Introduction
Those of Q’uo address the societal roots of authoritarianism in the individual’s repression of ugly or unwanted parts of the individual into their unconscious mind. Most people repress parts of themselves from free expression, building a potential that can be politically and socially released at scale in mass society by certain personalities which magnetically attract these repressed other selves. Releasing this potential sidesteps the necessity of the repressed individual to call sufficiently upon the spirit complex, trapping the repressed individual in the sinkhole of indifference indefinitely. Q’uo ends by discussing the power yielded through polarized engagement with this shadow self and suggests how one might positively accomplish this work.
Group Question
The question today has to do with the shadow side of the personality, and the way that repression plays into the development of that shadow side, the sense in which having a shadow side leaves us susceptible to the manipulation of those who would play authorities to us and what we might do to limit our susceptibility to this kind of manipulation.
Channeled Message
(Steve channeling)
I am Q’uo. We greet those gathered here today, in love and light, thanking those who have made the sacrifice of personal comfort, and of personal convenience, so that we may be assembled in an effort to bridge the gap, shall we say, from density to density, as we learn from each other how more eloquently to seek the One Infinite Creator.
We believe that you understand well enough that it is necessary in all communications of this sort for you to exercise your utmost discrimination and, deciding whether what we have to offer befits the circumstances and if it does, we happily walk with you along the way, so that to our mutual benefit we may further the interests of our seeking. And if not, there is no blame, we simply go our separate ways and continue to seek as best we can.
The question you have put to us today is not an easy one to gain entrance to, for not only does it reach deep within that area you call your unconscious, but it also inevitably must pass through layer upon layer of resistance built up to the very revelation of this, which you have called your shadow side.
Now it is correct to say that the shadow side is part of that configuration of consciousness which you generally regard as not conscious or unconscious. The unconscious, however, is a large concept, and there are many different depths, shall we say, of which one might speak in this regard.
The most accessible has to do with that layer of consciousness to which you are not, in the moment, directed, but to which you may be directed, should you choose, that is to say, it is a layer of consciousness, not in the present moment accessed by you, but which is accessible by you at will.
There are, however, other deeper layers which are not so easily accessible, which in fact are pointedly hidden from you, and these deeper layers have, themselves, different dynamics depending upon how deep one wishes to go. The most ready access to these deeper layers is through the influence which they exercise upon those layers of consciousness to which you do have access. And the way that these may be signaled is to recognize in perhaps the flicker of an emotion or an association that comes across your screen of conscious attention from some source that you cannot readily identify. Sometimes these sources are somewhat innocuous and have very little charge to them. At other times, these sources have a great deal of charge, and you may experience this charge in the form of an emotional reaction, a sense of recoil, perhaps a knot you feel in your stomach, perhaps tension which you have felt in your musculature, and may or may not be aware of these accompanying affects to other conscious engagements in which you may be occupied.
So one who wishes to raise the question of what there might be of unconscious involvement with one’s current conscious state can begin here. And you can find, for example, that let us say you have a certain tension which you observe in your bodily comportment, that by focusing your mind on this tension and acting to relax it just a little bit, those affects that are associated with that tension might bubble up to the surface and may there be examined.
Now, if you wish to go deeper yet, you will need to take a survey of issues of which you have experience in more vexed circumstances, shall we say. You may wish to take an inventory of anger which you have experienced in.the recent past, perhaps hurt, which you have experienced, maybe it is grief, maybe it is a feeling of being lost or bereft, not being able to find your way through a circumstance that suggests itself to you as difficult.
Perhaps, if you go deeper yet, you will find that some of these negative affects, which we have just enumerated, have hardened and crystallized into something more difficult to put a name to. Maybe it’s a kind of resentment. Maybe it’s a kind of feeling of being immobilized in the core of your being. Maybe it’s something so inchoate that when you say of it, for example, that it is depressive, that hardly begins to circumscribe it with a concept adequate to its nature. Maybe there is something in this structure, in this character that lies hidden within your psyche, that you are able to get even the vaguest glimpse of only when you find yourself acting in an inordinate way, acting in a way that does not conform to your idea of how you ought to act in the circumstance that has called it forth, in short, only when you feel yourself to have been called out. and find yourself to be someone you would not wish to be. And in a circumstance such as this, you might well feel the need to ask yourself how it came about that such a portion of your personality could have been dislodged in this fashion, so as to become a motivator for action, you cannot wholly consciously embrace as properly belonging to you. How could it have come to pass that I am this being that I now do not wish to be.
