How do you look into your own darkness? How do you face it over and over again, live with it without feeling like it wants to consume you? How do you stop it from seeping into your every pore, into the hidden spaces you keep safe, into own soul and into your entire being?
I believe we all have darkness within us, and recently I’ve had the privilege to be trusted with the opportunity to look closely into the darkness of others. It was very unsettling and my instinct for self-preservation started to kick in. Yet at the same time, I felt strongly that there was something I was not seeing. So I stopped pulling my walls up, calmed myself and took a look.
Is our darkness the stain of original sin? As someone who holds the Christian faith, I believe in original sin. At the same time, I don’t believe it justifies any behaviour - like a catch-up excuse for things we aren’t proud of. It’s far too convenient.
Or is it the modern world we live in today - with all its pressures and its conveniences, its stigmas and its rules, its structure and its liberties, its expectations and its judgements, its momentum and its history? What strikes me the most about modern life are the unspoken “shoulds” of the world - that for all the freedom it affords us, modern society has created a ceiling woven into its very fabric which demands these standards and blind comformity. For example, “I should be stronger”, “I should have this figured out”, “I should try harder”, “I should be better”, and so on. And a lot of the darkness I have seen comes from decades of not living up to these standards.
But there was still more to the picture I wasn’t seeing, so I continued to stay still - probing and allowing myself to take a closer look. What I began to make out was some sort of spectrum within this darkness. On one end of it was apathy, purposelessness, hopelessness and despair - which is what many people associate with this darkness. And on the other end was a realization that darkness is inseparable from light, and that our fear of darkness comes only because of the association we have made to light.
So why is light “good” and darkness “bad”? Do apathy and purposelessness exist so that we CAN discover purpose? Do hopelessness and despair exist so that we can see hope more clearly?
What if we stopped for just a moment and befriended our darkness? Instead of talking to it from behind our inpenetrable wall, sit down with it for coffee. What would it say?
-
My name is Eu Jin. I embarked on a career as a professional actor after 20 years in the corporate world. I am a big advocate of personal growth in the performing arts. I dedicate time and energy in performing arts education, specifically in the arena of practical approaches to inner health because I believe that this lays the groundwork for a sustainable career as an artiste.
If you would like to engage in a conversation about a healthy inner life practice, please leave me a message on the "Contact" page of my website and a way to contact you. Thank you!