Perhaps because we are moving toward the darkest time of year I am very preoccupied at the moment with not only the dark but the oscillation too of the polarities of both light and dark. Jung conceived of this as an intermix of ego and shadow, ego showing what was lit up by conscious awareness within the personality, like the rays of the sun. The shadow often being the ‘darker’ more deeply obscured unconscious side that never the less exerts a very powerful pull or hold over us and is more lunar in character.
Astrology conceives of opposites or polarities via the use of 12 archetypal energies and uses the elements of earth, air, water and fire to give expression to different aspects of our psyche. Like the yin and the yang of ancient Chinese symbolism all darkness has some light hidden deep inside of it and there is also much darkness within the light. A supremely moralistic preacher may speak in terms of fire and brimstone and all kind of other blazes but while he does he is relegating to the shadows other qualities which are of equal value even if repudiated in those he is denigrating with his philosophical sermon. ( I often wonder in this kind of case how the childhood of such a person was that they learned to split and divide so starkly wrong from right and black from white?)
Some of us prefer the day, some the night. Some of us revel in sunny bright days where energy is high and we feel filled with enthusiasm ready to take on the world, we may fear those times when energy is lower, or when we have felt overcome by difficult things happening to us from way outside of our control, such as the loss, abandonment or death of a loved one. Such experiences may tear open a deep void of emptiness or past pain inside of us that we fall into and such experiences can feel like obliteration or drowning, it becomes hard to see the light and even harder at times to embrace our feelings of lostness, sadness, confusion, anger or powerlessness.
Some of us are better with this, more capable of surrender and letting go, not as attached to our ‘fixed’ ideas of how life ‘should’ be. Some of us are more open to going with the flow, surrendering control and allowing things to be and breathe. Some of us panic when the lights go out, some of us go and root around for a candle to light, some of us may just sit there helplessly crying waiting for someone to step in and fix the lights.
As human beings there are an infinitude of responses which we can make to similar events. Some of us struggle and some of us surrender. Some of us do not fear the dark side of us, some of us accept that sometimes we will feel angry or sad, lost or confused, amorphous. Some of us are surrounded by those who are fearful when such feelings manifest. Some of us reach for something anything to change the experience. In the end our individual reaction rests with us and our action can often be dictated by the thoughts we have or the philosophies we guide our lives by.
I was wondering today what makes some of us fear the dark so much. I was discussing in therapy just a short time ago how impossible it so often was in my family to have and express feelings of anger or sadness. So often I was made to feel ‘bad’ for these feelings. I was exiled for them. I reached the conclusion deep within my body today in therapy that over the course of my life I developed the hardwired belief THAT I COULD NOT TRULY BE MYSELF AND STILL BE LOVED. I learned that if I wanted love, acceptance or approval I had to remake myself or try to adapt to what was needed by the environment. I developed a false personality too in many ways.
It took a few years of active abstinence from booze (six in total) to begin to realise that for most of adult life I had been living with a ‘split’ self. I had to cut off a lot of my feelings in order to function until I started on a pathway that taught me it was better to find and know myself and bring out what I had buried deep inside of me that was hidden in the dark. Then the real battle began with those who wanted me to ‘change back’ in order that they did not have to feel uncomfortable.
It took me some time and a better quality of thoughtful friendships to realise people who I scared reacted to me out of their own fear and then blamed me for it. It is a pattern that I am now working on changing for the price of burying too much of my true self inside the dark was addiction and soul loss. It all happened to me in such a way over so many years that my conscious mind was not aware of what was lost or buried but my unconscious/body always was and was always trying to remind me. I thought today in therapy of how often I have lied to myself about the way I truly feel about things, intellectualising.
Today I am glad for the dark times for I feel they have always had something to teach me. I am learning that sometimes it is far better to stand alone and be genuine than seek to belong by changing myself into something I am not. Somehow through befriending my dark side I am learning to be my own best friend, to find that inner loving figure who can sustain and guide and champion me on the journey home to me. And when I befriend and bear witness to my own and other’s darkness that paradoxically is the time that so much light breaks through and shines, just as the sun is now burning off the cloud that has covered our local skies for so much of this rainy dark cold Monday morning.
Emerging From The Dark Night 