Why love your dark heart?

Within everyone of us lies at least the shadow of darkness, the part of us that we do not like, past memories of thoughts and actions that we wish we had never had or taken. That dark heart is the voice that haunts so many of us, that tells us we are unlovable, bad and fundamentally lacking in those characteristics that we envy in others. We try to hide it, however when those we love look into our eyes, we know that they can see it, it sets us apart and taints us with the label of outcasts. We know we are less, because we are marked by the dark shadow on our soul.

That is the illusion of the dark heart, there is so much light that pours out from within us, that any dark spot fills us with fear, we feel it shouldn't be there. It's like noticing a new freckle on your hand, it triggers a moment of fear until you accept it just marks the passing of time, a milestone in our journey through life. If we were just simple crystals, such dark spots would indeed represent a flaw, but we're more than that, we are the human experience of the source of everything, that is pure love and creation. We are spiritual beings having that human experience, and one of the powers that we have, is power of pure creation, anything we can imagine we can make real, including darkness.

And the imagination has no limits, it doesn't know there are places you don't want to go, things that should not be thought, feelings that make you uncomfortable and can even disgust the thinker of those thoughts. As the darkness it is so obvious to us, we cannot help the belief that is obvious to everyone else, that is a distorted thinking, we cannot read minds, therefore our minds cannot be read, which should come as a relief to everyone. Maybe after we pass, we get to have the human experience of everyone else, which seems like a wonderful kind of thing, to know everyone else had the same problems, doubts and fears.

We would know that everyone else needed those dark thoughts in order to recognise the light thoughts, only those who have known hate can know love, peace is not just absence of war, it is the rejection of war, bravery needs fear, generosity needs hoarding and greed. It is by contrasts that we see the world, if the writing on the page was the same colour, it would be meaningless to us, it would just be monochrome, we need the black ink to find meaning in these words, a blank page could contain every word of wisdom of the universe but they would be lost on us.

So it is with the world, our neighbourhood feels safe and secure compared to at least somewhere in the world. If it didn't, there is no power in the world that would stop us from moving away from that place. Hard borders certainly do not prevent refugees, they may be effective in killing them but nothing stops someone from escaping true darkness. The same is true for your own heart, when you look into the darkness, you want to escape it, it seems so overwhelming and the more you look at it, the more it spreads, it distorts reality more reliably than any hallucinogenic substance known to us. It manages to block out the light of the entire universe if we let it, we have to accept the hypnotic attraction of the small dark imperfection, they are part of us, like the tiny faults that turns photographic reality into artistic masterpieces.

They are our contrasts as to what we truly wish to be, they guide our actions like the gravity of a black hole, they shape our orbits through life. They pull at us, they provide the resistance that we lean away from, so that we have the illusion of a state of grace, ease and joy. Anyone who has seen a sail boat at full speed knows that that effortless flight on the surface of the water combines the twin resistances of the water and air, pushing against each other through the boat. Any single force acting on its own would tear, spin and wreck the boat, a tsunami or a hurricane would smash it. The same is true for you, pure love without resistance would flatten you, being able to imagine and be a pure being of love would be to send an unlimited amount of power into a single light bulb, it would burn brighter than the sun, a single moment of time that would explode like a supernova and then blink out.

We need the human side of us, the imperfect side, the one that makes mistakes, that thinks dark thought, we need our fears and insecurities to keep us upright. To keep a steady course, we need the ballasts of our dark heart, it is the drag that keeps us in the right direction, it is the compass needle that points away from what we do not want to be, the ways we do not want to act and the results we do not want to have. It is the yapping dog that reminds us of our own desires that we do not want to fulfil, the obligations we do not want to create, the limitations on others that we do not wish to place, it pushes us towards the kind of unconditional love that we want for ourselves. So pat it on its head, scratches ears and thank it for the guard dog that is.

That is the way to treat your dark heart, as the guide that protects you from your own mistake before you even commit them. That is what it guards for you, the worse contents of your heart and everything, every action that you can imagine, is contained and imprisoned in your heart, and the larger the prison, the darker the heart, the more you are protected, and the more you protect others.