What does it mean that the brightest light casts the darkest shadow?
There are many different variations to the meaning of this phrase. One is that we are both light and dark and some believe the greater our light, the greater our darkness. But I don’t believe this is true at all. Because the more we face our shadow, the more we walk through our darkness, the lighter we become.
Our shadow contains everything that is repressed within us. And if we haven’t been on a personal or spiritual growth path and have not reflected on that which lies within, we are much more likely to project that shadow out into the world.
The more self work we do, the more we learn how to own our darkness, our negativity, our pain, our fear and everything else that is emerging from our subconscious.
We become warriors of the light, slaying our dragons and bringing what is in the shadow to light. The more we bring what is in our shadow to light, the more light we hold.
Light is a very attractive thing. Like moths to a flame, people seek out the light. Because the light carries the vibration of love and we are all attracted to love.
As we do our inner work, our shadow work, we look at all those things within us that are not loving. We look at our fear, which is the opposite of love. We look at our hatred, which is a resistance to love. We look at our envy, our jealousy, our resentments, and our deep pain. All of these keep us from embodying the higher vibrations of love.
Love is a pure energy and one who has worked hard to slay her dragons and bring the darkness to light, will have a lot of purity. We don’t want to mistake purity with perfection. I am talking about the pure of heart. One who sees life through the eyes of love and extends others compassion and understanding, to the best of her ability is pure of heart. Even those who have hurt or betrayed her receive her compassion, because she is wise enough to know that fighting fire with fire only causes more fire.
Fighting hatred with hatred, is a losing battle. But to meet hatred with love, is like water to the flame, it robs the flame of its power to destroy!
However, love does not always convert others to love. What love does is shine its light upon the shadow of humanity. It exposes the shadow. So, the more loving we are, the brighter we shine our inner light, and the more we expose the shadow in those who are cut off from the light of genuine love.
I’ve talked before about the saying “love heals all wounds.” It is not true that if we love someone enough, or throw enough love at a situation that we have this magical power to heal it. Because healing must always come from within. Our battle is always with the self. We like to believe we are fighting against others, but we are really only ever fighting against our own resistances to love.
When someone is shut down, or has closed their heart to love, we don’t have the power to open their heart. I’m not saying that being loving to someone can’t help to melt their resistance. Often times this can and does happen. But this is more likely to happen when we are already somewhat open and desiring to be in harmony with others.
When we are dealing with people who are narcissistic or really shut down, there is a great wall up that is about protecting that person from feeling anything uncomfortable. They would rather cause discomfort in others than be uncomfortable themselves, therefore they don’t allow themselves to be vulnerable, nor do they have the capacity to feel empathy for others. Empathy requires vulnerability.
We all have our methods to protect ourselves from pain. Nobody wants to be hurt! We avoid pain at all costs. In order to embody the greatest light, we must walk into our fear and our pain and be willing to stand in the fires of transformation. We must be willing to allow our pain to be there and release our fear of being hurt. Being hurt is a part of life. Everybody gets hurt. So, the more we can learn to be with our pain, rather than spend all our life energy trying to avoid it, the more light we will allow into our lives.
We also take the power away from others to hurt us. Because we are no longer afraid of being hurt. We stand in the light and allow people to be who they are. If someone is deceptive and hurtful, that is about them and not about you. It is our own core wounds that make somebody else’s hurtful behavior about us.
The best thing we can do when someone is hurtful, deceptive, or destructive, is to step deeper into the vibration of love and separate ourselves from the behavior. We must acknowledge and recognize that people act from their own wounds and defenses. Hurt people, hurt people. It isn’t about you.
Reacting in anger and hatred to somebody else’s bad behavior just pulls you down to their level. You are pulled into a dark place. You allow the darkness into your world.
However, when you shine your light and allow your true self, your soul self to shine through, you also hold up a mirror that shines upon the shadow of others. It is like holding up a big flashlight into a dark room. Suddenly everything in that room is exposed. It can be seen.
It can be very uncomfortable for people to feel exposed. It is not that suddenly we become aware of the secrets that person is keeping. It is that the light shining into the darkness exposes the vulnerability in a person. They will often lash out, project and blame the one who is shining the light, rather than looking at the contents within that is being triggered.
The contents within being triggered may be fear, shame, self loathing, worthlessness, and all those ego-based beliefs that are hiding behind a perfected facade.
When there is a threat to the perfected facade being exposed, one may come out fighting. The facade is who he believes himself to be. The contents hidden within the shadow are disowned. The greater the self-denial, the greater the need to keep what is lurking in the shadow hidden. Because if one were to admit to himself or others that he or she is feeling shame, inadequacy, fear, guilt or worthlessness, it would affect the image one has been hiding behind.
The more authentic we become, the more we become aware of the contents of our shadow. The more we can admit to ourselves that we are afraid, that we feel pain, shame, guilt and feelings of worthlessness, the more real we become. We may have come to believe these feelings and fears are a sign of weakness. And yet emotional honesty is a sign of great strength and courage. When we can be really honest with ourselves, we begin to be real.
The brightest people have most often faced the greatest darkness.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross says “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of the depths.”
I believe these are not only the most beautiful people, but the most interesting.
I feel it would be more accurate to say that the brightest light has walked through the darkest shadow. And the brightest light exposes the shadow in others.
We live in the land of opposites; a dualistic reality. So, to really know light, we must know darkness. We must walk through our darkness, face our shadow, and overcome the obstacles that life brings our way.
When we pretend that we are light and yet we run from our shadow, we are not authentic, nor can we be truly happy. Because our happiness comes in our ability to “be ourselves.” When we are trying to be someone else, or something else, we put on a show and hide behind the facade. We are pretending! Pretending to be something that we are not, robs us of our happiness, because we are always afraid, either consciously or subconsciously, that others will find out who we really are.
So many people are of the belief “if I show people who I really am they will reject me.” These kinds of beliefs come from our core wounds that tell us we are unlovable, unworthy, unnecessary, not good enough, and unwanted, to name a few. Yet the more honest you are about how you really feel, the more people can relate to you. We all have core wounds and beliefs. Some of us have worked harder to overcome these beliefs and develop stronger self-love. But we get there by facing the negative ideas we hold of ourselves. It is really our self-rejection we must conquer first.
When we stop rejecting ourselves for having these negative core wounds, we will stop worrying so much about others rejecting us. When we learn that the beliefs we hold about ourselves as “not good enough, not lovable, and not worthy, are lies, we will stop giving them so much power. We will stop allowing the negative projections of others to affect us in the way we may have in the past.
Within that soul contains the knowledge of one’s greatest darkness and the awareness of his greatest light. Both dance together in the understanding that the day and the night are opposite sides of the same coin. They are both necessary parts of our becoming whole and complete within ourselves. We can’t be the light without the darkness. As we find the courage to meet ourselves in our greatest darkness, we will also find our greatest light.
