Embracing Our Inner Darkness

I recently watched a profound talk where Alan Watts described being in the presence of Carl Jung - a man who deeply understood and accepted his darker sides, and as a result, appeared to be in complete ease with himself and others. A "very integrated character" as Watts called him.

The description echoed how I began my Taiwan sabbatical:

"There's always two sides of me. One noble, one depraved. One of control, the other of destruction. One confident and self-sufficient, the other needing external validation.

Who am I? Who do I want to be? I'm somebody, I'm nobody, a ghost, a brief moment in time."

At that juncture, I was venturing into Taiwan as a blank slate - an opportunity to rediscover myself in a place where no one knew me. To do so, however, I first had to honestly acknowledge who I really was.

I have since realized this dance between my light and dark sides generates tension and friction. The former makes life interesting, dare I say fun. The latter is necessary to move life forward. Tension and friction are not things to be feared, but rather leaned into as creative fuel, raw materials to be used in the creation process.

It’s fascinating that in the Western tradition, evil is to be eradicated in order for good to prevail. It’s this warring relationship that gives this tension the negative bent that we commonly adopt today.

But what if we can embrace, not just acknowledge, the duality within us?

In many ways, this aligns with what I’ve observed in Nature, which is by definition amoral as it does not care about human notions of “right” and “wrong”. It just is. And so is every animal except for man. By accepting both our nobility and "irreducible rascality," as Jung* termed it, we may bring ourselves closer to nature itself.

This mirrors the Eastern Taoist philosophy of achieving harmony between opposing forces - the yin and yang. Good and evil, light and dark, are seen as interdependent and constantly transforming into each other in an eternal flux like a white fish flowing into its black counterpart. One is necessary for the other to exist. The concept of "non-action" (wu wei) is about yielding and flowing with the natural course of events, valuing receptivity, accommodation and flexibility over rigid moral judgments.

My friend and experienced meditator Jeremy Carter insightfully remarked, "if we're not aware of our own darkness, we can't do anything about it. So even if our aim is ensuring our darkness doesn't destroy us or the world, a necessary first step is seeing it clearly, and then understanding it deeply. If we start from resistance to our darkness, it'll be too far away, too obscure. So we have to get in close with it."

Perhaps this will bring ceasefire to our inner civil war that Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh noted. The guilt of not being perfect like the gods, who in mythology were anything but. —To liberate ourselves from the need to maintain masks.

To become more whole, integrated characters. To gaze into another’s eyes with knowing and understanding, true empathy and non-judgment, for we recognize parts of the other in ourselves.

That is how we may feel at home in the presence of others. — For they are us, and we are them.

*I am fortunate to be married to someone who has this level of Jungian acceptance. Olivia may be considered a rascal by societal standards because she is unapologetically herself at all times, yet she is more kind hearted than many outwardly saints. Her unbridled existence then allows others to be more themselves in her presence.

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