with it, our choices. Who and
what we will be tomor row is usually some for m of who we
were yester day, because we can only access the r esour ces
and behaviors of the self that has consented to be seen. In
shutting out the darkness we fear lurks within us because
we fear the destruction it might cause, we also shut oﬀ the
competent, powerful, successful, se xy, funny, and brilliant
parts of ourselves that ar e year ning for e xpression. This is
the root cause of the bor edom we of ten feel in some or
many ar eas of our life. As we sever our r elationship with certain aspects of our
personality, we deny ourselves access to stimulation,
excitement, passion, and cr eativity. One of the most e xciting
aspects of being human is that ther e are literally hundr eds
of inspiring, useful, and powerful parts of ourselves lying
dormant, aching to come out of the shadow and be
integrated into the whole of the self. Ther e is a whole ar ray
of wonderful feelings waiting for an opportunity to move
through our body, bringing us new sensations and new
levels of happiness, joy, and pleasur e. We can’t r eally enjoy
the enor mity of who we ar e, because we have for gotten who
we ar e beyond the bor ders of our own r estricted inter nal
barriers and the constraints we have imposed on our
emotional world. To be r einspir ed in any ar ea of our life, we just have to
look to see which of our shadow aspects or characters have
been driven out of sight, ﬁnd safe and appr opriate ways for
them to e xpress themselves, and invite them once again
onto the stage. W e must challenge ourselves to accept all
the faces of our humanity; otherwise the characters that got
booted oﬀ stage and ar e now r epressed will become the
silent or chestrators of our secr et life. Only in the pr esence ofour entir e, uncensor ed self can we fully understand and
appreciate our totality and our uniqueness. W e must ﬁnd a
good use for every character, or we will r emain at war
within ourselves. BEFRIENDING OUR SHADOW
To begin to grasp how essential the shadow is, try to
imagine a story without any conﬂict or a her o whose virtue
is never put to the test by a worthy adversary. The her o of
any story could not e xist if it wer e not for the villains that
challenge the her o along the way. If what the Easter n
wisdom traditions say is indeed true, that “the sinner and
the saint ar e mer ely e xchanging notes,” then the conﬂict
between our higher and lower natur es cr eates the tension
necessary to pr opel our evolution as human beings. The
same concept that guides good literatur e applies equally in
real life: heroes ar e only as str ong as their villains. In the drama of our evolution, the shadow is the character
of greatest inter est. The shadow is only danger ous when we
keep it lock ed away in the dark cellar of r epression. That’s
when we run the risk that it will blow up in our face,
derailing our diets, sabotaging our r elationships, and killing
our dr eams. But if we allow our shadow characters to serve
as integrated parts of our whole self—as colorful, powerful
forces for the good—they will lead us to richer e xperiences,
more genuine connections, mor e laughter, mor e
authenticity, and honest self -expression. The battle with our
dark side will never be won thr ough hatr ed and r epression;
we can’t ﬁght darkness with darkness. W e have to ﬁnd
compassion and embrace the darkness inside us in or der to
understand it and, ultimately, to transcend it. In his inﬂuential book The Art of W ar, Sun Tzu suggests
that “to know your enemy, you must become your enemy. ”
In this case, the enemy is usually an impulse insideourselves that we don’t understand or don’t know how to
deal with. As long as we’r e denying, r epressing, or
minimizing the importance of this and other hidden ur ges,
as long as we believe that our own dark impulses will never
catch up with us or be e xposed, their wisdom will continue
to elude us. By actively ﬁnding the gif ts and r eceiving the
contribution our shadow is trying to mak e, we r edirect its
once destructive power into a for ce that can beneﬁt our life. More than that, we become a r ole model for others to ﬁnd
healthy outlets for the parts of themselves that don’t
confor m to society’s script or to their ego ideal. We can be saints by pr oviding the sinners that r eside
within us the fr eedom of self -expression—not by indulging
bad behavior, but by seeing how this impulse or quality
could serve us or society as a whole. The mor e acceptance
