Black Friday is an event created in America in the early 2000’s that follows the day of Thanksgiving. On Black Friday, stores, retailers and even online companies drastically lower the prices of products for one night to increase sales. Typically at this time people are preparing for the holiday season, which includes fulfilling the wish list of their sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters. For many more, Black Friday is seen as the once in a year date to grab ‘can’t miss deals’.

In the last few years this event started becoming global and is now practiced in many other countries such as the United Kingdom, Romania, Canada, Brazil, Germany and others.

At a first glance, it is just a day of shopping and good deals, but is there a deeper impact of this event and how does it affect people?

1. Black Friday impact at a physical level

As we can imagine, with a limited number of items at a low price and high demand it can create a lot of shopping fever. People have been reported to line up in front of stores hours and days in advance, even in the freezing temperatures of the winter season. Finally, at 12 am when the doors open, people rush and push their way into the stores to get their hands on desired items before other customers do.

Last year there were many reported stampedes, injuries and even fights. One example is the famous Asda fight in England, which broke out in 2014, and another example occurred in Manchester where a television set fell on a woman and injured her.

A year ago there were also reports that the police had to be called to calm down crowds of angry shoppers who refused to leave a store that sold out of items.

In addition many times after going for such shopping events people reach home drained and feeling quite tired.

2. Black Friday impact at a psychological level

We often hear the phrase that ‘less is more’, but in events like Black Friday, people do the opposite. Media are bombarded every moment of the day with advertisements and marketing messages, with corporations telling people what they should buy, how they should dress and the latest electronics they should own.

It is normal to buy things that we need. However when such a shopping day happens people are mostly focused on buying based on desires, not based on need. Due to this there is a negative impact on the minds of people at a psychological level:

1. People’s desires and attachment for materialistic things increase. Attachments can cause suffering when the person loses the object that he acquired or if something happens to it.
2. Selfishness increases when there are not enough goods in the store and people try to take the goods for themselves over other people in the store
3. Impatience and impulsiveness increase as people are rushing to get the best deals and are reacting on impulse instead of thinking things through calmly
4. Greed can increase when people try to buy more than they initially planned
5. People spend more money than they planned to spend and then later they can have financial difficulties, which can cause them stress

3. Black Friday’s impact at a spiritual level

If one participates in events such as this it can affect us at a spiritual level adversely. Whenever there is an event where people are stressed out, rushing, pushing each other or generally acting improperly the impurity in the environment increases greatly and this in turn affects people badly at a spiritual level. The people collect a covering of negative energy around them and then experience various problems like headaches, an increase in anger, depression or other symptoms.

On top of that various negative energies (ghosts, demons, etc.) like such environments. They are attracted to them and with their presence they start causing people additional problems. Negative energies influence people in society to create events such as Black Friday so that negative energy in the environment increases.

What are some additional signs of the spiritually negative aspect of Black Friday?

1. The name ‘Black Friday’ itself is one answer. As black colour is the most spiritually impure (tāmasik) colour, such a name attracts negative frequencies and emits them further in the environment.
2. The event starts exactly at 12 AM, when the negative energy in the environment starts to greatly increase and the negative energies are approaching their strongest point.
3. If Black Friday was a positive event, people would be calm, cooperative and feeling fresh afterwards, and there would be no detrimental effects.

4. What can we do to protect ourselves from the side effects of shopping events like Black Friday?

Due to the above mentioned reasons, when we go shopping it is best to avoid doing it at times of great shopping fervor when there are large crowds in stores. Also we should avoid going for shopping in very late hours of the day.

After returning from shopping if we feel drained and tired, we can take the remedy of salt water treatment. This remedy has the ability to remove negative energy from the body and to reduce any black covering collected from the environment, leaving us fresh and recharged.

Sincerely,
SSRF