Dealing with our own darkness can be very challenging. As you might know, if you’ve been following my blog (see more posts), I’ve had sort of a challenging return from my stay in Italy. 

To say the least, it’s been a handful of practical things to be resolved and a rollercoaster of emotions on so many levels. Now that I am finally finding the inner strength to calm the storm and trust the process, I can look back and realize how it made me grow even more.

It actually dawned on me yesterday! For you to better understand the idea, I basically just met a new friend. We sort of connected because of spirituality. The setting made us exchange on values and beliefs and we later continued the conversation through texts.

Darkness My Old Friend

As we were talking about certain life events, other people’s perceptions, our reactions to determined situations, etc., he basically hits me with this one, “No matter what you say about this, your inner darkness is probably greater than you’d want to really see it. I mean you have an immensity of light … but also great darkness … we all do.”

Euhhhhh… No! Well, I guess it’s more of a yes! It is so true, but gosh does it hurt to hear it. We don’t always want to admit our inner darkness, we hide it from others but also from ourselves. But doesn’t it condition what we say or do? This is true in so many ways, fostering jealousy while giving love advice to an ex, holding resentment while trying to help a family member, etc. No matter what we say, our true inner feeling will certainly condition our behaviour. 

In a previous post, I had spoken about the so-called dark shadow and about the importance  of learning to love it as well. However, comes a time where we tend to forget and focus more on others than on ourselves. It’s what they call projection in psychology. 

Coming back to my friend, in that very moment, he hurt me really badly with his sentence… His intention was well-intended, the intent of the conversation as well. The goal was to focus on the positive outcome and the light that can emerge from every situation, but that was quite a direct jab!

Darkness… Where Light Can Emerge

It reminded me of a quote from Leonard Cohen, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” It almost sounds contradictory, but I truly believe that the light can only shine through those who embody their whole being with peace and love. 

After that conversation with my friend, I couldn’t help but think back to different life events from the past few years. I realized that most of what happened had its origin in me. 

As bad as it seems, I truly believe I was the cause of a lot of what happened … you know why? Because I allowed it in the first place. I gave other people power over my life, I gave them permission to disrespect me, to treat me differently, to invade my personal space and intimacy. I gave them authority over my own decisions and made them kings of my kingdom. 

You might think I’m going ballistic! LOL… Well, if you’ve been reading my blog posts, you shouldn’t be surprised. But seriously, I believe I did not truly and fully love myself. I was focusing more on my defects and wounds than on my value and strengths. Since I did not love myself fully, I was a fertile ground for toxicity. 

So, here I am trying to make sense of what I did to myself! Thank you dear friend for waking me up with a bucket of cold water and ice. 

Darkness and Light… Tango of Forgiveness

Overwhelmed with all of what I needed to process, I decided to light some incense and force myself to meditate, breath and think. It became clear, I needed to forgive myself!

It is so easy to project things on others and on situations, but so much harder to acknowledge the true and deep roots of certain events. We then feel resentful towards others or situations and feel the need to make it known or even bash at them publicly. But what if we chose to forgive ourselves? What if we were capable of finding in us the source that made it all happen?

There is this one situation that pops to mind. There is a couple I’ve known who ended up divorcing. They weren’t married for very long. They had two kids and from the beginning, the man was more of a dreamer. He went from one job to another, never settling and spending all his money on clothing. 

He wanted the perfect little house and the little dog and he ended up getting them both. Two kids later, the work situation wasn’t at its best. The woman was basically taking care of the kids and working night shifts in a restaurant (back then opened 24 hours), to make ends meet. She was basically exhausting herself so they could keep the house and lifestyle her husband wanted and cherished. That resulted in low patience, lots of fights between them, etc. 

In the meantime, the husband kept going for “business trips.” It was later discovered that he was actually cheating on his wife with another woman. Obviously, the wife asked for a divorce. At that point, the man started a war and did everything he could to make the wife seem like the problem. 

Well, thinking about this situation, the ending is logical and fair. What? Why? Please bear with me, I don’t think the events are fair; I don’t believe the man’s behaviour is to be praised. However, I do believe that the woman allowed him to treat her that way. She allowed him to use her as a provider for his selfish needs and she did everything she could to fulfill them. 

When you allow someone else to purposely use you, you then become an object, you lose all sense of identity and self-worth. 

Let Light Shine Through Your Darkness

This situation must have been hell. Imagine the suffering of that woman needing to work crazy hours, doing everything out of love, to then find out she was being cheated on. Not only do you live the pain of the events, but you even end up being the guilty one in the eyes of others. 

The problem is always the same … lack of self-love. If that woman had found the inner strength to truly love herself, she would have never accepted any of that b*****t in the first place. But because of her past wounds and her desire to be loved, she allowed others to treat her like shit. She traded her dignity for a bit of love. 

That is so me… I’d do anything for love. I always dream of that fairy tale love in my friendships and relationships. The problem is I always believed love to be conditional in my life. It’s as if I believed a simple mistake could have taken my parents’ and family’s love away from me. Same thing with God, same thing with friends. I often repeated, “People love me now, but if they knew me better, they would stop loving me!” 

Why? Because of my past … because of my wounds … because of my lack of self-love. Like that woman, I traded my dignity, my self-defence, my autonomy, etc., fo a bit of love. So what’s to be done? Learn to forgive yourself and the more you will learn to forgive, the more you will learn to truly love yourself.

You see? By acknowledging my weakness and darkness, I’m allowing light to shine through! Beloved breach that allows light in! Maybe this is what you needed to read… maybe a friend would need to read this. What do you think? Does it make sense? Let me know in the comments … 

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