Light and darkness: integration and transmutation
An important part of our work on this Earth is to learn how to master the dance between light and darkness and to find a balanced way to relate to them both, as healers and as spiritually ascending souls.
More and more people want to live in a better world. Especially with everything that’s happening on the planet now. We want to bring a new reality here and to incorporate more ease, joy, fullness, truth. To manifest more of the luminous self, more of our essence. But I always tell the people I work with that in order to do it in an authentic way, we need to pay attention to a very important part that we tend to skip because it’s uncomfortable: the integration of the dark side of us.
That means owning our darkness. Then there will be no need for outside projection. And then we will stop wishing for the darkness not to exist on Earth, just because it is uncomfortable for us to take control of our inner darkness.
Balance in the integration of darkness
When we try to keep the darkness out of us, the darkness takes over. When not recognized, the darkness becomes monstrous, sadistic, inhuman. The universe asks us to make peace with the darkness. This is how humanity will be able to move to the next level.
The more unrecognized goes the darkness, the more dangerous it is. The more we do not own the dark parts of us, the more they can take over us and turn into inner monsters.
But identifying with the inner darkness is not a balanced attitude either. Instead of identifying with darkness, considering that we are evil, we need to recognize that evil is archetypal in nature and belongs to the whole universe. Thus we no longer become responsible for the fact that we have impulses, emotions and dark parts, but we become responsible only for the way we choose to manage them.
To give an example: I am not responsible for the fact that, like any other human being, I have the ability to kill. I’m not bad at all and there’s nothing wrong with me if I feel and allow myself to feel this energy in my cells and let it flow as pure energy through my body. But I have full responsibility for how I channel this energy, which in some circumstances can really kill. I can channel it in the best way possible: through overflowing creativity in my activities, through justified anger that I allow myself to manifest when necessary or through letting flow in my body my full sexual energy. The more I repress my darkness, in this case the power to kill, the more likely I am one day to reach the limit and be able to make an extreme gesture. The repressed energy of natural human instincts creates demons.
The ego, between light and darkness
So is the discussion about the Ego. The ego is not bad in essence. Without a strong sense of self, we cannot relate to the strong archetypal forces of light and darkness. If we do not have a strong sense of self we can be overwhelmed by unconscious forces that we can then manifest in behavior. We need to develop our ego so that we can then offer it at the right time, in the service of something greater than ourselves.
The ego is crucial in the divine plan of awakening each of us. The ego can become dark when we over-identify with it and become too attached to it. The danger is that we get stuck in a phase of ego development in which we cannot transcend self-image. The real demon is our clinging to the ego, our clinging to the self-created image of who we think we are.
Thus, the awareness that we have both light and darkness inside leads to the conclusion that darkness is not evil in essence, but is a part of our totality. Not accepting a part of us, either in the light or in the dark, is what creates problems.
The madness we see manifested on our planet is a reflection of our own darkness. Those who manifest darkness in the world represent the materialization of this potential that everyone has but that we have projected on the outside and we manifest it in this way. When we recognize this we can have compassion for this part of ourselves.
When we accept the archetypal dimension of evil, this is the expression of the fact that we are in contact with our totality, which helps us not to identify with darkness, but rather to contain it, transmute it and release it.
When we have assimilated the parts of us that we keep in the dark and that would have the potential to become dangerous, then we can transmute greater dark energies that affect our connection with the higher Self, with the soul, on different dimensions. The transmutation of darkness beyond us cannot be made authentic, however, before the integration of one’s own shadow and one’s own destructive power. As I always say to those I work with, there is a darkness to integrate and a darkness to transmute. Only in this way can we come to incorporate light in an authentic way.
For a bigger perspective on this subject, I highly recommend you to read the book: Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil by Paul Levy