The Darkness Within And the People Around Us. — @segalink

Watching the political circus in my homeland destroy everything our founding fathers have labored for is not something I was prepared for. Yet it is something that is happening for a reason that may be as simple as we becoming all that we are designed to be.

People are quick to forget that “Leaders” have moral scruples and certain follower’s confessions are hard to swallow, yet the follower does not feel himself accepted unless the very worst in him are accepted as well.

No one can bring this about by mere words, It comes only through reflections and through the Leader’s attitude towards himself and his own dark side. If the leader wants to guide another or even accompany him a step of the way, he must connect (feel) with that person’s psyche. This he can never feel when he passes Judgement.

Whether he puts his judgement into words or keeps them to himself makes not the slightest difference. To take the opposite position and to agree with the follower offhand is also of no use but estranges him as much as condemnation.

Feeling comes only through unprejudiced objectivity. This sound almost like a scientific precept and could be confused with the purely intellectual abstract attitude of mind but what I mean is something quite different…it is a human quality, a kind of deep respect for the facts, for the riddle of such a man’s life.

A truly religious person has this attitude. He knows that God has brought all sorts of strange and inconceivable things to pass. He then seeks the most curious ways to enter a man’s heart. Therefore senses in everything the unseen presence of the divine will…

This is what is meant by unprejudiced objectivity. It is a moral achievement on the part of the Leader who ought not to let himself be repelled by sickness or corruption. We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate…It oppresses.

“I am the oppressor of the person I condemn not his friend and fellow sufferer”

I do not in the least mean to say that we must never pass judgement when we desire to help or improve but if the Leader wishes to help a fellow human being, he must be able to accept him as he is and he can do this in reality, only when he has already seen and accepted himself as he is.

Perhaps this sounds very simple but simple things are always the most difficult in actual life. It requires the greatest art to be simple. And so acceptance of oneself is the essence of moral problems and the acid test of one’s whole outlook on life.

That I feed the beggar, that I’ve forgiven insults, that I love my enemy in the name of Christ, all these are undoubtedly great virtues. What I do unto the least of my brethren, that I do unto Christ but what if I should discover that the least amongst them all, the poorest amongst beggars, the most impudent amongst offenders, yeah the very seed itself, that these are within me. That I myself stand in the need of my the arms of my own kindness, that I myself I am the enemy who must be loved?

There is then no more talk of love and long suffering, we say to the brothers within us “Beware” and then we rage against ourselves while we hide our very being from the world. We deny ever having met this least amongst the depth of ourselves hadn’t it been God Himself who drew near to us in this despicable form, we should have denied Him a thousand times before a single Cock has crowed.

“Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we do not really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what Love is”

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.

Inspired by Alan Watts from the Lectures of Carl Jung