I have discovered something important. Owning my power means owning my darkness.
By darkness, I mean the things about myself I don’t want to see, the things that I repress, or stuff down into the tissues of my body, or my unconsciousness. By darkness, I don’t mean some god-awful evil deep inside me somewhere, waiting to spring out onto the world, although I am VERY clear that when we don’t own our darkness, we can become evil and do heinous things.
I have learned that the only way out is through, that the only way to wholeness is complete acceptance of ALL aspects of my psyche, and the only way to change for the better (otherwise known as healing) is to first own my darkness.
It is very interesting to me that my darkness has a direct relationship to my power in my life. I’ve been stunned to realize how much of my life energy is expended in keeping down what I don’t want to look at. It’s hard to be a powerful person when not all of your life energy is available in the present moment!
These last 6 years of my life I have chosen to look at the dark places, those pockets of energy that are repressed emotion, difficult memories, and unkind things I have done personally. It’s not easy. The only thing that makes it bearable is to know that what I discover about my darkness is not the sum total of who I am.
In fact, the “light” that I am is so much bigger and so much more devoted to kindness than any darkness inside me. I wonder if this is why so many of us here in this human life can’t bear to own our darkness? That we cannot find our strength in our “light”, and therefore believe the worst…that darkness is all we are?
I know several people who may be good examples of this idea. They are people with intelligence, curiosity, and great gifts to offer the world. But their darkness seems to have overwhelmed their awareness of their divinity, their innate consciousness of their “light”. I think about them a lot, as the divine beings that they truly are, and perhaps this is why their choice to remain in the dark is such a painful disappointment.
The choice to remain unaware despite several attempts by the universe to make us aware is what leads to “evil”, in my experience. Unconsciousness is something we all experience…if we were conscious of every little thing we did, thought, and said, we would not be able to function. But when our unconsciousness is hurting others, and they have tried to tell us, but we elect to remain unaware of our behavior and why we act in hurtful ways, this becomes how evil is perpetrated.
I choose to look at my darkness in the eye, to embrace it with my giant arms of light, to shine my awareness on what squirms away into the recesses of my mind…all that I may be healed and free, and that I may be a force of love in this world. I choose to own my authentic power, to own all the parts of me that believe I am unworthy of love, and to liberate the places where my life energy is tied up in keeping some aspect of myself in the dark.
