If you perceive that you have a shadow self or shadow side and are inspired to embrace and own your shadow, then Dr Demartini’s insights might be a powerful first step in the process.

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I think the shadow side is sometimes also

just as valuable and essential as the

so-called light side. But the light

side has inside it the shadow.

It's like a yin and yang.

In all probability you've

heard of the term, your shadow,

and I'd like to elaborate on the

concept of the shadow for a moment.

Most people think that there's,

as Carl Jung described,

a light side and a dark

side of your nature.

I'm going to confront that a bit

because that's an arbitrary selection.

Sometimes we go through life and we

think we have a trait that we've injected

into our life, an ideal, a moral

hypocrisy about how we're supposed to be.

For instance, your mother or grandmother

may have said to you, be nice,

don't be mean. Be kind, don't be

cruel. Be positive, don't be negative.

Be generous, don't be stingy.

Be peaceful, don't be wrathful,

and this kind of thing. And so you grew

up with this kind of moral hypocrisy,

even though five minutes later,

grandma's beating the hell outta grandpa,

demanding from her and playing out the

exact opposite of what she just said.

So these are called moral hypocrisies

that many people buy into.

They originate from, you know,

mothers and fathers and preachers and

teachers and conventions and traditions

and mores that we've inculcated into

our life, maybe not even consciously.

And then what we do is we

compare ourselves to those

ideals, nice never mean.

But the fact is, , when I, I mean,

I've been teaching for 51 years

and I have people in audiences,

and I ask people, you know, how many, if

I was to go up to you and I would say,

you're always nice, never

mean. They go, not exactly.

Or if I said, you're always mean, you're

never nice. They go, mm, not exactly.

But sometimes you're nice, sometimes

you're mean. They go with that.

Sometimes you're kind, sometimes

you're cruel. They go with that.

Sometimes you're peaceful, sometimes

wrathful, they go with that.

They have certainty that

they have both sides,

but they don't have certainty of one side.

And so what happens is we go through life

and sometimes these moral imperatives

and moral hypocrisies that we've got

inculcated from some outside authority

that has been handed down,

that may never even question

the source of it themselves,

they may just be passing it down because

they learned that from somebody and

somebody and somebody through time. And

the question is, is that even possible?

Is it even possible to be a one-sided

individual? The answer is no.

No human being is one-sided. In fact,

one of the biggest

fantasies that people have,

an unrealistic expectation that they're

going to get rid of half of themselves

and love only one side.

The Buddha in the Buddhist teaching

said the desire for that which is

unobtainable, and the desire to

avoid that which is unavoidable,

is the source of human suffering.

So I've been observing people and

I've never met a one-sided person.

I've never met a nice person.

I'm not a nice person.

I'm a nice person when

you support my values.

I'm a mean person when you challenge it.

I can be nice as a pussy cat or

mean as a tiger. I have both sides.

And I need both sides. If I

look carefully in my life,

sometimes both sides are needed.

So trying to live in a kind of a social

idealism, a fantasy of one sidedness,

nobody's going to do.

But we sometimes have inculcated that

into our life and believe that's the way

we should be. And we hear ourselves

saying, I gotta be this way,

I have to be this way, I need to

be this way, I should be this way,

I'm supposed to be this

way, I ought to be this way.

And you're basically inculcating

it from outer authorities,

and you're now trying to live by duty

and obligation of some ideal instead of

actually who you are.

And the magnificence of who you are is

far greater than those fantasies that you

inject and idealized.

So the shadow is the byproduct

of those moral hypocrisies.

Because if you have this fantasy

that you're supposed to be nice,

if you're nice, you're proud of

yourself. If all of a sudden you're mean,

you're now ashamed of yourself,

and you go, oh. The pride side,

with your amygdala, you want

to go and show that off.

You want to show the pride side off,

but the shame side you want to hide.

So what happens is you tend to want

to hide that part because of social

instruction. You don't

want to have that part.

You don't want people to see you have

that part. But the truth is you do.

You're kind and cruel at times.

I can be very kind at times and other

times people perceive me as cruel.

And I try to get rid of half of myself,

but you're not going to love yourself

trying to get rid of half of yourself.

That whole idea of this

self-improvement of one sidedness,

I ask people in the seminar, I said,

do you ever get rid of the

anger in your life? No,

I still have it here and there. Do

you ever get negative at times? Yeah.

You ever get wrathful at times and

angry? Yeah. I said, well, okay,

how long you been trying to get rid

of that? 60 years . 50 years.

Nothing's ever gotten rid of

and nothing's ever gained.

It's in a form that you're not

honoring, maybe, not recognizing,

but you have all the forms

of all the traits I found

4,628 traits in human beings.

