One of the conversations I’ve been having recently with my clients over and over again is that they are having a hard time accepting that the darkness inside of them is OK. They know at a core level that it doesn’t need to be changed, but it’s hard to overcome the millions of messages about darkness equaling evil that we experience every day.
What Is Darkness?
Darkness is the balance of light. It is the destruction that makes way for new growth, the pain that causes one to find clarity and move forward, the willingness to cause pain to set the bone so that it will heal properly – and not feel bad about it because it was the right thing to do. Darkness is the willingness to sit in the pain, the grief, the sorrow, and also the joy, the physically ecstatic, the rapturous. Darkness is what allows us access to our animal nature, to that deep grounding in mother earth, to the well of desire within us that we can harness into action.
What Is Evil?
When I Googled the definition of evil it came up as “profoundly immoral and malevolent.” So I looked a little further and all of the definitions evil had a reference to morality. Which means that evil is in the eye of the beholder – since morality is a decidedly personal thing. Sure, culturally, we have shared morals – not killing is one of them. Unless of course, it’s in self-defense or by the state as punishment, or by the police to protect citizenry, or, well, for any reason that we all deem OK in the moment. You see my point? When I was going to define evil, it was simply “acting on the intent to cause harm with the purpose of damaging the person being harmed.” It’s not simply “the intent to cause harm” because there’s no action to make it relevant. Nor is it just “acting on the intent to cause harm” because a father may breakup a relationship between his daughter and a dangerous man with the intent of keeping her from being abused and/or killed. I don’t think that anyone would call that evil. It is the intent of doing damage from your harmful actions that is the crux of “evil” in my book.
You Don’t Intend To Cause Damage – Let It Go
And this is why it makes it so painful to watch my clients go through this thought process. Not one of them intends to cause damage. Occasionally it happens to the best of us. We do our best and it goes awry, but there was no malevolent intent. The fear of the darkness is that it will become evil. But that is not in the nature of the people I have a clients. The real issue underlying the fear of the darkness is the inherent power of the darkness over the physical realms and whether the client can trust themselves with that much power. But that is about trusting yourself, and that’s tomorrow’s topic.
Embrace Your Darkness
For now, let’s just say this. Your darkness serves a purpose. Yes, it is powerful. Yes, if misused, it could cause great damage. So don’t misuse it. It’s that simple. Love your darkness as much as you love your light. The balance of the two is what will bring us into the next age.
