The Darkness

The Hidden Force Keeping You From The Light.

This post has been a long time coming. For the most part I have avoided answering direct questions about this topic for quite some time as I was waiting for the green light before approaching it. And now, here we are. This will move some of you to look at things differently. Others have already seen. And some of you will feel a squirm because of it. As you read this, try and remember that you are love.

The Opposition

You know the voice. It is strangely familiar. It can sound like caution. It can sound like self-respect, dignity, even awareness. Possibly even self love. It tells you to trust this person, don’t trust that person, say this, don’t say that, seek what you want, or don’t because wanting it, saying it, trusting it, would leave you exposed. This voice usually sounds like it's protecting you. And for the majority of the people of the world, most days, they listen to it, believe it, and act on it.

That voice has a source. I call it “The Darkness”. It is the alternate energy, cloud, essence, being, power, etc. The contrast to light. Love has a counterpart. Where there is the choice to be love, there must be something else to choose instead, otherwise it isn't a choice at all. That something else is the darkness, and it is far closer to you and easier to see than you think.

It Has Motive

The darkness is not passive. It is not simply the absence of light, the way a shadow is the absence of sun. The darkness is chock full of desire to be you, be with you, own you. And desire gives it motive.

This is what makes it so effective. It doesn't just sit there in the dark, passively waiting. It wants something from you, your fear, your attachment, your smallness, your agreement, and it will work around the clock to get it. It supports the fabricated self, the identity you have built out of roles and reactions and the need to feel safe. 

This is one of its favorite tricks: the darkness makes you feel unsafe, just so it can hand you the solution that makes you feel safe again. However, you don’t realize the solution just pushed you further into the darkness.

The darkness plays both sides. It creates the wound and sells you the medicine, and either way, unless noticed, it owns the entire transaction. And at that point, it owns you.

It Is Everywhere

You will not find the darkness just in some obvious, dark place. You will find it in your family, your best friendships, your hobbies, your “needs”. You will find it in entertainment, in music, in art, and in our highest institutions. You will find it in the topics you entertain with the people you love and socialize with. You will find it in your opinions, the opinions of others, and your judgements. You will find it in the language you use, in your attraction to others, in the caring words of another’s concern, and sometimes even in a smile.

It can come as an opportunity in the new job offer. It can come as attention from the opposite sex during a difficult time with your significant other, an email or text message from an old flame checking in, or the resulting lack of truth and transparency. It can be found in your lies. It can be found in books, in social media and its imagery, in your mental comparisons, as well as in your technology use. And you will also find it in spiritual and religious beliefs as well as your favorite YouTube gurus.

You will find it everywhere. The darkness is not confined to the things you already suspect. It is woven into the very things you enjoy most as well as the people you interact with daily.

This is by design. The darkness is not trying to make you anything. It can’t. But it certainly is trying to deny you of something. 

The darkness will feed you everything you need to be who you think you are. Its design is to keep you scared, trapped, entertained, distracted, and hungry for more. It is what creates an expectation you carry, keeps you guarded instead of open, closed instead of expansive. It is the difference between being trapped by being of the world, as opposed to simply just walking in it.

What Lies Within You

The darkness does not just surround you. It lives within you.

It owns your intellect, your intellectual intentions, and your interpretations. It owns the story you tell yourself about something that might have just happened and what it means, or the lies about who you are or should be in comparison to it. 

It owns your fears and your desires, both, because they are two sides of the same coin. It owns your inner voice, the one that sounds so reasonable, so protective. “I know what's best for you, and this isn't it. Listen to meeee.” 

It owns your ego, the part of you that gets offended, the part that feels indignant, the part that believes it deserves something, the part that believes it is owed something. It is the scorekeeper. The darkness owns all of it. 

The darkness is deep inside of you. It waits like a venomous snake buried in the darkest recess of your rationalizing, fabricated self, coiled beneath the desire that continuously seeks comfort.

It is strong within you. Stronger than you'll ever like to admit. And it will influence your actions, every one of them a reflection of the darkness in and around you.

This is why some of you are so exhausted. It is that pervasive. 

You might ask, if it can be as well-disguised as your own reasonable voice, what hope is there? Don’t flinch from the question. The following answer matters more than you realize: you are not here to defeat something that powerful. You are only being asked to see it. 

Your gaze, your recognition of the darkness in a moment of conscious awareness, is what allows you to recognize the love in which you are or to recognize that you are sitting in the darkness that is poisoning you. 

Seeing the darkness IS the awakening within you. The darkness survives on being mistaken for you, for the love of your friends and family, for good intentions, for manufactured safety. 

The instant you recognize a fear within you as the darkness speaking rather than the truth about your situation, you have already dissolved its grip. Just through seeing. 

This is not a blog post about how outmatched you might be, or how powerful it is. It's about how thin the disguise of the darkness actually is. Once you know how to look for it, it becomes you as the sun vs the shadow. You will always win that matchup.

The Seeker Seeking

There is darkness in the part of you that seeks. The seeker seeking is most likely not you. It’s the part of you that thinks freedom is found in what the seeker finds. The truth is, you are the light. You need nothing but the recognition that you are love manifest in the world. 

