BALANCE OF LIGHT AND DARK
We embrace our light and our dark because there is no light without dark and no dark without light.
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The important task is to ask for help when it is needed. We cannot go through life alone and with that help, we can come out of the darkness much faster.
We all have the gifts of love, happiness, kindness and all that is good, inside each of us. But along with the light there is the dark. Because we are human, we have flaws; we hurt, we get angry, we lash out, we fight and many other qualities we see in the world today. It is because we are dependent on one another and don't realize it. Our souls are all connected and with that connection comes dependence.
As Thomas Moore says in the book, Care of the Soul, "with dependence comes neediness, inferiority, submission and loss of control and as we walk the path on this journey of life, as much as we want to shine our light to help bring about love, peace, unity, and harmony into the Universe, we also have to understand the dark side of humanity and learn how we can minimize it within ourselves."
This can have a profound and adverse affect on us in our mind, with our body and with our spirit.
In life, we have found people who love to live with the light and shine it all day long, while others love the dark side of themselves. Most people, however, live with a balance of both, some darker days than others with some lighter days thrown in.
Those who are stuck completely in the dark or completely in the light do not have balance and have something within themselves they have not resolved and are either ignoring it by denial or may have pushed it so far down that they don't realize it is still there. If they only knew that if they acknowledge it, it would go away.
What we have to understand is that it is ok to embrace the dark. No, that is wrong. We should embrace our dark. How can we know light, if we do not know the dark?
Same with the light. It is good to embrace it but don't think it always has to be that way. We are told that we are to be happy all the time. How is that possible? We know anger, we know pain, we know death. What could be darker than when the light is turned off permanently? That is why harmony and balance is critical in our lives. Mother Nature is the perfect example of that. She gives us day and night; our light and dark.
Think about times that were happy and carefree. How did you feel? Light, airy and full of hope for the future. Singing or humming to yourself or finding that you want to start skipping instead of walking. Now reflect on the days that you felt rejected, hurt, ignored, and worst of all, unacknowledged. You merely exists that day or days. How did you feel? It was definitely not light and airy and you probably found that being indoors with the curtain shut tight was more comforting than being outside with the sun shining down on you. And honestly, what is wrong with that? To allow yourself to feel dark, to feel down and to feel like you need to just hide is good, sometimes. It allows you to see the dark so that you can know your light.
We are taught to keep our emotions in check. Take a pill to calm yourself or to make yourself feel better. Pills to dull or numb the pain so that we can go on or just sleep. Come on! Why is it so wrong to show emotion? When you are sad, cry. If you are angry, dammit, be angry! Just don't hurt anyone including yourself. If you are depressed about something, stay in bed and sleep it off. If you are happy and want to dance, sing and skip all around, then do it! We have been given gifts of emotions and why we can't use them all of them, just boggles the mind.
Life is meant to be lived fully, completely, every day. We go through experiences so that at the end, we are blessed with lessons that hopefully we learn from and can pass on to others. So we ask... how do you embrace your dark as you shine your light and find balance between the two?
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