and safe e xpression we ﬁnd for our dark er impulses, the less
we will have to wor ry about being blindsided by them. I
know you might be wondering how a part of you that you
fear and loathe could actually serve you, but I pr omise you
as you go thr ough the pr ocess, you will see that ther e are
gifts to be mined in every quality, feeling, and e xperience. Reclaiming the parts of ourselves that we have r elegated
to the shadow is the most r eliable path to actualizing all of
our human potential. Once befriended, our shadow becomes
a divine map that—when pr operly r ead and followed—
reconnects us to the life we wer e meant to live, the people
we wer e meant to be, and the contributions we wer e meant
to give. Embracing our inner beast is the tick et to fr eedom. It is the conduit for tapping into all our gr eatness. It mak es
our inner life rich and meaningful and our outer life mor e
enjoyable. It allows us to bask in wholeness rather than be
constrained by the limitations of a self that was cr eated by
smok e and mir rors. Why smok e and mir rors. Because if we
have cr eated our public image or persona out of only those
qualities we have deemed acceptable, we will have lef t outsome of the most important, potent, and ﬂavorful parts of
ourselves. OUR SHADOW MASK
Uncovering the parts of ourselves that we lear ned to r epress
is the k ey to understanding why we enjoy fr eedom in some
areas of our life and behave lik e a robot in others. It is fear
that convinces us to wear one of an inﬁnite number of
masks to hide behind and to construct a persona—a
costume, so to speak—to conceal all of who we r eally ar e. We work tir elessly to cr eate an outer façade, so that no one
will ﬁnd out about our dark thoughts, desir es, impulses, and
history. It is the shadow of our past that dr ove us to cr eate
the face—the mask—that we show the world. W ill we be a
people pleaser, or will we seek r elief from the world by
being isolated, distant, and alone. W ill we work tir elessly to
be per ceived as an overachiever, or will we be content to lie
in front of the TV or spend hours sear ching Inter net gossip
sites. Our persona was not cr eated by accident; it was
created in or der to camouﬂage the parts of ourselves we
deemed the most undesirable and to over compensate for
what we believe to be our deepest ﬂaws. This false self is char ged with one mission only : to hide all
of the unwanted and unacceptable parts of ourselves. If we
were wounded fr om having been raised by emotionally
unpredictable par ents, we may work very har d to portray an
image that we ar e calm and in contr ol. If we had a lear ning
disability gr owing up, we might cr eate a war m, overly loving
personality, so others won’t notice what we per ceive to be
our handicap. If we ar e ashamed of the fact that we wer e
raised by a welfar e mom, we might become a highly
motivated work er who is always impeccably dr essed and
well-spok en. The public image we cr eate is contrived by the
parts of us that wer e hurt, confused, or full of pain. Althoughit may fool others and even us for a while, eventually we will
be faced with the wounds that this mask was constructed to
hide. As a way to ensur e that our ﬂawed and imperfect self
would not be discover ed or e xposed, we cleverly began to
develop qualities opposite fr om those we wer e trying to
hide. W e work ed har d to over compensate for the parts of
ourselves we believed wer e unacceptable, hoping to thr ow
others oﬀ the scent or to rid ourselves of the bad feelings
that wer e associated with them. If we wer e riddled with
insecurities, we may have developed an ar rogant, know-it-
all persona to convince others that we have enor mous
conﬁdence. If we felt lik e a failur e, we may have sur rounded
ourselves with people who have achieved gr eat things or
exaggerated the scope of our own endeavors to appear
more successful than we actually ar e. If we felt powerless
over our life, we might have chosen a car eer or partner that
would have allowed us to appear mor e powerful. Our personas convince us that ther e is nothing that we
don’t know about ourselves—that we ar e in fact the person
we see in the mir ror and believe ourselves to be. But the
issue with this is that once we have bought into the story of
“this is who I am,” we shut the door on any other possibility
and deny ourselves access to all of who we can be. W e lose
our ability to choose, because we can’t do anything outside
