Can embracing both darkness and light become the key steps toward wholeness, growth, empathy, and self-understanding? Let’s explore insights from expert Paul J Dunion.
Personal Perspective: Both darkness and light foster wholeness.
Key points
- Adequate darkness leads to empathy and realism amid life’s unpredictability.
- Adequate light fosters biophilia, inspiration, and a united worldview.
- Embracing darkness and light nurtures personal growth and maturity.
I have appreciated the thinking that the psyche has two purposes: survival and wholeness. The former needs no explanation, but wholeness can easily fall into an unnamed abstraction. One consideration when exploring wholeness is to view life from the perspectives of darkness and light. The mythologist Michael Meade asks, “Are you adequately darkened?” I offer the question, “Are you adequately lightened?” Our inquiry examines what it means to be “adequately darkened” and “adequately lightened.”
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2 Steps Toward Wholeness
Adequately Darkened
An individual could be darkened or adequately darkened. If you are simply darkened, it likely means that you don’t carry enough light in order to carry the darkness without shame, cynicism, guilt, aggression, or contempt. Some expressions of darkness include loss, trauma, defeat, insecurity, betrayal, isolation, and melancholy.
Adequately darkened also entails doing the work necessary to hold the darkness as not simply unfortunate, but also as a significant expression of real life. We then allow the darkness to bring attention to what truly matters in life. Here are some of the benefits of being adequately darkened.
- Realistic. Life is viewed as it actually is. There is no unnecessary naivete or idealism.
- Empathic. When I’ve been adequately darkened, I have empathy for those who are experiencing a measure of darkness.
- Living life on life’s terms. Life’s terms include mystery, unpredictability, and insecurity. Being adequately darkened offers an honest understanding of life, one that is neither quixotic nor embittered.
- A valuable ego adjustment. When we see and accept darkness as part of life, and a part that we mostly can’t control, we live with more peace, not trying to have power where we have none. The ego is more ready to surrender to life’s immensity.
- Personal maturity is enhanced. When we live life on life’s terms, we can know and accept ourselves on such a journey. The need to triumph over life or feel like its victim fades. We have greater access to the courage needed to change what we can control and to surrender to what we can’t.
Adequately Lightened
As mentioned earlier, the dark and light are in a mutually supportive relationship. However, we can deny darkness or be overwhelmed by it. When we deny it, we remain naïve, innocent, and ignorant of life’s true nature. It means remaining childlike with a measure of arrested development.
People who remain inadequately lightened often maintain a family vow to see life as only absolutely wonderful. Someone likely denied and feared the darkness and passed the fear on as a legacy.
Or, we get overwhelmed by darkness, resulting in living with remorse, cynicism, a loss of faith, bitterness, and either aggression or excessive passivity. When adequately lightened, darkness has been addressed, and the light is celebrated. Some examples of light include a success, being loved, a felt sense of belonging, a fulfilling spiritual experience, the birth of a child, receiving an award or some form of positive acknowledgement, and experiencing some form of healing. Here are some of the benefits of being adequately lightened.
- Biophilia. We continue to love life. Life is not viewed as the enemy; regardless of the challenges and ordeals we face, we continue to believe in it. We maintain our connection to life by remaining curious: Life, what are you asking of me?
- An apprenticeship. More than anything, life is experienced as an apprenticeship to the human condition. We see life as offering endless opportunities for learning and discovering who we are.
- Beauty. When adequately lightened, we witness beauty in Nature, Art, and in our fellow humans, and on a good day, see beauty in ourselves.
- Inspiration. We have more opportunities to feel inspired, to see life from varied perspectives, and to be guided by awe and wonder. We hold the faith that we can create ourselves and a life well lived.
- Unity vision. With a genuine source of light, we begin to see the connective tissue that binds us. Race, religion, ideology, and gender separate us less.
- Gratitude. We are not naïve about what’s taken, nor are we blind to what’s given. Complaining starts feeling silly, understanding that excessive lamenting is not the way home. It’s great to start with gratitude for one breath.
- Joy. I noticed that my life was short on joy. Then it dawned on me: I don’t pause and open to the possibility of joy. The more I stopped and opened, the more I discovered joy. It also came on the heels of feeling more gratitude.
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The more we do our work with darkness, the more we can trust our light as genuine. There’s a palpable maturity in those on the path to wholeness. They are easily touched and moved, which are mini celebrations of life.
For more of Paul Dunion’s insights on emotional healing and personal transformation, explore his work at pauldunion.com.
Written by Paul J Dunion Ed.D.
Originally appeared on Psychology Today
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