Ignore Your Shadow At Your Peril – Debbie Ford & Oprah Discuss The Shadow Side

Oprah Winfrey Super Soul Sunday
Oprah Winfrey Super Soul Sunday

Last night I excitedly e-mailed the clients taking part in my TranceFormation™ Programme which is a journey that starts with exploring your Soul Plan and inner Archetypes, and identifying exactly where you are on your life or Hero’s Journey.  I was excited because the example that I had cited just a few days earlier when I talked about the importance of uncovering their shadow side or repressed Archetypes, was an interview that I had seen with Oprah and Debbie Ford.

In the interview, which I first saw air in Summer 2013, Debbie came forward out of a shadow to confront and share secret she had never talked about in public before.  A secret she had kept hidden for 11 years.

Although I had seen the interview before, it was interesting, yet I hadn’t viewed it with my ‘Archetypal and Soul Plan head’ on.

In Debbie’s book, The Dark Side of the Light Chasers she talks about shadows being those hidden beliefs we have about ourselves that keep us from reaching our potential, a big core shadow being unworthiness.

Debbie said: “When I got the call (from Oprah) I knew that it was a bigger call and that it was time.  I had such a deep state of denial.”

Oprah Interviewing Debbie Ford
Oprah Interviewing Debbie Ford – Their Last Public Interview

In her book, Debbie describes denial as an acronym: Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying.  “We only fear feedback if on some level we know we have been lying to ourselves.  If what someone thinks about us has no basis we don’t care.  We care when we have been deceiving ourselves and we get called on it.

Hereafter I have put my additional comments in italics.

On being given her diagnosis

What occurred to me is that there were parts of me that wanted to check out.  I didn’t know and I was projecting that all on to them (the Doctors and other people), I thought: What did they know?

I thought I deserved some kind of protection because of the work that I do in the world.  I saw the arrogance of that.  I was so out of touch with reality.

What is the Shadow?

The shadow is the part of us that has been wounded, the part of us we try to hide.

The shadow is a part of us that is our wounded ego.  It’s what we try to hide about ourselves.  With your behaviour (both positive and negative, light or dark) ask what kind of person would do that?  For me it was go and go all the time.

So I had to ask, what kind of person would do that?  The answer is the type of person that doesn’t’ want to be seen as weak or lazy, which is what they said about my father.  Being super busy and fast goes into my shadow.

Do you have to get rid of your shadow?

It’s not about getting rid of the darkness, the pain, or the events or things that have happened to us, it’s about bringing the light in and making the shadow light.  The shadow is fear based, that push away.  That I’m not good enough, I’m unlovable are a couple of cores, I’m not worthy is another.  Many women have that innately inside of them.  It’s not about hating these or resisting, it’s about embracing.

I was saying to the clients that have just joined my new TranceFormation Programme when going through their Soul Plans and Archetypal Profiles that it was more about stepping into their Talents, Strengths, and Gifts to therefore minimise or ‘out weigh’ the challenges and shadow sides.

What did you learn about yourself and love?

This disease has taught me all about my shadow and about love.

I was so busy giving that I wasn’t able to receive.  The arrogance piece is that someone who lives in the world of the shadow and talks about it all the time could be fooled by it.  The shadow is so tricky.

In the book, The Shadow Effect that Debbie wrote with Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson they spoke about bringing your gifts and light to the world.

Marilyn Devonish with Author Marianne Williamson
Marilyn Devonish with Author Marianne Williamson

We are born with so many gifts that have been suppressed, and Marianne Williamson is right, so right, that we can’t allow that real self, that dark to exist.

You have to ask if you are worthy of happiness, which is different to feeling that you deserving it.

Why did you keep your cancer a secret for 11 years?

If I shared my cancer I feared it would all become about me, and people have come to see me about them.  When I would tell people they would immediate say they would send me healing energy.  I didn’t want other peoples’ energy on me.

My next evolutionary step

Now I see it was the vulnerability of love and letting love in that was so hard.  Receiving, that was just so shocking to me.  When people would call me and express their love it was so surprising to me: Oh?  They love me?  I just cried.  I love that I got, that’s what I needed, that’s my next evolutionary step, to let the love in and feel it, all of the love that I ignored.  I didn’t want to hear it.

Love
Love

My fear is that I would get so big for my britches that I would just blow up!  I’d seen too many people in my industry get so fluffed up by their ego that they were no longer with the people, that was my fear, I didn’t want to be that, but when you have a fear, and I thought it was a good fear, that is a shadow.  That was always my fear, and when you have a fear that constantly comes up, that is a shadow, but I thought it was a good shadow.