the conﬁnes of the character we’r e playing. The pr edictable
persona we’ve constructed is now in contr ol. W e become
blind to the immense possibilities for our life. Only when we
stop pr etending to be something we ar e not—when we no
longer feel the need to hide or over compensate for either
our weaknesses or our gif ts—will we know the fr eedom of
expressing our authentic self and have the ability to mak e
choices that ar e based on the life we truly desir e to live. When we br eak out of this trance and ar e no longer
preoccupied with ﬁtting in, with what other people think of
us or what we think about ourselves, we can open up andtake advantage of opportunities that might just pass us by
when we ar e trapped inside our story line or behind the
mask we wear. We are driven to the point of e xhaustion by our ego ideal
to be diﬀer ent than we ar e. We ﬁght to be bigger, str onger,
tougher, and mor e secur e. Without r ealizing it, we position
ourselves to pr ove that we ar e mor e, better, or diﬀer ent
than the r est of the cr owd or try to stay invisible by ﬁtting in
and not being seen. W e scramble to cr eate the e xact
persona we believe will bring us the appr oval and
recognition we desperately need or, alter natively, give us an
excuse for not playing full out and having a life we love. And
then we begin to act and behave in ways, consciously or
unconsciously, that will leave others with the thoughts,
feelings, and impr essions we believe will bring us their love,
respect, or pity—until that one day when the walls come
crumbling down. Amanda was deeply ashamed of the fact that she never
graduated fr om college and mortiﬁed that most of the
relatives on her mother’s side of the family wer e from the
wrong side of the tracks and uneducated. She work ed har d
to create a persona to hide her embar rassment and mak e
her look good to those she wanted to impr ess. She found a
niche for herself in a specialized ﬁeld wher e she was
regarded as smart, helpful, and indispensable, but no
matter how much she r ead or how much she contributed at
work, Amanda ended most days feeling “less than. ” In an
attempt to r esolve her pain, she decided to go back to
school, hoping that ear ning a degr ee would transfor m her
from an uneducated girl fr om a trailer park into a
sophisticated, worldly woman. One evening she walk ed into her psychology class suited
up inside her pr ofessional persona. She felt pr oud, because
she had alr eady cr eated a r eputation for being the smart girl
in the class. As the pr ofessor detailed their assignment for
the week, Amanda began to cringe as her shame-ﬁlledshadow took over. She could feel her whole body tightening
up as she lear ned that the pr oject was to cr eate a very
detailed family tr ee showing the educational backgr ounds
and car eers of all her family members. As she began
working on the assignment, noting all the members of her
family who wer e drug-addicted, ﬁnancially unstable, and
uneducated, she was confr onted with the pain and
embar rassment of her family history. Her overwhelming
sense of not being good enough suddenly felt too big to be
hidden by any persona. Later in the week, as she r ead her
report and look ed over her compr ehensive family tr ee,
instead of feeling pr oud of the work she had done, she was
riddled with shame. A fter years of trying to outrun her
shadow and cover it up, it took only one assignment for
Amanda’s persona to crack open. Like Amanda, some of us wer e awar e, even at a young
age, that we wer e trying to be someone we wer e not. Instead of ourselves, we wanted to be lik e someone we
looked up to, so we unconsciously took on another person’s
façade, not even r ealizing that it was not an authentic self
we wer e seeing. But either way, in our sear ch for fr eedom,
safety, and authenticity, it is imperative to r ecognize that
we ar e wearing some version of a mask that we put on
twenty, thirty, or even forty years ago. And now our
authentic self, which is scr eaming to get our attention, is
deeply hidden behind a mask, and our false self is
masquerading as our true natur e. Imagine this. When you wer e a small child, you r eceived a
little gif t—a magic penny, per haps—fr om your grandmother. Wanting to k eep it safe, you hid it somewher e so no one
would ﬁnd it. W ould you be able to r emember all these
decades later wher e you had hidden it. W ould you
remember that you had hidden it at all. The same is true for
