• 首页
• 中式美食
• 西式美食
• 美食专栏
• 手艺分享
• 味久闲聊
• 味久摄影
• 关于本站

味久闲聊

Dark of the Moon

The Dark Side of Ourselves

The dark side is the part of ourselves that we deny, hide and suppress. 

The shadow self is a person we would rather not be. It is the things we see in other people that push our buttons, that make us angry and all the stuff we would not want to say. I am not bad. I would never do that. That is our personal dark side. We are not born this way, although we all have dark creatures that we project upon over the years. We are told, do not be like that, do not be angry, do not be selfish, do not be a liar, do not be mean. 

What we do not understand is that when we are very young, we start to hide and suppress these aspects of ourselves. By the age of twenty-five, most people have wrapped themselves up in a persona, so that they no longer really know who they are because so many aspects of ourselves as a human being are unacceptable. They are unacceptable in society and every family has their particular dark side shadows that should not be. Maybe they tell you you should not be so loud, so your family tells you to be quiet. You hide your voice. Maybe they tell you not to be creative and artsy because people will tell you that you are stupid or ridiculous, so you have to hide your creative instincts. As we get older and older, we hide more aspects of ourselves until we become this person who is not really us. 

We are, right now, being taken over by the collective dark shadows of the world, where we do not know when someone is telling us the truth. Some people do not know themselves when they are telling the truth or when they are telling a lie. When we give up our responsibilities to make sure we are taken care of, we give it to political officials. They are suppressing their own shadows. One of the shadows, one of the dark sides of people and politics, if you study them, is their powerlessness. They carry that around, looking important. If the shadow we feel is being unimportant, what are you going to do? You are going to strive as you get older to find something to do that makes you important. If we feel powerless when we are kids, when we feel insignificant, we might strive to get into a position of power. 

What happens to the shadow of our dark side is like a beach ball. If you hold the beach ball under water, what happens when you look away? You do not pay attention to the beach ball and it pops up and hits you in the face. This is what we see with all these public officials and what is going on with the economy and corporations. All these shadows are popping up, but they are not just hitting that person in the face. We are all standing by getting drenched and soaked in some of the worst times for people that we can imagine facing today. 

Hitler had a dark side, but what did he want to create? He wanted to create, in his mind, a beautiful society of blond haired and blue-eyed people and he was an ugly little man. This is a great expression of the shadows. He hated what he was, so what did he want to do? He wanted to wipe out anything that he considered imperfect and to create a race of what he wanted to be. People follow this because that is the way the world is made up. Somebody stands up and they have this confidence and create a collective shadow because people are so insecure. They do not trust themselves. They do not trust their intuition, so we have a world where we follow somebody who stands up with a loud voice and they have a confident persona and people follow that person. We can look at the world right now and see people similar to this and think, how can anyone listen to that person?

When we are kids, we play with our shadows. When you are little, there is nothing more fun than seeing your shadow and playing with it, dancing with it and making shadow puppets. As you get older, that shadow is part of you that you do not want anybody to see. You want to get rid of it. These shadows that we hide, these parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of, that we are embarrassed by, we will do anything to shut down our creativity and get into addictions. What is an addiction? Addictions are a source of this level. It is just hating parts of who you are because you do not feel good with your own mind and body. When you are trying to suppress all these aspects and all of these uncomfortable feelings, we have a system that tells us we should do whatever it takes to feel better and that is ridiculous.  All you have to do is watch a baby and you know what it is to be human. One minute the baby is laughing, the next minute they are soundly sleeping, the next minute they are crying or screaming. We all have emotions and we are not teaching our children how to express themselves when this might actually be of some good use.  

Does having a dark side mean we are evil? No. It is simply part of being human. We all know whatever these qualities are meant to be. We would not know sunshine if we did not know darkness. We would not know light if we did not know dark. We would not have courage if we did not have fear. We need both qualities. We would not know love if we did not know hate. Humans see and understand these contrasts. The dark side is anything that we deem dark. When did we learn that? We learned that when someone teased us. You’re being a baby. You are stupid. Whatever they called you became a shadow part of your self that you hate. These are qualities that we have to struggle with in this lifetime. We do have a tendency toward different shadow qualities, but I think most of them are learned. How many people did not want to be like their father or mother? When you get older, you see those parts of them coming up in you. You either have to deal with the shadow or the shadow deals with you.