Embracing the Shadow: Finding Balance in Light and Darkness

Explore the uncharted territories of spirituality and personal growth by embracing the shadow within us. Discover how finding balance in light and darkness can transform your journey and deepen your understanding of Self and the universe.

In this meaningful Journey episode, we discuss the concept of darkness and light, not just as opposing forces, but as complementary elements essential for personal growth and spiritual enlightenment. 

We discuss the societal tendency to shy away from darkness, the importance of acknowledging our inner shadows and the transformative power of balancing these with light. 

Through personal anecdotes and philosophical insights, we explore our shadows within and without. This discussion invites you to consider the balance of yin and yang, the significance of acceptance and awareness and the choices that lead us through our spiritual paths. 

By acknowledging the darkness within and around us, we open the door to a more profound connection with the universe and ourselves, fostering a journey of healing, understanding and unconditional self-love.

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#SpiritualJourney #Darkness #Shadow #ShadowWork #LightAndDarkness #Light #Balance #PersonalGrowth #SpiritualAwakening

Transcript

0:35

Today, we're going to talk about embracing darkness and spirituality. And we're going to talk about the fact that we kind of shy away from talking about darkness. We we don't just shy away from it in the spiritual realm, but our society doesn't really want to talk about darkness. They turn away from it. We have all these movies that we watch that have violence. They they might have drama and they have some dark themes, but we don't really talk about it as a community. And it's not something in our culture where we teach our children to think about darkness and what it means and that that human condition, we know there's darkness. We accept kind of passively that there's darkness, but it's not something that we really address. And this isn't about something like in the spiritual world, the dark night of the soul, you know, that's important. It's something that we should talk about, something that is important to people that are walking a spiritual path. But just because you have this dark night of the soul and that might be talked about in spiritual realms quite a bit, it doesn't necessarily mean that we're talking about the darkness that's in the universe, in the darkness that we're kind of all a part of. And I don't want this to be a negative thing, like I am a positive person. Guys, I really love the light. If someone asked me what my most important guiding value is, I would say loving kindness. So I definitely appreciate the light, but I still think we can have a conversation about these dark things out there. that takes me to the fact that we're the balance. I think, you know, we talk about, you know, if you look at the yin and the yang and you look at Daoism and the Way of the Dao, you've got the light on one side, you've got the dark on the other side, and we're kind of walking that path in the middle. That's the way the balance of the universe. And if we're that gray middle line and that's where we're walking, we have a choice about where we look. Do we look at the dark? Do we look at the light? And even though our society might not talk too much about darkness, we know that people dwell on darkness, right? We have ourselves dwelled on darkness. Or we have friends or family members or spouses, maybe even children that dwell on darkness. That's where their focus is. They're walking this line in between, but they feel like they're a part of darkness or they're lost to it. But because we don't talk about it, there's very little perspective when we get lost in it. That's a terrible thing. You know, we get lost in this darkness, but we don't have any perspective. There's no road map. There's no sign to kind of get us out. And so I think if we can see ourselves as a balance, at least we know that the base part of our compass is going to keep taking us back to that balance in the middle. And that should be comforting to us. That should be kind of this warm thing that, okay, I don't have to get lost in the darkness and I don't have to get completely even lost in the light. There's this balance in between. I can choose to look at the light. I can choose to live my life kind of looking over in that direction. But at least I know I have a compass and I can always turn to it. Truly important. And we have this darkness around us, right? The darkness of the universe. There's the darkness of society, our communities, people, relationships, all this stuff out there. And that's like this external darkness. And it's important, something that we should acknowledge and and, and come to terms with. And then there's also the darkness that's inside of us. You know, this is also really important, and I think this is even less talked about. I mean, we kind of acknowledge there's darkness in society, right? Even if we don't have great conversations about it. But the darkness within, I think we talk about that even less. And so that's something we really have to come to terms with. I'm a positive person. I'm a kind person, and I try to do right by myself. I try to do right by the world around me. And I can still say there's a dark thing in me because I'm part of the universe. I am that I am the universe, right? Like this universal kind of pantheistic oneness. But that means that there is also that balance of darkness in me. Even if I value loving kindness, even if I value find enjoying life. I was a soldier. I've talked to you all about that on this