Now if we take a step back to examine the process according to which such a thing might happen,we believe that the terms of your question have suggested you already know that it is through what is called repression. That is to say, there are many occasions when you have felt an urge to express an emotion that has been prompted from deep within, but you feel it is not appropriate to express this emotion, given the circumstances you find yourself in—most often the company you find yourself in—and so, instead of giving expression to this affect, you block it from being expressed, and you drive it further down into the depths of your psyche thereby.
Now what tends to happen in your social energy complex is that circumstances like this will have risen many, many times over, so much so that you have become habituated to this act of repression as a means of effectuating a more survivable manifest psyche, shall we say, so that when the feelings in question arise, they get repressed more and more quickly, even to the point that you are no longer conscious of the process that is taking place. And now your unconscious mind is very, very actively engaged in the function of repression, and in the process creates for itself an entire domain of repressed.affect:
Now, in truth, repressed affect does not simply, because it is repressed, go away on that account, instead it remains with you. And in fact we would say something even stronger, that is it becomes empowered with each new act of repression. Now this means that there develops within the unconscious portion of the mind a powerful potential for what to the conscious mind would be transgressive self-expression, transgressive action. And this means that you have what you have called this shadow side as a constant companion that walks through you through your hours and days.
So the work of the adept, which is work in consciousness, is charged with a responsibility which addresses not only the conscious portion of your being, but but equally, and in fact we would say especially, that unconscious portion. And so this does for example, when you reach down into the yellow ray and the deeper portions of that yellow ray as it blends with the orange ray and the deeper portions of that orange ray, as it stands most adjacent to the red ray, you will find a great deal of material there that will not appear attractive to your eye. It will inevitably, in fact, appear quite, quite ugly. And that is the very reason you have kept this portion of your psyche in the shadows.
And this ugly self, energized with ugly impulses of all manner of description, which through time have only become more powerful and more ugly, is a portion of yourself which needs to be selectively, in a controlled and managed situation of meditation, brought forward for examination, expression, and allowed the space it needs to become visible so that it may in the light become healed, so that it no longer feels, it must recoil from the light in order to be what it is. To the extent that you have not done this work, two things will be true: Number one, your behavior will evidence, in ways unbeknowns to you, the stirrings of these darker energies that you have not learned to accept.
Number two, to the extent that you yourself are not aware of these energies which have been driven down to a deep place within your being, you will be vulnerable to the workings of other individuals, whether or not they themselves are adept, in such a way that you may be better to action, which once again, if left to your normal conscious process, you would not approve. And yet you can find yourself quite beside yourself, under the influence of factors beyond your immediate self-control. That, my friends, is the reason why one who has undertaken work in consciousness does not simply dwell in the joy of the upper chakras day and and day out, but continually, upon a regular basis, one must revisit those lower regions of the psyche where the shadow self dwells, and embrace the energies that lie therein with love, and infuse those energies with light, inviting them to manifestation in higher and higher forms. We will say that this is slow work, but it is work most deserving of being done, and in fact most needful. With that, we thank this instrument for the contribution it has made to our message, and we now transfer the contact to the one known as Jeremy. I am Q’uo.
(Jeremy channeling)
I am Q’uo, and I am with this instrument at this time.
The portion of the individual which has not received honor from the conscious self is a part of that mind/body/spirit complex as any other. It is not simply a weight that one carries around; it has a potential to it. If you can imagine your social energy complex in which you have your identity as a cavalcade of different expressions of individual parts, some offered more energy than others, then you can appreciate the way in which the expression of yellow ray is a kind of channeling of consciousness into social integration.
It is often the case that mind/body/spirit complexes find that where they plug in, so to speak, reflects poorly upon the self they wish to be because they must survive, they must have social needs met, material needs met, and they must have a certain confidence in their place in the world, the room they take up on a finite seeming plane. This is an act of expression of personal energies and a pressure offered back by the complex of society. You may not appreciate how torrid this dynamic often is even in those individuals well balanced and content with their identity.
So imagine those who have not done the work in those lower energy centers. They are in a kind of subconscious fight-or-flight mode at all times. There is no rest for these weary. There is only the bloody struggle to be, and they manage as best they can with what conditions and powers they can locate within and about themselves. Of course, the salvation of wholeness is always at hand, my friends, and there are few entities who have not had a glimpse of that wholeness. But the glimpse interacts with the biases brought into the incarnation, and when this occurs, the chips fall where they may. Polarization may or may not occur as a result.
