The Path of Darkness and Light

About a century ago Freud had an astute observation. There is an interplay of our consciousness, the "I", the ego, with the norms that our parents and our society impose on us, which he called the super-ego and then there are all these drives, the instincts and animalistic spirits, the so-called "It". He worked under the assumption that if you really do your homework, if you really face all your animalistic passions, if you worked out all the suppressed stuff then perhaps you could be a pretty sane individual.

We in the spiritual community don't really disagree with any of this. Of course our society and our friends and parents as well as our religions have created a super-ego and we also certainly accept that we are driven by animalistic spirits which are biological and evolutionary in nature. Where we differ is in the insight that the " I" is an institution that can never become sane. Instead, we think of the "I" as an interplay of devil and angel, ego and True Self, darkness and light, and that more often than not the "good" in us wins the upper hand despite ourselves. But we also say that there is a path that allows us to integrate the two and that the Tao will help us in this process.

How to proceed from this insight is not so straightforward. You agree with this concept mentally, but in order to be in touch with your True Self you have to bring your entire "system" along and there is frustration growing inside of you because your "system" wants to point out to you that you are negating parts of your being by eying the elusive True Self. You want to be good and in that wanting you create a shadow that just waits for its opportunity to let off steam. In this expectation you create a conflict within yourself. The more we want to be good, the greater our struggle will be and the bigger our shadow will become in the process. Naturally, we spiritual path travelers struggle especially with the shadow personality.

We say "I must be a good person" because my True Self wants me to be. We say "I must not take advantage of someone only because I want a promotion", or "I must not lust after attractive people because I am married", etc. Freud's simple idea is still very relevant in this aspect. Try repressing your animalistic drives, try undermining what you deep down inside really appreciate and the dark empire will strike back. We humans have known this fact for millennia, this is an issue that is as ancient as the Tree of Knowledge. The question now only is what exactly can we do about it?

We think that the Tao can help you very much in the search for who you truly are. The Tao is the way of paradoxes. Hot and cold, yin and yang, dominance and submission, attack and defense. The Tao is the Way of the Middle, engaged but detached, following, but leading, last, yet first. A Tao traveler doesn't have to be afraid of shadow work - we specialize in paradoxes. There is an exciting riddle waiting for you to be solved, a Mission Impossible made possible just for you if you choose to accept. When you are done solving yours you will have literally turned the world you live in upside down. You will have redefined spiritual norms, you will have expanded the spiritual possibility frontier. Do not lose sleep on whether the spiritual community frowns on you or not, do whatever the Tao wants you to do. You will see that along the Way there will be white lies, there will be sex, there will be anger and laughter and crying.

Get in touch with your emotions, face your desires and express them creatively without undermining your spiritual path. But don't have any preconceived notions of how this path should look like let the Tao show you the way. When it is beneficial for your soul development to engage in the dark corners of your being, the Tao will ask you to do it no matter how difficult or how dirty this effort may appear to you. But the Tao will also show you the way into the light, the symbolic cleaning process, the ability to let go of your frustrations and the path to let go of your psychological baggage. There is a path through the darkness into the light and nobody but you can travel it. Just follow the signs and be prepared to walk in the daytime as well as at night.

By Christian and Su Zhen