33. The Shadow's Nature

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XXXIII

The Shadow:

Karmic Chronicle and Actuator

Lecture based Questions:

1. Describe the life cycle of the Shadow.

The most potent portion of the subconscious mind is the Shadow. It accumulates through negative expressions starting from the first incarnation. This is an integral part of the Astral Body, and remains in play for as long as the Astral Body continues its life cycle, which ends at the 3DI.

The shadow is born from our instinctive nature. It gathers around it the energies of our negative experiences. These are mostly composed of violations that we have committed against others! The karmic debts that we accumulate with other people (humans and animals, plants and microbes) collect here, in the shadow area. When we become mature enough to redeem our karmic energies, then the shadow creates the conditions for our payment. We find ourselves in karmic relationships. During these, we feel committed to continue—despite lack of compatibility, abuse, or long years of servitude. When the debts are paid, then we suddenly feel free to move on.

The shadow also throws up apparent obstacles to happiness. This can seem very frustrating when we have goals to pursue. In actuality, these barricades to happiness are challenges to patience and faith. We need to accept the responsibilities and neuroses in life as part of the Divine Rhythm. As we patiently persist in our hopes for fulfillment, we still need to give people and obligations their time and attention.

2. To which dimensions does the Shadow belong?

The Shadow resides in the Astral World, or the fourth dimension. It actuates circumstances in the physical world, or the third dimension. This means that the shadow aspect of the subconscious mind is the choreographer of your life as you experience it. It is an organ of the Astral Body. So we can explore it and heal it, as we continue to help the Astral Body develop in goodness, strength, and maturity.

3. How does the Shadow affect your life?

The Shadow makes accidents happen as well as other attacks. This is done in conjunction with the Guardian Angel, who supervises all timing and spiritual lessons. The mishaps occur with the purpose of teaching you how other people are feeling, so that you can have empathy for the suffering of others. In karmic terms, you experience what others in the past felt when they interacted with you. You are understanding what it was like to know you.

How do “critters” relate to the Shadow?

We pick up “critters” or elementals when we are open to certain types of attacks or ailments. These elementals feed on our energies of suffering. We can liberate them by addressing them directly and releasing them to angels who specialize in caring for them and turning them into positive entities.

4. How do we assimilate the Shadow into conscious thought?

Psychotherapy, active imagination, meditation, and self-analysis are the means of accomplishing this. It is not a process to expect instant fixes from. The Inner Child must become an intimate friend. Repressed rage must become conscious and then accepted into a peaceful mode. We must vanquish the villains of our childhood.

Why would we want to do this?

We want to because this means the end of accidents and attacks. It means a life of complete consciousness. We can live with complete intention when we have accomplished assimilation of the shadow.

5. Exercise: The Karmic String

•Visualize a golden wire or string of Light extending from your heart chakra.

•See it stretching from you to the distant past, through the many lifetimes of your experience.

•You may travel down along this string and revisit certain moments of interest. The emotional impact of these memories will be strong, although you seem to be observing the scenes from a passive position.

7. Draw or describe one of your helpers.

Yes, your Shadow is a helper, but it is part of yourself. How about the Remliel Angel—The Awakener—who kicks off all that trippy life shit when you need a whack on the side of the head to get you going in a different direction?

Part 1.

The Friendly Executioner

We could use the metaphor of a warrior, well armed, poised, and ready to lunge for the attack. This is the stance of the Shadow as it awaits to implement its purpose—to activate karmic energy for the purpose of redemption. The force behind the Shadow is benevolent and without emotion. Think of it more as a well-designed mechanism involved with the expenditure of stored energy. The Shadow is not your enemy. It is an evolved part of you that must fulfill its design. How it does this depends on your conscious thought and your intention.

From your first negative thought, from your first hurtful action, the Shadow began a collection of energy that would be spent later, when you would be better able to understand and adjust to the karmic experiences.

There are more ways than one to redeem karma.

