Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark: Breaking Free from the Hidden Forces That Drive You

"Our shadow," teaches Robert Augustus Masters, "is our internal storehouse for the parts of us that we’ve disowned or rejected, or are otherwise keeping in the dark."

Everyone has a shadow, but all too many of us are unaware of it. It holds the feelings and beliefs that we are most ashamed of or cannot accept about ourselves. For some, it may contain unacknowledged anger or grief. For others, pain or fear.

Our shadow contains our unfaced conditioning.

And the more unaware we are of our shadow, the more it influences and controlsus.

Based upon Masters's four decades as a psychospiritual therapist and guide, Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark invites readers to understand and skillfully work with this rich yet neglected dimension of ourselves.

With depth and clarity, he illuminates the process of meeting our shadow in beneficial ways, and how we can embody a more complete and life-giving experience of who we are.

In this book you’ll discover:

• The nature of our shadow and how to optimally work with it—exploring our conditioning and core shadow elements, including in the domains of shame, fear, aggression, resistance, addiction, death, and spirituality

• How to work with the child within, self-sabotage, narcissism, sexuality, dreams, and other matters deeply influenced by our shadow

• Why turning toward our pain is an essential part of shadow work—making wise use of our pain

•Collective shadow domains we share with family, social groups, political party, or nation—bringing them and their associated traumas into the light

When we uncover and work in-depth with our shadow, we free ourselves from its control and gain the opportunity to put its contents to work for us instead of allowing them to work against us.

Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark shows us how to navigate the full terrain of our emotions, drives, needs, and depths of who we are.

Foreword by Lissa Rankin, MD, New York Times bestselling author of Mind Over Medicine, The Fear Cure, and The Anatomy of a Calling.

Robert Augustus Masters
Robert Augustus Masters, PhD, is an integral psychotherapist, relationship expert, and spiritual teacher whose work blends the psychological and physical with the spiritual, emphasizing embodiment, emotional literacy, and the development of relational maturity. He is the author of fourteen books, including Transformation through Intimacy and Spiritual Bypassing.

Lissa Rankin
Lissa Rankin, MD, is the star of two national public television specials and the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestselling Mind Over Medicine. Founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute, she is a physician, educator, and health-care advocate who seeks to bridge the divides between traditional medicine, complementary medicine, and cutting-edge trauma therapy. Dr. Rankin leads online training programs for medical and healing-arts professionals, as well as the public, and has offered workshops at retreat centers internationally. Her nonprofit Heal At Last seeks to provide equal access to trauma healing and spiritual practices for everyone who needs treatment. She resides in Northern California. For more, visit lissarankin.com.

Robert Augustus Masters
Robert Augustus Masters, PhD, is an integral psychotherapist, relationship expert, and spiritual teacher whose work blends the psychological and physical with the spiritual, emphasizing embodiment, emotional literacy, and the development of relational maturity. He is the author of fourteen books, including Transformation through Intimacy and Spiritual Bypassing.

Lissa Rankin
Lissa Rankin, MD, New York Timesbestselling author ofMind Over Medicine, The Fear Cure,andThe Anatomy of a Calling,is a physician, speaker, founder of the Whole Health Medicine Institute, and mystic. Passionate about what makes people optimally healthy and what predisposes them to illness, she is on a mission to merge science and spirituality in a way that not only facilitates the health of the individual, but also uplifts the health of the collective. Bridging between seemingly disparate worlds, Lissa is a connector, collaborator, curator, and amplifier, broadcasting not only her unique visionary ideas, but also those of cutting-edge visionaries she discerns and trusts, especially in the field of her latest research into "Sacred Medicine." Lissa has starred in two PBS specials and also leads workshops both online and at retreat centers like Esalen and Kripalu. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and daughter. For more, seeLissaRankin.com.