Brother Eulogius
We are all light and shadow. Acknowledging the light does not mean denying the darkness. If you do deny it, then your story is incomplete. Too much patriarchal religion and a diet of Star Wars has tainted our understanding of the darkness, so that it has assumed in the common psyche the attributes of malevolence. Indeed the very word darkness has become synonymous with evil.
But the tapestry of Creation is a weave of opposites, of both the light and the darkness, of emergence and dissolution, birth and destruction. Each gives meaning to the other. It is by the darkness that the light is revealed, and by the light that the darkness is affirmed.
We speak of wrestling with our demons, not realising that these shadows are pieces of who we are. We seek to disintegrate them when we should be integrating them and accepting them as chapters of our story. The truth is that the universe is not all sunflowers in meadows and positive thinking. A singular focus on such a view is merely a resistance of part of our selves. Sure, we carry baggage that weighs us down; we are haunted by the past; we are crippled by those memories and experiences that have been designed to break us. And we fight against our neuroses in a bid to overcome them for the sake of peace of mind.
But disarming your demons isn’t made more probable by ‘imagining figures of light’ as Jung said. Rather make the darkness conscious. Be conscious of all these shades and ghosts and embrace them as friends. Because it is thanks to them that you appreciate those things that bless you. It is the hurt that seeds gratitude for joyful times, and the clouded pathways you have trod that make the sunlit streets even more beautiful.
