Darkness Isn’t Bad. In the spiritual world, we often use the word “dark” to describe bad, negative or evil forces. I too was guilty of this, using the phrase “dark energy” as a synonym and colloquialism for “bad” and “evil”. I didn’t realize how much this was an ingrained habit until I asked myself “do I really equate evil with darkness? And If I do, what am I saying about myself, because my own skin is dark?” In that moment, I really had to challenge myself on language. Particularly as a darker complexioned Black Woman, using the word dark to describe something that is bad or evil is an insult to my existence, the existence of my relations, my ancestors and the millions of people who look like me.And yet, it is so common place in our spiritual and everyday language, that you wouldn’t think about it, unless you really sat down to think about it. Even when you look up the words dark or darkness in the dictionary, the 2nd definition says “wickedness or evil”. Understand that using dark as a synonym for “evil” or “bad” is a misinterpretation of the word and a view that upholds the white supremacist view that anything Light is Good/Right and anything Dark is Bad/Wrong.
In principle, darkness is the partial or total absence of light; the absence of illumination. Darkness is not bad. Dark does not mean negative. In fact, you cannot know the light with out the dark. Dark, in a spiritual sense, serves a healing purpose, because we would not know our shadow selves without it. It is all necessary for soul growth.
This is also an important concept to grasp when it comes to walking our own spiritual paths and journeys in life. There are going to be times of darkness and living in the shadows before we see the light. One thing that Spirit tells me is that we suffer so much on our paths, because we are constantly calling any darkness we experience in life “bad”, and as humans, we are wired to avoid “BAD” as a survival mechanism. But yet, when we avoid “the dark” because we think it’s bad, two thing happen: (1) The dark persists because it is a patient and insistent teacher and (2) When we call our dark periods bad, we fall into tailspins of guilt and shame because we each tell ourselves that “these bad things are happening because I AM bad” and on and on we go.
There are two takeaways from this message. (1) When you are enmeshed in darkness, know that it is an absence of illumination. If you ask Spirit to see, you will be shown (whether you like it our not). (2) Call a thing a thing. If it’s bad, it’s bad. If it’s evil, it’s evil.
