There is a place within your spiritual self that is spoken of in hushed whispers. Fear and despondence mar its visage as people push against it. Hoping to either topple its regime or avoid suspicion of colluding. Because according to everything we are being “taught” this piece of ourselves is the ultimate enemy. Our Darkness.
We have been misled for centuries. Basic fearmongering and control tactics have forced us to abandon this crucial part of our spiritual self. And this is what I believe has been the driving cause of our imbalance in society at large. The longer we continue to support the narrative of Light=Good and Darkness=Evil the more out of balance we become.
Why did Darkness get such a bad reputation though? The simple answer is misunderstanding and misrepresentation. If Darkness and Light were to ever get in a legal battle, Darkness would come out the winner for the slander thrown against it. But to go into a deeper explanation for the answer we need to examine what Darkness is both in the physical sense and the spiritual sense. This will be the best way to uncover the reason such misgivings began in the first place.
Physically, Darkness is everywhere and permeates everything. It exists anywhere that light is not able to permeate. This includes the inside of our bodies. Darkness exists inherently and natively. It is the cradle holding everything together. Darkness does not exist to spite the Light. Light exists within Darkness. The stars in the night sky. The pulses of electrical signals through our nervous systems faintly illuminate our insides for milliseconds. Stars burn out and the nerves can go dormant. When this happens, Darkness is all that remains. Darkness is eternal and brings together the pieces that form new light. Darkness is the womb of creation. That is why the vastness of outer space is a birthing place for stars and planets. We like to think of the Darkness of space as a void or vacuum. But that has been proven wrong through more recent breakthroughs in science. A vacuum or void would mean emptiness and nothing. The Darkness of space though is full of particulate matter at the subatomic levels. And there is a thin membrane of hydrogen and helium present everywhere in space. This means that the Darkness of space is not empty and lifeless, it is where the building blocks of life can be found.
From a spiritual level, Darkness draws out that which is no longer needed, cleanses those things, and readies them to be used for something else down the line. Darkness is the ultimate comfort. It hides us from our deformities or inadequacies because we are all equal within Darkness. No one can claim to be better looking or have a higher status from personal possessions. Boasting such things in Darkness proves the fragility of the boaster. That’s what Darkness does though. It draws the things we don’t want others to see out of us. This isn’t for cruelty or spite, it is for comfort and release. It is much more common to lay in bed at night with little to no light and start crying as we think of things like stress, anger, grief, and pain than it is to express those feelings in broad daylight.
The Darkness brings us this safety and comfort so that we can process and release those things. We hold onto them because we have an unhealthy obsession with being more broken than the person next to us. We are constantly comparing our traumas rather than getting to the cause of them and working through them. If we only chase after the Light the more we retreat from coming face to face with these real and pressing issues. The longer we hold onto them the more we dwell on them. And dwelling on the past is the biggest upset to our spiritual balance we can experience. The gift of Darkness is that it helps us to release what we have been holding onto. We express it and the Darkness takes it, sending it off to be recycled into the universal sea of infinite energy. The heaviness is removed from it which allows it to become fuel for the creation of something new.
This process creates space within us to be able to house new more rewarding things as well. If you fill a bowl with stones and then pour in water it looks as if the bowl is full of water. But as you remove the stones you find that there is a lot less water in the bowl than you thought. And most of the people you meet today are walking around like that. They think they are full of what they need when in reality they are carrying around stones they don’t need. The more baggage we accumulate the less space for what we do need in our lives. The Darkness is there to show us what is weighing us down.
We need to cry the tears and scream the screams. We need to exhale. We need to rest and relax. The Darkness provides that space for us. Connecting to our spiritual aspect of Darkness doesn’t mean giving in to these things. It means being tender with ourselves. It means showing ourselves Grace. If the Shadow teaches us Humility and Light teaches us Worthiness then that is the value you learn with Darkness. Having Grace is saying to yourself, “Hey…it’s ok. Yeah, it’s not an ideal situation and it could have been done better. But you did your best for that present moment. Let it go and move on.” Grace means you don’t punish yourself or beat yourself up. It also means you don’t give in to the heavier emotions. I believe I have already spoken about how I am against Rage Rooms but once again for good measure doesn’t hurt. Rage Rooms are a terrible idea because you’re not processing your anger you are simply giving into it.
Darkness is where you need to go to process your emotions. Light is again very revealing. This causes judgment whether we want it to or not. If we are only suffused in our Light we can start judging ourselves. Remember how I spoke about my Sword of Damocles situation from my tattoo about power? Those were judgments I was making against myself without allowing myself to be one with my Light. Standing on the periphery of light does that to us. Darkness doesn’t allow for judgment though because it warps us in a protective blanket shielding us from prying eyes, even our own, so that we can process and deal with our situations as needed. You can ugly cry in the dark and no one would know how ugly it gets.
There is a pitfall still to Darkness though. It's getting stuck in Darkness. Once you find the Darkness within yourself you will feel a profound sense of peace and comfort. Sometimes because of this people will release only a small bit of what needs to go at a time. Which isn’t problematic at first because people heal in different ways and times. The more proficient we get with working with our Darkness the quicker and easier the process goes. But for some, they never get past this chipping away phase. They like this feeling of comfort, peace, and security so they don’t want to release everything at once. They want to be surrounded at all times like this. Which is how you get chronically healing people.
They are always in the process of healing and forget that life is meant to be lived not to be perpetually healing. We can grow reliant on Darkness’ comfort and security but that is not going to help us to push forward and grow. We need to instead learn to get into the Darkness and release what is not needed and then get out. While we cannot live without Darkness we are not meant to live in Darkness.
And those are the answers to the earlier question. Darkness has a bad reputation because we associate it with those heavier experiences in our lives. It is to support our healing and processing. But because we are led to fear the Darkness, instead we are bottling those experiences up. Holding them in until they are ready to explode in catastrophic ways. Marriages fall apart much more quickly in today’s society. Wars are launched at the drop of a pin. Another shooting here or there. All of this is because we don’t know how to get in touch with our Dark side and express and release things in healthy ways. The Darkness is supposed to be of solace but we fear it so much that we find no peace anywhere we turn.
Sleep disorders are rampant because we are no longer comfortable falling asleep and succumbing to the Darkness. In the Darkness of sleep, we can have dreams which help us to process the events of the day. But we can’t sleep cause we don’t know what’s lurking in the dark ready to get us. All of that is fallacious misgivings of what the Darkness is there for. We get flayed open by the light and then shudder at the thought of being alone in the dark. And yet we are the ones who make the monsters that go bump in the night. We are their creators. We need to change our mindsets to realize that. We are tired all the time cause we carry boulders and have no way to let them go because we villainized the one piece of ourselves that is meant to help with that.
We don’t need to make peace with our Darkness because we were never at war with it. It has taken the blows and never punched back. We need to accept the peace that it offers. That is not something Light or Shadow can do for us. Light is going to drive us forward. Shadow is at our side giving us advice on how best to proceed. Darkness is there to tell us, “Take a break and rest. You cannot keep going like this.” You cannot get to your Higher Self or “True” self without understanding that you are Body, you are Mind, you are Shadow, you are Light, and you ARE Darkness.
These are the components that make up your Higher Self or, as I like to call it, your Council of Self. Which will be what we get into in the next post. Until then, go into the Darkness and feel what you need to feel. Let it all out. You don’t need to carry those burdens anymore.
Thank you for reading as always and I wish you sweet dreams as you move through Darkness.