How you can test for your own shadows?

In the book The Shadow, the test is to ask how long have you been working on the same issue?  Is it 6 months, 12 months, 2 years, longer?  If it always comes up it is a shadow.

We all have them, it is nothing to embarrassed about, that is how our soul grows.

How did you get through it?

I made a list everyday of reasons to live.

How do you know it is time to take action and change?

Literally the timing was so magical because I am ready to talk about it now.  My publicist asked me if I would finally talk about the cancer (in public) 2 prior and I said OK and then you (Oprah) called.  That is just too far out.

When I started the book on Courage 3 years ago, what I realise now is that I didn’t know anything about courage!  Facing a lift threatening illness and choosing life, now that’s courage.

On losing her faith

I lost my faith.  Me who felt so close to god.  Me who felt like I had been guided through every piece of work I’d done, I felt truly blessed, with that gift I get to give but I don’t believe there’s anyone to protect me.  I lost my faith.

On how to regain your faith

We have to choose faith even if we don’t believe it or hold on to a friend that believes in us.  I sometimes didn’t get out of bed for 30 or 40 days after coming back from hospital.  My lowest moment was realising that I didn’t want to be here.

In the Soul Plan work people often find the ‘Resistance to being here’ showing up in their chart with usually surprises them.  Often that belief can be deeply unconscious, which is what Debbie Ford described.  For more about the Soul Plan and how it works check out my Blog post entitled: The Soul Plan – The Key To Unlocking Your Talents, Destiny & Soul Potential

“I was so f@£king angry with God!”

I was angry with God so I called Neale Donald Walsch who wrote Conversations With God.  So angry, so f&£king angry because why me?  This should not be happening to me!  The cancer put me on my knees and kept me there.

One of goals was to be around my son for the last 2 years he was at home (before going to college) I just didn’t know that it would mean getting knocked out with cancer to do it.

On finding strength 

We’ve got to find that Warrior inside, we’ve got to find that strength and go after it.

One of the Archetypes is The Warrior, which some of my clients (particularly the female clients) often resist.  All of the Archetypes in the Profile, (12 of them in total) have their place.  It is when they are ignored, repressed or unexpressed when problems and challenges arise.  For more information on the Archetype and completing a personalised profile visit: www.tranceformationsTM.com/archetypal 

Oprah pointed out that part of being a spiritual warrior for other people is to take those lessons and share them.

On finding that thread, that glimmer of hope

It is a state of mind that all of us will be challenged with at some time.  Don’t give up on yourself, and if you can’t do, it find somebody who is standing there knowing that they are not going to give up on you.  Find those people.

The Power of The Gratitude Journal

Write it down in a journal every day, the good things about your life, not the bad, just the good things.

Oprah: “Yes, I call it keeping a grateful journal.  I actually kept one for years and have started back doing it again, and it makes a difference in your day because you go through life looking for the good thing that is gonna happen so you can remember it, that is what I’ve learned.”

And you can go back and read it when you are really having a down moment, and you’re like wow, that’s my life!

Oprah: “When my life was so rushed at the end of the Oprah show and I was going from one thing, to the next thing, to the next thing I pulled out a Grateful Journal from 1992 and I was reading about running through the woods with my dogs; Had a mango sorbet; Had a flatbread pizza – usually food!  Just reading what made me happy and thinking gee, there was a time when running through the woods with my dogs allowed me to feel such pleasure, such joy.  Why don’t I do that for myself anymore?  That’s why I think keeping a Grateful Journal is really powerful.”

The Magic Programme with Marilyn Devonish
The Magic Programme with Marilyn Devonish

Part of my 28-Day Magic Programme is having everyone keep a Gratitude Journal.  The participants are ALWAYS stunned by the power of this and dramatic and often immediate impact that it has on their daily lives, mindset, attitudes, relationships and even their business and finances.

On discovering your Shadow Side

Oprah: “How do we who want to discover find out what the shadow side is?  How do we discover what our shadow beliefs that keep us from moving forwards are?  Do we need a teacher?  Do we need somebody to help us do it?  Is it possible to figure that out for yourself?” 

It’s harder than one would think to do it by yourself.  It’s not a fix it, it’s not an overnight process, and as we know, people in our society are always looking for the quick fix.  It’s not a quick fix; it’s a long term transformation.  You can learn about the shadow in your mind but it’s useless.  You must learn about the shadow through the integration because it’s really the movement of the integration in your head to the movement to the integration in your heart.  So to go to someone who is doing deep shadow work.  It is just so cathartic if you just allow yourself to scream.