channel and multiple episodes that I've done. And it's not easy to have been a soldier sometimes because you think, okay, I saw darkness. I had darkness that I was on the receiving end of, but I also took part in darkness. I was part of the the U.S. and the Western military industrial complex and even though I thought I was doing the right thing and I was saving lives or protecting my fellow brothers and sisters in arms or whatever it was, you know, we were doing some evil stuff and you might be doing it for the right reasons. And I use air quotes there, but you're still doing darkness. You're part of it. And I think it took me a while before I could fully come to terms with that. I think the longer I spent 12 years in the desert of the deserts of Kuwait, I was in Baghdad for over 18 months. I was in Kandahar for over six and a half years. And yes, I started to see this sort of wear on me, that darkness you start to see, man, this is this is dark. I'm a part of it, and it wears on you. And I got I kind of got lost in it. And then when I came home, you know, there it was. So I think if we acknowledge that we have darkness inside of us, then again, that helps us have perspective on the hole, which is light, dark and the balance in between. And so I encourage each of you to to think about the light. Yes. Think about is there a part of me that I need to get in touch with? I don't think you surrender yourself to the darkness. It's not at all what I'm saying. Guys. This doesn't mean we have to go out and be bad. It doesn't mean we have to go out and let it control us or let it define us. It's just that it's part of the definition of who we are, even if it doesn't define exactly who we are. I think there's a distinction that we can make there. as you're walking your spiritual path and we're all walking our own journey, it's going to be fiercely unique and individual to each of us. What does darkness look like to you? What darkness has impacted you externally? Think about the things that have happened and this bad thing has happened to me. I've had this trauma, I've had this bad relationship, I've had this bad job. I've been stuck in this thing over here for so long. I'm tired of it. Think about how those dark things impact you and I come to terms with that a little bit. Write things down. You can journal about it. There's different things that you can do to kind of work through this. There's meditation, I think, you know, we've got videos here on this channel about how to better meditate and a way that works best for you and getting in touch with those feelings of things that have happened to you, those dark things around you is important. And then it always comes back to me, to those two big words. There's acceptance and it's a big thing, right? We have to accept things when we have this acceptance that the the universe makes more sense, the world makes more sense, and there's awareness. And I think awareness is this thing that we have as we move throughout our lives, as we move down our spiritual path. It gets talked about a lot, right? We talk about it in the spiritual community, in the spiritual circles, and and awareness can seem like this daunting thing. I've got to be aware all the time. That seems really tiring. It seems like it would really tire me out. I can't do that. I don't even know how to do that. I don't know how to start and how do I sustain that? Because it seems like it would take all my energy and I get that I've been there. What I would say is when it comes to awareness, I see it as a thing that's going to ease your mind suddenly when you're aware of things. So it's going to wear on you less because you're going to be aware of what's happening and you can be present in the moment, which is definitely not an overused thing in the spiritual world. It's really important. So when you have this awareness, your present and then you know what's happening to you, you're not just letting life happen to you, you're taking control of life. And the reason I'm talking about this now in this this episode here about darkness is because if you have that acceptance of the dark things that have happened to you and around you and you have awareness about things that are going on today, in this moment, you're going to have more perspective on where you're at and you're going to be less tied to the past. You should hopefully be less tied to the future. The future is very uncertain. We don't know what's going to happen. So don't dwell too much on on the what ifs. Kind of take them as they come. And so that's the darkness around you. That's the darkness that had happened to you. And again, back to that darkness within there's acceptance and awareness there. Again, I'm saying that doesn't define us, but it's part of the definition of who and what we are. So if there's this part of you that you don't like because it causes you to feel bad things, it causes you to maybe do unkind things or quote unquote bad things to people, don't run from that. And that doesn't mean that you go and you just surrender to it and accept it that, I have to be this way. I think acceptance is more of I accept that I am this way sometimes and I don't have to let that control me because I have this value and this belief. So I'm coming to terms with this part of me that is difficult to deal with. And like I said, I don't think we talk about that too much as a society. We don't talk about that too much in our culture and our communities because it's scary. You know, this dark, these dark parts inside of us are scary. And I, you know, growing up, I feel like we were taught at least I was that there's only darkness in these bad guys. There's only darkness in the criminal. There's only darkness