Shadow Work
I was wondering about how to start this post, since there are such an incredible amount of reasons creating this reasoning.
Whatever, I'm just gonna go for it.
I've started to explore my darkness. As in seriously exploring my darkness. However, not to be confused with losing myself to darkness or letting darkness take over, as has previously been my way - victimising myself to it. No, I'm talking about exploring my darkness; difference being that I make a choice, currently daily, to visit my darkness. Bringing a little bit of light into it, keeping the exploration somewhat reasonable and respectful.
How I've been living my life until this point have been like this: I see my darkness as a weakness and I make it my goal to transcend it to a point where all there's left of me is light. It's not working, though. What happens instead is that I embrace what is easily likeable about myself (for example; my kindness, generosity, bubbliness, adventure seeking, easy going nature) and I suppress the things not easy to like. The things I'm embarrassed by, the things I get triggered about, "ugly" emotions such as anger, jealousy, greed, envy and so on. I've been telling myself that by focusing on the light, I will become light. Reach nirvana or whatever. It's really not working out for me.
What's happened instead is I've had an inability to handle healthy relationships, I've projected my own darkness onto others - criticising other people with similar (and sometimes quite strongly suppressed and hidden) issues as me, I've been overwhelmed by anxiety, worries and a general tendency toward escapism. Stuff got way uglier than a "just having a few bad traits" would have. And it's not like I got rid of my "bad" traits either. I just suppressed them to a degree which they decided to pop up subconsciously in my behavioural pattern. So at that point darkness was out of control, due to such a long term disconnection to it, and my decision making was based from a very unbalanced foundation.
Due to the discomfort of this dark, out of control, shameful behavior I obviously thought the solution was to bring more light in my life. And then even more light. More and more, thinking once again I could transcend my darkness until *bang*, there it is again. Totally out of control.
It really doesn't work. This is the reason, when you look at the symbol of yin and yang, you find a white spot in the dark, and a black spot in the light. The presence of one is crucial for the life of the other. Wholeness is beyond dualities.
Suddenly, my own darkness excites me. All those things I've found bad and taboo and not ok. I just go right into them. Through art or writing or meditation fully exploring these areas. Fully feeling them, as if I've suddenly become good friends with my evil twin. I enter it with a torch of light, knowing that that light will bring respect and decency to all that heavy and dark.
To be in control of my darkness, rather than being controlled by it, is the most liberating experience I've had. More liberating than any physical travel, adventure or sport has ever been. And they have all been quite liberating.
For the first time in a very long time, I'm starting to feel real and authentic, as if both me and the people around me can finally actually get to know me.