The seeker seeks proof. It seeks a particular knowledge, a material feeling, a sighting. It wants the evidence, presented clearly and neatly. But I know that if that were to happen, the seeker would just seek what is next to seek. More proof. The opposite of a full surrender into the light of what you are.

I could show all of you things that would break your understanding of this reality, and most of you would still struggle to surrender to what you are. Ask yourself, do you need to see the blind healed? Some of you would witness this very miracle and still be unaffected.

So what is it that you actually need to recognize what you are? What could you possibly be shown that would finally convince you to surrender into the light, to the divinity within and around you? And more importantly, what part of you feels like you need anything at all? 

On the other hand I believe some aren't even looking for proof of what they are. Maybe you just want to be convinced. It is easier to be convinced than to recognize the love within you because then you have an out if you don’t fully surrender and it doesn’t work out in your favor. Then, there is somebody else to blame. 

The truth is, it was never proof that any of you needed. That need is the darkness within you. The fear that keeps you from your own divinity, the inner voice pushing you to stay scared, stay needy, stay human, stay material, stay safe, stay dark.

The part of you that wants something is the darkness. It is the illusion that you ever needed anything at all.

There will be a time where you will fall back into seeking. Especially seeking comfort, safety. But you cannot be love while you are seeking. Because to seek is to believe you are better off with what you might find than with what you already have. Love needs nothing outside of itself. The moment you are reaching for something, you've left it.

An I For An I

Which “I” are you sitting in? The “I” that recognizes its divinity or the “I” that says it needs more of something? Which “I” does the darkness own? It owns the “I” that believes it needs a condition or a preference met in order to be love. Take the time to consciously witness your own preferences and desires and you will start to see which “I” has you. The light or the darkness.

Surrender and trust in the divine around you is a choice, exactly like the choice to be love. You don't need anything to be love. You only think you do. Whether you stay dark or become light is a choice you can make consciously. But the uncomfortable truth is that most of the world has already made it unconsciously. 

And worse, some of you will eventually turn your back to the light consciously out of fear in the future, having already felt what you would identify as comfort and or safety found in the feelings the darkness has provided to the “I” it owns.

I am here to show you how to see.

Shine The Light

Here is a powerful practice. Say the words slowly and with intention: “I am love”.

Notice that one of two things will happen. Does it feel like a lie in the moment you said it? Is it hard to recognize as true? Does it make you squirm, even just a little bit? If it does, you now know you are standing in the darkness. Know that the discomfort is a red flag, not a failing grade. The only other possibility is that you are consciously love.

Use this practice the next time you catch yourself seeking, or defending, or you are offended, or even scared. 

When you get your answer, don't fight the feeling, just see it. “I see you. You are the darkness, playing both sides again.” That's the entire practice: not trying to overpower it, not shaming yourself for having it, just seeing it clearly enough to no longer mistake it for who you are. 

Learn to recognize the darkness, really see it, without flinching, and you will never have anything left to fear again. Fear only works in the dark. There is no need to hide from the light.

The choice to recognize all of this is not exciting, and it is not dramatic, and that is exactly why the darkness has such an easy time convincing you it isn't enough, that you need more than this. You don't. This is how to recognize the state you're choosing consciously or unconsciously. It is much quieter and quicker than you might expect, and I assure you that it is already familiar to you.

What The Darkness Can't Own

The darkness does not need a name or a face, it has many. I’ve experienced the darkness first hand manifested materially and immaterially in many forms. It is something to be aware of. 

Some people can see it, and others never will. Many will never get the chance, they’ve already allowed themselves to be swallowed by it.

If I was to say just one thing about the darkness, I would say that it DOES NOT want you to know that you are the light, that you are love, that you are whole. 

In the end the darkness does not own your divinity. It cannot. It is something it cannot hold for it is the very thing that would destroy it. Instead, it hides, in and behind every part of this walk hoping you don’t see it. Hoping you don’t remember what you are. 

In order for you to be free of the darkness, you must recognize your divinity in the moments that matter. You must recognize the false part of you that believes it is owed something. The part of you that needs its conditions to be met in order to feel or be love. Ask yourself how many conditions do you have? 

You need nothing. You are love manifest in this world. 

Deep down you already know and recognize this. It is the exhale after you finally chose transparency and told the truth, the silence with someone you trust that you don't feel the urge to fill. It is the moment right before you'd normally defend yourself, or fight for a preference, and you don't. It is the stillness in a room where nothing needs fixing, protecting, or proving. You have felt this before. It was found the instant you stopped performing and no one left the room. 

If you have any desire left in you, let it be this: the desire to be love. Not safety. Not dignity. Not having conditions met. Not the desire to feel good or have more knowledge. Love, just be love, in the hopes that you see your desire. Because love is the one thing the darkness cannot claim as its own. The one thing it cannot stand, the light of what you are.

I say to you, allow your blindness to be healed. Recognize what you are or sit in the darkness and be consumed by it. This has always been your choice.