Embracing the dark side of life and ourselves

Yang cannot exist without Yin.

Nature is our host. We are made in its image, born from it, and ultimately return to it, don’t we? We can deny our connection to nature as much as we like. We can run from it and hide among concrete skyscrapers and electronic devices, but we cannot escape its power, cycles, laws – or its cruelty, relentlessness, and destructive force. Let’s examine how nature operates, the rules that govern its world, the principles and recurring cycles that ensure its continuation. Where did we get the idea that we are separate from it? Where does our ideal and desire for a perfect world – a life flowing smoothly without obstacles or difficulties – come from?

Nature presents itself to us through a rich palette of experiences. From breathtaking beauty to raw power and aggression that makes our pulse race. Are the light, easy, and beautiful moments of life truly what they are without something to contrast them with? Would we even recognize them, and would they need a name if they were all that existed? Our desire for our ship to sail only on calm seas is futile. The sooner we accept this fact, the easier life becomes. Life on this planet is not purely pleasant and bright, nor does nature operate in that way.

The rules of opposites, birth, death, and rebirth are fundamental truths on this planet and in the material world. Without night, there is no day; without autumn, no spring; without winter, no summer. Without decay and decomposition, there is no blooming and harvest; without endings, there is no beginnings. Nature functions cyclically, and so does humanity. Yet modern humans have decided, for some reason, to cut themselves off from these cycles, to cease breathing in harmony with them – unaware that escaping them is impossible. Sooner or later, these cycles will confront us, if not before, then when our physical body takes its final breath.

We do not respect nature or the needs of our human body, one of nature’s most complex and fascinating creations. Instead, we have decided to write new rules for it.

Tell me, how much quality, harmony, happiness, and inner peace can truly be found in a life that follows these new man made rules? Nature has operated according to its laws long before us, without us, and it will continue to thrive long after we are gone. In the vast, endless book of its existence, we are but a single page. To claim that our judgment is superior to nature’s is utterly pretentious and foolish. We have lost all respect and gratitude for it, as well as for our own bodies. This makes sense, as our bodies and nature are inseparable.

How much respect and gratitude do you feel for your physical home? Do you live in harmony with it, or do you recklessly disregard it, seeing it only as a tool to achieve the mind’s goals?

There is now overwhelming evidence that our bodies begin to rebel, crying out for help through warning signs we call diseases. We wish we didn’t need to sleep or rest, so we could achieve, create, and accumulate ever more. We wish days lasted 48 hours. We grow angry at bad weather. Wide-eyed, we are astonished by natural phenomena, labeling them as aggressive. Humanity’s inability to see the bigger picture and recognize the laws of cause and effect is sometimes downright laughable.

As a product of nature, we also experience constant cycles of small deaths and new beginnings, periods of decay, rest, contemplation, germination, evolution, struggle, natural selection, new starts, blossoming, fruition and harvest.

Yet it’s true that human cruelty and aggression often exceed what nature requires for survival, expansion, efficiency, or evolution. While this behavior can be called self-destructive, even akin to biting the hand that feeds us, a look at history reveals that this pattern has been with us throughout our existence on this planet. Why is this so? Why do we, both as individuals and collectively, keep repeating these patterns? Why, for heaven’s sake, do we continue to support and create them, allowing them to live within us when they make us unhappy and bitter?

For now, let us stop at the fact that these patterns are part of all of us, collectively as humanity. They have always accompanied us, making us unhappy while leaving us clueless about how to confront or address them.

The Roman playwright Terence once wrote: “Nothing human is alien to me.”

Denying and rejecting this behavior within us only builds dissatisfaction and creates tension. Similarly, denial, resistance, and hatred toward our so-called dark side is equally pointless. Why do we fear and turn away from the shadowy aspects of our personality, thoughts, and emotions, when we ourselves are their creators? Why fear our own creations? Just as we created them, we can also free ourselves from them – but the first step must be to confront and accept them, acknowledging their existence. They are a normal part of human nature, and of nature as a whole. Darkness was labeled “bad” by us; it has existed as it is for all eternity.

Black and white, white and black. Yin and Yang, Yang and Yin. One cannot exist without the other, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. This fact will not change. Just as we turn our backs on our uglier sides, we also turn our backs on the darker aspects of society as a whole. We dump humanity’s garbage in faraway places, out of sight, just as we sweep our personal waste under the rug.

I’ve met countless people who are terrified of looking within. They say they would rather not know anything at all, or that there’s so much “garbage” that they don’t even know where to begin – so they give up before they even start. Yet they claim they’re unhappy, longing for change, health, inner peace, and harmony.

So where and how should we begin, when the desire for harmony within us grows louder and louder, and the cries for help from our bodies and minds become too loud to ignore? Changing the entire world to suit your preferences and ideas seems like a daunting, perhaps impossible task, doesn’t it? The place to start, then, is within yourself.

Our dark side isn’t something that can vanish overnight. Considering the nature of polarity and opposition – the friction of which drives the material world – is it even reasonable to want to completely eliminate it? Instead, let us turn toward it and accept it, rather than continuing to deny its existence. If we want to transform or integrate it into the light, we must first face it and accept it as it is – not just our personal dark sides, but also the darker side of humanity as a whole.

The greatest inner turmoil comes from resisting and denying what is. This resistance consumes vast amounts of energy. Some things we can transform through awareness, especially those related to ourselves and within our control. However, let us also accept, with love and understanding, the existence of that which we cannot change.

Greater inner peace comes from accepting that the material world around us is as it is right now. Darkness and light are inescapable components of existence and essential elements of human life. We must accept that we, each and every one of us, bear responsibility for the state of our world.

This, to me, sounds like a productive beginning: to accept that we are all part of humanity, collectively growing or sinking together, hand in hand.