and the anti-hero, right? We're very rarely taught that there's darkness inside of us. I think sometimes we're taught it maybe in in some religions, I feel like in Christianity I was raised Southern Baptist and not obviously not anymore, but honestly, a universalist. But I feel like sometimes we're told, there's darkness inside of you and that'll cause you to go to hell. It's not that right. So, like, that's not really talking about darkness, any type of constructive way. And that's what we're trying to do today right now is talk about darkness in this constructive way where we can say, okay, there's more acceptance around it, there's more awareness around it. we've been on the receiving end of darkness. You know, we've taken part in darkness. So it's both those things. And I go back and think about not always, but sometimes it's a choice. We make these choices in life. We make choices about where we decide to live. We make choices about what our job is. We make choices about who we spend time with. And these are all things that can pull us into darkness. So I was idealistic as a as a kid. I wanted to do counterterrorism because I wanted to make the world a better place, right? I want to figure out why these people were doing these, quote unquote, bad things. So I joined the Army and became a counterintelligence special agent. And I did asymmetric warfare and I quote unquote, fought the enemy and sent guys on mission is to go capture bad guys and drop arms and all these all these horrible things. I was putting myself in a situation where there was darkness. I was putting my self in a situation where I was a recipient of darkness. I was a party to darkness. I can say that was a choice. It's, you know, it's not something that I have to dwell on to say, you should have done that. It's that was my life. That's what I did. It's part of who I am. I have had to accept what I did and who I was, and I now accept that that person is still who I am. But it didn't it didn't define me. It doesn't define me because I'm this person who appreciates loving kindness. And I appreciate joy and positivity. And that's what I want to share with people. And so I debated even doing this episode because I don't want to dwell in darkness. But again, that goes to the whole point of making this video is I think we should talk about it and I think you should talk about it with yourself. I think we should have this conversation with each other and it really is an internal thing. It really is part of your spiritual path saying, okay, yeah, there's this dark part of me and I'm okay with that and it's not going to define me. It's not going to control me. It's just going to be there and I'm going to kind of set it off here to the side and it will be there. And and I think that's how we deal with it. it's a process and it's one that I think we've we've all probably had like fleeting moments where we think, okay, you know, I I've got this part of me that frustrates me that I it's kind of scary. And I think the more we run away from it, the more it will control us. So again, that goes back to awareness, acceptance. So you're aware of it. You know it's happening. You accept that it's happening and then there's intention. There's now I'm going to intentionally move forward and live my life in a way that makes the most sense to me, that is meaningful to me. And it's going to be according to my values and beliefs. And this darkness that I know that has happened to me doesn't mean that I can't be this positive person or this joyous person, or have this loving kindness in my life. It's just something that is natural. And again, it's it's part of the universe. The universe is whether you're, you know, what I call the god of many names or, you know, it's nature or it's the Brahman of the Hindus, the Dow, Daoism, the way or it's nature, or it's that self with a capital S, maybe it's just you believe in your inner self and that's your divine thing. But for me, that is the universe. And we're all except it's this pantheistic idea that we're all one going back to that. it's that idea of if you go out in nature and realize, I'm not, I'm not just walking through nature or in nature, but I actually am nature. We are nature. If you go through that and you you look at what's happening and this beautiful world around us, there's darkness, there's difficult things that are happening out there as part of these cycles. We talk about cycles on this channel quite a bit. Hindus call it samsara, right? There's this big samsara that we're living that's this birth and life and then death and then rebirth. And that's your big samsara, this big circular cycle that you keep reliving as you learn in our reborn. And you keep learning about spirituality, you keep learning about the universe. And finally you become enlightened and you break out of it and you're done. I think it's a beautiful thing, but whatever you believe, we are kind of in these cycles of things. And part of that cycle is darkness. And like I said, you can go out and and realize you're part of nature and you can see that light and dark around you from night and day to life and death, to swings of emotions, of happiness and sadness and grief and joy. All this stuff that I think when you really look at it, especially, you are walking down the spiritual path. You think, Man, this is this is beautiful. And I can look back and I don't see beauty in the things that I did that were dark. But I appreciate the contrast that it gives to the light that I can see now. And I think that's part of what darkness is. I think that's part of what the universe is. There's no ultimate like humanoid anthropomorphic god, right? It's just the universe being the universe. It's