Owning Our Darkness, A Sermon

Thich Nhat Hanh, a very gentle Buddhist monk can find within himself a mix of both darkness and light as it occurs in the world. In his poem, “Call me by my True Names,” he identifies with such beautiful images of spring but he does not stop there.  He does not decline to see the darkness in himself, he also identifies as a rape victim and a rapist, as both the predator and prey. He knows that darkness is a part of him, as much as light, ugliness as much as beauty, and he acknowledges all of himself with compassion.

Can we look upon our own darkness with that same compassion? Can we find the murderer and rapist within ourselves and still love ourselves?  If not to that extreme, can we own our anger, our violent speech and desires, our moments of dehumanizing others?  Can we find the seed of the horrible things of this world within ourselves?  And can we have compassion for those cold, loveless, aching parts?

Lately I have been angry.  Just filled with anger. No reason for the anger that I can find. Just anger. Someone who I respect very much once said, emotions don’t have to make sense, they don’t need a reason. I don’t need to prove that I have a right to feel this anger. I feel it. That’s it. Anger was something I wasn’t allowing myself to feel for a long time. Anger was something I wasn’t supposed to feel.  I was supposed to be a well of understanding and forgiveness. And so for a long time I buried my anger and loved and forgave and understood until I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I am not asking you to only feel a narrow range of emotion, just the opposite, I am asking you to allow yourself to feel everything you feel. Allowing is a form of loving. You don’t need to explain yourself, you don’t need to justify yourself. You don’t need to paint yourself holy. You just need to allow yourself to be you. It’s the only way to be peaceful. Let everything that is there, be there. It won’t hurt you. It won’t overtake you.  You always have a choice about how you want to act in this world, being more honest about how you are feeling or what you are thinking doesn’t take away that choice.

We have imaged that everything we are ashamed of is like a powerful demon that we must always resist, deny, and never say the name of. I will tell you, I have met this demon within myself. I would like to share a somewhat disturbing experience with you. In meditation, I saw a horrific figure, a demonic being, actually eating the remains of a human body.  And I knew that this being was a part of me. Just that, just that alone, horrified me. That my mind held this inside of it. But I would not open my eyes. I stayed with the meditation. And I felt myself as the demon now, I was hiding in a clothing trunk, eating human remains in the dark. I felt my teeth ripping and tearing at the flesh of a severed leg and I felt the dirty shame of eating it. But I was also the person I knew myself to be, standing at a distance, aware of the demon, and trying to have courage, not just to face this terrible thing, but to face the fact that this terrible thing was a part of me. Myself as the demon knew that it had been found and began to panic and opened the trunk and waved a knife at the self I knew, and warned it to stay back, promising violence, promising death. “I’ll kill you, I’ll f-ing kill you.” I screamed to my human self, desperate to be left alone to my shame, in the safe space of my dark box. As the demon, I felt such panic, and such anger. As the human, I gathered my courage and said, “I am not here to hurt you, I just want to get to know you better. I just want to understand what you mean.” And the demon was screaming, “look what you have made me become to survive, look at what I have had to do.” And then the demon became a child, a hurt angry child, now crying and screaming, a child who had to find a way to live without love for so long. I stayed with her a while until she trusted me enough to take my hand and I took her by the seashore and told her that the world doesn’t have to be like the one she had known, I wouldn’t keep her in a dark room in a box anymore.  I wanted her to know the light, I wanted her to see how beautiful the world could be. I told her I was sorry. And she cried the soft cry that comes when you’ve grown weak with crying. And I took her to a room full of windows, with a view of the water, and I tucked her into bed, and told her to rest. I think she is still recovering in some room inside of me.

This was my demon, a hurt unloved child who had to find a way to survive. I believe this demon represented what I created when I did not offer myself self care. When I would give and give to others and pay no attention to myself I became like a cannibal, eating away at myself. I needed to nourish myself somehow. When I was so giving, I was also very manipulative. I had to get my needs met without claiming them, because I was taught that having needs was selfish. So I took when I could in shady ways, to survive, and then felt even more shame. Either I make better choices about how to nourish myself or I go into hiding and get my needs met in any ugly way I could in the dark. When we have the courage to face the most horrible parts of ourselves, we see that it is still ourselves, asking for attention, still in need of kindness.

In a course in miracles, we are told that everything that is done is either an act of love or a call for love.

When parts of us are raging, violent, and ugly, can we answer their call for love?  Can we have compassion for the parts of us that are hurting and now seek to hurt others? I think we need to, if we don’t want their call for love to grow louder and more desperate I think we need to listen, understand the aching, and have some compassion.

It is time to call the homeless parts of ourselves back home.  The parts we are ashamed of, the parts that we are sure need to stay hidden if we want to be loved in this world. There is no way around it, we have got to love it all, every aching ugly part of our complicated spirit.  We have got to allow the space in our mind/bodies for every insistent part. What we resist, persists. Denying it doesn’t change it, pushing it out won’t work, trying to kill it makes it stronger, you have got to learn to love the ugly parts of you.

