The secret of living a life of wholeness and how to transform dark qualities like anger, envy, jealousy into life saving tools!
Whatever you don't accept, ignore, or resist, you will become that. Accepting the darkness in you without indulging will transform it into the light. You must go into the dark to bring forth your light. When we suppress any aspect of ourselves, we suppress its opposite.
To Recap: the shadow is composed of everything you have chosen to exclude from your conscious life. Shadow is the qualities you hide from the world. We all have a dark shadow and a golden shadow; both are necessary for our well-being.
Dark shadows are the qualities like envy, hatred, anger, compulsiveness, etc. Golden shadows are the qualities like inherent calmness, spirituality, honesty, courage, creativity, etc.
Our mind projects a dark shadow onto others, blaming “They are the Problem.” And it casts a golden shadow on others, claiming, “They are the Solution.” Both are projections and ways to deny our responsibility for our inner life.
Transforming dark qualities like anger, envy, jealousy into life saving tools!
Related to your dark shadow: whatever you resist, you always become that.
If you deny your anger , you will diminish your calmness because you persist in being angry. If you deny your fear, you diminish your courage because you persist in being fearful. If you deny your greed, you diminish your generosity because you persist in being greedy.
If you deny your suffering, you diminish your healing because you persist to suffering. If you deny your confusion, you diminish your clarity because you persist in being confused
We think we resist certain states because they are there, but actually, they are there because we resist them.
Related to your golden shadow: whatever you resist, you become the opposite of it.
If you don’t accept your calmness, you are always angry. If you don’t accept your spiritual side, you are always anxious. If you don’t accept your creativity, you are always unproductive
Is acceptance of dark side means we get a free license to indulge into those dark qualities?
No Way. I am not saying that. It only means that once you accept your dark qualities fully, it will transform into light.
We must be whole whether we like it or not; the only choice is whether we will consciously incorporate the dark shadow with some dignity or do it through some neurotic behavior.
Every time we condemn other people for their dark traits, we’re in essence, condemning our hypocritical dark self in the process. A whole and balanced self is a reconciliation of all parts, an inner unification.
Before making our way out of “hell” we must walk through the depths of our inner darkness. Many religions symbolize these experiences well. Jesus face Satan in the desert and Buddha’s encounter with Mara (the Buddhist Satan) before his spiritual awakening.
The qualities which you don’t like about yourself are your greatest treasure.
I no longer saw the lower aspect of myself, with all his personal issues and melodramas, as the enemy that had to be destroyed. I looked at him now with a new understanding. I needed to use all these disturbed personal energies for my ascent. It was perfectly clear to me that since he was the problem, he was also the solution. I actually felt a tinge of compassion toward that struggling person within me.
I would later come to learn that the Bhagavad Gita says that one should raise the self with Self, not trample down the self. I had been trampling down my personal self in the name of getting free from his humanness. I now needed to learn how to raise those energies up to assist me on the journey.
All of your so-called faults, all the things which you don’t like about yourself, are your greatest God-given treasure. Those dark qualities are bit over-amplified. Meaning there volume is slightly up. Once you are fully aware of these dark qualities, your interaction with the world is a spiritual practice.
Turning down the volume on these dark qualities will help you use them as wonderful tools working for you rather than have them beat you down. Soon, all your limitations will start to work for you. All you have to do is learn to call on these dark shadows in appropriate amounts to the moment. Now those weaknesses transformed into strengths, your liabilities are transformed into assets
The art of transforming dark into light
Decide with self awareness, how much of your wonderful qualities are needed, and don’t give any more than that.
Your bragging was nothing more than over-amplified confidence.Your anger was nothing more than over-amplified concern for the well-being of others. Your aggressivity and verbal toughness is your leadership ability, five notches too high. Your act of pulling the leg of others is your unconscious sense of humor.
You need to realize that all of these aspects of your being were qualities for which you had also been praised at one time or another. All you had to do was use those behaviors differently. Not repress them. Not disown them. Simply use them differently. As they are all your gifts
For different people, what falls into dark shadow and what’s falls into golden shadow can vary in different families and cultures. For some permit anger or aggression to be expressed; most do not. Some permit sexuality, vulnerability or strong emotions, many do not. Some permit financial ambition, artistic expression, or intellectual development, while others do not.
What happens when you refuse to accept your dark side!
Refusing to face one’s darker side is accumulating darkness, which manifests as a bad mood, psychosomatic sickness, or unintentionally caused mishaps. We are currently dealing with the residue of a civilization that has worshiped its light side while rejecting the dark. This residue manifests itself in war, economic upheaval, strikes, and racial intolerance.
How?
The longer we avoid that which haunts us, the more it grows within us like a volcano, waiting for any moment of weakness to explode. When you deny your darkness, you diminish your light, and you persist in doing dark things in the pretext of doing good, for the betterment of your country, your people, or the economy. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, pointing out this truth.
The art of healing and living the life of true sainthood
In Ancient Chinese philosophy, yin and yang is a Chinese philosophical concept that describes how obviously opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.
True sainthood—or living life of wholeness—consists of standing at the center of life’s extremes and living life in balance. It could be redefined for our time as the ability to stand paradox.
The message is unmistakable; our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and bad, light and dark. It is not that the light element alone does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise.
