How Darkness Organizes the Light
“Putin Has Organized the World in One Week” read a headline from last week’s news.
The darkness of war catalyzed an immediate global response. In one week, a previously polarized world rapidly organized itself to respond to the darkness.
This principle is evident in nature. It is because of a pitch-black night that you can experience the beauty of a sparkling, starlight evening. Without the darkness there is no light.
The sudden and unifying global response to the war was based upon this law. The darkness helped organize the light. This same principle operates inside you when you grasp a “darker” part of yourself that you may not have been willing to see before. Seeing that dark side for the first time can help ignite your desire to bring your light to your world.
There are two basic instincts that drive our human survival mechanism. One is to avoid threats, and the other is to move toward pleasure. Threats or, in this case, what we might call “darkness,” was easy for our ancestors to recognize. Wild beasts, famine, infectious disease, war are just a few threats that our predecessors faced each day—and some in our human family still do. To survive these obvious threats, our ancestors learned to work together in community and partnership.
In our modern world, the “dark” threats are not as easy to distinguish. Most of you reading this blog live in safe neighborhoods, have abundant food, comfortable beds, and hopefully quality health care. Modern threats to our survival are not as obvious, however.
For some, your personal threat may be over-working, addiction to your devices, numbing yourself with alcohol and drugs, compulsive shopping, or wasting hours on social media. The subtle darkness of these reactive habits can hide in the fissures of your unconscious mind for a long time because you have learned to manage or avoid the pain.
Eventually, a dark, drama-filled habit can feel like going to war with yourself. But there’s a gift in bringing this “war” to the surface, where it is now obvious and no longer hiding in plain sight. The darkness helps illuminate and evoke your inner light.
The inner light is your Creator essence, the foundation of TED* (*The Empowerment Dynamic)®, which is always there waiting to support your best self. This is how seeing the darkness can help you to take action toward being the person you want to be.
If you are patient and accept the patterns in your life that you didn’t want to see, take heart in the realization that accepting your darkness will help you to see your light—the best part of yourself. The more the darkness is made obvious, the better chance you have to integrate and transform it.
You may not always love the darkness. As a Creator, though, you can still appreciate the lessons embedded in the cycle of darkness and light. In this same way, it is our wish that you may grow to embrace your drama habits when they arise, as part of the natural cycle of human experience.
This is the common human experience. When we experience dark times—when we are in the drama of difficult relationships with ourselves and others or face situations that challenge us—we wonder if we will find our way through. It is common to feel confused and not know what to do.
As you observe and learn from your reactive thinking and behavior, may you view the darkness as a way to help you organize and bring forth your inner light. That is our prayer for each human being as well as our global community.
March 11, 2022 @ 3:18 am
Thanks for this post. I found it very re-assuring to know that I need to be at peace with the dark side of myself and with the light. I know this already but I need to deeply integrate it.
April 4, 2022 @ 11:21 am
We absolutely do. It is only in the darkness that can fully appreciate the power and beauty of our light.