What is Darkness?

Photo Credit: Vince Gowmon

What is Darkness? 

It is said that there is nothing like ‘darkness’ – darkness is nothing but the absence of light. When you cannot recognise light, then you see darkness. What is dark for humans is bright as light for animals like cats, owls, tigers, bats and so on. Everything is relative. When you have one the other comes along with it – you just cannot have only one side of a coin can you?

The moment you realise that darkness is a part of the whole, then it is no longer darkness. The real darkness is your ignorance – your not knowing what it actually is! Your not knowing is the darkness – the moment you know the darkness disappears. We welcome both day and night, because without night the day is not complete – night makes the day complete.

Some people are afraid of the dark to such an extent that they need a night lamp even to just sleep. The moment you fall asleep, it is dark but there is no fear because ‘you’ are not aware of the dark after falling asleep. The mind rests and the fears disappear – now darkness does not matter – as the sleeping mind is lost in its dreams.

Similarly pleasure and pain are also two sides of the same coin. If you only want pleasure and you hate the pain, you become miserable and sad. But life is like that – one follows the other, its like surfing, we have to ride the waves – up-down, up-down, up-down, there is no let up we have to accept the upswings in life along with the downswings just as day follows night. We cannot say that we will accept only the joy but not the sadness – this is a sure-fire recipe for misery in life.

When the downswing comes you fight it, you don’t accept it, and when that happens it is your ego which taking you down the path of resistance, and with resistance God tests you even more, the journey becomes tougher and you get more pain. The dose keeps on increasing till you learn to accept that okay let’s face this and move – let whatever is happening happen. Let me leave it to God. Once that happens, you accept and the pain eases and life goes on and the upswing starts.

If someone is nice behaves nicely with you, the expectation that this person will always behave nicely with you, respect you rises in your heart. The moment this person behaves badly with you, you are let down, feel insulted and begin hating this person. Both are extreme reactions – one has to accept that every individual has a bright side and a dark side.

Love every person in totality because God has made every person unique – love the person in totality, because both the positive and the negative aspects make up the personality. Once you do this then you are in a different light, where there is no darkness at all. That’s what you call Supreme Light. That Light is not like this light that casts a shadow; that Light is a shadowless Light. Once you go into that state, you still see the light and darkness, but you respect them both.