I had no idea why I was guided to make my TranceFormation a 3 or 6 month (and in one case 12-month) Programme at the time I was in production creation mode.  Hearing Debbie explain about the process of doing this kind of evolutionary and transformational work crystalised it for me.

Do you need to curse and scream?

The Scream
Do you need to release the inner repression?

We had an 80 year old woman who had never screamed, had never cursed, had never raised her voice and we just got her down on the floor to get her to scream and curse.  Her whole face changed, she looked 20 years younger because she let out what was bottled and repressed and kept down all those years.  The conscious mind doesn’t allow us to remember these incidents that got us there, that got us stuck, that had us turn away from ourselves.

This just goes to show that it is never too late to get started.  One of the old sayings in personal development is: “When would now be the right time start?”  Just like the Archetypal or Hero’s Journey, many will hear The Call, but they are at choice as to whether they will step over the Threshold, face the Challenges, and dive into the Abyss in order to come through the other side into Transformation and the Revelation.

On making sense of the past

Everybody finds these incidents from the past and you think.  Whoa, what does that have to do with anything?!

Oprah: “But what we learn is that everything has something to do with everything.  There is nothing that’s lost.  Every single thing that’s happened to any of us contributes to the being that we are now.  And whether you allow that, push it down, or bring it up to the light determines what your course in life will be I think for so many of us.”

When we get to the other side of it we think oh now that makes sense.

What is the soul? 

To me the soul is the part of us that never dies it’s what we come in with.  I don’t think you can see it but I think it’s who we are at our core and it carries all the messages and the lessons we have learned in the past,  and it carries all the lessons and the messages that we will carry into the future.

Soul Plan Reports by Marilyn Devonish
Soul Plan Reports by Marilyn Devonish

In the TranceFormation™ Programme we map out the Soul Plan based upon your unique birth name, which is always an exciting revelation.

On the spiritual a-ha moment

I think my first trauma in life to get through was my addictions (cocaine and opiates), so I think it was on the bathroom floor, in a treatment centre.  I felt it energetically that the world loved me and that there was a beautiful force out there and that was my first real spiritual moment and I committed to study and doing what I needed to do to connect with that feeling.  Because of course I was an addict so I had to go and chase it and learn everything about it.  I thought I had a lot of spiritual experiences while on drugs but I later knew that wasn’t it.

On the revelation about dying

There was a time that I thought I would die because there was this underlying part of me that didn’t want to live.  My son kept me alive because I couldn’t imagine not being there for him.  I didn’t fear dying before but I fear it now because I so want to live and I am now so enjoying my life.

What do you know for sure? 

What I know for sure is that we are created with this phenomenal force inside of us that can have us withstand.  That god never gives us more than we can handle and that everything that is coming our ways comes our way so that we can grow and evolve.

And if we are willing to look at it like that and if we are willing to open our hearts and see where we are shut down, where we’re trying to resist life, then we have the greatest opportunity to step into who we always wanted to be.

In Loving Memory of Debbie Ford, 1955-2013
In Loving Memory of Debbie Ford, 1955-2013

If you found this Blog Post useful or know anyone who might benefit from reading it please do feel free to Like and Share it.

I also created a free Archetypal Journey Online Quiz if you wanted to find out more about where you are on your life path and what shadow energies might be at play.  Go to: https://app.brandquiz.io/tranceformationstm/archetypal-journey-quiz

Marilyn x

ABOUT MARILYN DEVONISH

Marilyn Devonish is a TranceFormational Coach, Therapist, Public Speaker, Freelance Writer, and Workshop Facilitator. She is also a Certified Trainer of NLP, Certified Trainer of Hypnosis, Certified Trainer of Time Line Therapy, and Certified PhotoReading Instructor.  She is also Soul Plan Practitioner, Angel Tarot Card Reader, and Practitioner of Archetypal Profiling, Hawaiian Huna & Ho’oponopono, DNA Theta Healing, EFT, EmoTrance, Energetic NLP, Positive EFT, Quantum Touch Level 1, Reiki, Access Bars, and Access Consciousness.

Her new TranceFormation™ Programme which combines all of these skills and more was launched in December 2013.

Website: www.tranceformationTM.com

TranceFormation Programme: www.thetranceformationprogramme.eventbrite.com 

The Magic & Gratitude eCoaching Programme: The Magic eCoaching Programme

I have also created a free 5-Day Intro Programme: https://mailchi.mp/tranceformationstm.com/the-magic-free-5-day-intro-course

 

 

 

 

 

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