Balancing Darkness And Light

[Louisa]

I've been thinking about something lately. My thoughts on this subject are still a bit blurry, but the intuitions leading me here are fresh, so I will try to put it in words. It seems to me that being darkness, or having been darkness, enriches the experience of being light. Having been a "horrible person" enriches and intensifies the experience of knowing good. Intensifies the feeling of compassion for suffering or ignorant ones. And I think it may intensify the ability to find pleasure in the imperfection of life, and to descend into darkness and chaos at will for a higher purpose, to use one's darkness for the purpose of light. That's a dangerous thing sometimes, I feel like I've been misled into thinking I was using darkness for light, when I really was just indulging in darkness. But there's such a fine line sometimes in this flawed world cloaked in darkness and ignorance. What will work or what is really asked and needed of us in a situation can be murky. Sometimes a "harmful" action can actually become more liberating to all involved. Also, sometimes when the tide of damage is unstoppable, to add a little more damage to the mix actually doesn't really cause any longterm increase in total damage, but may allow one to feel the pleasure or clarity that comes from sometimes appeasing the ego, and seeing how we are all inescapably egos at some level. I think it can enrich our experience of how we are inevitably separate and limited in our view, and help to intensify the experience of relating to others who are stuck in that kind of darkness. And also, ultimately, if we are all one and inseparable in some way, as in nonduality views, then God/universal energy or whatever you want to call it, is experiencing everything, is everything, darkness and shadow as well as love and light. Well, I've written quite a bit so I'll stop here. Hope this makes sense. Any thoughts on this?

Originally Posted by Louisa

Having been a "horrible person" enriches and intensifies the experience of knowing good. Intensifies the feeling of compassion for suffering or ignorant ones. And I think it may intensify the ability to find pleasure in the imperfection of life, and to descend into darkness and chaos at will for a higher purpose, to use one's darkness for the purpose of light.

:')

this one hit me hard. thank you. i really needed this today

[Louisa]

I'm glad that it helped you. It's something that I'm not sure I even really understand on an intellectual level. It's an intuition I've felt deeply before, and I'm starting to know it more deeply again. But translating to the living it is harder. I think that maybe having been (and still sometimes am) a very "dark, horrible" person seems to make me feel life sharper, deeper, more starkly. Now I want to go beyond that self of identifying with love or lack thereof, darkness or light, and to live from that place beyond self. Beyond that self but through it, feeling through it, enjoying it, using it, and loving the starkness and intensity that this darkness-prone or -addicted, flawed identity has granted me in my experience. Now how I can live with love and balance the duality and see how there is no right and wrong (nonduality), how bad can be used for good, and so on and to act on that... That's what I'm trying to learn how to apply to my daily life.

[Louisa]

Or maybe there is no beyond-self, the self-clinging fear says to me. And I think maybe there is no beyond-self, truly. The knowing of the beyond self is through the self, hmmm.... The beyond self is the self too, but not separate, just linked. So the fear of losing this self-perspective can make me try to be selfish and preserve and protect and build up my little world-experience. Death, illness, suffering may wrench my separate self-view from me, in the end. I don't know, I'm just speculating. Intuition can be illusory, as can rational perception. Love is what keeps drawing me back to my pleasure, my path, my view of right, when I find a way to know and experience love. So that is what my path and my "right" is. That's my truth, but I wonder if some people just can't feel that love, and then their central experience and guiding light could be, whatever else it may be, who knows, but not love, not "Light" as it is generally conceived.

Personally, I think balancing "evil" and "good" involves refusing to classify the experiences and aspects of reality in such a dualistic fashion in the first place. This whole dualistic "good vs. evil" construct is just that: a construct. It's a map humans create in their minds to explain the territory, but the map is not the territory. If you stop using that map to explain the territory, the need for "balancing" evaporates as you stop seeing things in dualistic terms.

I also, as should be evident, like to avoid equating "evil" with darkness and "good" with lightness. They are not equivalent concepts to me; darkness and light are natural phenomena that do not intrinsically posses moral dimensions. The language of good/right and evil/wrong, however, is inherently moralistic. Balancing light and darkness in the sense I think of it is a completely different topic than the OP probably intends, so I'll leave my comments on that off the table for the moment.

