Welcome back to daily breath. This is the Bach Chopra. Today I'd like to continue our discussion of the self's eighth secret,

evil is not your enemy,

and discuss how each one of us can contain violence in ourselves and in the world by breaking it down into manageable bits.

Negative emotions feed off certain aspects of the shadow that are very manageable.

The shadow is dark.

Everyone has a shadow because of the natural contrast between darkness and light. Light and

shadow go together. First principle. Second principle, the shadow is secret. We

store impulses and feelings there that we wish to keep private.

We don't want other people to find out about our shadow. It's just natural because we are

embarrassed about it and we don't realize that everybody else has it as well.

The third principle to be aware of is that the shadow is dangerous when it's repressed because repressed feelings have the power to

convince us that they can kill us or make us go insane and that's why we

repressed them. Fifth point, the shadows shrouded in myth,

which means in stories, in mythical stories, for generations.

People have seen it as the layer of dragons and monsters and fallen angels and the devil himself.

You know, actually think of the word devil, D-E-V-I-L, it means the divine feeling ill.

So the devil is God's shadow, basically.

If you want to think about it metaphorically,

is God in a bad mood? Because of some unmet perceived need, we

humans project both God as the ultimate good and the devil as the ultimate evil.

This is how you realize that the shadow is shrouded in myth.

The shadow is irrational. It has no logic. Its impulses fight against reason. They are explosive and totally willful.

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