And it's not a matter of you

gaining them or losing any of them,

it's a matter of knowing that they're

there and you're going to use them when

needed. And so I'm not,

I think the shadow side is sometimes also

just as valuable and essential as the

so-called light side. But the light

side has inside it the shadow.

It's like a yin and yang. So if you look

very carefully, let's say you think,

well, the good side is

nice, I should be nice.

But I've seen people that are being

nice to people and then repressing

themselves, trying to fit into

society's niceness and not speaking up,

and then also doing things for them

generously and taking care of them,

make them juveniley dependent. And

then they basically rely on them.

They feel obligated to them.

So that nice has inside it

something that's actually mean.

And I've seen people mean and accountable

make people accountable and tough on

them. And then they become entrepreneurs

and they're capable of self-sustaining,

and they're more independent.

And so the nice has meanness and the

mean has niceness in it. So I look at it,

I've had people come up

to me and said, you know,

when you really hit hard on me in the

seminar and really held me accountable,

you were really tough on

me, but I broke through.

So now I'm being tough

and really firm, you know,

with somebody and then they go,

well, thank you, I broke through.

So that so-called shadow

side is just as essential.

So beware of the labels,

because in different countries

and different cultures,

different things that are considered

shadow are completely different.

In South Africa, the president had nine

wives, and so he was proud of that.

But in America, if you have nine wives,

you better hide it because you go to jail.

So now that would be the shadow side

if you're having secret love affairs or

secret this. So these shadows and

light sides are really kind of murky.

And I'm not,

I always say that whatever you think

you've done that you feel so terrible

about, find out how it served and find

out how it's benefited some people.

Otherwise, you carry around a

shame all your life for no reason.

And the things you think are so all

powerful and you're so proud of,

what are the downsides?

If you don't know how to govern yourself

and bring yourself into equanimity,

the world around you forces

you to. Your physiology,

your psychology and your sociology

will come in to humble you.

The second you feel proud, you

attract a criticism, challenge,

humbling circumstance to bring you pride

before the fall, bring you back down.

When you go down and maybe feel a

shame and people lift you up and try to

lighten you up.

Nature's trying to get you to own both

sides of yourself and honor the authentic

you. So I'm not here to try have

you get rid of any part of yourself.

I'm here to love all parts of yourself.

That's, to teach you to love all parts.

I've been teaching the

Breakthrough Experience Program,

the signature program I've been

doing for 35 plus years now.

And people come in there with all kinds

of resentments and infatuations or

guilts or shames, or they're

beating themselves up,

or self depreciating or fantasizing,

and I do is I show them how to dissolve

their infatuations, their resentments,

their prides, their shames,

and bring them back into equanimity and

equity and allow them to love themselves

and other people.

And then they have a sustainable fair

exchange dynamic with people that's more

fulfilling, more inspiring, and

they're doing what they love that way,

instead of what they feel that they've

gotta do and should according to some

moral imperative and mortal

hypocrisy. So be aware of that.

I'm working on a textbook right now on

morality, and it's quite interesting.

I've been studying that for decades.

And it's very interesting on

how vulnerable people are,

because in different cultures at different

times there's different moralities,

and we just assume that ours is right,

and it's a social contract in our

group that we happen to live in,

but not necessarily universal.

That's why I teach people in the

Breakthrough Experience universal laws,

things that are unviolatble,

that nobody violates,

instead of the human laws and the

human moralities that people violate.

In fact, you can't even completely

live by some of those ideals,

but you can live by the universals.

So I'm trying to teach people how to

study those universals and live according

to what really stands the test of time

instead of things that are fluctuating

and, you know, vicissitudes of the

emotions of the time because it changes.

Marijuana was illegal when I was

growing up. Now it's legalized.

So now it's used for therapeutic effects,

but it was once you put to jail for that.

So now that would be your shadow side

doing that on the side. Now it's okay.

So be aware of these transient

moral hypocrisies that people get

trapped in.

And then label yourself light and shadow

when in fact all parts of you may be

needed.

You have a time when you need to be

tough and be firm and be maybe assertive.

And other times it's time for passiveness.

There was a song by the

Something like that.

About turn, turn, turn,

there is a season for everything under

the sun, a time for sowing and reaping,

a time for peace, a time for

war, a time for, you know,

joining with people and time for

separating, all things under the sun.

And I really believe that that old

biblical statement has meaning.

It's applicable to our daily

lives. So I'm not here to say,

get rid of half of

yourself to love yourself.

I'm here to show you that you

can love all parts of yourself.

That's why I have people come

to the Breakthrough Experience.

That's why I have people also

do the Value Determination.

