This has not been an easy subject to write a blog post about. I will try to briefly explain the topic and give my thoughts on it. Many books have been written regarding our “dark side,” or our demons. All I can do in this short post is give my thoughts.
I think we all can acknowledge that the evil people in our world have a serious problem with their dark side. No question that evil criminals have serious flaws or demons that cause them to act out in evil ways in our world.
I want to turn, instead, to another sector of our society and talk about our shadow side of our lives. I’m talking about the “good” people in the world. Nice, good, even religious and spiritual people in our midst. I think we all have our dark side, we all have our demons that we have to deal with, or not deal with in life. One way or another, they do affect us and influence our life, thoughts, and actions.
A good book I recently read (twice, I am planning a third reading soon) is titled “Spiritual Bypassing, When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters,” by Robert August Masters, PhD. It is concerned with religious and spiritual people who think they do not have a dark side to their personality and life. Now, as mentioned in my previous posts, I have spent a lot of my life with religious people, church people. I have seen that though they are nice, good people, they, too, have their own “demons” that do affect their lives and will keep them from having really free, joyous, honest and psychologically clean lives. I must include myself in this assessment as I too have my shadow side and have had my own demons to deal with during my life.
What the author of this book deals with is how often religious people use their spirituality and their spiritual practices and beliefs to avoid dealing with damaging, painful feelings and unresolved wounds. This is often ignored in our society, we just go on with our daily lives and live in a limited, wounded manner, even if we don’t realize it.
Now, I know some people have found resolution to their wounded parts through therapy. I also know some people who have had a lot of therapy and don’t seem to be much better in regard to handling their dark side. Personally, I had a breakthrough when I had a session with a medium and had contact with my deceased parents. I finally cleared up what happened in my childhood that was not pleasant for me, even though I was not conscious of a lot of the issues we had. I feel like I had $10,000 worth of therapy in one hour and a half session with my medium. I totally resolved any early childhood issues for good.
Like I said, I think we all have our wounded parts that need healing. I still have issues to handle. I have my father’s temper, that’s a difficult one to totally eliminate (thanks, dad! ). But my point is, we do not handle these issues by using “spiritual bypassing” or using spiritual bs to just pretend we do not have demons in our lives, a shadow or dark side that God or Jesus or whatever has handled or swept under the rug, so to speak.
The more unresolved issues we have in life, the more our life is limited, as I see it. Limited in that we are not really free and have real total joy and a sense of a close relationship to all of life and to the Divine life that is available to us all. I’m not saying that therapy is the answer, maybe it is for some. There are different paths to handling these issues in life. I’m just saying I sometimes see spiritual people that seem to use spiritual or new age bs to think they have no dark side whatsoever in their lives.
I’m all in favor or living the “good life.” That includes cleaning up the messes we may have made in our lives. Heal our wounds, learn to love and practice forgiving all the time! My particular spiritual path involves working on forgiving everyone and everything. Not an easy task, not a necessarily pleasant task. I do not want to be crippled by the past. I love freedom and joy and openness and loving relationships. That’s my choice in how I live and I recommend it.
Wally
Beautifully and thoughtfully expressed. Thank you.