1) Suffering is the most common path. It comes to those who are not conscious of their karmic debts and need to awaken to the pain of others. In this mode, all the suffering that we have ever caused any living being in the past will be expiated, minute for minute, through our own matching experience. This is what is meant by “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” Behaviors that invite karmic suffering are: A) criticizing or mocking other people B) wondering why someone has a particular problem C) inflicting pain upon another life through physical, verbal, or thought attack.

2) Perfect understanding of the suffering of others creates the condition for karmic redemption, because the whole purpose of karma is to achieve this state of consciousness. Here is a hint: fear gives rise to many actions resulting in emotional and physical oppression. To understand the entire cycle of fear-oppression-damage is to start awakening to our places in the Network of Light, within which we all are interconnected and interflowing. Pray for perfect empathy of every living thing. Remember that none of us are really severed from the rest. Each individual affects the flow of the Network for good or for ill.

3) Acts of kindness and sacrifice create redemption on two levels at the same time—the receiver is blessed/fortified and the giver experiences dilation (the chakras are opened and receive thought forms of enlightenment). The required conditions for this are that the giver is not emotionally bonded to the receiver and also the act of sacrifice must create some form of personal discomfort or inconvenience without creating involuntary sacrifice from another party. Opportunities for this arise several times a day. We can achieve this by simply allowing someone ahead of us in line at the grocery store or giving courteous right-of-way to someone at an intersection (where this would not hold up traffic). Beware of grand gestures, for the motives involved are rarely pure and usually are fraught with hidden purposes. Beware of any sacrificial act that attracts attention or notoriety.

Part 2.

The Bellwether

That bump on the head you got while bending into the car, that self-defeating choice you made yesterday, that bad habit that you continue to practice—all are conditions brought on by the Shadow as a reminder to your conscious self that there is work to be done. Because we are each such bundles of work in progress, which part of our imperfect natures should we focus on to pray for and bless? The Shadow knows!

The Shadow is part of the team (believe it!) that the Guardian Angel uses to draw our attention to what part of the personality needs the most attention. She activates the Shadow to create circumstances that draw our focus to the right point of interest. If we continue to react unconsciously to these stimuli, then she brings stronger influences into play. If we heed the messages at their low-energy level, we can affect change in our lives with minimum muss and fuss.

The power to change does not come from imposing discipline and force from external behaviors. You already know that this only creates temporary change and also gives rise to emotional backlash. To affect permanent enlightenment, healing, and transformation, we must never depend on personal effort and power. Daily meditation, prayer, and affirmation are the tools that implement movement out of a static neurosis.

1) Meditation involves first stillness of mind and then clarity of thought. A positive image of the goal must be held in the mind with complete faith in God’s power to create the change.

2) Prayer is the dynamite that sends the thought form into the higher regions of the dimensional worlds. Prayer consists of invocation, petition/request, surrender to the Divine Plan, and gratitude.

3) Daily and frequent affirmations carry the impetus of change forward and give rise to increasing liveliness of the thought form created by the preceding actions. Any thoughts of doubt or negativity must be countered by multiple positive affirmations in order to cancel any negative or destructive effects.

The Shadow will eventually become an assimilated part of the conscious mind. When that moment comes, the power of the Shadow to affect our lives in unexpected ways will cease. We will achieve control over the building and the success of aligning our lives to the Perfect Divine Plan that awaits each of us.

Critters, negative elementals, demons, and mischief makers act upon us in similar ways but not the same as the Shadow. These children of our thoughts can be transformed and blessed through our prayers and invitations to change in the Light.

Chiaroscuro

Created in the heart of darkness

The ravenous and lonely part of our illusion

Hunkers in the night of our making

And awaits our awakening and acceptance.

It paws at us, tearing, attempting to make us wake.

For with the opening of our eyes

Comes daylight and the ending of the nightmare.

Let us open then our sleepy eyes

And cradle the lonely hungry child

That waited so long for us to remember

That we are together, the same, inseparable.

Bring us into each other and look at the cosmos

With the same eyes, the same experiences.

With integration comes wholeness, beauty, and peace.