David Herron, Energy Healer

The shadow is the part of us which we don't "see" or "know". The human ego is willing to let us experience only a portion of ourself. There's a wide range of thoughts, feelings, emotions, beliefs and more which bubble inside us, which we don't always see or realize are there. Our friends probably see them very clearly, but our ego doesn't let us see them.

Some of the shadow is hurtful or harming. Maybe we don't want to admit to dominating or intimidating others. Maybe we don't want to admit to self destructive attitudes. Maybe we are scared of success, for whatever reason, and a part of us will sabotage any path towards success. But those aspects of ourself aren't pleasant to know about, are they? Therefore the ego will keep these aspects of ourself secret. This sort of shadow self is known as the dark shadow.

The following event happened to me on the last weekend of September, 2003, while attending a class given by Vianna Stibal. The following experiment was done rather informally, though with good care to have fairly clear results. I believe it could be repeated in a more rigourous setting if someone chose.

In the room along with the class was a woman with a microscope doing "Live Blood Cell Analysis". The microscope also had a video monitor and VHS tape recorder allowing a record to be made. She also had pictures explaining various common blood conditions. The process was simple, she pricked my finger with a clean needle, collected some blood on a slide, mixed in a clear liquid, and put it under the microscope. I've since been told that in a clinical setting, live blood cell analysis uses multiple samples taken from different parts of the body. In this case the woman took only one sample, from my finger.