[Louisa]

Thanks, Quintessence, I think that's helping me see, maybe I can look beyond the good and bad labels. I get stuck on this because I've been in the "dark", "bad", miserable and self-destructive states. Consciously, I didn't want to suffer. If I can find one commonality in beings, it seems at some level, they all function best and are healthiest when they are not suffering and live a life that reduces their suffering as much as possible. I know that suffering sometimes is helpful, but the overall balance of individuals is not to suffer too much, it seems to me.
So I get stuck when I see that people could be shown how to not suffer, their whole nature could change, their whole sets of behavior, out of that knowledge. It's a path of slow transformation sometimes. I don't want to leave someone in their suffering, because others have reached in and given me a light I couldn't recognize at first. That makes me want to give my light to others who can't even recognize the light, the way out of suffering. Maybe not even light in terms of good or bad, but rather, just a way to relieve and transform a life full of suffering.
Maybe predators are meant to kill. Maybe happiest that way. Maybe some people are the same, or similar, and I can't judge them. That is not really what I'm talking about, though it can be hard to assimilate and accept those elements of life. As I said, I've been really "dark" or "bad", so I can see how others can be that way. I can see how it can have its usefulness sometimes, and that helps me to love those "dark" ones and to love life better.

Edited to add:
So maybe a better way to describe what I'm thinking of as "bad" is "suffering without purpose or benefit" or "out of balance with one's inner nature", perhaps. Still it's something that can best be understood or judged from an individual perspective. And individual perspectives can sometimes interact and intersect, and help each other, but ultimately we can't know what another is experiencing. It may be totally foreign and beyond our influence.

Edited again to add:
Maybe I should say I think "bad" is "suffering without rational purpose or benefit". There may be an irrational purpose or benefit even still, and maybe in retrospect, as with my retrospective feeling that my life is enriched by the chaos and senseless suffering and self-destruction that I've experienced. Some of it is irrational - well, love is irrational, my whole central path is irrational. But it is rational in the sense that it is doing what makes me feel happiest and most balanced. That seems rational. Anyway, nothing is truly, definitively rational and objective to the human perception. Speaking of rationality, yeah, enough of my revisions and rational explanations. lol I can drive myself crazy with rational thought, ah tedium.

Greetings..

Originally Posted by Quintessence

Personally, I think balancing "evil" and "good" involves refusing to classify the experiences and aspects of reality in such a dualistic fashion in the first place. This whole dualistic "good vs. evil" construct is just that: a construct. It's a map humans create in their minds to explain the territory, but the map is not the territory. If you stop using that map to explain the territory, the need for "balancing" evaporates as you stop seeing things in dualistic terms.

I also, as should be evident, like to avoid equating "evil" with darkness and "good" with lightness. They are not equivalent concepts to me; darkness and light are natural phenomena that do not intrinsically posses moral dimensions. The language of good/right and evil/wrong, however, is inherently moralistic. Balancing light and darkness in the sense I think of it is a completely different topic than the OP probably intends, so I'll leave my comments on that off the table for the moment.

Without discounting duality as a fundamental condition of existence, i very much agree with the spirit of this post..

Be well..

[Louisa]

I agree with TzuJanLi.
And I would like to learn a way to live my life free from the map, from labels, as much as possible.
I am interested in your view of light and darkness, Quintessence. It may be relevant to my original topic, maybe even if we have differing definitions of the terms. Even if they are not about the same topic, words are shapeshifters and I am welcome to a discussion of the different definitions of light and dark. Someone else who views this thread may benefit from your view of balancing dark and light, even if it's something different that I had in mind when I wrote the OP. So what does it mean to you, Quintessence, if you'd like to discuss?

[Louisa]

I think instead of using the words dark or light or good or bad to describe what I am referring to, I am going to try to find another description - painful or causing pain. That may get cumbersome or confusing at times, but I'm going to try it, as I remember.

[Xan]

Louisa... The essence of being that we are is beyond self identity and is known in silent awareness beyond the mind.

Through discovering and yielding into this quiet open-space center, gradually and naturally the opposites of light or dark, pain and conflict or harmony and well being, come into balance without thought or effort.


Xan