Light & Shadow: Dance of Eternity
Is there good hidden in the darkness and evil lurking in broad daylight?
“Look, Simba. Everything the light touches is our kingdom.” — Mufasa
Life seeks light. The process of photosynthesis — the ability to take in sunlight and carbon dioxide, obtain energy, and release oxygen first evolved among lifeforms on Earth 2.15 billion years ago.
Since then, our relationship with light has grown deeper still. Fast forward to the beginning of human civilization — The Egyptians, Indo-Europeans, and Meso-Americans — all regarded the sun as divine. To this day, the source of all light — the sun — is closely associated with divinity. And the divine is often described as ‘light’ — like Jesus is the light of the world.
We associate the word ‘light’ with the good and the virtuous. We speak of illumination and clarity of mind, of the bright and the beautiful. Light is associated with safety and security — with the world of the known.
“…that shadowy place, that's beyond our borders. You must never go there, Simba.” — Mufasa
Racists have also turned these motifs to imply that light-skinned people are superior to dark-skinned people. And there is plenty of darkness that has followed these conclusions they have come to.
But that last sentence indicates our conundrum — in our very language, we associate darkness with evil. The word dark brings to mind things hidden and things to be feared — bad things lurk in the dark.
The nighttime — when the light goes out — is when death comes out of the shadows. The fact that this previous sentence feels right and sounds right is where our problem lies. On the other hand, “death lurks in the light” doesn’t feel or sound right! If there are such deep associations between darkness and evil in our psyche, then how can we hope to enlighten the masses?
"Don’t attribute to evil that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
Racism is more widely prevalent than we think. But I don’t think people are racist because they are inherently evil. Racism is more like the “terrible twos” — the tantrums and defiant behavior that most 2-year-old children exhibit. I think people are racist because they are spiritually 2 years old. We are racist because we don’t know any better!
“My shadow is the me that I cannot see.”
I don’t think that darkness is evil. And I think that evil can exist in broad daylight as well. As individuals, we cannot do much to change the way humans are wired to think and behave. But we can work on integrating our own shadows.
Like Simba, we have to go into the shadow realm and explore the parts of ourselves that we haven’t previously explored. Doing this is bound to shake the very foundations of our reality — because in the “part of us that we can’t see”, we will find that we have hidden our deepest fears & insecurities.
But what lies beyond the borders of the known world isn’t all bad. Because our deepest fear — paradoxically — is of the light within us. And so, when we explore the shadow aspects of ourselves, we might discover our hidden brilliance — our Golden Shadow.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure!
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?'
Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God! Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do! We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us!
It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson
Everything in the light isn’t good — even God is a trickster and sometimes, he’s up to no good! Everything in the dark isn’t evil — even the Devil is an idealist and sometimes, he dares to dream.
Light and shadow are locked in a dance of eternity — a cosmic dance!
This dance is also within you and me — the dance of the conscious and the unconscious, the known and the unknown, the yin and the yang.
And so, there’s one thing we can do — we can learn to dance with grace!