Now, there are individuals who build up so much potential in those neglected and repressed parts of self that they express, in a subconscious and intuitively perceived manner, great power latent [and] waiting to be made kinetic. This is an opportunity for those who would assemble societies to a purpose they themselves intend to set. Authority figures do not themselves necessarily possess great power on their own terms. Instead they learn to leverage, they learn to coordinate, and most of all [to] become focal points for imbalanced conditions within the social complex to discharge, to let their energy current flow to a ground of some kind. We can point to examples of this in normal situations in the school yard, in the locker room, in the online spaces where resentments are not recognized as the catalysis they in truth represent, catalysis for recognition of dishonored parts of the self that may be redeemed only with care and tender repair.
The faster the social intercourse—the cycle of energy exchange—flows, the more potential the unexamined self provides the social complex, for however powerful the networked society of realized individuals may be, there is still great power in the repressed individuals, the individuals who have yoked themselves to their lack of acceptance, and build within them energy, tension, psychic trauma that demands release. Now, the authoritarian leader cannot make anything happen in this societal complex, but it can see the repression within itself reflected in others and, in a way, assumes the role of social head to the social body, providing the possibility of release of energies and subsidizing, if you will, the deleterious tension that repression always enacts upon an individual mind/body/spirit complex.
Perhaps one way to think of this flow of potential would be to recognize it as an alternative to the opening of the spirit complex within the individual, the activation in full of that conduit to intelligent infinity. By offering the societal body as a sink for these energies, one need not search too diligently within oneself. One is a part of something bigger than the self, that instead of transforming the self as in the positive path, allows for the sinkhole of indifference to be indefinitely maintained. And this is a phenomenon you may recognize from moment to moment in your experience of the yellow ray complex in which you have your energy interchanges. This is, in a way, a lowering of the threat level within the repressed mind/body/spirit complex, a way to discharge the potential that catalyst seeks to release, and instead let it flow into other ends with which the individual can identify as both a visceral expression of power as well as an ideal that can perhaps substitute for the higher concepts that spirit provides.
It is a pickle, my friends, because all hope relies on individual work. This is the case regardless of the polarity chosen if one seeks to pursue the Creator. Therefore, this holding pattern of the social memory complex in potentiation has a valence to it that seems perpetual and static, and the death drive is often realized through it. There is no problem with death as a natural function, but as a goal, it is a way to channel negativity into a kind of engine, and there are entities who assist in the maintenance of this engine so that the darker, more negative energies may be appreciated and consumed by them. This is a distasteful topic. However, it is important to understand how the sinkhole of indifference does not simply arrest the individual, but creates political, social, ethical corruptions.
We would at this time leave this instrument and transfer contact to the one known as Nithin to explore this individual role in making sense of this situation. We are those of Q’uo.
(Nithin channeling)
I am Q’uo, I am with this instrument. It is useful to first consider the nature and the relationship of the mind, body, spirit complex to the shadow self as it is now, in comparison to the conditions prior to veiling. Prior to veiling, the mind, body, spirit was more aware of all within itself, including those things it would find distasteful. However, the seeking of polarity in third density without a veil occurred at a glacial pace. Thus the veil was introduced and the shadow self so often became a self that was hidden beneath this veil. However, it created great potential and impetus towards polarization through the attraction of catalyst.
In order to discuss how one may utilize and interact with the shadow self, it is first useful to comment on the often magnetic attraction which things that are repressed create within the mind/body/spirit complex’s reality. This instrument has recently experienced such a magnetic attraction over the past several days with catalyst regarding work. It is useful to consider the nature of repression that can strengthen or add to the shadow self. One type of repression is a distortion towards comfort that is often paired with a lack of understanding how to process the discomfortable catalyst. And so often great trauma can be repressed from an almost instinctual and sometimes cultural desire to regain the seeming comfort that was lost at the inception of this – of the catalyst. Other forms of repression that add or build to the shadow self: a core from a desire to control and utilize catalyst for greater power, and this is typically associated with a more negative approach. However, any form or type of repression is subject to random, let us say surfacing of the shadow self into the conscious mind and into conscious manifestation, often by unexpected or surprising emotions.
And so an observation of the present moment, of the triggers of the surfacing emotions that are both expected and unexpected are a very important practice involved in the so-called integration of the shadow self. However, the so-called integration of the shadow self is never truly complete, it is always ongoing practice, in addition to observation of the present moment, as we have often spoke, meditation is key in discovering what lies beneath the surface of the conscious mind, and peeling the many layers of that sometimes appear to comprise of waking life. And so for those on the positive path, discovering and accepting one’s shadow self is an ongoing practice, but every portion of that self that is discovered and accepted removes some of the magnetic charge that that shadow self has towards certain types of catalysts. As we have said, that which is not needed falls away, and so too is this true of the processing and accepting of the various portions of the shadow self.
