The Dynamic Interplay Between Darkness And Light
Is the dynamic interplay between darkness and light a battle or a dance? It all depends on your perspective.
I would say it’s both, and that this is so in every case of duality.
The forces of duality are infinitely intertwined and inseparable, intimately interwoven and necessary for each other’s very existence.
We have come to favor one over the other in many expressions: light over darkness, love over fear, life over death…Yet in others it seems ridiculous to choose between the two: inhale/exhale, masculine/feminine, fire/water.
They are extreme opposites and cannot exist without each other. You may agree with this in some circumstances: there is no high without the lows, what goes up must come down, the high tide must ebb and flow with low tide…
But others you may feel more resistance to experience pleasure you must move through the pain, or as Carl Jung puts it: “One’s branches may not reach to Heaven unless its roots reach down to Hell,” or as Carolynn Elliott depicts: “You can’t feel your full compassion if you won’t feel your full sadism.”
These opposites are the inverse of each other but stem from the same source: both contained within the whole circle of the yin yang, connected by the s-curve through which they fade infinitesimally into each other, containing a small dot of the other within. Two sides of the same coin connected by the same ridge, and again contained within the same circle.
There is a tendency to shun the darkness and fear in favor of love and light, yet this is a fragmented, unintegrated approach to life. We can indeed, be blinded by the light, just as much as we can by the darkness.
Take the current Age of Information, for example, where we are so flooded by constant stimulus and conflicting information that it can feel impossible to know what’s true. Or by spiritual bypassing unwillingness to be with the shadow.
If we deny parts of ourselves and each other, they will be banished to repression, where they will fester into nastier states than they were to begin with. When we accept them, we make them conscious, where they have less power over us.
Take the repression of sexuality for example, and the dark perversions that can come of it. Or the repression of our truth, and how it will either wear us down through self-implosion or eventually explode. Yet when we choose to channel them in healthy ways, we are not so much at their effect.
Darkness is simply a lack of information. We tend to fear the unknown. If we can shine a light on the mystery and become intimately acquainted with the feeling of not knowing, we can allow for greater ease.
Upon walking down into a dark basement, we might get goosebumps as our hair rises in anticipation of navigating the unknown, seemingly creepy space. With the flip of a switch, light (information) can flood the room, and reveal a plush sanctuary that suddenly feels warm and inviting.
The same space instantly FEELS and APPEARS completely different, simply because of new information carried through the light.
Whether an opponent in martial arts or a partner in the dance, the darkness, the struggle, the conflict, are all OPPORTUNITIES and TEACHERS—honing our awareness, requiring our peak discipline and adaptability, beckoning our most potent power to pierce through our blind spots and come home to deeper WHOLENESS in ways we may not have, had we not been provoked.
THEY are just another US, playing their role in the play of life as we come home to oneness and the realization that there is no “other.”
When we are willing to look at OURSELVES in the mirror THEY provide, the darkness suddenly becomes a light shed upon our own darkness, illuminating our ability to see ourselves and the role WE’VE played in the mess we like to blame “them” for.
The spot of light in the darkness illuminates the spot of dark in the light, and from here we awaken into wholeness.