Such an important theme. Here I want to share a dream from a period of my life when darkness and trauma was present.
“I am sitting on the stands above an arena where an exhibition is taking place, but I am watching something explained by an older man just below me instead. He says that it is possible to go beyond darkness, and that in the dark there is light. I close my eyes and can see what he is talking about, as if energy runs through two veins. The energy is both black and white, mostly black, but the deeper I look from within, the stronger light is getting. The strong light turns into DNA-spirals and I am going deeper and deeper inside the energy, that reveals itself in smaller and smaller molecules. The light gets stronger and stronger, and when I understand that I am being in the presence of the pure constituents of life, I begin to cry out of motion and gratitude because I am allowed to see this. All the time I’m getting deeper and deeper into it, and crying more and more. The energy now looks like carbon dioxide rushing through veins, and it’s the most beautiful phenomena I have ever seen. I wake up standing on the arena, and stay standing for a long time, wiping my tears out of my face, without being able to stop crying. I am so fulfilled by what I have witnessed, and that I was able to go beyond the darkness. I understand that I reached the pure light by seeing through darkness without judging. I would really like to explain what I have seen to someone, and I look around me. I see my long time ago passed away grandmother, my former female mentor and a close female friend, but the time doesn’t feel right to talk about it.”
So, what was this dream saying? At first, let’s take it through the first level of dream interpretation. Remember everything in the dream on level one is the dreamer.
I - as in the soul, the watcher - is sitting above an arena. The watcher is seeing things from above. An arena is a place where dualistic games and fights takes place, but here the soul - who is used to watch life’s dramas – see through the most intrusive present. There’s an older man there, explaining something. He is an active aspect, and the fact that he is older means he’s been around for a while, which indicates knowledge. Since he is an active aspect he represents how to do things, and he knows it is possible to go beyond darkness. So an old inner knowledge present itself, or should I say reminds the soul of something. When being a watcher, a soul in a body - the soul forgets it’s knowledge. That’s how it’s meant to be, because otherwise there should be no point in coming here to learn. But it is also meant that the soul shall remember when the time is right, and the recollecting of inner knowledge happens in stages. Knowledge has to become understanding, and after understanding has taken place, the process towards gaining wisdom begins.
The old man says that in the dark there is light, and according to first level interpretation we are still talking about the dreamer. We are not moving into some other darkness here, than what’s in the individual self. So what’s darkness here? When something is dark it’s hard to see, to get a grip of. It may of course be scary since things we can’t see is unknown to us, we don’t really know what’s in the dark or even where known things are in the dark.
Are we not safe in the dark? Well that depends on our personal comprehension and the confidence we have for others, and for unfamiliar situations in general. Animals are safe in the dark, because they trust their instincts. Humans have sadly enough mainly rationalized their instincts away.
So the darkness can be seen as the unknown and perhaps scary, and if going through, seeing through or perhaps walking through this darkness, it leads towards light. What is light then?
As the opposite to the unknown, light would be something known. Something being illuminated. This is not to be mistaken as a reward after having undergone something horrible. It is the understanding of the darkness, that could only be gained from the inside. Then, when having gone through the unknown and dark, the brightest of light appears, and here’s an important detail to consider; the condition for achieving this light, was seeing through darkness without judging.
This gives further understanding to the interpretation when being on level one. The darkness belonging to the watcher, the dreamer, has to be seen without judging. We all have dark places inside us, things we don’t want to, or can’t touch or approach, because they are filled with pain, shame, fear - and even because of loss of memory.
The black and white energy were moving in two veins, like blood floating towards and from the heart. As if they really were cooperating, having the same purpose. Compare it to the fact that even if the blood that is pumped out from the heart to the body is oxygen rich, and the blood returning to the heart contains carbohydrates, it’s still the same fluid.
The energy was more dark than light at first, since the unknown darkness was still unknown, but the deeper the understanding got, the brighter the light became. The pure constituents of life was shown to me, and on level one this means the components of how everything is seen as darkness or light, as good or bad, how what had been regarded as scaring, shameful or not acceptable - was essentially life changing. Not as in choosing it was in a bad way or in a good, not as in judging the darkness as acceptable or not. Just life changing.
In the dream I woke up from the deeper level of dreaming, still in the dream - the kind of meta-meta formula which sometimes occur when being taken deeper into understanding of something. I cried in gratitude and humility over these things being unveiled to me. I wanted to communicate this, but even if three important passive and receiving aspects of myself were available, I as the watcher didn’t share my experience with them. The soul knew the time wasn’t right which means that what had been reviled, had to be processed before being fully understood and expressed.
When taking the dream to the second level of interpretation, it includes people, memories and the dualism we live in. The dark versus light suddenly is given larger proportions as in bad versus good, and the message becomes important regarding judging persons who have done something wrong in one way or the other. Here the old man besides being an aspect of the dreamer, also is someone who know how to deal with the human darkness without judging. At the time I had this dream I couldn’t find anyone around me not judging the ongoing events, so the man in the dream represented acting as in not judging, offering a greater understanding of the context.
As always there is more than one side to things, everybody can’t see the whole picture, and so much should be easier if people weren’t so quick to judge each other. But since dualism is the common fuel for humanity, every given chance to make a judgement bears fruit. I am not saying is wrong to stand up for what in the heart feels right, but it’s important to not get blinded by self-righteousness.