The thing about wanting to feel whole is that wholeness means everything, everything.  We want unity; we want an undivided self and world. Unity means everything and everyone. It means living with contradictions, it means allowing both sides. Stop frantically rooting out your weeds, weeds and grass will grow in you and will keep growing. You are what you are. Everything you are God/Goddess has enfolded in you. So love your darkness as you would the most lovable part of you. Every part of you needs love. Every part of you needs a place to come to rest. No way around it. And the ugly parts are just hurting and they need even more love and acceptance than the rest.

Every feeling ever felt by anyone, all those murderous, ugly, hateful feelings: you are capable of feeling every one of them. Every horrible act ever done by a human being, you are capable of doing yourself.  You aren’t above or separate from anyone who has ever lived in this world. Every dark thing you see outside of you is inside you as well. Until we face our own darkness, our own angry, seething, destructive instinct, we are going to keep acting it out thoughtlessly. Know what you are, know what you are capable of being, then make your choices.

Awareness of our darkness will empower us to make choices, instead of acting out of subconscious motivation. It seems to me, we can’t authentically shine our light unless we are willing to begin to embrace our darkness. If we don’t own that we are capable of magnificent ugliness, we will go around judging people and pretending ugly isn’t our nature. Everything is our nature. We are capable of so much, don’t sell yourself short in any direction. You can descend as far as you can ascend. As above so below. It is all there within you, but you have a choice about what you want to act out, so make your choices.

That is not to say, it is easy. We may find ourselves screaming at a loved one and feeling shameful.  All a call for love. There is a saying in Italian,

“Amami quando lo merito meno,
perché sará quando ne ho piú bisogno."

Translation: "Love me when I deserve it the least,
because that is when I will need it the most.”

See if you can offer yourself some understanding, and forgiveness, no matter how many times you do a thing you are ashamed of. No matter what you do, you are deserving of understanding, love, and forgiveness. I was raised Catholic, and I was told that no matter how many times I go to confession for the same issues, I would be forgiven. The Quran speaks about a merciful and forgiving God. Many religions attribute these qualities to God. Friends, every atom of ourselves is made of God. Allow the God of ourselves to forgive the aching God within us. Everything is God. We are creating God as much as God is creating us. Let the God that you are, be merciful and loving and forgiving to the parts that need it the most.  Manifest a kind and gentle God to yourself, to all parts of you that are calling for love in the dark.

We can’t love and accept outside, what we can’t love and accept inside. When I see a homeless person, I feel aversion and fear and I fill my mind with judgments about him, trying to convince myself that somehow he deserved it, and that is if I consider him at all.  I am not proud of it, but there it is. The aversion is me trying to protect myself from what I am, from the reality that I am vulnerable to the same things which put the homeless person in that position.  There isn’t much stopping me from curling up beside him tonight. That scares me. That aversion was me trying to create distance, trying to cut off my connection to that person by arguing that there is something substantially different between him and me, but there isn’t. We are so similar and I am afraid. A part of my shadow is homeless and cold and hungry, and by speaking its name to you I am trying to give it a little warmth, a little food, a little comfort that it has a place to come home to now within me. And when I really welcome that part home, maybe then I can really give some comfort and warmth to someone outside of me. Metaphorically all of my shadow is homeless.

It’s time to put the porch light on in our hearts and say, “come back, it’s safe now, you have a home here,” to every part of us we thought couldn’t be loved.  “Get out of the shadows and come warm yourself by the fire.”  Let’s say that to ourselves first, and maybe in some distant time, we can show that kindness to someone outside of ourselves, without looking down on the person, without a feeling of difference. Just another part of the whole that needs some love.

For many of us even our light is a part of our shadow.  We have learned to be ashamed of our goodness, our innocence, our loving, our brilliance, all of the gifts that we were given in order to make a difference in this life.  Anything we were taught to be ashamed of is in the darkness, not just our dark seething desires, but also our magnificence, our beauty, our power. When we were young, maybe we said something that was a little too wise for our time, maybe we offered the answer to a question a little quicker than we should have, maybe we loved someone we were supposed to be disgusted by, and we were “corrected.” We were corrected for shining too brightly in a world that convinced itself that being a little dim always is the only way to survive.

We were meant to do more than just survive. We need to wiggle the lamp shades off of our spirit. We need to come alive.  Howard Thurman wrote, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”  Coming alive means allowing every part of yourself to receive blood, to be nourished. And when you give yourself permission to be everything you are, you give that permission to others, you allow others to be less afraid of themselves, less ashamed, you allow others to come home to themselves. Everything in you is acceptable and understandable and lovable.

Let us pray:

Mother,

Please guide and protect us as we seek reconciliation with all of the parts of ourselves. A part of us yearns for the experience of wholeness. Remind us that wholeness means everything. It means viewing everything inside of us as acceptable and loveable.

Please give us grace to forgive ourselves when we fall short of what we think is acceptable and remind us that we are just calling out for love. Give us the grace to love what we have learned is unlovable. We know everything is of one substance, and everything is divine, even the darkness in us and in our world. Remind us to consider loving when the call for love is made in any form and to forgive ourselves when we cannot answer the call.

Please help us to accept and heal our divided self so that we may be empowered in time to help heal our divided world.

Let it be. Amen.