not it's not doing it in a mean way. It's not doing it in an intentional way. This is just the universe existing as a balance. And that gives us, you know, where we have our free will. And like I said, it's choices that we make. And so as we acknowledge the darkness within us, as we kind of get perspective on it, we realize it gives us great contrast to the light. And we have this acceptance that it's going to be outside of us and things are going to happen to us that are dark. There's going to be a darkness within us that we have to come to terms with all that kind of rushes in and we realize that it's this beautiful spiritual path that we're on. that that's when it comes to I think there's a big letting go guys that happens here that for me, you know, I was after those 12 years in the desert and I came home, I was I didn't know identity. I, I didn't know how to heal. I think time helped, but part of it was acceptance and surrender and letting go. And and that frees us, I think, from being held by the darkness, because we get attached to these dark things. And so freeing those attachments, not being attached to things, is this this process of letting go. And if you can do that on your spiritual path, you're going to lose all this baggage that you're carrying around, which I think is part of the point of our spiritual journey, is we're we're shedding this baggage that we have, and that's this meaningful thing of imagine walking around with all this less weight on you, where you can breathe deeply and consistently. You're not anxious and you're more at peace and you're more calm. I took a breath just now because it feels really good to talk about that. It feels really good to say that. And I want all of you to be able to experience that for yourselves and to be able to go out there and be the best version of yourself, be the version of yourself that is embracing and embodying the values and beliefs that resonate most with you. And I don't want darkness to get in the way. take some time. Maybe write to yourself about darkness, maybe journal on it. And I will acknowledge here, guys, this is not an easy subject for you and for some of you is something that you might not be prepared for, ready for. And I would give yourself grace for that, guys. Just really, really give yourself grace saying, you know what, I'm not ready for that right now. I'm going to be positive and I'm going to go my spiritual, I'm going to read this stuff. I'm going to do some work, but I'm not ready for, looking at my darkness or facing that darkness in the universe or around me or even inside of me. That's okay. And but if you are ready to take that step, you know, we talk about a leap of faith. I don't think it has to be a religious term. That can be a very spiritual term. The faith can be in ourselves. It can be again in the universe or whatever you want to call the divine or or the lack thereof. But take that leap. Take that leap for yourself. And now when I say self, take that leap for yourself with a capital s and get introspective and whatever works best for you, if it's not journaling, if it's not writing stuff down, like I said, it could be meditating. I'm going go back to that. Meditation is this powerful thing. And remember, you don't have to meditate any specific way. It can be very specific to you and think about where you are. Think about where you want to go. Maybe it's where you need to go. where we put ourselves in this concrete world that we're going through every day that we share with each other, where we're putting ourselves very much impacts our spirituality, impacts our path and our journey of where we are and where we're going. think about those things that are happening around you again, the things that you do, the people that you spend time with, the content that you consume, whether it's movies or podcasts or books, all of this impacts how you perceive yourself, how you perceive the universe around you. it's going to impact your state of mind. It's going to impact how you view spirituality. So just remember you kind of are who and what you do and where you spend your time and who you spend your time with. So you should be very aware of that and I don't want to say make good choices because that sounds like a kind of an afterschool special, but make good choices for you. Make the choices that you need to make, make the choices that you want to make, and ask yourself, what are those choices? Where am I going and what am I doing? What do I want? What do I need? have grace for yourself. Always have self-love, guys. Always, always have self-love. As you're moving ahead. And if you if you love yourself, everything else going to fall in place. So I really encourage that. And I really hope that you enjoyed our discussion here today. And, you know, let me know what your thoughts are on darkness. Like, I really seriously I want to know, like, does any of this make sense to you or what I'm saying, Do you have other opinions? You know, you're like, that's a good point, but have you thought about this? I would love to hear that. And I will obviously for sure comment back and we can have a conversation. if you like this episode, please give us a like subscribe by hitting the watermark in the lower right hand corner. Share it with friends or family. If you think they could benefit from this, maybe you know someone who's having a hard time with darkness or maybe needs to to kind of face their darkness, you know, share it out and see if maybe it'll help them. And, you know, we have a cool community at Kishar.org where we have conversations just like this all the time. If you're interested, go check it out and I'll say, Until next time, I wish you peace on your journey.