Awareness and Ira Riklis

A shadow mission is that part of our life that doesn’t get exposed. It has to do with thoughts or patterns of thinking and behaviors involving temptations and selfishness that cause us to betray our values. Our shadow mission leads us to focus on the dark side of our life that we don’t want others to particularly know about. Can you recognize your shadow mission? Maybe it has something to do with revenge or competition at all cost.

Ira Riklis and all of us remember the difficulties two of our recent U.S. Presidents got into when their shadow missions surfaced. Richard Nixon’s shadow mission evidently was to get power and keep it. Bill Clinton’s shadow mission was being able to carry on extramarital affairs even if it required lying about them in order to stay in his party’s and the country’s good graces.

Other shadow missions can have to do with extreme self-involvement, money, putting on a good front to avoid conflict, putting professional achievement ahead of the people in your life, and maybe hidden addictions.

When you become aware of your shadow mission, you see that acting on it is really not very fulfilling or satisfying in the long run, that it is not in line with your real values and that sometimes the  people in your life are just objects.

Ira Riklis knows that overcoming our shadow mission has to do with focusing on character—-who we are when no one is looking. Also necessary is spending time with people and in activities that don’t necessarily lead to “getting ahead”. Lastly time spent in reflection is of the utmost of importance.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Ira D. Riklis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.