We don’t grow by making others small. We aren’t right because someone else is wrong. The light isn’t the obvious answer to darkness. Darkness is only the opposite of light, another kind of light.
Does this mean everything is love, despite of what people do to each other - or that we can all choose only light and love?
No, absolutely not.
Even though everything is energy, and everything has the same value for the soul when it comes to experiencing and developing, one can’t ignore what comes with painful events when being a soul in a third dimensional body. We are here to learn and to feel, and even if we are on our way to learn unconditional love, we can’t go there without walking through darkness. And here comes the tricky part.
Walking through darkness without judging, is not the same thing as choosing light before darkness. When choosing only the light as in ignoring there is hatred and violence in the world, one is not choosing love, one is choosing fear, so avoiding the reality as in darkness isn’t the same as walking in the light. Avoiding and judging a person possibly guilty of a crime, is avoiding someone else’s darkness in order not to get infected by it - and in order not to get close to one’s own darkness. Judging an act someone has done, as wrong, no matter who has done it - is on the other hand - having an opinion about what is right and what is wrong in acting.
To understand what just judgement really is, we have for example the Tree of Life to our help. There we have two pairs of opposites, and one of them is judgment versus mercy. One may also say severity versus kindness. These two pairs of opposites have to work together to form a balance, otherwise the weight ends up in one or the other of the two bowls of the scale. If on the judging side the severity tends to bullying, and on the merciful side the kindness would be more like indulgent behavior.
A person being both severe and kind, is balanced and can walk through darkness without judging in the common human way, since he knows that judging the right way isn’t making someone else bad, evil, or damned in any way. We shall not judge to label someone as evil, but to create change. When judging with the same amount of kindness as severity, the result is the will to change. Why? Because there is safety there.
Look at parenting, or at teaching. What does a child learn if being told he or she is bad? Either, the child becomes more inclined to contradict what is right, or it changes in order not to lose love and security. Change out of fear lacks roots in understanding.
But is it possible to be both severe and kind at the same time? Judge with love?
If it is possible, why don’t we?
In order to understand this we have to look again at the Tree of Life and the two pairs of opposites. The other pair is explained in the easiest way, as cause and effect. Here is the ongoing dualistic games and fights we see all the time around us. The games that makes the world go around. Violence, competition, armor, power measurements, war, suffering, unhealthy luxury, indifference, starvation, selfishness, porn, abuse and so on, in an endless stream of bad vibes - with the same message: imbalance.
Cause and effect is a way to learn and grow through experiences, but here on earth the concept has turned into something else. It has become a series of: attack, be treated in the same way, fight back - and the only thing that comes from this is martyrdom or condemnation of others.
For you who know how the Tree of Life looks like, the two pairs of opposites (whose names are Hod and Netzach and Gevurah and Chesed) looks kind of like planets orbiting a sun. The sun – Tiferet, could be said symbolizing the heart, the place of love. Real love, the unconditional kind, cannot be reached as long as the cause and effect games doesn’t stop; and as long as this doesn’t happen, we can’t judge with love. We can’t be both severe and kind at the same time – and when not being able to, we can’t go beyond darkness.
This is not an easy subject, and the cause and effect game will not change in a day, but we can work on ourselves in order to stop the game. When dualistic things happen, as they always do, instead of reacting directly, we can stop and watch it all at a distance. If we do that, we can see a bigger part of the picture, and instead of react with revenge or blame we can see what is there for us to learn from.
It’s right here we can use dream interpretation, in order not to get forever stuck in the human mind games. Take the problem down to level one before even thinking about judging someone, or being part of the general opinion.
So, let’s go back to darkness as concept. Should we avoid it? If darkness is the way of learning things, we shall go through it in order to reach a brighter light. The brighter light of the soul, that comes from understanding one’s own darkness.
And what about the darkness as in occult things, which actually is the most common way to think about the concept? Should we go through that too? Well, in the first place we shouldn’t judge without knowing what it means. Occult for one thing means hidden, as in not seen.
Look here:
Light versus darkness, good versus evil, God versus Satan, angels versus demons, heaven versus hell. This is the opposites that is the constituents of life! Our way of evolving, learning.. but what has happened? This happened. Pay attention:
Cause versus effect, fatigue versus sleep, hunger versus eating, thirst versus drinking, loving versus giving love. Do you see the problem? The opposite pairs that should be balanced, have become growing contradictions.
The key here is to stop judging on the outside what we can’t understand on the inside. Watch and learn from scary, horrible and strange things, instead of jumping into impulsive reactions and self-righteous judgements. Because if we didn’t have night we wouldn’t know what day is, and if we had never felt sorrow we would not know happiness. This means light is not possible without darkness.
Learn from the hard things that happens to you and others, go through your feelings – don’t flee from them - feel everything down to the roots. Learn from other’s mistakes instead of talking about them as unacceptable acts being done by evil people. Learn from each other instead of judging and talking bad about each other. This is actually really easy, it just takes some guts to break the pattern. Remember, it’s not about avoiding the dark as in avoiding saying this is wrong and that is right. You just have to gain inner balance before being able to judge in a kind and just way. When you do, you can help others wanting to change a bad behavior.
