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Shadow Energies

posted by Deepak Chopra Apr 21, 2009 5:00 am
Shadow Energies
15 comments

The intensity of shadow energies is a way of getting noticed: Hiding something is not the same as killing it. Shadow energies remain alive. Even though you refuse to look at them, they aren’t extinguished–in fact, their desire for life becomes all the more desperate.

To catch your attention as a parent, a child who is overlooked will become more and more extreme in its behavior: first a call for attention, then a cry, then a tantrum. Shadow energies follow much the same pattern.

It seems only reasonable to see panic attacks, for example, as a hidden fear throwing a tantrum. That same fear first called out to be noticed in a normal way, but when the person refused to notice it, a call turned into a cry and finally ended up as a full-blown attack.

Fear and anger are especially adept at increasing the voltage to the point where we feel that they are alien, evil, demonic forces acting without our will. They are actually just aspects of consciousness forced into inhuman intensity by repression. Repression says, “If I don’t look at you, you will leave me alone.” To which the shadow answers, “I can do things that will make you look at me.”

Bringing consciousness to any energy diffuses it: This follows naturally from the last statement. If an energy demands your attention, then paying attention will begin to satisfy it. An overlooked child isn’t placated by only one glance. It takes time to change any behavior for good or ill and, like children, our shadow energies get stuck in patterns and habits.

But this doesn’t alter the general truth that if you bring light into the shadow, its distortions start to lessen and eventually are healed. Is there time enough and patience to do the whole job thoroughly? There’s no fixed answer to that.

Adapted from The Book of Secrets, by Deepak Chopra (Harmony Books, 2004).

More on Deepak Chopra's Tips (503 articles available)
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15 comments

15 comments

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15 comments add your comment
Uma Chernoff

I've been thinking about shadows and have remembered that my spiritual master once told us that shadows are dimensional doors and that it's possible to know something on a whole different level by contemplating them. I will give it a look and see what I might.

Dwight Baker

SHOW SOCIETY YOUR DEEDS --------SOCIETY WILL NEED TO READ YOUR WORDS
SHOW SOCIETY YOUR WORDS -------SOCIETY WILL NEED TO SEE YOUR DEEDS

Have many of us Americans become snobbish critics that have neither? No societal words or deeds.

Thus have our state of the union and the well being of our society become for some just a casual satiated exclusion and satisfied to become a mere belittling critic?

If so, I submit we must ask ourselves what are those of that mind set ignoring, at this time when their skills observations intellect is most needed?

Has the many roads that lead to exclusion ever been good for the great encompassing societal sectors for the good of our moral based communed American society?

I think not.

Seems to me that more in our society each day is pulling back from the needs to be inclusive.

Hence those seeking that other and higher pompous ground to be walled up around with acts of exclusions may in fact be one more rub to come to try and destroy us from within.

If those premises be so ---- then who could ever report that those ideologies of life will ever defeat the many vile and evil people, matters and things that have come about to wreck our well being as a sovereign nation?

Thus let all of us ARISE and SHINE to once again be an inclusive communed voice for our Great and Abundant America and our sovereignty.

stana H.

YES! Uma...the GIFT...and so it goes....

stana H.

Good one Dixon!

Uma Chernoff

Yes Dixon: the great musician Olatunji said: The past is past,a river flown and never truly remembered, the future is a mystery, the gift of the present. That is why it is called the present; it is the gift.

Dixon Murrah

God tells us to forgive and to give thanks for all things. He only allows things in our lives that are to mature us and are ultimately for our best interest.

God focuses on the future, Satan on the past and we are to consider and live in the present.

Charles G.

Yes, the fear, anxiety, and paranoia of the Cold War led to the Shadow Government that included Cheney and Rumfeld. The War on Terror has become even worse because there is no center to the fear, it is now all around us. Cheney hid in the shadows but had to act out in proclaiming he knew Iraq was harboring WMD's and he knew where they were. He came out of the closet and said we must take the gloves of civilization off but they have really been off for a long time. The incredible damage now done is not in the shadows any longer, the paranoia is in plain sight and we are just pretending we don't see it and the damage it is doing. Nothing positive comes from this kind of ignorance.

Susan Wallace

janine k., you defy belief. You are probably as rigid in your thinking, as black and white, as it were, toward all other aspects of life, the universe and everything -- there to throw a wet blanket over any discourse that deviates from your narrow line of "acceptibility."

Dwight Baker

DEVIANT AND DEFIANT BEHAVIOR OR GOOD AND OPEN BEHAVIOR

Deepak is right---- many go through life trying to force on others their will most of the times those folks are what is called sociopath. And many of them are more bad than good. For they only see others as a mark.

However on the other hand many folks like yours truly stays open all the time for all to see in transpierces. And in the end of doing that some times abuse comes hard fast and overburdening. But I decided long ago to walk in an open state and if attacked or high jacked by a bad on just run off, mentally, or physically. Because those folks have nothing at all to offer any one. They are in my books vampires or leaches that have not the will to join others in a communed state of well being for all in the community.

stana H.

if... you find ...you are no better @ gd bye then i.."well then"..lets just spend the rest or our lives saying "hello!" hello ,hello, hello,!!!! can you hear me? can you hear the cry of my soul?!....i can hear yours....and so it is...for every door that closes a window can be found for opening...if one looks close e-nuff...tis TRUE.....>

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