Everyday Canvas

Facing the Dark Side

Prompt: What do you think darkness is and why is it important to understand your own dark side?

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Darkness is ignorance. Darkness is not knowing. I freak out in the dark. Not as if it is a phobia, but close to it. It is the unknown that attaches its claws of fear into me.

This dislike of the dark takes on a strange emotional intricacy and, in time, turns into what we call our shadow or dark side. With the same approach to any other darkness, we fear it, and we try to omit looking into it. Sometimes we even deny it exists and hide the dark side without exploring it. Same as the tools, books and furniture concealed in the darkness of a room before we turn on the light, little do we know that inside our dark sides also reside what we need: our strengths.

Sometimes, our timid maneuvering takes over our lives and replaces the fear of the dark with the fear of becoming exposed. Our fear of our own dark side can be viewed as self-betrayal because by ignoring a serious part of ourselves we are hiding our complete selves. Not only that, but also we are rejecting any healing for our earlier wounds, and letting those wounds fester and inject poison into our behaviors and thinking.

By not facing the dark niches inside us, we introduce and cultivate decay. Jealousy, hatred, anger, hurt, addictions and whatever else is hiding in the darkest corners of our being continuously ask for recognition and will make every effort to show themselves to us any chance they get. So why not deal with the dark side as soon as we can?

Our hesitancy may be due to what is hidden within, the fear that our shadowed side may cause calamity and may push us into complete isolation. That is why we need to meet the dark with open arms in a safe and loving way and in a secure environment.

Embracing who we are completely need not be advertised to the world, but that we have sieved through our insides and worked with what can be worked with would be enough to make us feel complete, even if at the beginning, we don’t exactly know who we are. The dark side or what is hidden from awareness should be ventured into when it is safe because, to deepen our understanding, we have to face, conquer, and reform it.

Any reformation needs exposure and analysis. Trying to find the light in ourselves is fine, but working with the dark side makes us into authentic human beings.