And it is useful again to comment that those actively polarizing negatively, and perhaps those who have been, let us say, misinformed as to the ramifications of controlling their shadow self, may engage in behavior where a trigger of the shadow self is discovered, but instead of attempting to integrate or unify, an attempt is made to further separate and control that aspect of oneself for one’s own benefit or power. A simplistic example of this is the so-called martial arts fighter who recognizes certain things that make them tremendously angry and chooses to repress that anger until such a moment when they can use that against their opponent in order to empower themselves, but that is not to say that acceptance and integration of the various portions of the shadow self, does not also contain great power, but the power is of a different nature. The interaction with the shadow self continues beyond third density, but it is here that it provides the strongest impetus and potential for change, and so we would suggest that all seekers be mindful in engaging with this key aspect of the mind/body/spirit complex.
We now turn this contact back to the one known as Steve. I am Q’uo.
(Steve channeling)
I am Q’uo, and we are once again with this instrument. We come now to the point where a summation is in order, and we would add to this summation one small admonition, which we would suggest to you is perhaps not small in importance.
We have seen how a shadow self can be created from a host of diverse affects that for one reason or another have, in the course of time, been not allowed expression but driven down to a deeper portion of the mind/body/spirit complex, where they no longer remain available to ready conscious access. We have initially emphasized how this process works within the space of a single incarnation, but we could and should supplement that notion with a further realization that over the course of many, many incarnations, a residue may thus be built up, a residuum of propensity or bias lurking in a dispositive way unseen behind the developments of conscious life. Thus it is that polarity is achieved gradually. And a motivating factor in the achievement of polarity is the way in which an unconscious repository is situated within the being.
There are configurations in which the situation tilts towards that which we have called the positive, and there are configurations in which this complex of residual affect tilts toward the negative, but both alike, to the extent that they have not been made available to the mind/body/spirit complex, are subject to the very manipulations of which we have spoken to the instrument known as Jeremy.
Thus, a positive configuration can very easily, all too easily, we would say, be mobilized to negative effect in one who is not sufficiently scrupulous in the everyday work of bringing up to conscious life those elements which lurk below. Now, as one gains maturity in spiritual work, one becomes more and more able to sense the stirrings of the energies from below, and, on both paths, the positive as well as the negative, these stirrings not only may be brought to light, but may be used as motivators for further development. They are, as we have said, through the one known as Nithin, an impetus.
Here is where we would issue an admonition and a caution, for it becomes possible—to the one with growing awareness of the way the process of conscious unfoldment works—to invoke these underlying energies in various degrees of wholeness.
It is the work of the negative adept to achieve crystallization and integration of these energies from down below in such a way that they retain the character of negative energy, which is sometimes called magnetic, and to invoke this character in totality as an energy reserve around which the personality shall be placed and allowed to develop. Such a move inevitably results in personality inflation, such that the negative energies become available to the personality, and increasingly the personality conceives of itself in relation to the powers it may thus mobilize for worldly effect.
Now the positive adept is also in the position of needing to draw upon these powers that lie below. But the task at hand for the positive adept is to transform these powers from the negative or the magnetic register to what we may call the positive or the radiant register, and that transformation is part and parcel of a personality transformation, which the positive adept willingly allows itself to undergo.
However, there is a danger. There is a danger that, when the shadow self is thus courted, too much of it will be allowed presence in the light of day for the positive adept—too much to work with at a given time, so that the result is a personality inflation, not unlike that which we have described on the pathway of the negative adept. This is a moment of hazard, a danger on the path of the working in consciousness that seeks to integrate that which has been repressed. And so therefore we do recommend a certain approach to this moment, which has to it a certain danger, and that is that not more of the shadow side should be evoked on any given occasion than can be handled in a single session.
And it is well, therefore, to focus on a particular theme for any particular working. So, let us say the theme is anger, or let us say the theme is grief, or let us say the theme is a perceived: propensity to take authority. On a specific occasion, let it be but a simple, single and well-circumscribed theme that is brought forward, so that that energy may be transmuted, and not in such a way as to bring forth sufficient energy from these reservoirs, that they might overwhelm the will to transform, and the capacity to transform, that the adept knows itself at that moment to have.
With that admonition we will say that it is good work to make your addresses to your shadow side, and moreover, it is necessary work. and to that work, my friends, we do commend you. We are those of Q’uo, and at this time we would take our leave of this instrument and this group, wishing you, godspeed. Adonai, my friends, Adonai.