So many people are concerned about the state of the world, and they think it is because the world is in darkness. But that is not actually the issue. Darkness is never the issue.
The baby inside of the womb is in darkness and has no problem with it. Deep space is darkness, with no substance or air, just pure ether, and is perfectly natural for our universe. Our universe is feminine. We live in what could be considered a black hole. Masculinity is a rare commodity in this universe that is the ability to make decisions and have will. Both darkness and light are very important aspects of reality, neither are evil. That doesn’t mean evil does not exist.
It’s important to distinguish between shadows and darkness, as they are fundamentally different phenomena. Shadows are where we are afraid of the light of consciousness, the places where our ego resists being seen, known, or transformed. Shadows contain our fixations on being seen, getting love, achieving safety, and being acknowledged. These are the parts of us that desperately want to remain hidden because exposure feels threatening to our constructed identity from childhood.
Darkness, by contrast, is where consciousness can pass through unimpeded. Just like sunlight through the solar system. True darkness is not about hiding from awareness but about creating a space so transparent that consciousness flows through without obstruction. Our task is to cultivate what could be called “a thin, servant ego,” an ego structure so refined and singulary pointed that it doesn’t attempt to control or manipulate consciousness. This servant ego is “blind” not because it cannot see, but because it trusts completely in the benevolence and inherent rightness of consciousness itself.
This distinction is crucial because shadow work and darkness work are entirely different processes. Shadow work involves bringing unconscious material into the light of awareness, often uncomfortable, resistant parts that the ego wants to keep hidden. Darkness work involves the ego learning to step aside entirely, becoming transparent enough that consciousness can operate without interference.
Many times fear of darkness is representing fear of women or more likely fear of our own human mother. Specifically, if our mother had distortions, we can easily project that pattern of distortion onto the Divine Mother (the source of creation) and imagine that darkness is the enemy, when in fact, darkness is perhaps the only thing that is totally reliable in this universe. Fear of the darkness is exactly what keeps us from moving forward in our spiritual development. If our mothers had some violent tendencies, we can imagine that violence and harm are to be equated with darkness, but this is only our psychological fixation and our imagination and is actually how we are harming ourselves.
The Nagual, as it is unmanifested, is pure darkness and pure potential for power. If we are afraid of darkness, we are afraid of power. This makes sense of course, because too much power all at once, too much intensity can destroy us. So a certain amount of fear is normal in that it keeps our sensitive faculties in place. At the same time, we have to recognize that fear is the throttle of how much we are able to integrate into our being and build our spiritual mass. The most darkest people are the most integrated people. The shaman living on the outskirts of the village is the one the commoners fear the most.
Powerful teachers are, by nature, the scariest teachers, because we are so accustomed to power being abused and we don’t know what it looks like for someone to be committed to meeting their own needs without resorting to manipulation and unnecessary/unnatural violence.
If we see violence such as a fight, or one animal eating another animal, our fearful psychology can easily chalk this up to proof and confirmation that mother is unsafe. But some degree of violence is normal and healthy in our world. When one animal eats another, this is not dysfunction, it’s natural order. Someone who is embodied in darkness (men become the dark masculine, women become the dark feminine) are trained in using their sword but choose to keep it sheathed most of the time.
If they were afraid of violence they would not be nearly as powerful. Someone who is afraid of violence is inherently untrustworthy because they are then afraid of themselves and their own inner violence. A car accident or an intentional initiation practice which can wound the flesh can easily cause us to project violence onto harm without making a dsintinction between the two. We imagine that there is something good and bad happening, this is a natural innocent childlike response.
While in one sense everyone truly is equal, at the same time there is a hierarchy of integration. This is not a personal hierarchy (though it may feel personal) that pits one person against another in competition. Rather, it’s a recognition that some nervous systems have developed greater capacity to remain present and centered when consciousness moves through them. The person who has learned to maintain a thin servant ego doesn’t become “better than” others, they become more useful to consciousness, and paradoxically, often less visible as a personality.
This integration work is entirely somatic, not intellectual. It requires the nervous system to literally learn new patterns of response when confronted with intensity, uncertainty, or the dissolution of familiar ego structures. Accepting uncertainty is only natural when darkness is present. When we process our shadows (our desperate fixations on being seen, loved, safe, and acknowledged) and allow them to be replaced by this transparent darkness, we become available for True Will to take its place. This is consciousness working through us in ways that serve the whole rather than feeding our personal hunger for recognition.
This creates a foundation where we can create real art, have a real relationship, face genuine crisis, recognize real harm, and accept and authentic personal death cycles without our ego structure getting the best of us (this is much easier said than done, of course).
The blindness of the Blind Seer is specifically in reference to being okay with darkness and not trying to get rid of the discomfort our human feels when confronted with the potential for harm and death. By accepting these aspects of the fragility of the human, paradoxically, it actually makes us stronger and more competent in taking care of ourselves, and thereby becoming one of the few who can actually survive in a real crisis, because we have practiced and trained for maintaining our centeredness in situations where most people are completely jettisoned from their body because of the extreme fear of death that is accepted as normal in our society.
