The Darkness Inside Us

“We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Nowadays all the articles we read are about light, positivity or motivational affirmations, but what about the “dark side” in everyone of us? The brightest idea is to choose not to ignore it, but instead to accept and embrace it. The term “Darkness” inside us, or our "Shadow self" (as the renowned psychologist Carl Jung name it) encompasses all the parts of us we don't want to see and we don’t want to show: the painful, sticky, murky stuff; the most aggressive, or lustful, anti-social instincts.

Whatever the reason is, we all have darkness in our mind. It can be dark thoughts, dark fantasies or anything. It's because as u can't erase it from your mind, so it will cause u an endless stress. This will lead to lower self esteem, inferiority complex, depression and so many things. So, it's better to stop worrying first and to understand that everybody goes through this.

To help you cope with the darkness inside think about this idea “the two most important moments of your life are now and the hour of your death”. How can you make the now moment count?

In my opinion we must fully accept our basic humanity and make peace with, our so-called “dark side”—which is less darker when we see it for what it is.

Carl Jung said, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”

To accept your darkness is not that easy and it takes time, courage and energy. It takes time also. And it takes more than one try, that’s for sure.

You can start by identifying your reactions to the stuff you don’t like. The most simple example we can take in consideration is “watching a movie and suddenly feeling depressed. You should analyse and identify in the context what exactly made you feel sad: maybe the mother of the main character died; his/her girlfriend/boyfriend left or any other situation that had an impact on you. In these situations you can identify the fear of losing someone dear, and the fear of abandon.

You can try to observe all the situations in which your emotions are running crazy and give a name to that situation.

For help, you can try to write down your thoughts and the observed situations. By going back to your journal entries you can identify common threads and name them.

Now, after you identified all your “dark” contexts, what emotions are triggered and precisely name it, you should try to use the word “accept” to those situations. All you have to do is to put “accept” before the names.

You realise your progress in different forms, like:
• feeling some sort of relaxation and some increase in the energy level;
• feeling relaxed in contexts were you used to be tensed;
• feeling “linearity” in your manifestations (if you could sustain a feeling for longer periods than before).

By accepting your shadow self and the fact that it is part of you, all the energy you spent in stifling it will suddenly be available for other purposes. Just by accepting that you are who you are, you will truly love and appreciate life more and the people in your life.