“According to the tenets of Easter Occultism, DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the basis and root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.”
~ Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine
There is a bias in the spiritual communities towards the light born out of a rejection and fear-laced perception of darkness while professing to believe in the oneness of all. Something I have fallen into as well for a while as nagging thoughts and sensations pointed to the logical contradiction and incompleteness of this attitude, inciting me to keep researching and meditating on it. In time it was easy to perceive the avoidance and subconscious patterns of victim mindsets and fear programming at play in this as well as the dualistic and oversimplified christian narratives.
I realized that our understanding of darkness affects our capacity and effectivity in our shadow work. Therefore it was not much of a surprise to me how lacking the shadow work of those who hold on to the above mentioned light bias mostly is. How can you own your shadow aspects when you demonize darkness while aggrandizing light? Who will bear the pain or shame of facing that they are holding aspects of what they reject and deny?
To see darkness through the eyes of the eastern masters is to dive into the mystery and truth of the inter-oneness of Yin & Yang. To know the inherent oneness of light and darkness, to learn to recognize it in all that surrounds us and is within us.
The nature of existence opens up to the observer who can let go of his attachments to dual perceptions of right/wrong, male/female, etc. Duality, though being a fundamental principle of our Universe, eventually merges into the oneness of consciousness on a higher or existential dimension. The inquiry into and contemplation of oneness are pathways of decolonizing and deconditioning ourselves in order to experience and know reality as it is and not through inherited and distorted filters.
Seeing darkness as a mother principle that birthed our universe of light and matter takes us closer to the creative potentiality of the void and allows us to meet our shadow aspects without fear and find healing through our curiosity, compassion and love for them as we do our self work.
Darkness is another expression of the One, nothing to fear, recoil from or oppose. What sense does opposing make in a universe where resistance creates persistence by feeding our energy to that which we fight?
We can calmly face it, shine our light of awareness on it and pierce through its Maya (illusion) to perceive deeper truths and principles at play in our moment and experience. We might even glimpse the “light of darkness” — its elegance and beauty in the universal play of consciousness as we perceive from higher mind and consciousness.
