You know it’s there, don’t you. Oh sure, you don’t want to admit it, but in the end, you’re going to have to face it. No matter how hard you try to avoid it, the truth of you will come out in your unguarded moments, when you’re least prepared, and even less capable of stopping it. We’re all the same, none of us perfect, just different shades of human in the same color gray.
Each of us is a combination of the dark and the light.
This week I've been focusing this work on the importance of finding your true self, because I honestly believe that it’s the only way you are truly going to be happy, and that people being happy is the only way to save the world. But what doesn’t get talked about so much is the way that the journey within our soul will show us some parts of us that we really don’t like to see.
Each of us has a shadow; a dark side, and it’s never an easy thing to find.
Growing up in a home where alcohol was definitely a problem, I saw some of the darker sides of humanity a little earlier than would have been good for me. I grew up thinking that since I didn’t do those things, I was a ‘good guy’… until I found myself behaving in a way that didn’t require alcohol to be unkind, cruel or just plain vicious.
Turns out, those were always a part of me.
And that’s a difficult realization. It’s been said that we all want to be the hero of our own life’s story, and truly it is easier to think of ourselves as a ‘good person’. Yet if you have any sense of awareness at all, eventually you’ll come to realize that sometimes you can be the villain as well. Since we humans like to deal in binaries wherever possible, we tend to look upon the good sides of our nature far more than the bad.
But if you dig around inside of yourself long enough, you’re going to find that the dark parts of you are there.
Which honestly is ok. We all have that side of our personality. I learned at a young age that I could be very mean, and for a while, as a messed up kid coming from a messed up home, I used that side of me for protection. But I came to understand that to continue down that road would lead to me becoming someone who I couldn’t live with, so I made a decision, and have done my best ever since to be better than the darker parts of me.
Coming to understand where that darkness lives within me helps me to recognize it, and making peace with my shadow helps me to control it.
But it also allows me to understand those who are still a slave to the darker moments of their souls.
I’ve found in my work with people that those who cannot accept and understand the darkness within themselves have a very hard time allowing for the fact that other people struggle with their own darkness as well. I spoke recently with a woman who made an incredibly cruel comment about those who she considers to be her ‘enemies’, simply because they see things differently than she does.
Because she cannot accept that there is darkness within her goodness, she is unable to see goodness in those who she believes are on the wrong side of right.
When you find that truth of who you are, and come to accept and forgive yourself for the times that you have given in to the darkness, you’ll find that in the end, you have no ‘enemies’, just those who have not found a way to let the goodness in them win. It doesn’t change what they have done, or are doing, but it can help us to seek peace with those with whom we struggle, rather than seek their destruction in our desire to be ‘right’.
The more you come to know yourself, the more the rest of humanity will resonate.
Shining a light into the darker corners of your soul is never easy. In my journey to understand me, I have found many things that have caused me sadness, and many wounds that have been, or are slowly being healed. Yet the more I work on myself, the more I am able to appreciate the humanity and duality that is present in all of us.
And the more I can see the good in everyone, the greater my desire to work for peace in all of its forms.
In the end, we are all in this together. Although our journey within is personal, our journey through this life is also communal. None of us exist in complete isolation, and so we must learn to find a way to balance the light and the dark within us, so that we may balance the light and the dark in all of us.
So that we can find peace together, and wisdom therein.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings