Awakening: Fear, the False Light, the Deceiving Darkness and the Union

In this article, I want to talk a bit about fear, and its role in the awakening process.

Whether we fear the darkness, being alone, being seen as bad, being seen as a failure, or being seen at all, each one of us, through the mechanism of ego, finds a way to either run from or attack what we fear. It’s a simple and very biological fight or flight mechanism. Flight is the most common choice for many, depending on the degree of fear, and on the depth of social conditioning that has them designed to avoid conflict (fight) of any form.
When most people do choose a form of fight, they tend to do it in a way that is concealed, and so becomes in greater or lesser degrees psycho- or socio- pathic, in their belief systems or in their behavior. Many pick up philosophies and political ideas or religions that help justify their fears and give them temporary, but apparently concrete answers. For example, men who deeply fear women will gravitate towards religions that speak very little about or diminish the power of women. Some will even gravitate to thought systems and theologies that demonize or blame women, such as in the story of Pandora or Adam and Eve. In parallel, they will develop deep-seated ideological and idealizations of the perfect woman in the form of mother, sister, or sex object. Regardless of the manifested form of holiness or goodness or attractiveness, the fear is always kept hidden from consciousness, and so the fight mechanism is shrouded in a cloak of kindness, religiosity, and airs of intelligence, righteousness and beauty and sexuality.

Most people spend their entire life inside the structures that conceal the very fear-energy that fuels their waking life. From that energy (fear energy), the ego-mind ruthlessly and without attention to consequences pursues that which promises its own empowerment and safety, which is also that which promises fortification of its existing ideologies, belief systems, and aesthetic. It is important to remember that the waking mind, the shallow form of the self-consciousness is completely oblivious to all of this fear energy projection, and instead believes it is living in a concrete reality in which he or she is the active door and first cause or victim around which their life spins. The myths regarding the underworld, the subconscious flow of life that lives beneath the surface, reflects these unseen shadow and dark aspects of our life that is our psyche (soul).

Yet, all of these egoic fear structures also provide an opportunity, because each corner; every word, every contradiction is a crack in the structure through which the light of truth can stream. To allow that light to pour in requires that the cracks become deep, substantial gaps, which will then lead to deep foundational deterioration – of the entire egoic structure. This process is called “awakening” and it is exactly the dismantling and deterioration of the egoic structures. Those with the deepest and most complex structures, will feel more pain and suffering during this process, commonly known as “dark night of the soul”. As the egoic structure crumbles, the egoic mind experiences the fire of fear, the great motivator, the demon and the whip that fuels most of the egoic-mind and its embodiment. It will experience the rage that can only derive from a sense of violation, of the awareness of the light, as it “trespasses” over the threshold. Some will experience supernatural beings; some will just have violent or intrusive thoughts; some physical and mental ailments. This is a very trying time in the process of awakening – it is a literal “facing of one’s own demons”. Many do not survive this, and turn back, claiming that awakening is the stuff of demons; or they spend the rest of their life in this zone “fighting demons”. Both ways are essentially the same, whether you flee or fight these demons. But who you are fighting is exactly an aspect of your own Self, that has been neglected, demonized, and fantasized into something that is designed to appear unconquerable and indominable.

And that is exactly where you are being challenged to find a way to not flee or fight, but to transform, to learn how the egoic mind, with its limiting structures of false light, have actually created the false darkness. Yes, the false darkness. Just like the ego lives in its own false reality of goodness, so too does it live in its underworld of fear. The two cannot be separated, due to the law of polarity which states all things in this universe hold both light and shadow. The only way to diminish or dissolve the demons of the underworld is to dissolve the false structures of ego. The problem isn’t the demons. The problem is the false light structure to which the ego clings. And so, in many ways, during awakening, people will be pushed to the edge only because of the goodness of the pain the “demons” provide – it is the only way the ego will finally let go of the false illusions in which it immerses the identity.

And so that is the way, to see the demons that you are harboring, whatever form they take, and to understand the connection they have to the “angels”. You must let go of both, equally, and imbalance, for them to merge into wholeness, peace, a tranquil horizon of silence.