When they live by their highest value

they're more objective and they're more

neutral,

and they're more embracive of both sides

of their own life and the two sides it

takes to achieve. And other people.

So you're way more resilient,

way more adaptable and more

informed and more value in life,

more efficient in function.

But also doing the Demartini Method in

the Breakthrough Experience allow you to

dissolve all the baggage

that you're carrying around,

because you're not even maybe aware that

you've injected values of other people,

judge yourself for things that are

perfectly normal and thought yourself as

terrible.

And I meet people almost every week in

the Breakthrough Experience that they

feel really down and depreciative

and beating themselves up about this,

and then we start looking at what

are the benefits of that behavior.

They never asked that. They just

assumed it was bad and it was a shadow,

and they want to hide it. And then they

go find out what's the benefit of that.

And they start to look at, wow.

I had a gentleman that came to my

Breakthrough Experience and he was feeling

really,

really guilty and shame because his mother

passed away and he didn't make it to

the mother before she died. And so he

was really beating himself up. He goes,

I should have been there.

I can't believe I wasn't even

there for my mother's passing.

And he was beating himself

up, beating himself up.

And this was going on for months,

beating himself up, in fact, for years,

three years. And then all of a

sudden I asked him a simple question,

so what was the benefit to your mom

that you weren't there? He said, well,

how could that be a benefit? A son should

be there. He's supposed to be there.

I know, but I didn't ansk

that question, I asked,

how did it benefit your mom that

you weren't there? I don't know.

I can't find the answer.

I said, look, again,

how did it benefit your mom that

you weren't there? He never even,

he just assumed because of the moral

imperatives that he had and the belief

systems, that that was the wrong. I said,

so what was the benefit to your

mom that you weren't there?

Finally he paused and he got

tears in his eyes, and he goes,

wow, I didn't think about this.

My mom and my sister were not getting

along and they hadn't talked to each other

and they're in the war path.

And it was my sister who was there at my

mom at the death bed and they resolved

their issue. If I would've been there,

they wouldn't have resolved the issue.

He says, when I think about it, this

was part of a higher ordered system.

So we go through and we think there's

a mistake or some sort of disorder in

there, but maybe not.

Maybe the quality of your life's based

on the quality of the questions you ask.

If you ask questions to find

the hidden order on things,

you liberate yourself from a lot

of judgment on yourself or others.

So what I did is I made him ask a

question he's not used to asking,

what's the benefit of that

so-called shadow side.

Once he realized he had the benefits and

he had helped his mom pass and make up

with his sister because she wouldn't

have been there if he'd been there. Once

that's the case, he started to

cry and he started to release it.

And he says there was an order, there's

nothing to fix. I said, exactly.

We go around and we compare our lives to

fantasies and injected ideals about how

we think we're supposed to do and

then if it doesn't match that,

we think that's a bad side, we want

to hide that, and that's our shadow.

But we need both sides in our life.

You don't have to get rid of half

of yourself to love yourself,

and the magnificence of who you are,

the total, the light and the shadow,

which isn't even light and shadow,

because inside the shadow is light,

and inside the light is shadow. There's

ups and downsides to every trait.

Every trait that you ever have in

your life has ups and downsides.

When you look carefully at that,

you realize that you're worthy of

love no matter what you've done.

And you deserve to be able to

look in the mirror and say,

no matter what I've done or not

done, I'm still worthy of love.

And that's why I just wanted to take

this moment to share that message.

Because that guy would've beat himself

another three years if he hadn't asked

the right question.

That's why I have people come

to the Breakthrough Experience,

to learn the set of questions,

to liberate themselves from unnecessary

emotional baggage and stored up

resentments and infatuations and

fantasies and things in their life.

And to get grounded. Because

the magnificence of the

way their life truly is,

and who they really are,

is far greater than all those fantasies

and all those nightmares that they're

distracted by. So I just

wanted to talk about,

to help you understand a

little bit about the shadow,

but the shadow itself has light in it.

And the light side of

you also has the shadow.

So beware of the labels that somebody

else has injected and honor all parts of

yourself because you're not going

to get rid of part of yourself.

That's the fantasy that you think

you have. But that's not the case.

You gotta realize that the fastest way

to disempower people and to control

people is to create an

idealism, a moral idealism,

that nobody lives but

everybody's supposed to,

and then they feel guilty about it

and they offload their decisions.

And the institutions that are

formulating those ideals have control.

So beware of letting the

outside world control your life.

Love all parts of yourself.

No matter what you've done or

not done you're worthy of love.

Embrace the shadow and come to the

Breakthrough Experience Program,

because if you're having

difficulty with that,

I'll show you exactly what

to do each step of the way,

and how to have yourself love,

appreciate all parts of you.