Q&A: What are the shadows?
Our Art of Chi student asked:
“Hello James,
You have mentioned shadows, and inner shadows a few times. What are the shadows?
Are they artificial elementals we create and feed lower frequency thoughts and feelings? Like fear, anger, greed?”
Please find our detailed answer below:
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Hello Nonna,
Thank you for asking 😊 There are two parts to your question, so let’s take them one at a time.
What do I mean by “shadows”?
The short answer: shadows are aspects of ourselves we have not fully recognized or integrated—particularly unconscious patterns of fear, attachment, and control that obscure our connection with God, or our recognition of non-duality.
I give this broad description because what we recognize as shadow changes as our consciousness expands. In my own cultivation, what I once considered “good” and “bad” continues to be challenged - and I feel it will continue to be re-formed until all such dualistic intepretations back to the One. I increasingly notice how my attachments can hide behind seemingly loving or spiritual intentions, taking on the appearance of false-light.
If we understand Light as conscious awareness, shadows are the parts of ourselves that this awareness has yet to illuminate. Working with them means understanding them and taking responsibility for how they influence our actions and karma. Awareness opens the possibility of release; integration means carrying that understanding into how we live.
Shadows may express themselves through anger, greed, or jealousy, or hide within good intentions (false-light paradigm). For example, we may sincerely want our children to succeed and call this love, while tying our own self-worth to their achievements. The love is real, but mixed with attachment. Recognizing this gives us the opportunity to love more unconditionally.
Having difficult emotions doesn’t make us bad or spiritually deficient. Meeting them honestly, understanding what lies beneath them, and consciously choosing our response is Light in action.
How does this relate to surrendering to Non-Dual Light?
In my teaching, the path of light involves surrendering to Source (when Two returns back to Oneness): loosening the ego’s need to control so our actions can arise from greater clarity, love, and connection. When we see ourselves separate from God, we need to cling on to our egoic control to life. When we are unified, we naturally surrender to consciousness expansion.
I see a parallel with Wu Wei, often translated as “non-action”: acting without unnecessary force. We continue to care, make decisions, and participate fully in life while releasing our insistence that everything follow our personal will.
As this deepens, doing and being begin to feel seamless - and paradoxically integrated. In devotional language, we become instruments of God’s will. In the mystical Christian language I draw upon, this is the ideal of embodying Christ consciousness—allowing divine, unconditional love to express itself through our lives.
Shadow work reveals what interferes with this surrender. Within a non-dual understanding, these parts of us also belong to the whole. We can meet them with compassion and learn from them along our spiritual journey.
Now to your second inquiry: “Are they artificial elementals we create and feed with lower-frequency thoughts and feelings, like fear, anger, and greed?”
We can explore this through “as within, so without”: the correspondence between our inner patterns and our outer energetic experience. In this framework, a shadow may express itself as an external entity form, but the underlying unconscious pattern is also part of what we need to address.
A pattern can feel both “you and not you”—arising within us while seeming separate or taking on a life of its own (becoming its own egregor).
We approach this from two perspectives:
Internally: Experiences that trigger us can reveal patterns worth exploring through the black and white mirrors. In our practice language, we examine their vital, astral, mental, and karmic dimensions through energy work and contemplation of their underlying causes.
Externally: Within our esoteric framework, some disturbances are interpreted as external influences resonating with inner patterns. These consciousness are expressed as larvae’s, phantoms, demons, egregors, lower astral beings, etc. Being triggered or experiencing difficult emotions does not by itself establish that an entity is present; but it is the doorway for such entities to enter us when we are unaware of these shadow expressions.
How do we work with this in AoC?
We combine energetic practice with self-reflection, addressing both the experience and the patterns that may sustain it.
In the esoteric aspects of our Medical Qigong training, clearing practices are described as releasing “astral entities” and filling the space with Light, which we understand as consciousness. The intention is to support greater clarity and awareness, giving the person an opportunity to cultivate and integrate these qualities after the session. The practitioner can support this process, while respecting the person’s freedom and pace.
Alongside this, we use the black and white mirrors in our own cultivation to examine our habits, beliefs, and attachments. Recognizing our own shadows helps us discern more clearly when supporting others, with less risk of projecting our unresolved patterns onto them.
The central teaching is that clearing an experience does not necessarily resolve its underlying pattern. Lasting integration involves bringing awareness into everyday life through the qualities we cultivate and the choices we make. When difficulties return, we chose whether to meet them with further understanding and care, or ignorance. And thus, at the end of the day, we are our own doctors; and as medical qigong practitioners, we DO NOT heal people’s shadows, but rather we create the conditions for people to CHOOSE to return back to light and to heal themselves.
In our devotional language, we offer our efforts and surrender the healing to divine providence. This is surrender in practice: participating wholeheartedly while releasing the need to control another person’s journey.
Together, energetic practice and honest self-reflection help us embody the awareness and compassion we seek to share. 🙏