your unscathed authentic self. You’ve k ept it hidden for such
a long time, you have for gotten that this part of you ever
existed in the ﬁrst place. The natur e of the façade we chose varies based on our
backgr ound, our par ents, our sur roundings, and what was
consider ed good and bad behavior, yet the masks that ar e
commonly seen in our society today ar e no diﬀer ent fr om
those of a hundr ed years ago. Today we see updated
versions of the seductr ess, the char mer, the people pleaser,
the eter nal optimist, the “cool” one, the martyr, the good
girl, the nice guy, the tough guy, the abuser, the bully, the
quiet snak e, the intellect, the savior, the depr essive, the
jokester, the loner, the victim, and the overachiever. They
are repetitive, ar chetypal e xpressions appearing in the
moder n age. The pr oblem with living inside these masks,
these personas, is that eventually we lose sight of who we
really ar e and what is possible for our life. In canceling out
our darkness, we unconsciously e xtinguish our authentic
power, cr eativity, and dr eams. EXPOSING OUR SECRET LIFE
Our shadow thrives when we have secr ets. The moment we
close the door on one or mor e aspects of ourselves, we set
into motion a secr et life. Ther e’s an adage in twelve-step
programs: “Y our secr ets k eep you sick. ” And in my years of
working with people, I can conﬁr m that this is, in fact, true. It is nothing to be ashamed of, because most of us have a
public life and a secr et life. W e have a public persona we
show the world and a secr et life we k eep hidden. W e
construct a secr et life in or der to hide the parts of ourselves
that we’r e most ashamed to face. It could be an ar ea of our
life that holds some shame or wher e we ar e behaving in a
way we fear will be unacceptable to those we love. Maybe
it’s an ar ea of our life that’s out of contr ol, a habit or
addiction we ar e struggling with, or a fantasy that we’r e
afraid to speak out loud. When our behaviors ar e
incongruent with the masks we wear, we will work har d tohide them. W e might be r eally sweet and caring to everyone
we come in contact with during the day and then go home
at night and yell at our kids. Maybe we position ourselves as
a brilliant intellectual while we’r e with our colleagues, only
to go home and spend hours watching mindless TV and
playing video games. P erhaps we’r e in a committed
relationship but ar e secr etly cheating, or we act lik e a self -
made success when the fact is we ar e secr etly living oﬀ our
parents. Our unr esolved shame causes us to act out; it eventually
gets e xpressed as an outer behavior that blows the cover oﬀ
the parts of our life we’ve been trying to conceal. W e can
work day and night trying to contr ol our hidden impulses
from ever coming to the surface, but we ar e only a moment
away fr om acting in ways that under mine our self -respect. If
we’ve been hiding a part of our life in which we act without
integrity, it will eventually be e xposed as we write bad
checks or cheat on our tax r eturns. Section summary: 

(Please summarize approximately 150 words)

Note: Please make sure to maintain accurate detail retention and include relevant numbers/figures whenever necessary, avoiding repetition where applicable. ).
The author believes that an idealized self-image is not a viable solution, as it can lead to feelings of rejection and emotional wounds.
What is the author's stance on idealized self-image?
The text lists several examples, including "I'm not like those people, I'm better", "I've never strayed", "God is proud of me", "Criminals and wrongdoers aren't even human", "Everyone sees how good I am", and "I already know who I am and what I need to do, I'm not conflicted".
What are some common attitudes that indicate an idealized self-image?
The author suggests acknowledging, embracing, and befriending one's shadow, and working to uncover and understand its role in their life.
What is the author's advice for dealing with the shadow?
The author believes that the shadow is a powerful and essential part of the human psyche, and that it is crucial to understand and integrate it in order to become a whole and authentic person.
What is the author's view on the concept of the shadow?
The author emphasizes that true self-acceptance is the only way to achieve wholeness and authenticity, and that trying to hide or deny one's shadow will only lead to further suffering.
What is the author's message about the importance of self-acceptance?