The Dark Side of Trying Too Hard to Survive in The Light

Trying to tip our natures toward lightness and subdue our shadows gets us into trouble

Like it or not, we’re all on the path of self-mastery. No matter your spiritual beliefs, you can’t help but reach for self-improvement. I love the analogy of humans, like plants trying to touch the sun. Even the tiniest seeds will sprout in a dark basement and clamber toward the slightest chink of light.

Light is often used to describe the pinnacle of advancement, and many people struggle to spend more time in the light of awareness and brilliance than the shadows.

Of course, striving to reach for betterment sounds super-positive, and the urge to grow keeps us changing and inching closer to our best selves.

But there’s a problem with trying too hard to spend all your time in the light. You might run into trouble when you aim to give up everything from bad thoughts to cravings in order to avoid the animalistic self that you associate with darkness.

Behaviors and negative thoughts, when avoided often, become similar to corks held underwater. Eventually, keeping them down becomes difficult, and they bob to the surface and explode.

You can see this happening when someone under pressure blows their top, getting angry and stressed. Trying to maintain a sunny disposition and pretend you are okay when you are not fine results in the opposite of what you want to achieve.

You lose your composure and react significantly to small triggers to release all that pent-up emotion.

Like it or not, each of us has what psychologist Jung described as a shadow side. We might refer to our shadows as our dark nature that we don’t want people to see.

Not accepting we sometimes have negative thoughts, for example, leads to much inner pressure. The way to manage our dark, shadow sides, then, isn’t to push them away and pretend they don’t exist. Instead, it’s to integrate them.

Once we acknowledge our unsavory thoughts and cravings, we can talk ourselves out of them, transforming them, so we are more balanced.

Trying to tip our natures toward lightness and subdue darkness gets us into trouble. First, it creates disharmony and pressures us always to be right. Then, self-talk turns to self-denigration as we tell ourselves we shouldn’t have negative thoughts and aren’t good enough.

It’s an excellent idea to journey toward whatever lightness means to you, whether that’s spiritual or entails self-improvement. But the way you go about climbing to the light matters. By not turning away your shadow and, instead, accepting it, you have the chance to transform it and turn it into a helpful companion.

After all, humans cast shadows because they are in the light. Their darkness ignites life lessons since it produces mistakes from which to learn and grow.

I’ve become more friendly with my shadow than I used to be. I recognize the folly of squashing it. So now, when it slinks behind me, tugging at my heels, I turn to greet it like an old friend.

“What can you teach me today?” I ask. Of course, it can’t impart its lesson until I let it express that so-called negative thing on its mind.

“Give me what I want!” It demands.

Then, I talk it down with my light until I reach a state of balance that’s neither saintlike nor aligned with evil. I accept the gray in-betweenness as it is, knowing perhaps if I keep up my practice, the grey will eventually get brighter.

Don’t want to miss new stories? Click here to join Medium. Your membership fee directly supports Bridget Webber and other writers you read. You’ll also get full access to every story on Medium.